The Stations of the Cross
_By the same Author_
=LENT & HOLY WEEK=: Chapters on Catholic Observance
and Ritual. With 3 Plates and 14 Illustrations in the text. Crown
8vo, 6s. _net_.
[Illustration: _VERONICA_. The Fourth of the set of Seven Stations
carved by Adam Krafft at Nuremberg (c. 1490-1505). It will be noticed
that the Carving is set in the wall of a house. See p. 63. The
inscription runs: “Hier hat Cristus sein heiligs angesicht der heiligen
Frau Veronica auf iren Slayr gedruckt vor irem Haus Vc (500) Sritt von
Pilatus Haws.—Here has Christ left the impress of His holy Face for the
holy woman Veronica upon her veil in front of her house, 500 paces from
Pilate’s House.”]
=THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS=
_An Account of their History and Devotional Purpose_
=By=
=HERBERT THURSTON, S.J.=
BURNS & OATES
28 Orchard Street, London, W.
Reprinted 1914
The Preface
This little book upon the Stations of the Cross explains itself
sufficiently to dispense with any lengthy preface. Although its purpose
is mainly historical, it will not, I trust, be found so devoid of
edification as to be unsuitable for Lenten reading. That devotional
attitude of mind on the part of our forefathers which is illustrated in
the following pages may be full of _naïveté_ and is sometimes even
grotesque in its extreme literalness and credulity, but there is nothing
in it which need scandalize the most sensitive. On the contrary, it is
impossible to come into close contact with the thought of the religious
teachers of that age without being deeply impressed by their nearness to
the world of spirit and by the intense reality of their personal
devotion to our Lord and His Blessed Mother. The legendary element no
doubt is always present in some measure, but it is for the most part
devoid of offence. Upon the true Catholic attitude towards this feature,
which appears in so many of our most venerated practices of piety, I may
refer the reader to some remarks which will be found later on at the
beginning of Chapter VII (p. 136).
From the historical point of view the chief novelty which will be
discovered in the following pages is the conclusion—the evidence for
which appears to me to be quite irresistible—that the arrangement of our
actual stations, though professedly made in imitation of a pilgrimage
along the Via Dolorosa, owes less to Jerusalem and the Franciscan
custodians of the Holy Places than to the pious imagination of a
Carmelite friar who lived all his life in Belgium. That our fourteen
stations derive directly from the _Theatrum Terræ Sanctæ_ of Adrichomius
has for some time been recognized, e.g., by Bishop von Keppler in his
excellent work “Die XIV Stationen des heiligen Kreuzwegs.” But when, on
the one hand, we find in Adrichomius, himself a Fleming, an explicit
avowal of indebtedness to the book of Brother Jan Pascha, and when, on
the other, Pascha’s book presents us with the identical enumeration of
subjects and distances which appear in the later writer, there can be
little doubt that Pascha must be regarded as the immediate source of the
subsequent developments. Further, it is clear that Pascha’s own system
was evolved in part out of the devotion of the “Seven Falls” which, at
the close of the fifteenth century, had become widely popular in Germany
and the Netherlands. This devotion is now completely forgotten, but it
has left behind one splendid memorial of itself in the famous sculptures
of Adam Krafft (c. 1490) still preserved at Nuremberg. I am inclined
also to think from the wide diffusion of a fifteenth century booklet
attributed to a certain “Heer Bethlem” (see Appendix A) that we must
regard this little work as another early and important element in the
popularizing of the exercise of the Way of the Cross. The full knowledge
of its popularity, however, came to me somewhat too late to deal with it
adequately in the text of my essay.
While giving prominence to such technical points as these, which may
help in some measure to throw light upon the byways of liturgical
history, it seemed desirable not to lose sight of other devotional
influences of wider range and more general interest. For this reason the
reader will find that the question of pilgrimages to the Holy Land is
illustrated rather more fully than was perhaps quite necessary for its
bearing upon the immediate subject of this volume. With regard to what
is said at pp. 161-172 upon the question of the indulgences of the Holy
Places, which no doubt had a considerable influence in attracting
pilgrims to Jerusalem, I should like to point out that I have formed no
final opinion as to their authenticity, and that I should be glad if the
few remarks I have thrown out should lead to further discussion.
Although part of the substance of this essay has already been published
in the form of articles in _The Month_ (July to September, 1900), I have
been able in the interval which has elapsed since the articles appeared
to add very considerably to my former materials. Amongst other minor
discoveries, I came quite lately upon a little volume in the Bodleian
library which is entitled “A Spiritual Pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” and
which was obviously printed abroad in the seventeenth century for
Catholic use. Upon examination it proved to be an abridgement in English
of that scarce “Gheestelyck Pelgrimagie” of Brother Jan Pascha which
plays so large a part in the argument of my little essay. As this
Bodleian volume may fairly be called the first book containing the
Stations of the Cross which was published in the English language, I
cannot, I think, better conclude these few words of introduction than by
reproducing a portion of the old translator’s preface. The sentiments
expressed are such as every priest in the twentieth century not less
than in the seventeenth may be glad to make his own.
THE PREFACE TO THE READER
Seeing it is so (my Catholic brother) that this present life is no
other thing but a continual pilgrimage which we are to make upon the
earth, and that all the time of our life is a term prefixed of GOD
the Creator, during which space we ought to accomplish this voyage
... were it not great folly and negligence in us if we should forget
... the principal place of our repose?... Let us behold therefore
what care and pains our loving LORD hath taken of our salvation, let
us learn to travaille courageously and like devout and holy pilgrims
to follow His steps, who hath left us an example of His blessed life
and passion, and ruminate in our hearts every day apart, some
general point thereof, and after well to practise the same in
ourselves, for such ought to be the end of our spiritual exercise,
by which means we may attain to the happy end that we desire.
Whereof having found this little treatise of _A Spiritual
Pilgrimage_, assuring myself that it would be a thing very agreeable
to all manner of devout and pious persons, I thought good to bring
the same to light. Beseeching the gentle reader to accept of this
little gift, and to respect more my hearty affection than the
littleness of the thing. The rest I remit to the disposition of
Almighty GOD the Creator of all things, whose only honour and glory
I desire herein. Amen.
Thy hearty well-willer in CHRIST JESUS,
R. H.
The kind friends who in many various ways have lightened my task in
preparing this book for the press, will know, I trust, that if I do not
make more particular mention of the help that they have rendered, it is
not for lack of sincere gratitude.
HERBERT THURSTON, S.J.
_31 Farm Street, London, W._
The Contents
CHAPTER I—_The Veneration of the Holy Places._ ... Pp. 1-19.
Imitative tendency in our popular devotions—The Stations a pilgrimage in
miniature—Ardour shown in making pilgrimages to Jerusalem—The Lady
Egeria—The Holy Places measured to be copied in the West—St
Petronius—Peter and John Bechetti or Becket—The spiritual Way of the
Cross of the Blessed Henry Suso—The vow of the Nun of Lorvão.
CHAPTER II—_The Beginnings of the Via Crucis._ ... Pp. 20-45.
The Porte Doloreuse—Sites of incidents on the way to Calvary—The
inverted order of the official pilgrimage route—The legend of our Lady’s
pilgrimage—Fabri’s description of the road to Calvary and of our Lady’s
daily journey—A night with the pilgrims in the Holy Sepulchre
Church—Rules to be observed—The reopening of the doors.
CHAPTER III—_The earliest Stations and their Sequence._ ... Pp. 45-61.
The word “Station”—William Wey’s use of it in connexion with the road to
Calvary—Wey’s memorial verses—Sir Richard Guylforde’s “pylgrymages
within Jerusalem”—Torkington’s copy in reverse order—The practice of
measuring the distances—Discrepancies in the order of the Stations.
CHAPTER IV—_The “Seven Falls.”_ ... Pp. 46-75
The Stations at Görlitz—The “Seven Falls” of Adam Krafft at
Nuremberg—The “Cruysganch” of Louvain—Romanet Boffin and the sets of
seven pillars at Rhodes, Fribourg and Romans—The Stations of the Seven
Dolours at Antwerp—Fifteenth-century engravings of the Seven Falls—The
book of the “Mount of Calvary”—The Seven Falls in Pascha’s “Spiritual
Pilgrimage.”
CHAPTER V—_The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Jan Pascha._ ... Pp. 76-95.
Some Dutch books relating to the stations—Bethlem’s “Meditations on the
Passion” with distances—The Nuremberg “Ghostly Way” of 1521—Prevalence
of the practice of erecting Stations—The “Spiritual Pilgrimage” of Jan
Pascha the Carmelite—Description of the book—Various editions and
translations—The “proper” Way of the Cross—Adrichomius and his
indebtedness to Pascha—Origin of the triple fall in our present system
of Stations—Impossibility in the sixteenth century of any public
exercise of the “Way of the Cross” at Jerusalem—The initiative
consequently did not come from the East but from Europe, especially from
the Netherlands—Practice of the Stations in an Antwerp convent.
CHAPTER VI—_The Via Dolorosa at Jerusalem from the Seventeenth century
to the Present Day._ ... Pp. 96-135.
Unique authority of the Franciscan traditions at
Jerusalem—Contradictions with the map of Adrichomius—Testimony of
Bernardino Amico and Quaresmius—Description of the Via Dolorosa—The
Stations according to Surius—The _Ecce Homo_ Arch—Place of our LORD’S
meeting with His Blessed Mother—The place of the first fall and of the
coming of Simon of Cyrene—Attempt to harmonize the Jerusalem tradition
with the system of Adrichomius—Sites of our LORD’S meeting with the
women of Jerusalem and with Veronica—The Judicial Gate—The gradual
displacement of the traditional Stations in the eighteenth century—The
question of the site of the Prætorium and of the true Way of the
Cross—Prevalence of other systems of Stations and notably of that of
Father Parviller.
CHAPTER VII—_The Devotional Aspect of the Stations._ ... Pp. 136-158.
Survival of the fittest in our devotional practices—A legendary element
permissible and often helpful to piety—Words of Père Lagrange—Devotional
suggestiveness of the legend of Veronica and of the triple
fall—Illustrations from the writings of Cardinal Newman and Henri
Perreyve—The spirit of the medieval pilgrims—Fabri’s description of
Calvary and of the Holy Sepulchre—Perreyve’s meditation on the Holy
Sepulchre.
CHAPTER VIII—_The Stations In Modern Times._ ... Pp. 159-177.
One uniform system now prevalent—Committed specially to the charge of
the Franciscan Order—Indulgences of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem
attached to the ordinary Stations of the Cross—Early belief to this
effect—Origin of the indulgences of the Holy Places—Impossible to
attribute them to Pope St Silvester—Remarkable Bull of confirmation
issued by Pope Pius IV—Conditions for gaining the indulgences at the
present day.
APPENDIX A—_Heer Bethlem’s “Ovewegingen,”_ p. 179
B—_Table of Indulgences_, p. 182
C—_Relative Antiquity of the various Stations_, p. 182
The List of Illustrations
Veronica (the fourth of the set of seven Stations carved by Adam Krafft
at Nuremberg) ... _Frontis_
Jerusalem and Palestine (Map from “Le Pèlerin Véritable” of 1615) ... 11
Church of the Holy Sepulchre (from Breydenbach, 1486) ... 28
Part of Bernardino Amico’s Map of Jerusalem (1609-1620) ... 32
Church of the Holy Sepulchre (_c._ 1835) ... 44
Map of Jerusalem (1616) from MS. Addit. 33566 ... 56
The Second and Fifth Stations, carved by Adam Krafft at Nuremberg (_c._
1490) ... 64
The Incident of Simon of Cyrene, from the “Geystlich Strass” (1521) ...
68
Title page of the “Geystlich Strass” (1521) ... 80
Page of Pascha’s “Ghestelyck Pelgrimagie” ... 84
Adrichomius’s Map of Jerusalem, with Stations of the Cross (1584) ... 87
A page of the French translation of Pascha’s “Gheestelyck Pelgrimagie”
(1666) ... 88
The Via Dolorosa according to Zuallardo (1587) ... 105
Plans of the Via Dolorosa ... 106-107
The _Ecce Homo_ Arch according to Amico (1620) ... 110
Christ at Pilate’s House (from the “Geystlich Strass,” 1521) ... 112
The _Ecce Homo_ Arch (from a recent photograph) ... 114
The Site of the First Fall (Station III) ... 116
The Via Dolorosa near Veronica’s House ... 126
The Via Dolorosa looking down-hill ... 140
The Entombment (from the “Geystlich Strass,” 1521) ... 154
Title page of French Edition (1566) of the “Gheestelyck Pelgrimagie” ...
162
Chapter I—The Veneration of the Holy Places
It may be said of many, perhaps most, of our popular devotions that they
are not so much spontaneous as imitative. They have been prized at first
as the substitute for something better, because they seemed to bring
within the reach of the many some practice of piety which had been
hitherto regarded as the merit or the privilege of the few. To recite,
for instance, the entire Psalter daily was the ambition of the early
ascetics, but obviously the repetition of one hundred and fifty psalms
was a feat beyond the capacity of men busied with the concerns of
everyday life. It was only when the convention was devised of
representing each psalm by a Hail Mary that the bulk of the faithful
found that they could imitate the long vigils of the monks by reciting
the fifteen decades of “Our Lady’s Psalter.” Again, a monastic habit was
not a desirable or possible attire for ordinary Christians living in the
world, but by an imitation of a portion of that habit, rapidly
diminishing in size until hardly a suggestion remained of its former
significance, secular persons found that they could wear the livery of
the Order of their choice, not merely at the hour of death, as so many
aspired to do, but even while going about their daily occupations. Or
once more, when the Divine Office, the official prayer of the Church,
was found to be too long and too difficult for any but clerics to
recite, the Hours of our Lady, which were much shorter and practically
invariable, formed a substitute which even the more ignorant of the
laity need not despair of mastering.
The devotion commonly known to us as the Stations of the Cross has a
very similar origin, and in its singular combination of old and new, of
elements dating from the beginning of Christianity, with forms which
have only become fixed during the last four centuries, it affords an
almost typical example both of the gradual growth of practices of piety
and of the working of the imitative tendency just alluded to. As the
Rosary, then, was a miniature Psalter, as the scapular was a miniature
monastic habit, and as the Hours of our Lady were a miniature Office, so
the Stations of the Cross constituted a miniature pilgrimage to the Holy
Land. Despite all the courage and fervour of the Christians in the later
middle ages, the number of those who were actually able to make their
way to Palestine was, relatively speaking, insignificant. It was a boon
when men were taught how to join in a make-believe pilgrimage which did
not take up an hour of time, and which stimulated their devotion to the
bitter sufferings of CHRIST as much as, or even more than, a perilous
journey over seas. Such, at any rate, is the very simple idea which has
made the Stations dear to the heart of the poor in every part of the
world. But in spite of its simplicity there have been many stages in the
growth of this devotion, and these, so far as I am able to elucidate
them, will form the subject of the pages which follow.
It is commonly said that the _Via Dolorosa_, the route of our SAVIOUR’S
painful journey to Calvary, has from the earliest ages been reverently
marked, and that already in the time of Constantine it was the goal of
pious pilgrims from all parts of the world.[1] However probable this may
seem antecedently, it must be confessed that no direct evidence is
forthcoming in support of such a statement. If our Blessed Lady really
did spend her last days upon earth in traversing again and again the
scenes of the Passion of her Divine Son, no trustworthy record of the
fact is at present known to survive. Only in the later middle ages do we
meet the full details of the story of the Mother’s daily pilgrimage, and
indeed it must be admitted both that the records of pilgrims of the
first ten centuries are silent as to the existence of any traditional
Way of Sorrows, and also that the first indications of it which we
encounter are not easily reconcilable with the sites now venerated. On
the other hand, antiquity speaks clearly as to the principle of paying
honour to the holy places. There is sufficient reason to believe that
the memory of the more important spots connected with the life of our
Blessed LORD was accurately preserved in the fourth century. The
Christians of Jerusalem were already a numerous body. They seem to have
had no doubt about the accuracy of their identifications. The instinct
of such traditions of locality was strong amongst them. It would appear,
then, that only an extreme scepticism will question the fact that the
spots where Constantine built his churches, the spots which Christians,
like the Bordeaux pilgrim of A.D. 333, came from the ends of the earth
to visit, were really the sites they claimed to be. On the one supremely
important question of the identification of the holy Sepulchre and
Calvary, it may be said fearlessly that, despite the attempts of sundry
English and American Protestants to find a Calvary of their own in
another quarter, the evidence of archæology and excavation is altogether
on the side of the old tradition. The narrative of the Lady Egeria’s
Pilgrimage, _c._ 380, discovered within the last few years,[2] has also
come to reinforce what we already knew from St Jerome, the Bordeaux
pilgrim, Eusebius, and others concerning the intense feelings of
veneration which the residents of Jerusalem felt for the holy places (a
very limited number) pointed out by local tradition.[3] There is no
reason to fear, in the case of such Christians as she describes for us,
that their imagination was stimulated to new flights by a keen
anticipation of baksheesh.
We have just said that in point of fact the sites which were pointed out
in Jerusalem in the time of the Bordeaux pilgrim, of St Jerome or of
Egeria, seem to have been few. This may be due to some extent to the
fact that the most detailed account of the city, that of Egeria, is
imperfect. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that this lady
of Galicia was keen to make mention even of spots of minor interest when
they were pointed out to her. A short quotation in her own words will
probably illustrate better than any verbal description the spirit in
which Egeria, and no doubt most of her contemporaries, approached such
questions. She had travelled more than a thousand miles to visit the
holy places, and landing first in Egypt had skirted the northern shore
of the Red Sea taking in Mount Sinai on her way. Now these are the terms
in which she speaks of the sites shown her by the monks on Mount Sinai
in their own immediate neighbourhood.
“Having satisfied every desire with which we had made haste to ascend,
we began now to descend from the summit of the Mount of GOD to another
mountain which is joined to it. The place is called Horeb, and we found
a church there. This is that Horeb to which the holy Prophet Elijah
withdrew when he fled from the face of King Ahab, and where GOD spake to
him saying, ‘What dost thou here, Elijah?’ as it is written in the Book
of Kings. For the cave where holy Elijah hid is shown to this day before
the door of the church which is there; the stone altar is also shown
which holy Elijah built that he might offer sacrifice to GOD. All which
things the holy men deigned to show us. There we offered an oblation and
an earnest prayer, and the passage from the Book of Kings was read; for
we always especially desired that when we come to any place the
corresponding passage from the book should be read. There having made an
oblation, we went on to another place not far off, which the priests and
monks pointed out, namely, that place where holy Aaron had stood with
the seventy elders when holy Moses received from the LORD the law for
the children of Israel. There, although the place is not roofed in, is a
huge rock having a circular flat surface, on which it is said these holy
persons stood. And in the middle there is a sort of altar made with
stones. The passage from the Book of Moses was read, and one psalm said,
which was appropriate to the place; and then, having offered a prayer,
we descended.”[4]
It need hardly be said that in studying the sites and the ceremonial of
Jerusalem the Lady Egeria was not less earnest. She speaks of the Church
of the Anastasis over the Holy Sepulchre, of the “Martyrium” close
beside it on Calvary or Golgotha, of the Church of the Ascension on the
Mount of Olives, of Gethsemani and the Grotto of the Agony, of the way
across the brook of Cedron, of Mount Sion and the Column of the
Flagellation which was erected there, but she says nothing of our _Via
Dolorosa_, nor of the site of any episode for which there is not warrant
in the Gospels.
Although the narrative of Egeria is the earliest detailed account which
we possess of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, there are a number of other
records in succeeding centuries which allow us to see that the eagerness
of the faithful to visit the holy places did not slacken, and which
leave a tolerably complete picture of the shrines honoured in Jerusalem
at each successive epoch in early Christian history. Almost from the
very beginning there went hand in hand with this earnestness in making
pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre a desire to reproduce at home in some
imperfect way the venerated sites that had been visited. It is to this
instinct probably that we owe both the ancient Church of the Anastasis
(the Resurrection) at Constantinople, which by some confusion was later
on associated with the cultus of the virgin martyr St Anastasia, as well
as that of Sta Croce in Rome, together with the Church of Sta Maria
Maggiore, or _Ad Præsepe_, which was meant in some sense to serve as the
counterpart of Constantine’s basilica at Bethlehem. To develop this
subject adequately would lead us too far afield, and it must suffice to
say that the design of perpetuating the memory of the holy places may be
traced even in the representations of ancient mosaics. One has of late
years been found in Palestine itself, which may claim to be regarded as
nothing less than a map of the province of Syria, including a plan of
Jerusalem in the sixth century,[5] while Father Grisar identifies the
background of the great mosaic in the apse of S. Pudenziana, assigned by
de Rossi to the year 398, as an attempt to represent pictorially the
chief buildings of the same Holy City.[6]
This spirit of imitation seems in some measure to have grown and
developed with the lapse of ages. Perhaps one of the most interesting
monuments which it has left behind may be recognized in the curious
group of churches, communicating with each other and forming one
building, originally erected as part of the Monastery of San Stefano in
Bologna. With regard to the construction of these venerable churches we
know little or nothing that is trustworthy. It seems, however, highly
probable that the tradition regarding them is substantially correct. The
buildings were intended to reproduce in some way the more important
shrines of Jerusalem, and may be regarded as perhaps the most ancient
existing example of a set of Stations of the Holy Land, even if they do
not in strictness deserve to be called Stations of the Cross. St
Petronius, Bishop of Bologna, to whom the construction of S. Stefano is
attributed, lived in the fifth century. The chronicle of the monastery
preserves a long life of him, which is no doubt a medieval fabrication,
and which may or may not incorporate some fragments of genuine
tradition. But in any case the manuscript itself seems to be of the
twelfth century. Assuming this to be approximately the date of the
composition, it bears witness to the existence, at least at that epoch,
of an attitude of mind with regard to the holy places which must have
had much to do with the development of our devotion to the Stations. The
writer tells us that in the very ornamentation of the monastery which
Petronius constructed he copied the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and
that he had with singular foresight measured everything accurately with
a measuring-rod during his stay in the Holy Land.[7] It is to be noted
that the description of this work given in the life bears a quite
extraordinary resemblance to certain prominent features of the mosaic of
the sixth century found at Mâdaba, and it is quite conceivable that the
compiler may here be incorporating the language of some authentic early
document.[8]
The writer further tells us that Petronius also built a monastery upon
another more elevated spot which down to the writer’s own day was called
Mons Oliveti. This was at the exact distance from Golgotha which the
saint had himself measured when he was in the Holy Land. On the top of
this “Mount Olivet” the saint planted a second church, reproducing the
Church of the Ascension. The valley between was called Josaphat, and
there was a pond constructed to represent the _natatoria Siloe_. The
seven connected churches at S. Stefano were no doubt meant to recall the
many sacred sites which tradition grouped about the Holy Sepulchre,
though we cannot attach any particular importance to the vague language
of Galesinius, who informs us that in the compass of S. Stefano
Petronius reproduced the column at which our LORD was scourged, the
cross upon which He died, the chamber in which He suffered, the spot
where Peter wept over his fall, and the room in which the angel saluted
our Blessed Lady.[9] It seems certain, however, that the monastery was
familiarly known as Hierusalem, and it is stated to have been described
by this term in the Bulls of several popes.[10]
[Illustration: _MAP OF JERUSALEM & PALESTINE_. This little map, copied
probably from some late mediæval source, was engraved to serve as a
frontispiece to “Le Pélerin Véritable” a guide-book printed at Paris in
1615. Note the landing of the pilgrims at Jaffa; one of them kneels to
kiss the ground, a Franciscan friar comes to meet them, while armed
Turks on foot and horseback scour the open country. Note also in the
right hand lower corner the conversion of St Paul on the way to
Damascus, which is represented in quite the wrong direction.]
Whether these ideas belong more properly to the fifth or to the twelfth
century we are not here called upon to determine. I may confess that I
incline to the former date, but in any case it must be admitted that the
devotion of the Stations down to near the close of the middle ages had
not reached any further stage of development. Examples of imitative
buildings like that of S. Stefano of Bologna were comparatively rare and
isolated, though the idea of imitation never died out, and definite
instances can be quoted. Thus we hear of a Mount of Olives and a chapel
of the Holy Sepulchre erected by the Augustinian John von Schaftolsheim
in 1378.[11] Again there is a well-known model of the Holy Sepulchre in
Bruges which was set up there by two knightly pilgrims on their return
from the Holy Land before the year 1435. So also, to turn to what is of
more immediate interest to English readers, it would seem that at
Fabriano, in the marches of Ancona, certain memorials of the holy places
were erected by the pious care of two brothers, Peter and John Bechetti,
or Becket, said to be members of the family of St Thomas, Archbishop of
Canterbury.[12] They were beatified in the early part of the last
century, and in the documents of the process special mention is made of
their pilgrimage to the Holy Land and of the chapels which they built on
their return.
Whether these two Augustinian friars were in any true sense collateral
descendants of the saint seems to me more than doubtful, but John da
Fabriano was unquestionably lecturing at Oxford about the year 1388,
though he was not himself born in England. In 1393 Peter da Fabriano
obtained leave from the Franciscan General and from the pope to make a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On his return he is said to have encouraged
his brother, or cousin, John, to follow his example. After this they
both went to reside in their native town, and, as the process of
beatification tells us, “They caused a church to be erected which they
called the Holy Sepulchre, and in which they placed five altars. One,
dedicated to our SAVIOUR crucified—‘al SSmo Crocifisso,’—stood on an
elevation which was reached by twelve steps, and they called it Mount
Calvary. Another which was dedicated ‘alla Madonna dello Spasimo,’ in
memory of our Lady’s anguish when she swooned away on meeting her divine
Son, they named, strange to say, ‘la Valle di Giosafat.’[13] The third
altar commemorated our Lady’s grief when she received her Son into her
arms. There they placed an image of the ‘Pietà,’ and to reach it you had
to descend ten steps. The fourth altar was erected in honour of our Lady
‘delle Gratie,’ and at the fifth their bones (so writes Torelli in 1680)
are at the present time enshrined. Besides this they built two chapels,
one on each side of ‘Mount Calvary,’ in one of which the Holy Sepulchre
is reproduced in the same size as at Jerusalem, and in the other chapel
is the tomb of the Blessed Virgin, with gilt statues beside it
representing the other Marys.”[14]
Again it is related of the Dominican, Blessed Alvaro, who died in 1420,
that he made a pilgrimage to Palestine, and “in order that some sort of
memorial of these holy places might remain for ever in the friary which
he erected, he arranged in it a series of oratories in which the
mysteries of our redemption might be set forth in separate stations; the
which pious institution of his is said to have been copied in other
religious houses.”[15] Similarly the Blessed Eustochium, a Poor Clare of
Messina, is recorded, out of devotion to the Passion, “to have set up
representations of the holy places as if it were at Jerusalem. And so
within the enclosure she had constructed the birthplace of CHRIST and
there too the house of His blessed Mother, there the Mount of Olives,
there the Garden in which our SAVIOUR was seized, there the Supper Room,
there the houses of Annas and Caiphas, there the Prætorium of Pilate,
there the Mount of Calvary and the tomb beside it. To these spots she
came daily, and just as if she were present at the very scenes
themselves she contemplated with tears the meekness of her heavenly
Spouse and all the acts which He did, each in its due order.”[16]
Blessed Eustochium died in 1491, and it is plain that neither in this
case nor in the others we have quoted is there anything at all closely
resembling our modern “Way of the Cross.” None the less we must allow
that the idea of the counterfeit devotional pilgrimage is there in
principle. Moreover this germ occasionally admitted remarkable
developments in the practice of the ascetics of the middle ages, as is
touchingly illustrated by the example of Blessed Henry Suso, the famous
Dominican mystic. The pious exercise described in the following passage
must have been adopted by him as early as the year 1326, for the
dialogue form into which he threw his “Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit,” or
“Horologium Sapientiæ,” begun in that year, is said to have been
suggested to him during one of these nightly devotional pilgrimages.[17]
“He [Blessed Henry] now began every night after matins at his usual
place, which was the chapter room, to force himself into a Christlike
feeling of sympathy with all that CHRIST, his LORD and GOD, had suffered
for him. He stood up and moved from corner to corner, in order that all
sluggishness might leave him, and that he might have throughout a lively
and keen sensitiveness to our LORD’S sufferings. He commenced this
exercise with the Last Supper, and he accompanied CHRIST from place to
place, until he brought Him before Pilate. Then he received Him after He
had been sentenced at the tribunal and he followed Him along the
sorrowful way to Calvary from the court-house to beneath the gallows.
The following was the manner in which he made the ‘Way of the Cross’: On
coming to the threshold of the chapter house, he kneeled down and kissed
the print of the first step which the LORD took, when, on being
sentenced, he turned Him round to go forth to death. Then he began the
psalm which describes our LORD’S passion, ‘DEUS, DEUS meus, respice in
me’ (Ps. xxi), and he went out by the door into the cloister repeating
it. Now there were four streets through which he accompanied Him. He
went with Him to death along the first street, with the earnest desire
and will to go forth from his friends and all perishable goods, and to
suffer for CHRIST’S glory misery without consolation and voluntary
poverty. In the second street he proposed to himself to cast aside all
perishable honour and dignity and voluntarily to despise this present
world, considering how the LORD had become a ‘worm and the outcast of
the people.’ At the beginning of the third street he kneeled down again,
and, kissing the ground, willingly renounced all needless comfort and
all tender treatment of his body in honour of the pains of CHRIST’S
tender body; and he set before his eyes what is written in the psalm,
how that all CHRIST’S strength was dried up, and His natural vigour
brought nigh to death as they drove Him onward thus pitiably; and he
thought how fitting it is that every eye should weep and every heart
sigh on account of it. When he came to the fourth street, he kneeled
down in the middle of the road, as if he were kneeling in front of the
road through which the LORD must pass out; and then falling on his face
before Him he kissed the ground, and crying out to Him prayed Him not to
go to death without his servant but to suffer him to go along with Him.
Then he pictured to himself as vividly as he could that the LORD was
obliged to pass quite close to him, and when he had said the prayer,
‘Ave, rex noster, Fili David!’ (Hail, our King, Son of David) he let Him
move onwards. After this he knelt down again, still turned towards the
gate, and greeted the cross with the verse, ‘O crux ave, spes unica’
(Hail, O Cross, our only hope!) and then let it go past. This done he
kneeled down once more before the tender Mother Mary, Heaven’s Queen, as
she was led past him in unfathomable anguish of heart, and he observed
how mournfully she bore herself, and noted her burning tears and
sighings and sorrowful demeanour; and he addressed her in the words of
the ‘Salve Regina’ and kissed her footsteps. Then he stood up and
hastened after his LORD until he came up with Him.
“And the picture was sometimes so vividly present to his mind that it
seemed to him as if he were in body walking at CHRIST’S side, and the
thought would come to him how that, when King David was driven from his
kingdom, his bravest captains walked around him and gave him loving
succour (2 Kings, xv). At this point he gave up his will to GOD’S will,
desiring that GOD would do with him according to His good pleasure. Last
of all he called to mind the epistle which is read in Holy Week from the
prophecy of Isaias, beginning ‘Quis credidit auditui nostro’ (Is. liii),
and which so exactly describes how the LORD was led forth to death, and,
meditating upon it, he went in by the door of the choir, and so up the
steps into the pulpit until he came beneath the cross in the place where
one day the hundred considerations upon the Passion had been made known
to him. He kneeled down and looked upon JESUS stripped of His garments
at the moment when He was cruelly nailed to the cross. Then, taking a
discipline and in a passion of fervour, nailing himself to the cross
with his LORD, he prayed that neither life nor death, weal nor woe,
might ever separate him from the Crucified.”[18]
A singularly touching legend regarding a spiritual pilgrimage of the
same kind may be read in the Cistercian Chronicle of Frey Bernardo de
Brito.[19] He tells us that in the ancient Cistercian convent of Lorvão
not far from Coimbra there was a certain holy lay-sister who before
dedicating herself to GOD as a nun had led a very mortified life in the
world. Among her other good undertakings, however, she had made a vow to
go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and when she entered religion she
was continually haunted by the recollection of this promise to GOD which
left her a prey to many harassing scruples, as she saw no means of
fulfilling her engagement. Still she always hoped that in some way she
might yet be enabled to keep her vow, and for this end she prayed very
earnestly and practised the most severe mortifications. Now it happened
while she was in this state of distress that a solemn jubilee was
proclaimed by the pope, and that extraordinary faculties were given to
confessors to commute vows of all kinds, even those of pilgrimage to the
Holy Land. There was of course no real need of any such commutation in
the case of our lay-sister, as vows of devotion, according to the common
teaching of theologians, are annulled _ipso facto_ by solemn profession
in a religious order. However, the sister, tortured by scruples,
presented herself to the confessor during the jubilee-tide, and humbly
asked him for some commutation which might discharge her conscience. He
decided that it would be best for her to make a spiritual pilgrimage for
such time as the actual journey to the Holy Land would have lasted had
she been able to travel thither, and so for a year together, with the
leave of her superior, the good lay-sister spent all her time in passing
from altar to altar and from shrine to shrine within the convent
enclosure, identifying them with those sacred spots which are venerated
by pilgrims in the holy city. Before the day appointed for commencing
this exercise she bade a solemn farewell to her sisters in religion, and
during all the time which followed she spoke no word to them nor they to
her. She took her scanty repasts in the refectory when the others had
finished, leaving the larger share of her allotted portion to be given
to the poor, and at night she lay down on the ground and slept in the
church or in the cloister, wherever she might be when the hour sounded
for retiring to rest.[20] For full twelve months this exercise
continued, and it happened that on the night when the year of pilgrimage
would expire, she was seen praying in the church before the Blessed
Sacrament with hands uplifted. There she must have remained in this
attitude from midnight until dawn; but when the sacristan who came to
open the church approached to warn her that the people were entering for
Mass, she found the sister lifeless and cold, but still kneeling as
before, while her face was all aglow with supernatural light. This
unusual occurrence deeply moved the townspeople, who cut away portions
of her habit and preserved them as relics, by which many miracles were
afterwards said to have been wrought. But the strangest marvel of all
happened only a few days later when a pilgrim newly returned from the
Holy Land knocked at the gate and asked for news of Sister Maria Minz,
this being the name of the good lay-sister who had so peacefully
departed. They bade him tell them how he came to know her and to make
such inquiry, whereupon he related that in all his pious visits to the
holy places of Jerusalem this sister had been his companion; but that on
such a day, naming the day of her death, she had suddenly quitted him as
they were journeying homeward, informing him that she was wanted in her
convent and bidding him call there to ask for further tidings.
Father Brito adds that he could not ascertain the year in which this
event took place, but that the memory of the holy lay-sister was still
venerated in the convent of Lorvão. Such historical foundation as the
story may have would seem to belong to the pre-Reformation period, while
the mention of the jubilee, which was proclaimed for the first time by
Boniface VIII, shows that it must in any case be subsequent to the year
1300.
But we may turn back now from the devotional practices of Europe in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to see how in Jerusalem itself a
definite _Via Dolorosa_ or Way of Sorrows had meanwhile gradually come
to be recognized, although perhaps it was not as yet called by any
specific name.[21] There can in any case be little doubt that when the
two brothers de Fabriano or Alonso the Dominican visited Palestine, they
would have had pointed out to them by their guides as an object of
special devotion the path followed by our SAVIOUR on His way to Calvary.
Footnote 1:
This is stated even by Thalhofer, in the second edition of the
“Kirchenlexicon,” art. Kreuzweg.
Footnote 2:
This has hitherto been printed and is commonly quoted under the title
of “Peregrinatio Silviæ.” We owe to Dom Férotin, O.S.B., the discovery
that the author’s true name is not Silvia but either Egeria, Etheria
or perhaps Eucheria.
Footnote 3:
“Certe si consortia nostra displicuerint adorasse ubi steterunt pedes
Domini, pars fidei est, et quasi recentia nativitatis, et crucis ac
passionis vidisse vestigia.” (St Jerome to Desiderius, Migne, P. L.
xxii, p. 493).
Footnote 4:
“Pilgrimage of St Silvia,” pp. 15, 16, in the translation of the
Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society.
Footnote 5:
See “La Mosaïque Géographique de Mâdaba,” by the R. P. Lagrange, O.P.,
in the “Revue Biblique,” 1897, pp. 165-185 and 450-458.
Footnote 6:
“Civiltà Cattolica,” p. 722, September, 1895.
Footnote 7:
“Illo plurimo labore typice gessit opus mirifice constructum instar
Dominici sepulchri, secundum ordinem quem viderat et provida cura cum
calamo dimensus fuerat cum esset Hierosolymæ” (“Acta Sanctorum,” Oct.
vol. II, p. 459; Molinier “Itinera Hierosolymitana,” II, p. 145).
Footnote 8:
I refer particularly to the long porticoes with their rows of columns.
“Aliud quoque ædificium idque plurima varietate columnarum a
fundamentis ædificavit cum atrio in circuitu, cum duobus ordinibus
preciosarum columnarum, cum basibus et capitellis suis, signis
multiplicibus decoratis, ita ut super inferiorem ordinem columnarum
alius pretiosior supereminebat, tali modo extendebatur usque ad locum
qui figurate Golgotha, hoc est Calvaria, nuncupatur, ubi crux in qua
CHRISTUS pro salute mundi fixus est posita fuit” (ibid.) The use of
the word Golgotha is suggestive of an early date and a genuine
Palestinian tradition.
Footnote 9:
“Acta Sanctorum,” Oct. vol. II, p. 466.
Footnote 10:
e.g., Celestine III: “Cum itaque in templo gloriosi martyris Stephani,
quod dicitur Hierusalem de Bononia quod servus DEI Petronius, ejusdem
civitatis episcopus, instar sepulchri DOMINI nostri JESU CHRISTI in
Hierusalem erexit et construxit,” etc. (Acta SS., loc. cit. p. 434.)
Footnote 11:
See Sepp, “Jerusalem und das heilige Land,” 2nd edition, vol. I, p.
504.
Footnote 12:
See Father John Morris, S.J., “Life of St Thomas of Canterbury,” 2nd
edition, p. 508.
Footnote 13:
The traditional shrine of the Swoon of our Lady at Jerusalem was
certainly not located in the Valley of Josaphat, but, as every pilgrim
of the fourteenth and fifteenth century tells us, it stood near the
Ecce Homo arch.
Footnote 14:
I have translated this from a printed copy of the “Approbatio Cultus”
in the process of beatification, pp. 13-14. The copy is in the library
of the Bollandist Fathers at Brussels.
Footnote 15:
Barbier de Montault, “Œuvres,” vol. VIII, p. 152, from the Dominican
Breviary.
Footnote 16:
Wadding, “Annales Minorum,” ad annum 1491.
Footnote 17:
From the Preface to the French edition of Suso by Verard (1493), of
which there is a beautiful copy on vellum in the British Museum
library (IB, 41151), we learn that attention was early directed to his
“Way of the Cross.” “Assavoir est que ceste maniere de parler entre
sapience et le disciple fut trouvee et commencee par l’occasion qui
ensuit. Advint une fois que le disciple dont ce livre fait memoire
faisoit apres matines une procession autour le cloistre ou par
l’eglise de son convent [sic] en lonneur et souvenance de cette tres
piteuse procession que nostre sauveur jhu crist fist quant on le mena
de jerusalem en calvaire. Et avoit acoustume le dit disciple a faire
chascune nuyt apres matines une telle procession” (Prologue, sig. a,
iv recto).
Footnote 18:
I have copied Father Knox’s excellent translation of Suso, pp. 50-54,
but I have modified a phrase here and there, where the original seemed
to require it. It may be noted that the phrase “Way of the Cross” is
equally used by Suso of a journey which he took in imagination to
accompany our Lady home after the entombment.
Footnote 19:
“Primeira Parte da Chronica de Cister,” Lisbon, 1602, book VI, c.
xxxiv, fol. 463.
Footnote 20:
Father Quaresmius, who borrows the story from Brito, omits these
details. He evidently thought that such a flagrant neglect of all
means of healthful relaxation was not calculated to edify.
Footnote 21:
Tobler, “Topographie von Jerusalem,” considers that the name _Via
Dolorosa_ did not come into common use before the end of the sixteenth
century. This however must be a mistake, for the Spanish poet Juan de
la Enzina, in his “Viage de Jerusalem” (1519), speaks of the street
(_calle_) along which our LORD dragged His cross, “which nowadays is
called the street of anguish” (_qu’ oy dia se dize la Cal de
Amargura_). At this period it was also sometimes called the _Via
Sancta_—Holy Way.