sunlight, darkened into the livid purple of beaten flesh. The fair,
gracious body, reeling with blows, staggered in the midst of the heaving
crowd. Christ said no word to those who vomited out on Him the appalling
contents of their souls. He had answered the guard who had struck Him in
the presence of Annas, asking him to correct Him if He had spoken ill;
for this ribald mob let loose He had no answer. But one of them more
quick-witted or more childish than the others had an idea: he took a
dirty cloth and with it covered the bleeding, buffeted face, tying the
corners behind. And he said: “Let us play blind man’s buff. This man
boasts of being a prophet; let us see if he can guess which of us is
striking him.”
Christ’s face was covered. Was there, in the action of the ruffians, an
unconsciously compassionate desire to spare Him, at least, the sight of
His brothers become like beasts? Or was that look of suffering love
really unendurable to them? With childish cruelty, they arranged
themselves in a circle about Him and first one and then another twitched
a fold of His garment, gave Him a blow on the shoulder, thrust Him in
the back, struck Him with a staff over the head: “Prophesy! Who is it
that smote thee?”
Why did He not answer? Had He not predicted the ruin of the Temple, wars
and earthquakes, the coming of the Son of Man on clouds and many other
idle stories? How was it that now He could not make such an easy guess,
give the name of a person so close at hand? What sort of a prophet was
this? Had he lost His power all at once, or had He never had it? He
might be able to make those poor countrified Galileans believe His
stories, but here we are in Jerusalem, the city which understands
prophets and kills them when they do not show a proper spirit. Luke
adds, “And many other things blasphemously spake they against him.”
But Caiaphas and the others were in haste and thought that the servile
pack had amused itself long enough. The false king must be taken to
Pilate that his sentence be confirmed: the Sanhedrin could pronounce
judgment, but since Judea was under Roman rule, it had no longer,
unfortunately, the Jus Gladii. And the High Priests, Scribes and Elders,
set out for the Palace of the Procurator, followed by the guards leading
Jesus with ropes, and by the yelling horde which grew larger as they
went along the street.
PONTIUS PILATE
Since A. D. 26, Pontius Pilate had been Procurator in the name of
Tiberius Cæsar. Historians know nothing of him before his arrival in
Judea. If the name comes from Pileatus it may be supposed that he was a
freedman or descendant of freedmen, since the Pileo, or skull cap, was
the head gear of freed slaves.
He had been in Judea only a few years, but long enough to draw upon
himself the bitterest hate of those over whom he ruled. It is true that
all our information about him comes from Jews and Christians, who were,
of course, his declared enemies; but it appears that he finally lost
favor even with his masters, since in A. D. 36 the Governor of Syria,
Lucius Vitellius, sent him to Rome to justify himself before Tiberius.
The Emperor died before Pilate arrived in the metropolis, but according
to tradition, he was exiled by Caligula, exiled into Gaul, where he
killed himself.
In the first place the hatred of the Jews came from the profound scorn
which he showed from the start for this stiff-necked, indocile people,
who must have seemed to him, brought up in Roman ideas, like a snake pit
of venomous serpents—a low, dirty crowd, scarcely worthy to be tamed by
the cudgels of the mercenaries. To have an idea of Pilate’s personality,
make a mental picture of an English Viceroy of India, a subscriber to
the _Times_, a reader of John Stuart Mill and Shaw—with Byron and
Swinburne on his bookshelves—destined to administer the government over
a ragged, captious, hungry and turbulent people, wrangling among
themselves over a confusion of castes and mythologies and superstitions
for which their ruler feels in his heart the profoundest aversion,
looking down on them from the height of his dignity as a white man, a
European, a Briton and a Liberal. Pilate, as shown by his questions put
to Jesus, was one of those skeptics of the Roman decadence corrupted
with Pyrrhonism, a devotee of Epicurus, an encyclopedist of Hellenism
without any belief in the gods of his country, nor any belief that any
real God existed at all. The idea certainly can never have occurred to
Pilate that the true God could be found in this vermin-ridden,
superstitious mob, in the midst of this factious and jealous clergy, in
this religion which must have seemed to him like a barbarous mixture of
Syrian and Chaldean oracles. The only faith remaining to him, or which
he needed to pretend to hold because of his office, was the new Roman
religion, civic and political, concentrated on the cult of the Emperor.
The first conflict with the Jews arose in fact from this religion. When
he had changed the guard of Jerusalem, he ordered the soldiers to enter
the city by night, without taking off from their ensigns the silver
images of Cæsar. In the morning, as soon as the Jews were aware of this,
great was the horror and the uproar. It was the first time that the
Romans had lacked in external respect for the religion of their subjects
in Palestine. These figures of the deified Cæsar planted near the Temple
were for them an idolatrous provocation, the beginning of the
abomination of desolation. All the country was in an uproar; a
deputation was sent to Cæsarea to have Pilate take them away. Pilate
refused; for five days and nights they stormed about him day and night.
Finally the Procurator, to get himself out of the trouble, convoked them
in the amphitheater and treacherously had them surrounded with soldiers
with naked swords, assuring them that no one would escape if they did
not make an end of their clamor. But the Jews, instead of asking for
mercy, offered their throats to the swords, and Pilate, conquered by
this heroic stubbornness, ordered that the insignia be carried back to
Cæsarea.
But if this clemency did not diminish the hatred of the Jews for the new
Procurator, neither did it lessen Pilate’s distaste nor his desire to do
them an ill turn. A little while after this, he introduced into Herod’s
palace, where he lived when he stayed at Jerusalem, votive tablets
dedicated to the Emperor. But the priests heard of it and once more the
people were aroused to outraged and furious anger. He was asked to take
away the idolatrous objects at once. An appeal to Cæsar was threatened,
an appeal supported by evidence of the impositions and cruelties
committed by Pilate. Pilate this time also did not yield. The Jews then
made the appeal to Tiberius, who decreed that the tablets should be sent
back to Cæsarea.
Twice Pilate had had the worst of a dispute. But the third time he was
triumphant. Coming from the city of public baths and aqueducts, a
friend, as is well known, of ablutions, he noticed that Jerusalem lacked
water and he planned to have a fine large reservoir constructed and an
aqueduct several miles long. But the undertaking was expensive and to
pay for it he used a goodly sum taken from the treasury of the Temple.
The treasury was rich, for all the Jews scattered about in the Empire
came there to bring offerings, and when they could not come in person
sent them from a distance—but the priests cried out on the sacrilege,
and the people incited by them made such a commotion that when Pilate
came for the Feast of the Passover to Jerusalem, thousands of men
gathered in a tumultuous crowd in front of his Palace. But this time he
sent among the multitude a large number of disguised soldiers who at a
given signal began to lay about them so vigorously, among the most
furious of the crowd, that in a short time they all fled away, and
Pilate could enjoy in peace the water of the reservoir paid for with the
Jews’ money, and make use of it for his various ablutions.
Only a short time had passed since this last encounter and now these
very priests who three times had risen against his authority, the very
ones who had tried to obtain his deposition, the very ones who hated him
heartily, hated him as a Roman, as a symbol of the foreign dominion and
of their slavery, and hated him still more personally as Pontius Pilate,
as plotter against their religion and thief of their money—these very
High Priests were forced to have recourse to him in order to vent
another hatred, which for the moment was more bitter in their wicked
hearts. Only hard necessity drove them to it, because death sentences
could not be carried out if they were not confirmed by Cæsar’s
representative.
That Friday, at dawn, Pontius Pilate, wrapped in his toga, still sleepy
and yawning, was waiting for them in Herod’s palace, very ill-disposed
towards those tiresome trouble-makers, whose contentions had forced him
to rise earlier than usual.
WHAT IS TRUTH?
The crowd of the accusers and of the rough populace finally came out
into the open place which was before Herod’s palace, but they stopped
outside, because if they went into a house where there was leaven and
bread baked with leaven, they would be contaminated all day long and
could not eat the Passover. Innocent blood does not pollute, but leaven
does.
Pilate, warned of their coming, went out on the door-sill and asked
abruptly: “What accusation bring ye against this man?”
Those who were before him were his enemies. It appeared that this man
was their enemy and Pilate instinctively took his part. Not that he had
any pity for him—was he not a Jew like the others, and poor into the
bargain? But if he were by any chance innocent, Pilate had no mind to
lend himself to a whim of those detestable vermin.
Caiaphas answered at once as if offended: “If he were not a malefactor,
we would not have delivered him up unto you.”
Then Pilate who wished to lose no time with ecclesiastical squabbles,
and did not think that there was any question of a capital crime,
answered dryly: “Take ye him, and judge him according to your law.”
Already in these words appears his wish to save the man without being
forced to take sides openly. But the concession of the Procurator, which
in any other case would have delighted Caiaphas and his party, this time
did not suit them, because the Sanhedrin could inflict only light
sentences and now they desired the most extreme sentence of all and
could not dispense with the Roman arm. They answered: “It is not lawful
for us to put any man to death.”
Pilate suddenly understood what sentence they wished passed on the
wretched man who stood before him, and he wished to find out what crime
He had committed. What might seem worthy of a death sentence to those
bigoted rabbis might seem a venial fault in the eyes of a Roman.
The foxes of the Temple had thought of this difficulty before taking
action. They knew very well that Pilate would not be satisfied if they
told him that this man attacked the religion of their fathers and
announced the Kingdom of God. They were prepared therefore to lie. For a
man about to commit a base action, one more accessory and subordinate
infamy seems of little consequence. Pilate could be conquered only with
his own weapons, by appealing to his loyalty to Rome and to the Emperor
and to the basis of his office-holding. It was already agreed that they
would give a political color to the accusation. If they told him that
Jesus was a false Messiah, Pilate would smile. But if they said that He
was a seditious inciter of revolt, that He was trying to rouse the
common people against Rome, Pilate could not do less than put Him to
death.
“We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give
tribute to Cæsar, saying that he himself is Christ, a King.... He
stirreth up all the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning
from Galilee to this place.”
Every word was a lie. Jesus had commanded men to render unto Cæsar that
which was Cæsar’s. He paid no attention whatever to the Romans. He said
that He was Christ but not in the coarse, political meaning of a King of
the Jews: and He did not stir up the people but wished to make of an
unhappy and degraded people a blessed kingdom of saints. However grave
these accusations might have seemed to Pilate if they had been true,
they only increased his suspicions of the priests. Was it probable that
those treacherous vipers who detested him and Rome, and who had tried to
overturn him so many times and whose one dream was to sweep away the
governing pagans and foreigners, should suddenly be kindled with so much
zeal to denounce a rebel of their own nation?
Pilate was not convinced and he wished to find out for himself, by
questioning the accused man in private. He went back into the palace and
commanded that Jesus be brought to him. Disregarding the less important
accusations, he went at once to the essential: “Art thou the King of the
Jews?”
But Jesus did not answer. How could He ever make this Roman understand!
This Roman who knew nothing of God’s promises, misinformed by His
assassins, a Pyrrhonic atheist, whose only religion was the artificial
and diabolical cult of a living man—and of what a man—Tiberius!—how
could He ever explain to this freedman, a pupil of the lawyers and
rhetoricians of Rome in the most decadent of all the degenerate foulness
of that time; how could He explain that He was the King of a Kingdom not
yet founded, of a spiritual Kingdom which would abolish all human
kingdoms?
Jesus read the depths of Pilate’s soul and made no answer, as He had
kept silent at first before Annas and before Caiaphas. The Procurator
could not understand this silence on the part of a man over whom hung
the threat of death. “Hearest thou not how many things they witness
against thee?”
But Jesus answered him never a word. Pilate, who at all costs wished to
triumph over those who hated him as much as they hated this man,
insisted, hoping to extract a denial which would permit him to set Him
at liberty: “Art thou the King of the Jews?”
If Jesus denied this He would betray Himself. He had said to His
disciples and to the Jews that He was Christ. He had no wish to lie and
save Himself. The better to sound the Roman’s mind He answered Him, as
was his wont, with another question: “Sayest thou this thing of thyself,
or did others tell it thee of me?”
Pilate answered, as if offended, “Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the
chief priests have delivered thee unto me. Art thou the King of the
Jews?”
With the exception of this contemptuous beginning, this answer of Pilate
was conciliatory. “For whom do you take me? Do you not know that I am a
Roman, that I do not believe what your enemies believe? Your accusers
are priests, not I; but they are obliged to give you into my hands: your
safety rests with me: tell me that what they say is not true and you
shall be free.”
Jesus had no wish to escape death, but still He determined to try to
shed more light on this pagan. Everything is possible to the Father: was
it not possible that Pilate might be the last convert of the dying man?
“My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then
would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but
now is my kingdom not from hence.”
The servant of Tiberius did not understand. The difference between “of
this world” and “my kingdom is not from hence” was obscure to him.
Pilate thought that what is the phrase “not of this world” meant the
gods above if there were really any, gods favorable or malignant to men,
and below in Hades the shadows of the dead if really there was anything
remaining of us when the body had been consumed by fire or worms: the
only reality for such a man as Pilate was “this world,” the great world
with all its kingdoms. And once more he asked: “Art thou a king then?”
There was no longer any reason to deny. He would say to this blinded man
what He had proclaimed to the others: “Thou sayest that I am a king. To
this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I
should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth
heareth my voice.”
Then Pilate, annoyed by what seemed to him truculent mystification,
answered with the celebrated question: “What is truth?”
And without waiting for an answer, he rose to go out. The skeptical
Roman had many times been present at the endless disputes of
philosophers, and because he had heard so many contradictory
metaphysical contentions and so many sophistical quibblings, had become
convinced that truth did not exist, or if it did exist, could never be
known by men. He did not dream for a moment that this obscure Jew who
stood before him as a malefactor could tell him the truth. It was
Pilate’s destiny on that one day of his life to contemplate the face of
truth, supreme truth made man, and he could not see it. Living truth,
the truth which could have made him a new man, was before him clothed
with human flesh and rough garments, with buffeted face, and hands tied.
But in his arrogance he did not guess what prodigious good fortune was
his, a good fortune which millions of men have envied him after his
death. If any one had told him that because of this one encounter,
because to him was vouchsafed the overwhelming honor of having spoken to
Jesus and having sent Him to the cross, his name would be known,
although in infamy and malediction, through all the centuries and by all
the human race, such a prophecy would have seemed to him like the
frenzied ravings of a madman. Pilate was blind with an appalling and
incurable blindness, but Christ on that very day was to pardon even him
because the blind, even less than others, know what they do.
CLAUDIA PROCULA
Just as Pilate was preparing to go out and give his answer to the Jews,
who were muttering restlessly and impatiently before the door, a servant
sent by his wife came up to him, giving him this message: “Have thou
nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this
day in a dream because of him.”
No one in the four Gospels tells us what impression was made on the
Procurator by this unexpected intercession from his wife. We know
nothing of her except her name. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus her
name was Claudia Procula, and if this name was really hers she may have
belonged to the Gente Claudia, distinguished and powerful at Rome. We
may thus suppose that she was by birth and connections of a higher
social rank than her husband, and that Pilate, a mere freedman, may have
owed to her and her influence in Rome his post in Judea.
If all this was true, certainly the request of Claudia Procula must have
made some impression on Pilate, especially if he loved her; and that he
loved her, at least as a man of his nature could love, seems proved by
the fact that he had asked to take her with him into Asia. The Lex
Oppia, although mitigated by a decree of the Senate in the consulship of
Cethegus and Varro, forbade the pro-consuls to take their wives with
them, and Pontius Pilate had a special permit from Tiberius allowing
Claudia Procula to accompany him to Palestine.
The motives for this intercession, so briefly stated, are mysterious.
The words of Matthew refer to a dream in which she had suffered because
of Jesus: it is probable that she had heard people talking for some time
of the new Prophet; perhaps she had seen Him, and found Him very
different from the other Jews. The fact that He was neither a vulgar
demagogue nor a hypocritical Pharisee must have been pleasing to the
imagination of a fanciful Roman woman. She did not understand the
language spoken in Jerusalem, but some interpreter of the law courts
might have repeated to her some of Jesus’ words, words which would have
convinced her that He was not, as they said, a dangerous criminal.
In those days the Romans, especially Roman women, were beginning to feel
the attraction of Oriental myths and cults, which gave more satisfaction
to the longing for personal immortality than the old Latin religion, a
cold, legal, businesslike exchange of sacrifices to obtain utilitarian
and political ends. Many patrician women, even in Rome, had been
initiated into the mysteries of Mithra, Osiris and of Isis, the Great
Mother, and some showed a certain leaning towards Judaism. In that very
reign of Tiberius many Jews living in Rome were exiled from the Capital
because, according to Josephus, some of them had deceived a matron
Fulvia—converted to Judaism—and Fulvia, as we see from a reference of
Suetonius, was not the only one.
It is not impossible that Claudia Procula, living in Judea, had been
curious to know more in detail about the religion of the people governed
by her husband, and that, curious like all women about new things, she
had tried to find out what new doctrines were being preached by the
Galilean prophet of whom every one in Jerusalem was talking. It is
certain that she had become convinced that Jesus was a “just man” and
hence innocent. The dream of that night, the terrible dream—for she had
“suffered many things” in it—had confirmed her in this conviction, and
it is not surprising that relying on the influence which women have with
their husbands, even if their husbands love them no longer, she sent
this imploring message to Pilate.
It is enough for us that she called Him “That just man”—the man whom the
Jews wished to assassinate. Together with the Centurion of Capernaum and
with the Canaanite woman, Claudia Procula is the first pagan who
believed in Christ, and the Greek Church has good reason to revere her
as a Saint.
This message from his wife strengthened Pilate’s reluctance, inclined as
he already was to neutrality, if not to clemency, through his animosity
to Caiaphas, and perhaps through the words of the Accused. Claudia
Procula had not said, “Save Him”—but: “Have thou nothing to do with that
just man.” This was Pilate’s idea, also; as if he had a confused
divination of the importance of this mysterious beggar who called
Himself King. At the very first he had ordered the Jews to judge Him,
themselves, but they had not been willing to do this. Then another way
to evade the responsibility occurred to him. He went back to Jesus and
asked whether He were a Galilean.
This evasion seemed to promise success. Jesus did not belong to his
jurisdiction, but to that of Herod Antipas. By good luck Herod was there
at Jerusalem at that very time, come as was his wont for the Passover.
The Procurator had found a legitimate subterfuge to satisfy his wife—and
to free himself from this troublesome perplexity. With one stroke he
would ingratiate himself with the Jews, leaving to one of their own race
the decisive judgment, and at the same time he would do a bad turn to
the patriarch whom he hated with all his heart because he suspected him
with good reason of spying on him and tale-bearing to Tiberius. So,
losing no time, he ordered the soldiers to take Jesus before Herod.
THE WHITE CLOAK
The third judge before whom Jesus was led was a son of that
bloody-minded hog, Herod the Great, by one of his five wives. He was the
true son of his father because he wronged his brothers as his father had
wronged his sons. When his brother Archelaus, his own half-brother, was
accused by his subjects, he managed to have him exiled. He robbed his
other brother Herod of his wife. When he was seventeen years old he
began to reign as Tetrarch over Galilee and over Berea, and to
ingratiate himself with Tiberius, offered himself as a secret
tale-bearer of the sayings and doings of his brothers and of the Roman
officials in Judea. On a voyage to Rome he fell in love with Herodias,
who was both his niece and his sister-in-law, since she was the daughter
of his brother Aristobulus, and wife of his brother Herod, and not
shrinking from the double incest, he persuaded her to follow him,
together with Salome, the daughter of the adulteress. His first wife,
daughter of Aretas, king of the Nabatei, went back to her father, who
declared war on Antipas and defeated him.