to the Present Day
Strange as it may appear that the pious musings of Brother Jan Pascha,
the Carmelite of Louvain, should have so entirely fashioned the
devotional practice of his fellow-Christians in the West, there is one
feature in the history of the Way of the Cross which must strike the
intelligent student as more remarkable still. The extraordinary
popularity of the work of Adrichomius, which embodies Pascha’s ideas and
data, suffices perhaps to explain the acceptance of his scheme of
Stations by those who were not familiar with the actual sites. But it is
more difficult to understand how the same arrangement came in the course
of a century or so to be adopted by the Franciscans of Jerusalem itself,
in spite of the flat contradiction offered to it upon so many points of
fact by a long succession of writers of the Order. These men had penned
their descriptions after years of residence in the Holy City and after
daily intercourse with their brethren there, who were the depositories
of traditions handed down from the time of St Louis. They were either
themselves the official custodians of the holy places, or at least the
duly authorized spokesmen of such custodians, and down to the end of the
seventeenth century the accounts which they gave did not vary in any
important particular. I am not contending, of course, that this
unanimity establishes in any way the authenticity of the sites which the
good Franciscans venerated. Such traditions cannot be traced back beyond
the Crusades, and in some cases were demonstrably erroneous, but in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the system was as confidently believed
in as if it had descended from the first ages of Christianity.
Consequently, as against this uniform Franciscan tradition, no other
description by casual pilgrims, no other ideal arrangement of Stations
had a moment’s claim to be considered. The pious pilgrims who travelled
so far to visit Jerusalem were hardly ever permitted to spend more than
a few days within the sacred precincts.[105] A hundred possibilities of
error beset their hurried impressions. At the best they could only
faithfully repeat for the benefit of friends in Europe what was told
them by their Franciscan guides of Mount Sion, while it must often have
happened that faulty or confused recollections of what they had seen and
heard introduced strange variations into their narratives. Hence no
testimony of irresponsible wayfarers like Martin Ketzel or Peter
Sterckx, however well-intentioned, can stand against the first-hand
witness of the friars who lived upon the spot; the more so that these
latter persisted for 200 years together in the same uniform tale, and
the books that they published were carefully revised by their brethren
at Jerusalem, and given to the world with all kinds of official
sanctions.
The list of the Franciscan descriptions of the holy places printed
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is a fairly long one, and
many of the volumes are not easily met with. Of one of the earliest,
Aranda’s “Verdadera Informacion” (1530), something has already been
said; and I propose to turn now to the traditions perpetuated in a group
of later works beginning with such official accounts as those of
Zuallardo (1587),[106] Bernardino Amico (1610) and Quaresmius (1639),
continued in Surius (1646), Antonio de Castillo (1656) and Caccia
(1694), and in some details surviving even as late as the “Peregrinus”
of Hietling (1712) and the “Patrimonio Seraphico” of Francisco Jesus
Maria (1724). The attitude taken up by some of these Franciscan writers
towards the work of Adrichomius is a very curious one. Bernardino Amico,
for example, whose book, owing to its careful drawings, is one of great
value,[107] does not hesitate to speak his mind freely. In his first
edition (1610) Adrichomius, if I mistake not, is not named, but Amico
comments severely upon the gross blunders contained in various maps and
plans of Jerusalem he had met with, and proceeds to express his surprise
at the audacity of certain writers on the Holy Land who scrupled not to
draw plans in minute detail of places they had never visited and of
which they understood nothing. If we had any doubt as to the particular
book which was most prominently in Amico’s mind when he used this
language, the doubt would be removed by the explicit references
contained in his second edition which appeared ten years later. There he
tells us roundly that the description given by Adrichomius of the _Ecce
Homo_ arch, for example, is altogether misleading and impossible.
Adrichomius, both in his verbal description and in his map, represents
it as a sort of portico or colonnade, made like a stone bridge with
narrow arches, looking out upon an open square and forming the ordinary
passage of communication between Pilate’s palace and the fortress of
Antonia. Now the buildings at that time identified as occupying the
sites of Pilate’s palace and the fortress of Antonia were well known.
The first lay eighty and the other 150 yards to the east of the _Ecce
Homo_ arch, which could not, therefore, have formed the ordinary passage
between the two. Hence Amico has no difficulty in showing that
Adrichomius’s account is based upon a wholly erroneous impression of the
relative position of the buildings, and that as regards the arch itself
Adrichomius most surely could never have set eyes upon it. It seems
indeed to be certain that this last-named writer, though accepted in
Europe as the most learned authority on the topography of Jerusalem, had
never visited the Holy Land. The clearness and precision of the
information he imparted were very welcome to his readers, but they were
simply due to the fact that he worked largely _a priori_ and was not
hampered by any inconvenient knowledge of the difficulties presented by
the actual sites. The most authoritative of all the Franciscan writers,
Quaresmius, Guardian of Mount Sion, whose book appeared in 1639,[108]
also makes explicit reference to Adrichomius. His criticism, whether
tempered by religious charity or overawed by the elaborate parade of
research which had been affected by the earlier writer, is in any case
singularly gentle. The following passage, which is one among several,
may serve as a specimen:
“Very diligently to be sure has Adrichomius set down the noteworthy
sites of the Way of the Cross with their distances, and also its entire
length. I do not venture to contradict him, since he wrote upon the
report of men who were eminent for piety and learning, who saw this Way
with their own eyes and paced it both in body and spirit. Nevertheless,
I think that it will not be foreign to my purpose nor unwelcome to the
reader if I append here some of the points observed by myself and
others, even if not perhaps with such extreme minuteness, although they
are different, yet not less true, especially since I repeatedly, if I
mistake not, when I was at Jerusalem paced the same road as those
pilgrims did. Hence I can pronounce a not incompetent judgement as to
its length from the evidence of my own senses and experience.”[109]
In spite of Adrichomius’s elaborate parade of references, it will be
obvious to any one who compares the two books that he has taken his
details about the _Via Dolorosa_ almost entirely from Pascha. We have
dozens of reports of travellers of the same epoch (e.g., Aranda’s), and
amongst these Pascha stands alone, contradicting all of them.
Quaresmius, in his charity, seems to have taken Adrichomius’s statement
about his authorities entirely at the writer’s own valuation.
With regard in particular to the question of measurements Quaresmius
estimates the distance from Pilate’s house to the Judicial Gate at 570
paces; while that other portion of the Way which lay beyond the Judicial
Gate, and consequently outside the old city, could not, he declared, be
followed in his day, since the gate was blocked up, but he calculates
that it was about 250 paces. The whole distance from Pilate’s house to
Calvary was, therefore, 820 paces.
This, it will be noticed, does not agree particularly well with
Adrichomius’s, or rather Pascha’s, estimate, which makes the total
distance from Pilate’s house to Calvary 3,050 feet, and the distance
from Pilate’s house to the Judicial Gate 1,741 feet.
To say the truth, if any one will take the trouble to compare the
separate items of Pascha’s measurement (given on pp. 84-85) with any
accurate map of the _Via Dolorosa_ (the plans on pp. 106-107 will serve
quite well for the purpose), he will probably come to the conclusion
that these distances, like other details of the pilgrimage, are purely
fanciful. How far the responsibility for them may rest with Jan Pascha
and how far with Peter Sterckx or the other travellers who set up the
Louvain Stations it does not seem easy to determine. But to take one
example, it follows from Pascha’s measurements that the distance from
Veronica’s house to the Judicial Gate was as great as the distance from
Veronica’s house to the _Ecce Homo_ Arch. Even allowing a certain
latitude for variations in the location of Veronica’s house this is
ludicrously impossible. The site now pointed out as that of Veronica’s
house is about sixty-three yards from the Judicial Gate, but it is
nearly 350 yards distant from the _Ecce Homo_ Arch. Even more
unfavourable to Pascha’s credit as an eyewitness of what he describes is
his impression, more than once recorded, that “Calvary” was a “high
mountain.” Thus he makes our LORD after His third fall, when close to
the place of crucifixion, rest a while and contemplate the “high
mountain” in front of Him.[110] From the spot nowadays pointed out as
the scene of the third fall (the ninth station) there is only an ascent
of some fifteen feet to the summit of the Rock of Calvary. Nevertheless
it was upon Pascha’s statements that Adrichomius beyond all doubt based
all his calculations,[111] adding to these unreliable materials new
blunders of his own, as, for example, when he makes Golgotha and the
Holy Sepulchre lie on the north side of the Judicial Gate instead of on
the south.[112] Pascha’s distances are borrowed by the later writer
without any modification, and to emphasize his sense of their accuracy
Adrichomius gives a measure in his text to show the exact length of the
foot used in these data.
But to come back to what more immediately concerns our present purpose,
it is particularly noteworthy that of Adrichomius’s three falls
Quaresmius says nothing and apparently knows nothing; that he assigns
the meeting with Simon of Cyrene and with the women of Jerusalem to what
is approximately one and the same spot in the cross-road leading to the
Damascus Gate; that he regards both these meetings as having taken place
before our SAVIOUR came to Veronica’s house and impressed His
countenance upon her veil; and that he calls attention to the fact that
Veronica’s house was not a corner house as depicted in the map of
Adrichomius. As the arrangement and wording of Quaresmius is a little
instructive, I may translate here the summary which he prefixes to his
chapter on the _Via Dolorosa_:
“The sixth pilgrimage is that of the WAY OF THE CROSS, or the WAY OF
SORROWS, in which are set forth and described eight sites in particular,
the which are piously venerated by those who traverse this same road.
The first site is the palace of Pilate the Governor; the second is that
of the Scourging of CHRIST; the third is the Palace of Herod; the fourth
is Pilate’s Arch, whereon CHRIST was shown to the people while Pilate
said: ‘Behold the man’; the fifth is the church, called the Swoon of our
Lady; the sixth is the cross-way where Simon of Cyrene was constrained
to carry our SAVIOUR’S cross and where JESUS was met by the weeping
women; the seventh is the house of Veronica, where this holy woman wiped
the face of CHRIST with her napkin; the eighth is the Judicial Gate.”
This, we must remember, is the official description given to the world
from Jerusalem itself between 1625 and 1639, just fifty years after
Adrichomius had published his map of the Stations, reproduced above.
What then was this _Via Dolorosa_ along which the pilgrims were
conducted by their Franciscan guides in the seventeenth century? So far
as regards the narrow roadway itself, it seems for that part of its
course which stretches from the _Ecce Homo_ Arch to the so-called
Judicial Gate to have consisted of exactly the same street or streets in
which the stations are pointed out to pilgrims at the present day.
Beyond the Judicial Gate, and up to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it
was admitted then as now that the path followed by our SAVIOUR had been
built over, and that owing to the intervening enclosures and houses,
detours have now to be made where JESUS CHRIST on His painful journey to
Calvary in all probability followed a straight course. But with regard
to the earlier portion of the Way of the Cross Quaresmius and his
contemporaries believed that it was possible to trace our SAVIOUR’S very
footsteps, and that though the houses which bordered the roadway might
have been destroyed and built up again, the direction and position of
the streets along which He passed had not been altered. Of the
improbability of this assumption a word may be said further on. For the
present it is sufficient to note that the view was universally held by
pilgrims in past ages, and that it is still accepted without discussion
by the majority of those who follow the Stations of the Cross as they
are now publicly made by the good Franciscans in Jerusalem on every
Friday afternoon. There can in any case be little doubt that the _Via
Dolorosa_ venerated at the present time is identical with that known to
Zuallardo and Quaresmius. Its general direction and also its change of
level can be sufficiently gathered from the rough map on p. 106.
Zuallardo’s plan, given opposite, while extremely interesting for its
witness to the Franciscan tradition, is unfortunately not very clear,
though intelligible after a little study.
[Illustration: _THE VIA DOLOROSA, ACCORDING TO ZUALLARDO, 1587._
Zuallardo has arranged his drawing in two sections, as it is reproduced
here, but the lower section is intended to be continuous with the upper
section, and in order to indicate this, the Church of our Lady’s Swoon
(K), which stands at the extremity of the upper section, is repeated by
him in the lower. A—Gate of St Stephen. B—Gate of the Court of the
Temple. C—The Temple, now the Mosque of Omar. D—Church of St Anne.
E—Pilate’s House. F—Scala Santa. G—Herod’s House. H—Pilate’s Arch (Ecce
Homo). K—Church of our Lady’s Swoon. L—Simon of Cyrene. M—Daughters of
Jerusalem. N—House of Dives. O—House of the Pharisee. P—House of
Veronica. Q—Judicial Gate. R—Mount Calvary.]
Taking the _Ecce Homo_ Arch and the Judicial Gate as two fixed points,
which are easily identifiable, the important fact to notice is that the
_Via Dolorosa_ does not, as Adrichomius incorrectly draws it, run
straight from one to the other, but that there is on the contrary a
sharp zigzag in the middle. For the first part of the course the _Via
Dolorosa_ is an ill-paved lane passing under the _Ecce Homo_ Arch
westwards and downhill for two hundred yards to the head of the Tyropœan
valley. Here the narrow lane debouches into a somewhat broader street,
one of the main thoroughfares of Jerusalem, which stretches, roughly
speaking, north and south and connects the Damascus Gate on the north
side with the centre of the city. The _Via Dolorosa_ then, on
encountering this more important thoroughfare, turns to the left and
follows its course southwards for about fifty yards, nearly as far as
the parti-coloured building raised upon an arch and astride of the road,
which tradition professes to identify as the house of the rich glutton.
Then the Way of Sorrows leaves the larger roadway once more and resumes
its former direction, almost due west, as a narrow lane up a steep hill,
coming out in front of the ruined archway known as the Judicial Gate.
Thus we have three sections: the first running west and downhill; the
second of about fifty yards running south and also slightly downhill;
and the third turning due west again uphill. It is in the elbow formed
by this middle section where there is a meeting of ways (_bivium_ or
_trivium_) that our SAVIOUR is believed to have encountered Simon of
Cyrene, who had just entered Jerusalem from his farm by the northern or
Damascus Gate. Upon this identification accounts, otherwise at variance,
are agreed. The brief description I have attempted will, no doubt, be
made intelligible enough by a reference to the plans on pp. 106-107. I
will only delay now to call attention to two points. First, the scene of
our Lady’s swoon upon meeting her divine Son was invariably assigned by
the Franciscan writers of the seventeenth century to what I have called
the first section, i.e., it was located in the lane running westward,
from the _Ecce Homo_ Arch, about midway between this and the point where
the lane strikes the main street. Secondly, the place of the colloquy
with the women of Jerusalem was not less invariably pointed out in the
second section, viz., the broader piece of roadway just referred to,
which runs south from the Damascus Gate. In view of the tradition which
now prevails in Jerusalem as to the sites of the fourth and eighth
stations of the Cross, the two particulars I have noticed seem of some
little interest.
[Illustration: _ROUGH PLAN OF THE VIA DOLOROSA IN THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY._ The crosses with Roman numerals in this and the two following
plans refer to the incidents commemorated by our modern Stations.
I—Condemnation. II—Receiving the Cross. III—First Fall. IV—The Blessed
Virgin Mary. V—Simon of Cyrene. VI—Veronica. VII—Second Fall. VIII—Women
of Jerusalem. In the seventeenth century these incidents were located as
indicated in the plan above. The Arabic numerals give the level above
the sea in feet.]
[Illustration: _ROUGH PLAN OF THE VIA DOLOROSA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY._ The III Station (the First Fall) is close to the
Ecce Homo Arch. The VIII Station (Women of Jerusalem) is beyond the
Judicial Gate.]
[Illustration: _ROUGH PLAN OF THE VIA DOLOROSA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
AND AT THE PRESENT DAY._ The III Station is now at the corner, and the
IV and V have been moved a corresponding distance nearer to Calvary.]
It would be tedious to attempt to discuss in detail the evidence of the
various witnesses to the Franciscan tradition. For the most part each of
them only re-echoes in substance what is said by his predecessors,
though in style and manner of treatment they are not wanting in
individuality. Perhaps as a sample of the rest we cannot do better than
turn to the description of Brother Bernardine Surius, who wrote
originally in Flemish about the year 1646, and afterwards had his book
translated into French. He had spent several years in Palestine, and had
been President of the Holy Sepulchre there, and his volume bristles with
every kind of authentication. Surius’s eight stations are not identical
with those of Quaresmius. He says nothing which is at variance with the
data of the earlier writer, but makes a slightly different selection in
the following order: (1) Pilate’s House, (2) _Ecce Homo_ Arch, (3) Our
Lady’s Swoon, (4) Simon of Cyrene, (5) Daughters of Jerusalem, (6) House
of the Pharisee, (7) Veronica, (8) Judicial Gate.[113]
The reader will not fail to note in this arrangement of the Stations
that Surius, like Quaresmius, is silent about the three falls, and that
he represents the meeting with the women of Jerusalem as preceding that
with Veronica. With regard to the contents of these eight chapters the
writer’s treatment is devotional as well as descriptive. He interpolates
pious reflections and points of meditation, but he gives at the same
time a precise account of the position of the different sites and of all
points of interest connected with them. The House of Pilate, Surius’s
first station, was then as now in the occupation of Turkish officials.
There is probably no shadow of reason for connecting this spacious
medieval structure with the residence of the Roman governor, but ever
since the Crusades tradition has located the Prætorium in this place.
We come next to the _Ecce Homo_ Arch. By special favour Surius had been
permitted to climb the twenty-six stone steps which led up to the
roofless and almost ruined chamber above the arch, and he had then been
able to examine the two oval windows, divided by a pillar about five
feet high, looking out upon the street (the _Via Dolorosa_) towards the
east. He avows his belief, and he adds that all the Christians of the
East believe likewise, that at one of these windows stood JESUS CHRIST
and at the other Pilate, not only at the solemn moment of the _Ecce
Homo_ (“Behold the Man”), but also when the populace were bidden to
choose between JESUS CHRIST and Barabbas. On the western side, and above
the crown of the arch, two white flag-stones have been built into the
wall. Medieval tradition declares that Pilate had stood on one of these
stones and our LORD on the other. Critical modern archæologists seem
inclined to recognize in these slabs two flag-stones of the paved
courtyard (_lithostrotos_) of Pilate’s Prætorium. Strange to say, Amico,
Surius and a number of other travellers of that epoch who had had
exceptional opportunities of observing them, averred very positively
that one of the stones, but not the other, bore traces of an inscription
in great Latin letters. Surius maintained that the words had been ECCE
HOMO, but that “of the eight letters contained in these two words only
five remain, EC.E .OM., the Turks having obliterated the
remainder.”[114] Earlier observers, however, seem to have dissented from
this view, and the majority assert that the words were Tol. To. (i.e.,
_Tolle, Tolle_).[115] Fra Niccolo da Poggibonsi, who noticed the
inscription in 1345, declared that it was written in Greek, Hebrew and
Latin letters, and that it would remain for ever.[116]
[Illustration: _THE ECCE HOMO ARCH._ _From the second edition of
Bernardino Amico’s “Piante et Immagini,” 1620_]
Be it said in passing that modern archæologists fully admit the _Ecce
Homo_ Arch to be a genuine relic of the Roman period, though it was not
necessarily standing in the time of our LORD. The more generally
accepted opinion seems to be that it was a triumphal arch erected in the
second century about the time of Hadrian, but it may, as the Franciscans
contend, have served as the entrance gate of the old fortress of the
Antonia. In any case there is no probability that it was ever used for
such a purpose as that of exhibiting a reputed criminal before the eyes
of the multitude.
[Illustration: _CHRIST AT PILATE’S HOUSE._ _Illustration from the
“Geystlich Strass,” Nuremberg, 1521_ Upon this threefold subject see p.
81. The first scene is the condemnation of our Saviour by Pilate,
represented as taking place on the top of an arch. The second is the
stripping off of His garments before putting on the purple robe. This
may possibly have been suggested by the curious statement in Heer
Bethlem’s book that of the two stones in the arch one was that on which
Christ stood to hear His Sentence, the other that on which He stood when
His garments were torn from Him. The third scene represents the going
forth with the cross.]
To say the truth, this latter part of the story must prove rather a
shock to out-and-out believers in Palestinian traditions, for by the
admission of the Franciscan custodians themselves the tale of our
SAVIOUR’S having been shown to the people from the top of the _Ecce
Homo_ Arch is entirely of modern growth.[117] As early as 1287 Philippus
Brusserius of Savona saw the two stones already built into the
arch,[118] and in the next century a legend grew up that upon these two
stones Pilate and our SAVIOUR had respectively stood or sat when the
former delivered judgement.[119] By a slight modification it was next
believed that those were the stones upon which they stood at the moment
of the _Ecce Homo_ (“Behold the Man!”). Rochechouart, a traveller of
1461, declared that the Empress St Helena had caused the stones to be
honourably set up in the arch; but the Franciscan, Anselm of Cracow,
1509, maintained that it was a Father Guardian of his own Order who had
had this done by permission of the Sultan. So far, however, it was
clearly understood that the stones had been transferred to the arch from
the pavement of the Prætorium.[120] But in the sixteenth century a
further development of the legend took place. It came to be believed
that the stones had always belonged to the arch, and that it was from
the central window of the chamber above the vaulting that our LORD was
shown to the people. This idea is clearly suggested in the engraving
from the “Geystlich Strass” of 1521, reproduced opposite, and it was
from about this date that the arch began to be generally known as the
arch of the _Ecce Homo_. For more than two hundred years not the
slightest doubt seems to have been felt that our LORD was really
exhibited to the people from this elevated spot. The upper portion of
the arch gradually fell into ruin. The chamber above the vault is
already shown roofless in Amico’s drawing, p. 110, probably made about
1590, but this may possibly have been its original state. The arched
double window on the east side with its dividing column still remained,
but in 1630, if we may trust Elzearius Horn, a treasurer of the Sultan
coming from Damascus thought that this graceful column might serve to
adorn a mosque which he was building. He sent men to take it down, but
in the operation the pillar fell upon the two workmen, breaking the arm
of one and the leg of the other.[121] One may legitimately have doubts
about the historical accuracy of this story, for when Father Horn goes
on to say that at the same time two flag-stones forming part of the
flooring of this upper chamber, the two stones upon which our SAVIOUR
and Pilate had stood, were built into the western external wall of the
arch, he certainly cannot be correct. We have already noticed that they
were seen in this position at a very much earlier date. Horn also states
that the upper portion of the arch was repaired by the Franciscan
Guardian, Father James de Luca, in 1725, though the drawing which he
gives of it shows the monument in a very dilapidated state, and was
probably made before the restoration. Other restorations have been
necessary since, and at present (see next page), the upper portion of
the structure seemingly preserves nothing of the original, either as to
form or material.
[Illustration: _THE ECCE HOMO ARCH, FROM THE WEST._ _From a recent
Photograph. See pp. 112, 113._]
The third station in Surius’s enumeration is the meeting of our LORD
with His blessed Mother. This spot he is careful to explain “is 120
paces from the arch westwards down the _Via Dolorosa_ at a point where
there is an old wall of big square stones facing the north.” It is,
consequently, on the left hand side of the road as one goes towards
Calvary, and some seventy or eighty yards short of the corner where the
lane turns into the main street. This, be it noticed, entirely agrees
with the descriptions of Amico, Zuallardo and Quaresmius. The old wall
of big square stones is stated by Surius to have been part of the
ancient chapel erected to commemorate our Lady’s Swoon at the meeting
with her divine Son. He adds that when the building was destroyed by the
Turks, the Franciscans managed to obtain possession of the block of
stone on which she was supposed to have stood and which was venerated in
that chapel. The relic was conveyed by them to Mount Sion.[122]
With regard to the exact spot of the meeting with our Lady, Aranda, in
1533, supplies other details which must convince all readers that in his
time it was pointed out in the first section of the _Via Dolorosa_. He
calls attention to the fact that the road sloped downwards to the place
where our Lady stood. Hence, although there was a great crowd about our
SAVIOUR, she could see Him quite well as He descended the incline.
Again, Aranda points out that it is but a short distance from the place
of the swoon to the corner of the main street, and he infers that the
anguish of seeing His Mother’s grief so worked upon our LORD that He
Himself fell fainting to the ground almost immediately afterwards. He
could only bear up until He had turned the corner and was presumably out
of her view. Here it was, consequently, at the same corner that the
executioners seized upon Simon of Cyrene and compelled him to help our
LORD to proceed.
In his next chapter Surius, supposing the pilgrim to be still
progressing westwards towards Calvary, deals with the incident of Simon
of Cyrene, which he counts as the fourth station. To quote his own
words: “Ninety-five paces further on [from the chapel of the Swoon] one
turns into the main street, which begins at the Damascus Gate on the
north and leads to the market place and to the gate of the temple known
as ‘Beautiful.’ This is the spot, according to Eastern tradition, where
CHRIST our LORD fell under the weight of the cross, and where the Jews,
fearing that He would not have the strength to reach Calvary, compelled
an old man coming in from his farm to help our SAVIOUR to carry His
heavy burden.” It is to be observed that the Jesuit, Père Nau, who made
his pilgrimage in 1674 in the train of the French ambassador, gives a
precisely similar account, and he adds that the place of our LORD’S fall
here at the corner of the main street is marked by a stone of
considerable size (_une assez grosse pierre_) which the pilgrims kiss
and venerate with much devotion, although it lies in the middle of the
road[123] and in full view of the infidels, who often reward their piety
with a volley of imprecations and abuse. Things must already have begun
to improve a little in Jerusalem when the Christian pilgrims ventured to
bestow marks of veneration upon such an object. It may perhaps be that
the presence of the French ambassador and his suite made them rather
bolder than usual.
[Illustration: _THE SITE OF THE FIRST FALL_ (_STATION III_). (_From a
photograph_) This spot at the corner of the lane was formerly regarded
as the place where Simon of Cyrene came to aid our Lord. The broken
column will easily be recognised.]
And now, if I may venture to anticipate a little what would otherwise
have to be said later, it is worth while to point out that we have here
an important clue to the genesis of the system of Stations which are
venerated along the _Via Dolorosa_ at the present day. For the last two
centuries the custodians of the holy places have adopted the arrangement
of Adrichomius with its three falls and other peculiarities, finding
probably that among their Franciscan brethren in Europe this form of the
exercise of the Way of the Cross had now won almost universal
acceptance. But to harmonize this new enumeration of the Stations with
the old traditions was not easy. It seems plain that a point of
departure presented itself at the corner of the main street where Surius
located his fourth station. Here was certainly the scene of a fall of
our SAVIOUR attested by ancient tradition. A large fragment of rock
marked the spot. This, therefore, must be the first in Adrichomius’s
series of three falls. And so at this spot, at the corner of the street
leading from the Damascus Gate, the third of our received series of
Stations, “Our SAVIOUR falls the first time,” is at present venerated.
The site is still marked by a fragment of rock, though it is now
described as a broken column of red marble half imbedded in the ground,
and it no longer lies—if any one ever meant to convey that it lay—in the
centre of the roadway. Thus Dom Geramb in his extremely interesting
letter, giving an account of the _Via Dolorosa_, written in 1832, states
that “at the end of the street, turning to the left near the Turkish
bath,[124] you come to a column of red marble prostrate and broken,
which, according to tradition, marks the spot where our SAVIOUR sank to
earth for the first time under the weight of the cross.” Earlier still
this column is spoken of by the Portuguese friar, Joao de Jesus Christo,
who visited Jerusalem before 1818.[125] The broken shaft is apparently
still there, and is shown in recent photographs. Indeed, it is quite
possible that this is the very stone of which Ludolf von Suchem (1350)
speaks in a rather confused passage in which he alludes to “the stone
whereon JESUS rested awhile when His strength failed Him on account of
His tortures and the weight of His cross, and there the Jews compelled
Simon of Cyrene to bear the cross after Him.”[126]
It will be noticed that earlier authorities like Ludolf all associate
this physical collapse of our Blessed LORD with the incident of Simon of
Cyrene. The real difficulty was created by Adrichomius’s arrangement,
which introduces the meeting with our Blessed Lady between the first
fall and the compulsory impressment of Simon. Once, however, that the
first fall was fixed at the corner of the main street, the other
stations had to be determined in their due order. The meeting with our
Lady was accordingly transferred from the old position in the lane to a
point further along the main street, while Simon of Cyrene’s advent had
to be assigned to a spot still lower down. These changes were rendered
somewhat easier by the fact that Adrichomius supposed the meeting with
the women of Jerusalem to have taken place outside the city beyond the
Judicial Gate. This, at any rate, as the sketch map on p. 107 will make
sufficiently clear, is the order in which the stations are now venerated
by those who piously follow their Franciscan guides along the _Via
Dolorosa_. Station III (the First Fall) is at the corner as we turn to
the left into the main street which runs south from the Damascus Gate.
Station IV (the meeting with Mary) is on the right hand forty yards
lower down. Station V (Simon of Cyrene) is twenty-five yards still
further on. It is located at the next corner, where the pilgrim turns
westward once more to climb up a narrow lane spanned by many arches and
leading to the Judicial Gate and Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In this
narrow lane half way up on the left hand is Station VI (Veronica). At
the Judicial Gate we have Station VII (the second Fall). Beyond this we
have to make detours, as has already been explained, in order to reach
the eminence of Calvary, now covered by the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre. The eighth station (Women of Jerusalem) and the ninth (third
Fall) are venerated on our way, but it is admitted that we cannot now
draw near to the site which tradition seeks to identify with the second
of these incidents.
But let us return after this interruption to Surius, whom we left at his
fourth station, meditating on the incident of Simon of Cyrene. If I may
summarize his rather diffuse remarks, he continues in some such terms as
these:
Station the fifth. After this painful fall our LORD, goaded on by His
cruel tormentors, struggled to His feet, leaving the ground purpled with
His precious Blood. Then, after staggering forward another twenty-four
paces, seeing that some pious women were following Him wailing and
lamenting, our SAVIOUR turned to them and said: “Daughters of
Jerusalem,” etc.
The sixth station, according to Surius, is 125 paces from where JESUS
CHRIST spoke to the women. It is up a steep lane (_une ruelle
montagneuse_) running westward, and is the house of the Pharisee, where
St Mary Magdalene washed our SAVIOUR’S feet.
One hundred and five paces further on towards the Judicial Gate we come
to the house of Veronica, Surius’s seventh station. The original
building, he tells us, had fallen into ruin, but another had been built
in its place, the entrance to which is up a flight of four steps. It may
be noted that recent exploration has shown the existence of very ancient
remains in this spot. Herr von Schick believed them to be Jewish and
older than the time of our LORD.[127]
Finally, after travelling straight on for 128 paces more, we come to the
Judicial Gate, which is Surius’s eighth and last station. He does not
speak of any fall of our SAVIOUR at this point, but he and the
Franciscan writers of the same epoch imply that there may have been a
halt there, a moment’s breathing space, while the formal sentence passed
upon JESUS of Nazareth was read aloud and posted upon the column
standing hard by. Father Parviller (_c._ 1650) is responsible for the
further curious suggestion that our SAVIOUR prostrated Himself upon the
earth when the sentence was read, in testimony of His entire obedience
to the will of His heavenly Father. There can be little doubt that the
good friars who at the beginning of the eighteenth century sought to
conciliate their traditions with the system of Adrichomius would have
welcomed the idea that the fall at the gate of the city (the seventh
station, “JESUS falls a second time”) might be identified with the halt
caused by the reading and posting of the sentence. I must not, however,
omit to note that Burchard of Mount Sion, a very early traveller (_c._
1280), describes our LORD as sinking to earth at the city gate under the
weight of His cross. But if there was any tradition to that effect, it
seems to have been forgotten for centuries.[128] Père Nau, the Jesuit,
who so closely agrees with Surius in his descriptions, takes particular
notice of the pillar which stood by the Judicial Gate and which may
still be seen there at the present day. It is now enclosed in a tiny
chapel built on the spot and owned by the Franciscans. “When we reach
the top of the street,” says Nau, “a pillar may be observed under the
archway of an old ruined house. It is stated that upon this pillar was
posted the sentence of death which had been judicially passed upon our
SAVIOUR. Tradition will have it that by a special providence of God the
column has remained there undisturbed until modern times. I confess I
have some difficulty in crediting the fact.” It may be added that the
existence of some city gate—probably that known to Nehemias as the “Old
Gate”—in the immediate neighbourhood of the present “Judicial Gate” is
highly probable. In spite of the reluctance of English experts to admit
that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre occupies the site of Calvary—a
reluctance largely prompted, I venture to think, by an antipathy to
relics and Romanism—the evidence collected by Herr von Schick and others
affords reliable proof that the city wall in the time of our SAVIOUR ran
east and north of the traditional site of the crucifixion. Given the
wall, the configuration of the ground shows that there must almost
necessarily have been a gate at this point, and the remains still
standing may very possibly have belonged to it.
With the Judicial Gate Surius, like Quaresmius, ended his Way of the
Cross; and the Franciscans, who as an exercise of devotion used to
follow our SAVIOUR barefoot from Pilate’s Prætorium to this point, here
resumed their sandals. It is particularly curious that in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries we almost entirely lose sight of that “stone
with crosses” in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,[129]
which was supposed to mark the place of our LORD’S falling or resting
for the last time before He reached the actual site of the crucifixion.
Although it is shown most conspicuously in early engravings of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where pilgrims are represented as kneeling
to kiss it and to gain the indulgence attached to it, neither Quaresmius
nor Surius include it in their Way of Sorrows. What is more, the site
now indicated for the third fall (the ninth station) is not in the
courtyard of the Holy Sepulchre Church but at an inaccessible spot
within the Coptic monastery. Hence it would seem that the stone which
stirred such deep emotions in the hearts of Wey, Fabri, Breydenbach and
innumerable others is now entirely unhonoured.
We have thus come to the end of our pilgrimage along the _Via Dolorosa_
as that pilgrimage was made by the authorized Franciscan guides of the
seventeenth century. Beyond the Judicial Gate, as has been said, Surius
does not take us, though he tells us that he estimated the distance that
our SAVIOUR travelled to Calvary at 410 paces more. But the ground, he
says, has been so built over that it is useless to attempt to trace His
actual footsteps. So far as I have been able to investigate the matter,
there can be no doubt that in Jerusalem itself the tradition represented
by Quaresmius and Surius entirely held the field down to the closing
years of the seventeenth century. Almost the only trace of our modern
system of Stations that I have encountered on Eastern soil before this
date occurs, strange to say, in the narrative of a Protestant traveller,
George Sandys.[130] In his “Relation of a Journey begun in 1610” he
gives an account of Jerusalem, and tells us the way between Pilate’s
palace and Mount Calvary “is called the Dolorous Way, along which our
SAVIOUR was led to His Passion; in which they say, and show where, that
He thrice fell under the weight of His cross.” This may be simply an
echo of Adrichomius, whose book before this date had been translated
into English, or the traveller may identify these falls with other
incidents such as those of Simon of Cyrene and Veronica. What is certain
is that Sandys reproduces in his own book Zuallardo’s woodcut of the
_Via Dolorosa_ (given above p. 105), and then adds a description which
agrees in every respect with the old Franciscan tradition.
Other later descriptions by visitors, who like Sandys could hardly be
called pilgrims, might be quoted in the same sense. However, towards the
close of the seventeenth century it is plain that the influence of
Adrichomius began to make itself felt even in the East. An attempt seems
gradually to have been made to combine the devotional system now in the
ascendant with the old Franciscan traditions, and it is curious to watch
the successive stages by which this was brought about. Perhaps the first
sign may be detected in the vogue of Adrichomius’s map with its figured
stations. Fray Antonio de Castillo, O.F.M., who had spent seven years
continuously in an official position in the Holy Land, returning to
Spain, published a handsome volume at Madrid in 1656 called “El Devoto
Peregrino.”[131] In this, while he is entirely faithful to the older
traditions, and reproduces Zuallardo’s plan of the _Via Dolorosa_ in a
better form than the original, nevertheless he has also incorporated in
his volume two large folding sheets, one a copy of the map of Jerusalem
by Fra Bernardino Amico, the other a copy of that of Adrichomius. The
fact that the two plans in many important particulars contradict one
another does not seem to have troubled him. The same map of Adrichomius
is again reproduced with its stations in the highly official Franciscan
history, “Chronica de la Provincia de Syria,” by Juan de Calahorra, in
1684. It is, however, in such a book as that of the German friar
Hietling, who had been guardian of Bethlehem and who on his return to
Austria in 1713 published a folio on the Holy Land,[132] that we find
the first clear indications of the coming change. His book contains a
very rude and curious plan of the _Via Dolorosa_, evidently drafted by
himself, but leaving no room for ambiguity as to its divergence from the
older delineations.[133] Of the three separate falls of Adrichomius’s
system there is as yet no formal mention, but there are other features
which unmistakably show the influence which Adrichomius exercised.
First, the meeting with the women of Jerusalem has been placed after
that with Veronica, and the place of the encounter has been indicated as
in Adrichomius’s map at the point beyond the Judicial Gate. Secondly,
the episode of our Lady now appears in a double form. The meeting with
her Son (_occursus Virginis_) is still assigned to the old site in the
lane, midway between the _Ecce Homo_ Arch and the end. But the Swoon of
our Lady (_deliquium beatæ Virginis_) is now treated as a separate
incident, and located in the main street well round the corner. As we
have already seen, this last site has been eventually retained, and is
now honoured as that of the fourth station, presumably because it allows
the first fall of our LORD to be identified with the corner of the lane
and yet to precede, as in Adrichomius’s order, the meeting with the
Blessed Virgin. It would appear that at this period, i.e., during the
first fifty years of the eighteenth century, great confusion prevailed
in determining the stations of the _Via Dolorosa_. No two writers,
however ample their opportunities of acquainting themselves with the
Franciscan traditions of Jerusalem, will be found to agree exactly. In
the “Guida Fedele” of Brother Pietr’ Antonio di Venetia, O.F.M., we have
the complete system of Adrichomius with all its details.[134] Brother
Antonio do Sacramento, a Portuguese friar who spent a year or more in
the Holy Land in 1739-40, mentions four falls of which the second
coincides with the episode of Simon of Cyrene, but he seems nevertheless
to assign the meeting with our Blessed Lady to the original position in
the lane. This is also the case in the elaborate and careful drawings of
Father Elzearius Horn (_c._ 1740).[135] On the other hand Father Myller,
a Bohemian Servite, in 1735 says nothing of the falls, though he, like
several others, places the meeting with the women outside the Judicial
Gate.[136] Eventually the system of Adrichomius was somehow made to fit
in with the local traditions, and in the _Viage_ of Brother Joao de
Jesus Christo of 1818, already mentioned, we find the Stations of the
_Via Dolorosa_ given in the same order and at precisely the same points
along the road as are observed in the exercise of the Way of the Cross
officially conducted by the Franciscans of Jerusalem on Friday
afternoons at the present day. For some hundreds of years it has been
the custom of the friars to traverse the _Via Dolorosa_ for their
private devotion, walking barefoot, i.e. without their sandals. But it
is only within the last half century that it has been possible for a
group of pilgrims to make the Way of the Cross together in public under
the guidance of one of the religious. Father Horn, it is true, declared
that in ancient times the friars of Mount Sion used to make the Stations
on Fridays “in procession, though without the cross at their
head—_processionaliter absque tamen prævia cruce_”—and that this
practice continued until 1621, when the Turkish authorities stopped it;
but I have found no satisfactory confirmation of this assertion. Even as
late as 1832 Christian devotees were exposed to every kind of annoyance,
as the following passage from a letter of Dom Geramb will show:
“Nine of these stations are in the streets forming the _Via Dolorosa_,
so that the pilgrim is obliged to refrain from all external signs of
piety, if he would avoid the insults and outrages of which Turkish
fanaticism is not sparing. I have sometimes ventured to disregard
Mussulman prejudice, but I would not advise any one to imitate my
temerity. Along a road bordered exclusively by Turkish dwellings and
frequented by all classes of the population it is better to confine
oneself to inward prayer than to provoke outrage and blasphemy. One day,
before the house of St Veronica, I allowed some external mark of respect
to escape me, and instantly a vessel of water was flung over me from a
window. The wisest thing was to say nothing, and I passed on in
silence.”[137]
The same writer also tells us in another place of a broken column in the
roadway, which was believed to mark the position of the ninth station,
i.e., the third fall, not far from Calvary; but the Turks, when they
discovered this, took to heaping up filth against it, with the express
object of keeping the Christians at a distance.
At the present day, however, the spectacle of a group of Christians
praying at a street corner has become too familiar in Jerusalem to evoke
as a rule any demonstration of Moslem fanaticism. On Good Friday a great
procession of pilgrims, a score of whom support between them on their
shoulders a gigantic wooden cross, traverse unmolested the whole course
of the _Via Dolorosa_, pausing for a while at each station to recite
devotions in public, while, as already mentioned, the exercise of the
Stations takes place on a smaller scale on every Friday afternoon
throughout the year. Travellers have also noticed that by a sort of
irony of fate there may be witnessed within a few hours on these same
Friday evenings the weird spectacle of the lamentations of the Jews in
“the place of wailing.” There, against the wall of what was once the
glorious temple of Jerusalem, they mourn over the dispersion of their
race almost within earshot of the Christian Way of Sorrows.
[Illustration: _THE VIA DOLOROSA, NEAR VERONICA’S HOUSE._ _From a
drawing by W. Bartlett_, _c._ 1840.]
The question can hardly fail to suggest itself: What probability is
there that the _Via Dolorosa_ now venerated in Jerusalem really
represents the path trodden by our LORD’S sacred feet on His last
painful journey to Calvary? It is not quite easy to answer such a
question satisfactorily within moderate limits. What we have already
seen in the foregoing pages of the growth and fluctuation of tradition,
as well as the adaptability of these same traditions to new ideas when
any strong pressure from without renders compromise desirable, will have
prepared us to find that the popular and general acceptance of a belief
even for a long period together can afford no satisfactory guarantee
that the belief has solid foundation in fact. It is to archæological
considerations and the evidence of the earliest centuries that we must
turn for a solution rather than to any living voice, even though it
represent an uninterrupted succession of teachers stretching back to the
middle ages. It must be obvious that the first question to be decided is
the position of the Prætorium of the Roman governor and of the
Lithostrotos or paved courtyard of which the gospel tells us. No
reasonable doubt can be felt that our SAVIOUR will have been led from
the place of sentence to the place of execution by the shortest
available route. The _terminus ad quem_ we may assume to be determined
by the position of Constantine’s basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. Recent
scientific research has made clear the futility of the reasons for
seeking Golgotha in any other quarter than that assigned by tradition.
The one serious objection to the identification of the present Church of
the Holy Sepulchre with the scene of the crucifixion was the doubt—which
formerly seemed well founded—whether this site could possibly have stood
outside the wall of the city in the time of our LORD. Thanks to the
researches of the German archæological expert, the late Herr Conrad von
Schick, we may take it as satisfactorily proved that the course of the
city wall did not originally take in the ground now covered by
Constantine’s basilica, but nevertheless ran close up to it.[138] Hence
if our SAVIOUR was crucified upon the spot which Christians ever since
the beginning of the fourth century have venerated as the rock of
Calvary, He truly “suffered outside the gate,” as the Epistle to the
Hebrews says with emphasis,[139] while on the other hand the place was
so near one of the main entrances into the city that St John might well
insist that the title affixed to the cross could be read by multitudes
of wayfarers.[140]
But with regard to the _terminus a quo_ of the Way of Sorrows things are
by no means so clear. A Catholic professor has recently published a long
article in a leading theological review to prove that from the testimony
of Josephus it necessarily follows that the Prætorium of Pilate was
situated on Mount Sion.[141] If that be so, our LORD must have
approached Calvary from an entirely different quarter than that
indicated by the traditional _Via Dolorosa_. He must have descended to
the place of crucifixion from the south side, instead of toiling upwards
from the east. On the other hand, a distinguished Dominican, Father
Zanecchia, has been led by the description of early pilgrims to locate
the Prætorium deep in the Tyropœan Valley, which separates the east and
west hills, upon which Jerusalem is built. In this view he has been
followed by the Assumptionist professors of Notre Dame de France in
their recently published guide-book, “La Palestine, Guide Historique.”
If this theory were correct, it would be equally impossible to regard
the traditional _Via Dolorosa_ as the true path of our SAVIOUR to
Calvary. Let me hasten to explain that neither of these two hypotheses
regarding the location of the Prætorium appears to me satisfactory. The
first proceeds upon the assumption that the Christians of ancient
Jerusalem retained no memory of the sites of our LORD’S Passion, and
that the descriptions of early pilgrims are consequently worthless;
surely a needlessly violent and extreme position. The second view, on
the other hand, seems to exaggerate the inferences to be deduced from
the accounts of Antonius and the Bordeaux pilgrim, and to ignore the
equally valuable evidence obtainable from other quarters. I am inclined
therefore to associate myself with the criticisms which have been
directed against Padre Zanecchia’s theory by Frère Barnabé d’Alsace and
Dr Karl Mommert,[142] and to accept the solution of the last-named that
the Prætorium of Pilate stood near the head of the Tyropœan Valley, on
the ground at present occupied by the Armenian convent, where pilgrims
now venerate the fourth station of the cross. In a recent article in the
“Dublin Review” I have touched upon the reasons which have led me to
this conclusion, though for a fuller exposition I must refer to the
important work of Dr Karl Mommert, who discusses the subject in great
detail. It may be sufficient to say here that while the account of the
Bordeaux pilgrim (A.D. 333) is precise in locating the ruins of the
Prætorium in the valley below Mount Sion, and on the right hand of a man
who is travelling northward from Mount Sion to the Damascus Gate, the
archæological evidence testifies strongly to the existence of a paved
courtyard of the Roman period, which seems to have extended from the
_Ecce Homo_ Arch to the present Armenian convent at the head of the
Tyropœan Valley. This has long been identified with the Lithostrotos
spoken of by St John, called in Hebrew “Gabbatha.” Now we know that in
the fourth and fifth century a considerable basilica dedicated to the
Holy Wisdom (_Sancta Sophia_) was erected on the site of the Prætorium,
and that a stone, believed to be that on which our Blessed LORD stood to
be judged, was specially venerated there. I will content myself with
quoting the account which passes under the name of St Antoninus of
Piacenza, _c._ 570.
“We pray,” he says, “in the Prætorium where the LORD was tried, which is
now the basilica of Holy Wisdom. In the church itself is the seat upon
which Pilate sat when he tried our LORD. There is also a square stone
which used to stand in the midst of the Prætorium, upon which the
accused was placed during his trial, that he might be heard and seen by
all the people. Upon it our LORD was placed when He was tried by Pilate,
and there the marks of His feet still remain. The portrait which during
His lifetime was painted and placed in the Prætorium shows a beautiful
small delicate foot, a person of ordinary height, a handsome face, hair
inclined to curl, a beautiful hand with long fingers. And many are the
virtues of the stone on which He stood, for men take the measure of His
footprints, and bind them upon their bodies for various diseases, and
are healed. The stone itself is adorned with gold and silver.”[143]
Further, this veneration paid to the marks of our SAVIOUR’S footprints
in the Church of Holy Wisdom as the place where He stood to be judged is
attested to the beginning of the seventh century by St Sophronius,
Patriarch of Jerusalem.[144]
This basilica of the Holy Wisdom probably fell into ruin during the
early years of the Mohammedan occupation. No one has pretended to
identify it with any existing building. But in certain recent
explorations undertaken in the neighbourhood of the Armenian convent
traces of a Byzantine building have been found, and in particular a
mosaic representing the imprint of two small feet or rather shoes.
Without supposing that this was the actual stone, “ornamented with gold
and silver,” which was once honoured there, it seems extremely probable
that such a pattern as that of two footprints might have been largely
used in the decoration of the basilica of the Holy Wisdom, and that we
have struck here upon the traces of the church erected upon the site of
the ruined Prætorium. For the fuller exposition of the argument I must
refer the reader to the work of Dr Mommert, but I may note that this
result is in very fair agreement with the conclusions arrived at from
their different standpoints by such devoted students of Jerusalem
topography as M. Clermont Ganneau, Comte de Vogüé, Herr von Schick,
Professor Zaccaria and Père Lagrange. Finally, let me note that if Dr
Mommert’s hypothesis be accepted as, on the whole, the most probable
theory which has yet been advanced, the received traditions as to the
course of our SAVIOUR’S sad journey to Calvary have not been so very far
wrong. We may perhaps have to surrender the belief that He passed under
the _Ecce Homo_ Arch and down the lane in which the first three stations
are now shown, but His way must roughly have coincided with the rest of
the _Via Dolorosa_, and the general direction of the painful ascent must
have been that which we have always supposed.
That we can never hope to recover the actual path sanctified by contact
with His sacred feet must be plain from one very simple consideration.
The level of the soil in such a city as Jerusalem is constantly
changing; the hollows are continually being filled up, the elevations
are in some measure denuded. Near the Armenian convent, where we may
believe the true _Via Dolorosa_ to have begun, the rock is now fifty
feet below the surface. In our LORD’S time, as the evidence of
excavations prove, there was a far less depth of soil, and the little
slope of Calvary must have been by so many feet the steeper.
Before ending this chapter a word may be added on the imitations of the
_Via Dolorosa_ in the West.
It must not be assumed that the arrangement of Stations which meets us
in Adrichomius’s book and which was later popularized by St Leonard of
Port Maurice and other great Franciscan missionaries, was the only
system to win any measure of popular favour. On the contrary, the Way of
the Cross compiled by Father Adrian Parviller, S.J., seems in the last
half of the seventeenth, and in the first half of the eighteenth century
to have had a very great vogue. A large number of editions of the little
book were called for, and it was translated into almost every language.
For example, four different editions in Breton are to be found in the
library of the British Museum; while the English translation of Father
Parviller’s method was apparently printed and reprinted some time before
any other arrangement of the Stations of the Cross was known in this
country.
According to Father Parviller’s method the first station was the supper
chamber, the second the grotto of the garden of Olives, the third the
gate of the garden of Olives where JESUS was arrested, the fourth the
brook Cedron, into which, as they crossed it, our SAVIOUR was thrown
through the brutal violence of His captors. Then we have in due order
the houses of Annas, Caiphas and Herod, followed by the chamber of the
scourging and the Prætorium of Pilate. This brings us to the tenth
station, the titles of which and of those which follow, we may give more
exactly.
Station X. The _Ecce Homo_ Arch where our LORD was put into comparison
with Barabbas, and Barabbas preferred before Him.
Station XI. The spot where our Blessed Lady swooned away with sorrow at
the sight of her Son carrying His cross to Calvary.
Station XII. The cross-roads where our SAVIOUR fell under the weight of
His cross and was raised up and aided to carry it by Simon of Cyrene.
Station XIII. The place where the women and devout maidens of Jerusalem
lamented at the sight of our LORD.
Station XIV. The house of holy Veronica, who wiped with her kerchief the
face of our LORD, covered as it was with sweat, with blood and with
spittle.
Station XV. The Judicial Gate, where our SAVIOUR heard His sentence read
aloud.
Station XVI. Calvary, where our LORD was crucified between two thieves.
Station XVII. The Holy Sepulchre in which the dead Body of our SAVIOUR
was laid.
Station XVIII (the last). The Mount of Olives, whence our LORD, after
the Resurrection, ascended into heaven.
So far as I can ascertain, no general rule prevailed in the sixteenth or
even in the seventeenth century, as to the number, order or character of
the devotional Stations of the Way of the Cross, which were set up in
many religious houses, churchyards and other sacred enclosures. In the
English Augustinian convent at Bruges, which has occupied the site which
it occupies now ever since the early part of the seventeenth century,
traces are preserved of two interesting sets of Stations.[145] In both
cases the selection of subjects coincides as little with the
arrangements of Parviller or Quaresmius as it does with the set of
fourteen Stations which is alone familiar at the present day. Again
there are many examples of old sets of Stations in the public churches
of Germany, France and the Netherlands, sometimes within the building,
as at St Roch in Paris, but more frequently out of doors, the subjects
of which by no means agree with those now in vogue.
Footnote 105:
Readers familiar with the life of St Ignatius Loyola will readily
recall the summary way in which he was shipped back to Europe when he
visited the Holy Land in 1523, and would fain have lingered in
Jerusalem.
Footnote 106:
Zuallardo was not himself a Franciscan, but his book is largely
founded upon the work of Brother Bonifacius of Ragusa, O.F.M., who was
custodian of the holy places and a high authority on the subject.
Footnote 107:
The title of Amico’s work is “Trattato delle Piante et Immagini de’
sacri Edifizi di Terra Santa.” The numerous plans and sketches which
it contains seem to have been executed by Fra Antonio d’Angioli, who
lived eight years in the Holy Land. See the first edition, 1610, p.
20. In the second edition, 1620, an account of the _Via Dolorosa_ was
added to the original text.
Footnote 108:
“Historica, Theologica et Moralis Terræ Sanctæ Elucidatio”; auctore
Francisco Quaresmio, Ordinis Minorum Theologo, olim Terræ Sanctæ
Præside, et Commissario Apostolico, 2 vols, folio (1639). In a printed
notice at the end the author states that the work was begun in 1616,
completed in 1625, that the printing commenced in 1634, and was
completed in 1639. After his manuscript had been finished and
censored, the author again returned to reside in the Holy Land, and
was there able to compare the descriptions in his book with the actual
sites, subjecting the whole to a thorough revision.
Footnote 109:
Quaresmius, “Elucidatio,” vol. II, pp. 179 seq. The good Franciscan
criticizes rather more severely Adrichomius’s identification of the
_Ecce Homo_ arch with the Xystus described in Josephus. The Xystus, as
Quaresmius shows, lay to the south-west of the Temple, while the arch
is on the north side. See ib. pp. 206-208.
Footnote 110:
“CHRIST aussi se reposa un peu icy regardant la haulte montagne
pargrande anxiété et douleur” (Pérégrination, p. 148). “Ende hier was
CHRISTUS wat rustende, ænsiende den hooghen berch met grooter
benautheden” (Eeen devote maniere), etc., fol. 112 verso.
Footnote 111:
The little work of the pilgrim priest, Heer Bethlem, mentioned above,
pp. 77-79, is also cited by Adrichomius amongst his authorities.
Bethlem agrees with Pascha in the extraordinary exaggeration of the
distance from Simon to Veronica and from Veronica to the Judicial
Gate, but while in Pascha the distance from Veronica to the Judicial
Gate is almost double that from Simon to Veronica (336 paces to 191
paces) Bethlem makes them almost identical (300 ells to 282 ells).
Adrichomius makes no comment, but follows Pascha implicitly.
Footnote 112:
Compare Adrichomius’s map, p. 87, with the sketches on pp. 106-107.
Footnote 113:
Surius, Bernardin, O.F.M. (Recollect, Président du Saint Sepulcre et
Commissaire de la Terre Saincte, des années 1644, 1645, 1646, 1647);
“Le Pieux Pélerin,” Brussels, 1666, p. 440.
Footnote 114:
Surius, “Le Pieux Pélerin,” p. 441, ed. 1666.
Footnote 115:
So says Aramon in 1549. See Schefer and Cordier, “Recueil de Voyages,”
vol. VIII, p. 120.
Footnote 116:
Vol. I, p. 205, ed. Bacchi.
Footnote 117:
See Père Barnabé d’Alsace, “Le Prétoire,” p. 53.
Footnote 118:
Philippus says they were the stones our LORD rested upon when He was
carrying the cross.—See “Oest. Vierteljahresschrift f. kat.
Theologie,” 1872, p. 53.
Footnote 119:
See C. G. Conrady, “Rheinische Pilgerschriften,” p. 121; and compare
Wey’s account (1462) quoted above, p. 48.
Footnote 120:
This is quite explicitly stated by M. Tschudi (1519) in his “Reyss und
Bilgerfahrt zum heyligen Grab,” p. 222. He also, like Poggibonsi, saw
an inscription on the arch “in Latin, Greek and Hebrew characters,”
but he does not say that it was engraved on the two stones.
Footnote 121:
Horn, “Ichnographia,” p. 125.
Footnote 122:
If this is true, then the mosaic representing the print of two feet
discovered of late years in the Armenian convent is not likely to have
had anything to do with our Blessed Lady’s Swoon.
Footnote 123:
Nau probably only means that the stone was conspicuous, not that it
actually lay in the centre of the roadway.
Footnote 124:
This property was subsequently bought by the Catholic Armenians, and
is now the Armenian convent. When Geramb wrote, the bath was still
standing.
Footnote 125:
“Se encontra huma columna de marmore que mostra o lugar onde o
Salvador cahio a primera vez.”—Joao de Jesus Christo, “Viage de hum
Peregrino a Jerusalem,” 3rd ed. Lisboa, p. 187.
Footnote 126:
“A great stone built into the wall at the corner where JESUS fell” is
also mentioned at this spot, in connexion with Simon of Cyrene, by
Duke Frederick II of Liegnitz in 1507. See “Zeitschrift d. deutsch.
Palästina Verein,” 1878, p. 187.
Footnote 127:
See Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1896, p. 214.
Footnote 128:
Laurent, “Peregrinationes Quatuor,” p. 20; cf. ibid. p. 74.
Footnote 129:
From Tschudi’s careful description, who saw the stone in 1519, it
seems to have been very small—less than a foot square. According to
him it was marked with only one cross, and was ten paces distant from
the church (“Reyss,” p. 191).
Footnote 130:
N. C. Radzivil, in his “Hierosol. Peregrinatio,” also speaks of the
falls. But he, like Quaresmius (II, p. 209), may only be quoting
Adrichomius.
Footnote 131:
Antonio de Castillo, O.F.M., “El Devoto Peregrino, Viage de Tierra
Santa.” The book contains the usual crowd of official approbations. A
similar inconsistency is even more conspicuous in Father Gonzalez’s
“Hierusalemse Reijse,” a work written in Flemish and published at
Antwerp in 1673.
Footnote 132:
“Peregrinus affectuose per Terram Sanctam et Jerusalem conductus,”
auctore C. Hietling, Ord. Min. Strict. Observ. Reform., 1713.
Footnote 133:
His plan in many details bears a curious resemblance to that of Father
Elzearius Horn, O.F.M., recently published from a Vatican MS. by
Father Golubovich. Hietling and Horn must probably have copied from
some common source.
Footnote 134:
“Guida Fedele alla Santa Città di Gerusalemme,” Venice, 1703.
Footnote 135:
“Viagem Santa e Peregrinacao Devota,” Lisbon, 1748; Horn,
“Ichnographiæ Locorum et Monumentorum Veterum Terræ Sanctæ,” Rome,
1902.
Footnote 136:
“Peregrinus in Jerusalem,” Vienna, 1735.
Footnote 137:
Letter of Dom Geramb, written in 1832.
Footnote 138:
An excellent summary of the question may be found in Herr von Schick’s
paper in the “Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund”
for April, 1893.
Footnote 139:
Heb. xiii, 12.
Footnote 140:
John xix, 20.
Footnote 141:
The “Theologische Quartalschrift” of Tübingen, for April, 1905;
article by Dr van Bebber on “Das Prætorium des Pilatus.”
Footnote 142:
“Das Prätorium des Pilatus.” By Dr Karl Mommert. Haberland, Leipzig,
1903.
Footnote 143:
Antoninus, ed. Geyer, p. 206.
Footnote 144:
See Migne, P.G. vol. LXVII, p. 3822.
Footnote 145:
One consists of diamond-shaped stones—the series unfortunately is
incomplete—erected originally in the garden. The tablets which survive
bear the following numbers and inscriptions: (3) Our LORD before
Caiphas; (5) Our LORD going to Herod; (7) Our LORD carrying His cross;
(8) Our LORD’S first fall; (9) Our LORD meeting with His Blessed
Mother; (10) Simon helps to carry our LORD’S cross; (11) Fall of our
LORD; (15) Our LORD’S nailing to the cross; (16) Our LORD hanging on
the cross. The other set are a series of pictures. They seem to have
been painted in Rome for Lady Carrington and to have been sent by her
to Lady Lucy Herbert, who was the Reverend Mother Prioress at Bruges
in the first half of the eighteenth century. The subjects are the
following: (1) The Last Supper; (2) The Agony in the Garden; (3) The
Apprehension; (4) CHRIST before Caiphas; (5) CHRIST before Pilate; (6)
The Ecce Homo; (7) The Scourging; (8) The Crowning with Thorns; (9)
Veronica; (10) The Taking Down from the Cross; (11) The Burial; (12)
The Resurrection.