Bury My Heart In Jerusalem

The Marquis John Patrick Crichton Steward, from the Royal Scottish Family, was a practicing Catholic and before he died he gave orders regarding his burial: he wanted his heart to be interred in Jerusalem.

On the eighth of October, 1900 the Marquis died and a week later his wife arrived in Jerusalem with their four children to bury her husband's heart at the Mount of Olives, on land adjacent to the Franciscan Chapel of Dominus Flevit.

Today a cross marking the grave and a marble tombstone with the inscription of the last wish of the Marquis can still be seen there. About 600 years earlier another Scotsman, King Robert Bruce, had expressed the same wish. His heart was put into a silver case and given to a messenger, Sir William de St.Clair. However, the case and its precious contents never made it to Jerusalem because Sir William died in battle in Spain.

The heart was brought back to Scotland and finally buried in Melrose Abbey (a mysterious place connected with the Templars and the Holy Grail). A memorial plaque at St. Andrew's in Jerusalem recalls this episode.