Saint Abraham?: Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

In 1099, the armies of the First Crusade swept through the territory around Jerusalem and established a Latin polity in the Christian Holy Land. Shrines dedicated to biblical events or figures became beacons of Latin piety and power, and many were reconstructed or redecorated to espouse “Crusader” religious and political ideologies. At the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the canons installed at the site faced an unusual situation. The shrine built over the bones of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah was one of the holiest sites in Islam and Judaism. Although Christians also venerated the patriarchs and matriarchs, their material remains were not necessarily sanctified. All the same, the bones were miraculously rediscovered below the shrine’s flagstones in 1119 and treated as relics. A cathedral was wedged inside first-century walls and adopted the plan of the eleventh-century mosque. Latin Kingdom clerics promoted the cult of the patriarchs, but their efforts were more successful among Muslim and Jewish pilgrims than the Christian travelers they hoped to attract. This paper explores the Latin actions and Jewish reactions in twelfth-century Hebron.