A medieval pipe instrument, which accompanied liturgies during the Crusader era, was discovered in Bethlehem and restored as part of the RESOUND project led by Spanish musicologist David Catalunya. The presentation was held this morning at the Convent of Holy Saviour, headquarters of the Custody of the Holy Land. New studies on the bells are now underway.

 

Jerusalem (AsiaNews) – The oldest organ in Christendom – and the world – is once again playing music after more than 800 years of silence.

Discovered in Bethlehem, the pipe instrument from the medieval era is back in use thanks to meticulous restoration, a miracle according to Spanish musicologist David Catalunya, as part of the RESOUND project.

The official presentation took place this morning at the Convent of the Holy Saviour in Jerusalem, headquarters of the Custody of the Holy Land (Franciscans), as part of an international event organised by the Custody and participating institutions.

Built in France in the 11th century, the instrument was brought to the Holy Land in the 12th century to accompany the Crusaders’ liturgy, and so can be considered the oldest instrument in the world still capable of producing musical sounds today.

It is even older than the organ in Valère Basilica, Sion, in the Swiss Canton of Valais, made between 1430 and 1435, as noted in an article in terrasanta.net (in Italian).

The Organ of Bethlehem project is promoted by Spain’s Complutense Institute of Musical Sciences (ICCMU) in co-operation with the Terra Sancta Museum and the Custody.

The research is led by Spanish researcher David Catalunya, whose passion for historical instruments brought him to the Holy City in search of a liturgical treasure buried in the 13th century.

In 1906, an excavation conducted by Franciscan archaeologists from the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum (SBF) under the garden of the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem uncovered 222 bronze pipes, a carillon of thirteen bells, and other liturgical objects hidden by the Crusaders.

This unique trove was carefully preserved by the clergy, who enthusiastically welcomed this innovative research project.

The Crusaders apparently hid the Organ of Bethlehem with the assistance of Latin Augustinian clerics prior to their expulsion from the Holy Land. It was buried alongside bells and liturgical objects inside the Church of the Nativity.

After it was dug out, the instrument was taken to the Convent of the Flagellation, where the Studium was founded over a century ago.

The find was ignored by the academic world until in 2019, when Catalunya, then a young researcher at the University of Oxford, discovered a handwritten note referring to the instrument.

This discovery prompted him to promote an ambitious study and restoration project conducted in Madrid thanks to the RESOUND, a project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and coordinated by the Complutense Institute of Musical Sciences (ICCMU).

A turning point in the work came on 20 May this year, when scholars discovered that eight of the 222 original organ pipes were in such a state of preservation that they could still play without any restoration work.

“They sounded as if they had been made yesterday,” the Spanish musicologist said. “It was like opening a pharaoh's tomb – for days, we felt like we were in a dream.”

Researchers attempted to insert one of the medieval pipes into the body of a portable organ, obtaining a clear and powerful sound that marked the instrument's return to life after eight centuries of silence.

Catalunya emphasises how the timbre of this medieval organ is different from Renaissance or modern ones:

“It's a surprising sound, with a lot of character, rich and varied in the low, medium, and high registers," he noted. Its sonority “allows us to imagine, as much as possible, the atmosphere of the medieval liturgy.”

As a world first, David Catalunya played music on some of the original pipes, producing the same vibration that once accompanied Crusader liturgies in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

“Today,” he explained, “this forgotten voice can be heard again, not just as an object of study, but as a living experience that connects art, history, and emotion. Like a musical Pompeii, it is a unique window into the past, a living relique.”

Álvaro Torrente, director of the Complutense Institute of Musical Sciences, the leading music research centre in Spain, goes further.

“The Organ of Bethlehem is not only a treasure of the past that we can now contemplate and hear. It is also a unique source of knowledge about European music, engineering, and organology, capable of radically transforming our vision of medieval culture.”

For him, “It is like finding a living dinosaur: something that once seemed impossible and that suddenly becomes real before our eyes and ears”.

Meanwhile, the work of researchers and musicologists is not yet complete. One of the ongoing studies concerns the possible relationship between the organ and the bells found in the same excavations in Bethlehem.

• holy land
• custody of the holy land
• jerusalem
• organ of bethlehem
• restoration
• david catalunya
• álvaro torrente