Note (3) — 39.—Of the withered tree.

(3.) “but now there is only a pillar.”—If tradition is to be relied on, it was the mother of Constantine who built the Church of the Annunciation, which had already ceased to exist in Schiltberger’s time. In 1620 a handsome church was erected on the same site (Raumer, Palæstina, etc., 136), and a column at the foot of seventeen steps indicated the spot where the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin; it was possibly the pillar referred to in the text. The pilgrim Daniel describes the earliest church, situated in the centre of the city, as being large and handsome, and enclosing three altars. It was destroyed by the sultan Bibars in 1263 (Weil, Gesch. der Chal., iv, 46; Makrizi by Quatremère, I, i, 200).—Bruun.