Church of the Pater Noster 4.08

The Church of the Pater Noster is a Roman Catholic church located on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. It is part of a Carmelite monastery', also known as the Sanctuary of the Eleona (Domaine de l'Eleona). The Church of the Pater Noster stands right next to the traditional site of Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer, a cave which formed the crypt and centrepiece of the 4th-century Byzantine Church of Eleona. The ruins of the Eleona were rediscovered in the 20th century and its walls were partially rebuilt. Today, the land on which both churches and the entire monastery are standing formally belongs to France.HistoryThe modern Church of the Pater Noster is built right next to the site of a fourth-century basilica commissioned by Constantine I to commemorate the Ascension of Jesus Christ. It was built under the direction of Constantine's mother Helena in the early 4th century, who named it the Church of the Disciples. The pilgrim Egeria was the first surviving source referring to it as the Church of the Eleona (Greek for olive grove) in the late 4th century. The church is mentioned by the Bordeaux pilgrim in the Itinerarium Burdigalense circa 333, and the historian Eusebius of Caesarea recounts that Constantine constructed a church over a cave on the Mount of Olives that had been linked with the Ascension. The 2nd-century Acts of John mentions the existence of a cave on the Mount of Olives associated with the teachings of Jesus, but not specifically the Lord's Prayer. The church survived intact until it was destroyed by Persians in 614.