The Church and Mosaics at Horvat Berachot, Israel

The planning of some pilgrimage churches in Crusader Palestine

“…Tsafrir and Hirschfeld 1979). The church of the Shepherds, east of Bethlehem, for instance, which began as a cave-chapel in the late fourth century, was enlarged in the fifth and had a basilica built over it in the sixth; the upper church was abandoned in the tenth century and was not rebuilt by the Crusaders, even though Western pilgrims continued to venerate the supposed burial place of the Shepherds in the cave-church through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Tzaferis 1975).…”