Crucifixion of the Thieves.
During the time of the crucifixion of Jesus, the two thieves were
left lying on the ground at some distance off; their arms were fastened
to the crosses on which they were to be executed, and a few soldiers
stood near on guard. The accusation which had been proved against them
was that of having assassinated a Jewish woman who, with her children,
was travelling from Jerusalem to Joppa. They were arrested, under the
disguise of rich merchants, at a castle in which Pilate resided
occasionally, when employed in exercising his troops, and they had been
imprisoned for a long time before being brought to trial. The thief
placed on the left-hand side was much older than the other; a regular
miscreant, who had corrupted the younger. They were commonly called
Dismas and Gesmas, and as I forget their real names I shall distinguish
them by these terms, calling the good one Dismas, and the wicked one
Gesmas. Both the one and the other belonged to a band of robbers who
infested the frontiers of Egypt; and it was in a cave inhabited by
these robbers that the Holy Family took refuge when flying into Egypt,
at the time of the massacre of the Innocents. The poor leprous child,
who was instantly cleansed by being dipped in the water which had been
used for washing the infant Jesus, was no other than this Dismas, and
the charity of his mother, in receiving and granting hospitality to the
Holy Family, had been rewarded by the cure of her child; while this
outward purification was an emblem of the inward purification which was
afterwards accomplished in the soul of Dismas on Mount Calvary, through
that Sacred Blood which was then shed on the cross for our redemption.
Dismas knew nothing at all about Jesus, but as his heart was not
hardened, the sight of the extreme patience of our Lord moved him much.
When the executioners had finished putting up the cross of Jesus, they
ordered the thieves to rise without delay, and they loosened their
fetters in order to crucify them at once, as the sky was becoming very
cloudy and bore every appearance of an approaching storm. After giving
them some myrrh and vinegar, they stripped off their ragged clothing,
tied ropes round their arms, and by the help of small ladders dragged
them up to their places on the cross. The executioners then bound the
arms of the thieves to the cross, with cords made of the bark of trees,
and fastened their wrists, elbows, knees, and feet in like manner,
drawing the cords so tight that their joints cracked, and the blood
burst out. They uttered piercing cries, and the good thief exclaimed as
they were drawing him up, 'This torture is dreadful, but if they had
treated us as they treated the poor Galilean, we should have been dead
long ago.'
The executioners had divided the garments of Jesus, in order to draw
lots for them; his mantle, which was narrow at the top, was very wide
at the bottom, and lined over the chest, thus forming a pocket between
the lining and the material itself; the lining they pulled out, tore
into bands, and divided. They did the same with his long white robe,
belt, scapular, and under-garment, which was completely saturated with
his Sacred Blood. Not being able to agree as to who was to be the
possessor of the seamless robe woven by his Mother, which could not be
cut up and divided, they brought out a species of chessboard marked
with figures, and were about to decide the point by lots, when a
messenger, sent by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, informed them
that there were persons ready to purchase all the clothes of Jesus;
they therefore gathered them together and sold them in a bundle. Thus
did the Christians get possession of these precious relics.