in the grove of olives. Inquisitive like all young men, he did not take
the time to dress, but wrapping a sheet about him, stepped out to see
what was happening. The guards thought him a disciple who had not had
time to escape, and laid hands on him, but the young man, casting off
the sheet, left it in their hands and fled from them naked.
No one has ever known the identity of this mysterious man awakened from
his sleep, who appeared suddenly in the night, and as suddenly
disappeared. Perhaps he was the youthful Mark, the only one of the
Evangelists who tells this story. If it were Mark, it is possible that
on that night the involuntary witness of the beginning of the Passion
first conceived the impulse to become, as Mark did, its first historian.
ANNAS
In a short time the criminal was taken to the house which Annas shared
with his son-in-law, the High Priest Caiaphas. Although the night was
now well advanced, and although the assembly had been warned the day
before, that Caiaphas hoped to capture the blasphemer early in the
morning, many of the Jews were still in bed and the prosecution could
not begin at once. In order that the common people might not have time
to rise in rebellion, nor Pilate to take thought, the leaders were in
haste to finish the affair that very morning. Some of the guards who
returned from the Mount of Olives were sent to awake the more important
Scribes and Elders, and in the meantime old Annas, who had not slept all
that night, set himself on his own account to question this false
Prophet.
Annas, son of Seth, had been for seven years High Priest, and though
deposed in the year 14 under Tiberius, he was still the real primate of
the Jewish Church. A Sadducee, head of one of the most aggressive and
wealthy families of the ecclesiastical patriarchate, he was still,
through his son-in-law, leader of his caste. Five of his sons were
afterwards High Priests, and one of them, also called Annas, caused
James, the brother of the Lord, to be stoned to death.
Jesus was led before him. It was the first time that the wood-worker of
Nazareth found Himself face to face with the religious head of His
people, with His greatest enemy. Up to that time He had met only the
subalterns in the Temple, the common soldiers, the Scribes and
Pharisees; now He was before the head, and He was no longer the accuser
but the accused. This was the first questioning of that day. In the
space of a few hours, four authorities examined Him; two rulers from the
Temple, Annas and Caiaphas; and two temporal rulers, Antipas and Pilate.
The first question Annas put to Jesus was to ask Him who His disciples
were. The old political priest who like all the other Sadducees gave no
credence to the foolish stories about the coming of a Messiah, wished to
know first of all who were the followers of the new Prophet, and from
what rank of society He had picked them up, so that he might determine
how far the seditious ulcer had progressed. But Jesus looked at Him
without answering. How could that dove-huckster have thought that Jesus
could betray those who had betrayed Him?
Then Annas asked about His doctrine. Jesus answered that it was not for
Him to explain: “I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the
synagogue and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in
secret have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? ask them which heard me,
what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said.”
This was the truth. Jesus was not esoteric. Even if He sometimes said to
His Disciples words that He did not repeat in the open places of the
city, He exhorted them to cry out on the housetops what He told them in
the house. But Annas must have made a wry face at an answer which
pre-supposed an honest trial, for one of the officers standing by struck
Jesus with the palm of his hand, saying, “Answerest thou the high priest
so?”
This blow from the quick-tempered attendant was the beginning of the
insults which were henceforth rained upon Christ up to the cross. But He
who had been struck, with His cheek reddened by the boor, turned towards
the man who had struck Him, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the
evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?”
The rogue, abashed by such calm, found no answer. Annas began to see
that this Galilean was no common adventurer, and he was all the more
eager to get Him out of the way. Seeing, however, that he was not
succeeding in extracting anything from Him, he sent Him bound to
Caiaphas, the High Priest, so that the fiction of a legal prosecution
might begin at once.
THE COCK CROWS
Only two of the fleeing Disciples repented of their cowardice, and
trembling in the shadow of the walls, followed from afar the swaying
lanterns which accompanied Christ to the den of fratricides: Simon, son
of Jonas, and John, son of Zebedee.
John, who was known in the household of Caiaphas, went into the
courtyard of the building with Jesus, but Simon, more shamefaced, or not
so bold, did not enter and stood at the door without: then after a few
moments John, not seeing his companion, and wishing to have him at hand
for sympathy or defense, went out and persuaded the suspicious
doorkeeper to let Peter also come in. But as he stepped through the
door, the woman recognized him: “Art not thou also one of his
disciples?”
But Peter took on an offended air, “I know not, neither understand I
what thou sayest. I know him not.”
And he sat down with John near the brazier which the servants had
kindled in the courtyard because, although it was in April, the night
was cold. But the woman would not give up her idea, and coming to the
fire and looking at him earnestly, said, “Thou also wast with Jesus of
Nazareth,” and he denied again with curses, “Woman, I know him not!”
The gate-keeper, shaking her head, turned back to her gate, but the men
aroused by these heated denials looked at him more closely and said,
“Surely thou art one of them: for thou art a Galilean, and thy speech
agreeth thereto.”
Then Simon began to curse and to swear, but another, a kinsman of
Malchus whose ear Peter had cut off, cut short his testimony: “Did I not
see thee in the garden with him?”
But Peter, now hopelessly involved in lies, began again to protest that
they had mistaken him for another and that he was not one of the friends
of the Man.
At this very moment Jesus, bound among the guards, crossed the courtyard
after His colloquy with Annas, passing to the other part of the palace,
where Caiaphas lived: and He heard the words of Simon and looked at Him.
For just one moment He turned His eyes upon Simon, those eyes where
Simon, denying Him now, had once recognized the gleam of divinity. For
an instant only He looked at him with eyes whose gentleness was more
unendurable than any contempt. And this look pierced for all time the
pitiable, distracted heart of the fisherman. To the day of his death he
could never forget those sad, mild eyes fixed on him in that terrible
night; those eyes which in one flash expressed more and moved him more
than a thousand words.
“Thou also who wast the first, of whom I hoped most, the hardest but the
most zealous, the most ignorant but the most fervent, thou also, Simon,
the same who cried out my true name near Cæsarea, thou also who knowest
all my words and hast slept with thy head on my cloak and hast kissed me
so many times with those lips which now deny me, thou also, Simon Peter,
son of Jonas, deny me before those who are about to kill me! I was right
that day when I called thee a stumbling block and reproached thee with
thinking not like God but like men. Thou mightest at least have fled
away as the others did if thou hadst not the strength to drink with me
the cup of infamy which I had foretold to thee. Flee away now that I may
see thee no more until the day when I shall be truly free and thou shalt
be truly made over by faith. If thou fearest for thy life why art thou
here? If thou fearest not, why dost thou deny me? Even Judas at the last
has been more faithful than thou: he came with my enemies, but he did
not deny that he knew me. Simon, Simon, I foretold that thou wouldst
leave me like the others, but now thou art more cruel than the others. I
have pardoned thee from my heart. I am about to die, and I pardon him
who brings me to death, and thee also; and I love thee as I have always
loved thee, but canst thou forgive thyself?”
Under the weight of this look, Simon hung his head and his heart beat
furiously in his breast. Not for his very life could he have brought out
another “No.” His face burned with an intolerable heat as if the brazier
before him had been the mouth of Hell. He was torn by an unbearable
tumult of passion and of remorse; in one breath he seemed frozen, in the
next all his body flamed. A moment before he had said that he had never
known Jesus, and now it seemed to him that he had spoken truly, that at
this moment he knew Him for the first time: that he finally understood
who He was, as if those eyes full of loving grief had pierced him with a
flash like an archangel’s sword.
He was scarcely able to drag himself to his feet and to stumble out to
the door. As he went out into the street in the silent, solitary
darkness a distant cock crew. This gay, bold note was for Peter like the
cry which awakens a sleeper from his nightmare. Then in the dim light of
dawn the last stars saw a man staggering along like a drunkard, his head
hidden in his cloak, his shoulders shaken by the sobs of a despairing
lament.
Weep, Peter, now that God mercifully grants you the grace of tears, weep
for yourself and for Him, weep for Judas, your traitor brother; weep for
your fleeing brothers, weep for the death of Him who is dying to save
your poor soul, for all those who will come after you and who will do as
you have done, deny their Saviour, and who will not pay for their
redemption by repentance. Weep for all the apostates, for all the others
who will deny Him, all those who will say as you have said, “I am not
one of His disciples!” Who of us has not done at least once what Simon
Peter did? Who of us, born in the Church of Christ, having prayed to Him
with our childish lips, having knelt before His blood-stained face, has
not said, fearing a mocking smile, “I never knew Him.”
Thou at least, unfortunate Simon, although thou wast Peter the rock,
wept bitterly and hid in thy cloak thy face convulsed with remorse. And
before many days Christ risen from the dead will kiss thee once more
because thy perjured mouth has been washed clean forever by thy tears.
THEN THE HIGH PRIEST RENT HIS CLOTHES
Caiaphas’ real name was Joseph. Caiaphas is a surname and is the same
word as Cephas, Simon’s surname, that is to say, Rock. On that Friday
morning’s dawn, the Son of Man was caught between those two rocks like a
grain of wheat between two millstones. Simon Peter is the type of the
timid friends who knew not how to save Him: Joseph Peter, of His
enemies, determined at any cost to destroy Him. Between the denial of
Simon and the hatred of Joseph, between the head of the church about to
disappear and the head of the Church just coming into existence, between
those two rocks Jesus was like wheat between the mill-stones.
The Sanhedrin had already come together and was awaiting Him. Together
with Annas and Caiaphas who presided, there were John, Alexander, and
all the reeking scum of the upper classes. As a rule the Sanhedrin was
composed of twenty-three priests, twenty-three Scribes, twenty-three
Elders, and two Presidents, in all, seventy-one. But on this occasion
some were absent, those who had more fear of an uprising of the people
than hatred for the blasphemer, and those few who would not lift a
finger to condemn Him, but would not defend Him openly: among these last
were certainly Nicodemus, the nocturnal disciple, and Joseph of
Arimathea, who was devoutly to lay Jesus in His tomb.
They had come together to ratify with a cloak of legality the decree of
murder already written on their hearts. These delegates from the Temple,
from the School and the Bank, burned with impatience to confirm, each
for his own reasons, their revengeful sentence. The great room of the
council already full of people was like a den of werewolves. The new day
showed itself hesitatingly: the orange-colored tongues of the torches
were scarcely visible in the dim light of dawn. In this sinister
half-shadow the Jews were waiting: aged, portly, hook-nosed, harsh,
beetle-browed, wrapped in their white cloaks, their heads covered,
stroking their venerable beards, with choleric eyes, seated in a half
circle, they seemed a council of sorcerers awaiting a living offering.
The rest of the hall was occupied by the clients of the seated assembly,
by guards with staves in their hands, by the domestic servants of the
house. The air was heavy and dense as in a charnel house.
Jesus, His wrists still tied with ropes, was thrust into the midst of
this kennel like a condemned man thrown to the beasts of the Imperial
amphitheater. Annas had gathered together in all haste from among the
rabble some false witnesses to make an end of any discussion or defense.
The pretense of a trial began with calling these perjurers. Two of them
came forward and swore that they had heard these words: “I will destroy
this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build
another made without hands.”
At the time and for those hearers this accusation was a very grave one,
meaning nothing less than sacrilege and blasphemy. For in the minds of
its upholders the Temple of Jerusalem was the one intangible home of the
Lord. And to threaten the Temple was to threaten their real Master, the
Master of all the Jews. But Jesus had never said these words or at least
not in this form, nor with this meaning. It is true that He had
announced that of the Temple not one stone would remain upon another,
but not through any action of His. And the reference to the Temple not
made with hands, built up in three days, was part of another discourse
in which He had spoken figuratively of His resurrection. The false
witnesses could not even agree about these words confusedly and
maliciously repeated, and one statement from Jesus would have been
enough to confound them utterly. But Jesus held His peace.
The High Priest could not endure this silence, and standing up, cried
out, “Answerest thou nothing? What is it which these witness against
thee?”
But Jesus answered nothing.
These silences of Jesus were so weighty with magnetic eloquence that
they enraged His judges. He held His peace at the first questioning of
Annas. He was silent now at the outcry of Caiaphas and He was to be
silent with Antipas and Pilate.
He had made already, a thousand times, the statements He might have made
now, and any other answers He might have made would either have been
misunderstood by His judges, or have been used by them as new pretexts
for attacking Him. Superhuman truths are in their very nature ineffable,
and only a shadow of them can be grasped, through a loving effort by
those who already have a faint divination of that shadow; and even to
them this comes more through the heart than through faulty and defective
words.
Jesus did not speak, but looked about Him with His great calm eyes, at
the troubled and convulsed faces of His assassins, and for all eternity
judged these phantom judges. In a flash every one of them was weighed
and condemned by that look which went straight to the soul. Were they
worthy to hear His words, those flawed, self-seeking souls, empty and
inane, those of them that are not ulcerous and moribund? How could He
ever, by the most unthinkable prodigy, stoop to justify Himself before
them?
Such self-justification was attempted by the son of the midwife, the
flat-nosed student and rival of the Sophists! The seventy-year-old
arguer, who for so many years had bored the artisans and the idlers on
the market-place, was capable of reciting to the judges of Athens an
eloquent and carefully arranged oration of excuses, which, from the
limits of dialectics, descended little by little to the sophistries of
law courts. It is true that the ironical old man who had set himself to
reform the art of thinking rather than the art of living, who had not
been above usury, who, not having his fill with Xantippe, had had two
children by his concubine Myra, and who amused himself with caressing
handsome young men more than was becoming for the father of a family,
was ready to die, and knew how to die with noble firmness; but at the
bottom of his heart he would have preferred to descend into Hades by the
more natural road. Towards the end of his specious defense, he tried to
placate his judges by recalling his old age to them. “It is useless to
kill me because I will die very soon anyhow”—and offered to pay thirty
greater minæ if they would let him go in peace.
But Christ was neither a sophist nor a lawyer, Christ whom so many
posthumous Pilates have tried to belittle by comparing Him to Socrates,
so inferior to Him. Like Dante’s angel, He disdained human discussions.
He answered with silence, or if He was forced to speak, spoke candidly
and briefly. Caiaphas, exasperated by this disrespectful taciturnity,
finally hit on a way to make him speak. “I adjure thee by the living
God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God.”
As long as they conducted His trial with the usual insidious procedure,
adducing falsities or asking Him about perfectly well-known truths,
Jesus said no word; but even in the infamous mouth of the High Priest,
the invocation to the living God was irresistible. Jesus could not deny
Himself to the living God, to the God who will live eternally, and who
lives in all of us, and who was present there even in that lair of
demons. And yet He hesitated a moment before dazzling those bleared eyes
with the splendor of His formidable secret.
“If I tell you, ye will not believe: And if I also ask you, ye will not
answer me.”
Now Caiaphas was not alone in putting the question; all of them,
excited, sprang to their feet and cried out, their clawing fingers
stretched towards Him, “Art thou then the Son of God?”
Jesus could not, like Peter, deny the irrefutable certainty which was
the reason for His life and for His death. He was responsible towards
His own people and towards all men. But, as at Cæsarea, He wished others
to be the ones to pronounce His real name, and when they had said it He
did not refuse it, even though death were the penalty.
“Ye say that I am. I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man
sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”
He had condemned Himself out of His own mouth. The snarling pack about
Him was frothing at the mouth with delight and anger. In the presence of
His assassins He had proclaimed what He had secretly admitted to His
most loving friends. Although they might betray Him, He had not betrayed
Himself or His father. Now He was ready for the last degradation. He had
said what He had to say.
Caiaphas was triumphant. Pretending a shocked horror which he did not
feel—because like all the Sadducees he had no faith whatever in the
apocalyptic writers and cared about nothing but the fees and honors of
the Temple—he rent his priestly garments, crying out, “He hath spoken
blasphemy! What further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have
heard his blasphemy. What think ye?”
And all the noisy kennel bayed out their answer, “He is guilty of
death.”
And without any further examination, without a single protest, they all
condemned Him to death as a blasphemer and false prophet.
The comedy of legal pretense was played to an end, and the cloaked
ghosts felt themselves relieved of an immense weight. It had cost the
High Priest a garment and he let the torn pieces hang like glorious
symbols of victorious battle. He did not know that on that very day a
garment more precious than any of his was to be torn, and he did not
dream that his gesture was a symbolic recognition of another
death-sentence. The priesthood of which he was the head was henceforth
disqualified and abolished forever. His successors were to be mere
semblances of priests, spurious and illegitimate, and in a few years the
sumptuous garment of marble and masonry of the Jewish sanctuary was to
be rent by the Roman rabble.
AND WHEN THEY HAD BLINDFOLDED HIM
When the tragi-comedy acted by the masters had ended in a
death-sentence, the devils’ band of subalterns had their turn. While the
high officials went apart to take counsel on the manner of securing the
ratification from the Procurator and executing the death sentence with
all speed, Jesus was thrown as prey to the rabble in the Palace, as the
offal of the slain animal is thrown to the pack which has taken part in
the hunt. The ruffians who lived upon the leavings of the Temple felt
that they had as their perquisite the right to some amusement. Man, the
beast, when he is certain of impunity, knows no more pleasing recreation
than to wreak himself upon the defenseless, especially if the
defenseless is innocent. Our bestial nature, crouching untamed at the
bottom of every human heart, rushes out bold and snarling; the face
becomes a muzzle, teeth are tusks, hands appear what they really are,
claws, the articulate sounds of human speech vanish in snarlings and
growlings. If a drop of blood reddens to the view, they jostle each
other to lick it up: there is no more intoxicating liquor than blood: it
is far more stimulating than wine, and far fairer to see, red as it is,
than the water of Pilate.
But tigerishness breaking loose readily takes the form of play; even
tigers are sportive, even children, as soon as they begin to grow strong
at all, are tigerish. The captors of Christ, waiting for foreign
authority to confirm the death sentence of the most innocent of their
brothers, meant to give Christ a humorous foretaste of His sufferings.
They had permission to jest with their King, to divert themselves with
their God. And they felt that they really deserved some amusement; they
had been awake all night long, and the night had been cold: and then the
march up to the Mount of Olives, fearing resistance, a well-grounded
fear, since one of them had had his ear stricken off; and then the long
wait, till dawn, a very tiring business especially on those festal days
when the city and the Temple were full of foreigners and there was so
much more for every one to do.
But they did not know how to begin. He was tied and his friends had
disappeared. But this man who looked at them with an expression they had
never seen till then, with a steady look which seemed beyond all earthly
things and yet searched them out within like a ray of troublesome
sunshine—this man, bound, exhausted, the fresh sweat on His face
softening the drops of dried blood on His cheeks, this insignificant
man, this defenseless provincial with no protecting patrons, condemned
to death by the highest and holiest tribunal of the Jewish people, this
human rubbish destined to the cross of slaves and thieves, this
laughingstock whom the authorities had given over to their abuse like a
puppet at the saturnalia, this man who did not speak nor complain nor
weep, but who looked on them as if He had compassion on them, as a
father might look at his sick child, as a friend might look at a
delirious friend, this man, mocked by all, inspired in their worthless
souls a mysterious reverence.
But one of the Scribes or the Elders gave the example, and spat at Jesus
as he passed by Him. He was too careful of His ritual cleanliness to
contaminate His newly washed hands, ready for the Passover, by touching
an enemy of God, who, near to death, was already impure like a corpse.
But saliva: what is saliva? Refuse of the body, contempt materialized in
a liquid.
And on that face illumined by the early morning sun and by imprisoned
divinity, on that face transfigured by the light of the sun and by
love’s light, on the golden face of Christ, the spittle of the Jews
covered the first blood of the Passion. But for the rabble of the
servants and the guards spitting was not enough, nor were they afraid of
sullying their hands. The example of the leaders had overcome the
impression made on them by the condemned man’s sad and brotherly look.
The guards who were nearest Him struck Him in the face; those who could
not strike His face rained down blows and threats, and the words which
came from the mouths of those insensate men wounded Him more cruelly
than blows.