Note 15 — Chapter X
Reading edition
Hereafter the abbreviation S. M. will be generally used instead of the name Santa Maria.
16. Fergusson (History of Architecture, vol. ii., pp. 408, 432) contends that this was the real Constantinian church of the Holy Sepulchre, and that the one called to-day by that name was erected by the Crusaders in the twelfth century. The more general view is that the latter was originally built by Constantine as the Church of the Sepulchre, though subsequently much altered, and that the octagonal edifice was also his work, but erected under some other name. Whether this church was later incorporated in the “Mosque of Omar,” or merely furnished some of the materials for its construction, is not quite clear.