Burgundy in Bethlehem: Architectural Diplomacy in Fifteenth-Century Mamluk Syria

Braden Lee Scott

In the middle of the fifteenth century, Philip the Good (1396-1467), Duke of Burgundy, began orchestrating renovations to the ancient Roman basilica in the city of Bethlehem. The church was built by the Roman Emperor Constantine and his mother, Helena, in the fourth century on top of a cave thought to have been the birthplace of Jesus. The Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian had renovated the church once in the sixth century, but by 1448, after nearly a thousand years of neglect due to Islamic legislation that forbade the renovation of Christian buildings, it was in shambles. My project Burgundy in Bethlehem will explore the transcultural mobility of architecture that unfolded during the fifteenth-century renovations to Bethlehem’s Basilica. I approach these events as a compelling example of cooperation and architectural diplomacy between European, Asian, and African rulers and diplomats that cut across confessional and political divisions. In this way, my study aims to add nuance to assumptions that political and religious discord characterized global relations in the period that straddles the turn from the Late Medieval to Early Modern.  The renovation serves as a rich study of a cooperative model of production in the history of art and architecture because it did not require a battle or conquest for completion. Rather, the process required courts in Burgundy, England, Rome, Venice, Jerusalem, and Cairo to set aside their differences and work together. My main questions are: why was the restoration of the Bethlehem Basilica important to so many courts? And what was it about this basilica that afforded a moment of cooperation across the Mediterranean? The same land that has been referred to at different times as Canaan, Israel, Judea, Palestine, and Syria is a site of ongoing conflicts that have raged for millennia. But the renovation project was a moment when, for a few decades at least, Europe put down the crusader spears it aimed at Jerusalem and picked up planks of wood to build things anew. Likewise, the Mamluk Sultanate that governed the province around Jerusalem opened their doors to innovative and restorative architectural proposals from European courts. It is certain that some of my answers will be found in a detailed understanding of the shifting diplomatic strategies at the time. After the middle of the fifteenth century, what had been a productive alliance between the Mamluks and Ottomans turned sour, and the Europeans could become useful allies to the Mamluk Sultanate if Christian crusader ambitions could be re-directed into something less battle-driven. This research must range widely in geographic coverage while limiting itself to a succinct time frame: from the Burgundian Duke’s initiation of the project around 1448, through the period of the Mamluk Sultan Qā’it Bay’s architectural patronage and permissions given to Burgundy twenty years later, and then to the thirty-year span during which the project, after having been handed down to Charles the Bold, his heir Mary of Burgundy, and her husband, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, arrived at completion shortly before 1484.