The Stations of the Cross
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Keywords: Stations of the Cross

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Title: The Stations of the Cross
an account of their history and devotional purpose

Author: Herbert Thurston

Release date: August 8, 2026 [eBook #79316]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Burns & Oates, 1914

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79316

Credits: Tim Lindell, David King, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS ***

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.

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]

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.

Chapter II—The Beginnings of the Via Crucis

In the useful essay upon the Stations of the Cross which has been published by Dr von Keppler, Bishop of Rottenburg, as an introduction to the “Kreuzweg” of the Beuron Art School,[22] he states that before the eleventh century, although we find some indications of a Via Sacra, a certain determined route along which pilgrims were conducted in visiting the holy places of Jerusalem, there was as yet no Via Crucis, no trace of any recognition of the path by which our Saviour bore His own Cross to Calvary. Bishop von Keppler considers that the earliest suggestion of such special recognition is to be met with in the French pilgrimage book of 1187, “La Citez de Hierusalem.” Even here, though there is mention of a Porte Dolereuse or sorrowful gate, by which our Lord went forth to die, the reference to the road to Calvary is slight and indirect. There is no allusion as yet to particular sites along the road, indulgenced stopping-places which the faithful are taught to regard with veneration and to greet with prayer. This was to come later on, but it was remote in the twelfth century. There is equally little trace of a Via Crucis in the narratives of a number of other pilgrims belonging to this period. They are so ready to give information when they possess it, that it seems barely credible that when Fetellus (1130), John of Würtzburg (1170), Theodore of Würtzburg (1172), John Phocas (1185), Wilbrand von Oldenburg (1212), and others, are all silent, the Via Crucis can really have been honoured by the pilgrims of that age. It is, perhaps, in the account of Philippus Brusserius Savonensis (1285-1291), that we first meet with anything like a series of halting places marking the incidents of the journey to Calvary. Riccoldo (1294) speaks of the “via per quam ascendit Christus bajulans sibi crucem,” the road by which Christ ascended carrying His cross. In Marino Sanuto (c. 1310), in Pipino (1320), and Ludolf of Suchem (1350), the impression becomes stronger, but even here the Via Crucis has no special prominence. We find indeed that mention is made of the places where Simon of Cyrene was forced to help our Saviour, where the women of Jerusalem wept, where Mary swooned at meeting her Son, none of which are heard of in earlier centuries; but these things are not associated together as having a particular interest of their own. They are, and remained for centuries later, merely items in a long series of holy places to be visited in turn. The tour occupied the whole day, and the Way of the Cross was only a fraction of it. Even as late as the seventeenth century so irrelevant an element as the house where Dives of the parable is said to have lived was retained amongst the other sites or stations which were venerated on the road to Calvary.

By the end of the fourteenth century, largely owing no doubt to the restrictions of the Turkish rule, a definite and almost invariable programme had established itself with regard to the entertainment of each band of pilgrims that visited the Holy City. For at least a whole night they were locked into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and were left free to wander about its precincts, to visit its holy places, to hear or say Mass, and to perform other devotions, always, be it understood, under the guidance of some of the Franciscans of Mount Sion. Then they returned to their hospice, and at midnight, or at any rate two hours before dawn, they were brought back to the open space before the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with a great flare of torches; and starting from that point, along with their Franciscan guides, they made the tour of the holy places within the city and outside the walls, crossing to Mount Olivet and returning to Sion before the evening had drawn in. It will be noticed from this arrangement that the pilgrims inverted the order of the stations of the Way of the Cross, passing not towards but away from Calvary, a fact which alone must make it sufficiently clear that the idea of accompanying our Saviour in spirit on His last sad journey was as yet entirely wanting. On the other hand, as the scenes of the carrying of the Cross, in their reverse order, were the first to be visited in the long pilgrimage, the stations in question must often have been seen only by torchlight or in the grey of the morning. This latter fact may account perhaps for a certain amount of confusion about the sites in the narratives of travellers. In any case we cannot doubt that such an arrangement of time which left hardly any interval for sleep must have been intensely fatiguing. It was no doubt adopted by the Franciscans of Mount Sion, who in all these matters had autocratic powers, in order to avoid friction with the Turks in the frequented parts of the city, and in order to get the pilgrims away from Jerusalem again with all possible despatch. However, it was not very long before a more devotional reason was forthcoming for this practice, and in the narrative of Felix Fabri (1480) we find an elaborate account of the long and wearisome pilgrimage to all the holy places of Jerusalem, made each day by our Blessed Lady while she remained on earth, the manner, duration and extent of her journey being, strange to say, the exact counterpart of that which was compulsorily followed by the pilgrims of the fifteenth century. As this, according to popular tradition, would have been the earliest example of the Way of the Cross, it seems worth while to say a few words on the subject.

The first traces of the legend of our Lady’s pilgrimages in Jerusalem are of early date. Thus a Syriac recension of the apocryphal departure of my Lady Mary from the world, which is assigned on high authority to the fifth century, records:

“In the year 345 (of the Seleucian era, i.e., A.D. 34), in the month of the latter Teshrin, my Lady Mary came forth from her house and went to the tomb of the Messiah, because day by day she used to go and weep there. But the Jews as soon as the Messiah was dead closed the tomb and heaped up large stones against its door, and set watchmen over the tomb and Golgotha, and gave them orders that if any one should go to pray by the grave or on Golgotha he should straightway die.... And the watchmen came in and said to the priests, ‘Mary comes in the evening and in the morning, and prays there.’ And there was a commotion in Jerusalem concerning my Lady Mary; and the priests went to the judge and said to him, ‘My Lord, send and order Mary not to go and pray at the grave and Golgotha.’”[23]

In a Latin adaptation of what is substantially the same story, printed by Tischendorf, a larger scope is given to our Lady’s devotional pilgrimage. This account states that:

“When the apostles had separated in order to preach the gospel and had travelled to different parts of the world, the blessed Virgin our Mother is said to have remained in Jerusalem in a house which was situated close to Mount Sion. Thence as long as she lived she used to visit every spot which her Son’s presence had sanctified, the place of His baptism, of His fast, of His passion, resurrection and ascension.”[24]

The legend gradually developed, and in the thirteenth century we begin to hear of a definite spot near the Church of the Ascension where our Lady used to rest, and where the archangel Gabriel appeared to her before her death, bringing her the branch of a palm tree. The scene of this angelic apparition was not always very clearly defined and was sometimes distinguished from our Lady’s resting place, but the very ancient story of the coming of the angel with the palm branch, to be borne before her bier—“a token,” says Fabri, “of her complete victory over death and over the enemy of the human race”—invariably attached itself in later times to her supposed pilgrimage to the holy places. But Fabri’s account of our Lady’s pilgrimage, conveying as it does a truthful impression of the devotional spirit of the age at which the exercise of the Stations took its rise, deserves to be cited at some length. I quote from the translation of this extremely interesting book published a few years since by the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society.[25]

“Our Blessed Lady was careful every day to visit the holiest places in Jerusalem and the neighbourhood. In the early morning, as dawn drew nigh, after having received holy Communion from St John on the Lord’s Mount of Sion, she went forth with her maidens and entered that great chamber which had been made ready for the Last Supper, where she meditated upon the immense boon there conferred upon the human race, looked into the deepest mysteries, and kissed the place where her Son had sat. From thence she would go to the house of Annas the high priest, and after praying there entered the hall of Caiaphas, and mused, not without sorrow, upon the sufferings undergone by her Son in that building. Thence she went down from the Mount Sion out of the city and came to the rock of the Cross, which she embraced and sweetly kissed, pitying that dearest One who was crucified thereon, and rejoicing nevertheless in His precious devotion to those whom He redeemed. From thence entering into the garden of the Lord’s tomb she would go to the place where the Body of her Son and Lord was anointed and preserved in spices, where she kneeled and kissed the stone, and swiftly rising from thence, made her way to the Lord’s tomb, whose cave she entered, and embracing His sepulchre, was filled on that spot with unspeakable joy. Leaving these places she went down the hill of Calvary towards the city gate; and on her way, not unmindful of her Son, how He was led out of the city along that path, burdened with the heavy Cross, and in the places where she had seen her Son either fall beneath the load of the Cross or be assailed by some special outrage, she would kneel down and pray. Thus she would enter the city by the Judicial Gate (‘per portam judiciariam’), go up to Pilate’s judgement hall, and kiss the places where He was scourged and crowned with thanksgiving. Coming out from thence she would go to the house of Herod and kiss her Son’s footprints there. From thence she would go up to the temple of the Lord, and after praying there, would leave the temple on the other side, and come to the Golden Gate, where she reflected upon her Son’s entrance on Palm Sunday.”[26]

It will be noticed how closely this corresponds with the course prescribed for the fifteenth-century pilgrims by their Franciscan guides. They have to make their way first from Sion to the Holy Sepulchre, and then after saluting the sites which are there they too begin their pilgrimage “down the hill of Calvary towards the city gate.” Our Blessed Lady, while mindful of her Son and of the sufferings of His last cruel journey, is represented by Fabri as travelling in the contrary direction to that which He followed. So too, almost invariably, did the pilgrims, as it would be easy to show from any one of the scores of such narratives which have been published in our own and earlier times. Fabri’s own account of his experience is too elaborate to follow in every detail, but we may quote it in part. He, being a Dominican, seems to have been entertained as a guest amongst the good Franciscans of Mount Sion, while his secular companions, “the pilgrim lords,” as he calls them, were lodged at the hospice provided for that purpose.

“When the sun,” he says, “had set, the pilgrims went down to their hospital to rest, but many of them remained with us on Mount Sion, and kept vigils in the holy places. At midnight we rose together with the brethren for the office of Matins and Lauds, after which we began to say private Masses, each in whatever place he chose, until it grew light. When the fifteenth day of July began to dawn, before sunrise we who were on Mount Sion went down to the hospital and roused up our brethren, the pilgrim lords, for a pilgrimage. When they were ready we came out of the hospital with some of the brethren of Mount Sion[27] and Calinus Elaphallo, the Saracen, with his stick, who afforded us safe conduct and kept the boys from throwing stones at us. First of all we went to the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and there prostrating ourselves at the place where Christ fell beneath the Cross, as described above, we received plenary indulgences.”[28]

CHURCH of the HOLY SEPULCHRE at JERUSALEM
Copied from the Early Edition of Breydenbach, printed at Mainz in 1486. In the courtyard, pilgrims are shown kissing the stone marked with the cross, which represented the Site of the Third Fall.

It may be instructive to quote the fuller description here referred to. The courtyard of the Holy Sepulchre Church, corresponding to the site of the last of the falls in our modern system of Stations, was the first halting place in the reverse pilgrimage undertaken by Fabri. The detailed account given by the Dominican pilgrim bears the following heading:

“The Courtyard in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre hath in it these places following.

“After we had seen that we came down by the same steps which we had gone up into the courtyard of the church, and near the door we were shown a stone in the pavement upon which were imprinted the marks of two human feet, just as if a man had stood upon a lump of soft wax, and pressed his feet into it; and it is evident that these traces of footsteps are not made in the stone by art, but by a miracle, though nothing is known for certain about this. However, they say that these are the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, who stood there at the foot of the rock of Calvary awaiting His crucifixion. Before this stone we bowed ourselves to the ground and kissed the sacred footprints. From thence we went in procession to a place close to the way out of the courtyard, where our Lord, as He carried His heavy cross, is said to have fallen beneath it through anguish and horror when He beheld the rock of Calvary before Him.... This holy place is marked with a stone, whereon many crosses have been cut by pilgrims. We therefore kissed this place and gained a plenary indulgence.”[29]

Next in order as Fabri made the descent from Calvary towards Pilate’s house came:

“The Gate, outside which our Lord Jesus was led to be crucified.

“After this we came out of the courtyard into a street which leads from Mount Sion to Mount Calvary and from thence leads down into the city through all its length. When we had gone down someway into the town, down that street up which the Lord Jesus ascended to Mount Calvary carrying His cross, we came to an ancient gate, broken on the right-hand side, whereof no more remained than one side, reaching from the ground to the curve which supported the arch, all the rest being gone.... This gate ... was called the Old Gate because it stood there in the time of the Jebusites. Afterwards it was called the Gate of Judgement (Porta Judiciaria) because judgement was given therein after the manner of the ancients, and those who had been judged and sentenced therein were sent out of it to be executed. Both of these names, which are one and the same, to wit, the Old Gate and the Gate of Judgement, are mentioned in the third chapter of the Book of Nehemiah.

“Out of this gate the Lord was led to be crucified, carrying His cross, wherefore it is said of this gate in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter xiii: ‘Jesus that He might sanctify the people with His own Blood suffered without the gate.’ Let us human pilgrims then go out to Him without the gate bearing His reproach. Who, I pray you, could behold this gate save with devout compassion? From hence Abel went forth to the field of Afrem to be slain. Through this came Isaac carrying the wood that he might be sacrificed upon the mountain. Here was seen the cluster of grapes borne upon the staff. At this gate we repeated the prayer appointed in the processional, and knelt and gained indulgences.”

Fabri’s account of Veronica and the subsequent halting places is rather lengthy. It will be well to substitute for it a shorter notice found in “Le Voyage de la Saincte Cyté Hierusalem,” the narrative of a pilgrim of the same date (1480).

“And first, in going from the holy Sepulchre to Mount Olivet, we passed before the house of Veronica, who, seeing our Saviour being led to His Crucifixion, lent Him a fine white cloth to cleanse His face, which was all disfigured by wounds and the filth thrown at Him by the false tyrants. And in putting the said cloth against His face His own likeness remained impressed upon it. The said Veronica is now at Rome, most preciously and jealously preserved.

“At the right-hand side, at the end of the street where is the house of the said Veronica, is the house of the wicked rich man, who would not give alms to the poor, of whom it is said that he is buried in hell. And in the said house there is an arch and gallery which goes across the street. In that street, on the left hand, there is a cross-way called the Trivium, and there the Jews compelled a good man named Simon the Cyrenian, whom they met there, to carry our Lord’s cross, because our Lord could carry it no longer.

“Also, a stone’s throw beyond the said cross-road, there is the place where our Lady fell to the ground, and her heart failed her, when she saw our Lord among so great a multitude of Jews, and that He was being led out to die, and there a chapel was erected. From hence one passes under an arch on which are two beautifully hewn stones, as large as the base of a cask of wine. And our Saviour was seated on one of these stones when He was condemned to death by Pilate, and Pilate was on the other stone.”[30]

The writer has apparently overlooked the incident of the women of Jerusalem. It is inserted by Fabri between the place where our Lord’s face was wiped by Veronica and the cross-way where Simon of Cyrene, according to the then prevalent tradition, was compelled to lend his aid. But it must be carefully understood that these sites, with which we are now familiar, formed but a very small part of the whole pilgrimage. Our Blessed Lady was believed to have passed right through the city across the brook Cedron to the Mount of Olives, visiting every scene and every holy place, and Fabri describes how—

“After having visited Gethsemani, she again sought the high ground, and climbed upwards, slender and fragile as a wreath of smoke, being already worn away by her various penances, and burned within by the flame of pious love; thus in cheerful guise she would with unspeakable longing seek the top of the holy hill of Olivet, from whence she had descended, and would return to the place of the Lord’s Ascension, whither she would go as though herself about to ascend straightway and meet her Son. When she was there, she would caress the aforesaid footprints with many kisses, lifting at one time her eyes, at another her hands to heaven, and on that spot she would feel much joy at the thought that there the greatest honour possible was bestowed upon her Son and upon herself, when that flesh which had been born of her was taken up from hence and exalted above all the heavens. Leaving this place, she would make her way home, and walk down the Mount, by the place where the apostles had put together the creed which she herself had taught them, where she would stand still for a little space and pray for those who professed the faith. Passing on from thence to the place where the Lord had taught them to say ‘Our Father,’ she would stop and say that prayer, and as she went on would give thanks at the place where the eight beatitudes were preached. From thence she would come down to the place where Christ sat with His disciples and told them the terrible story of the Last Judgement, where she offered a prayer that He might be merciful in His second advent; and went on till she came to the dwelling where already, at the outset of this pilgrimage of the most Blessed Virgin Mary, I have said was her place of rest and recovery of breath. Now at the time when the Blessed Virgin Mary was alive there stood there a dwelling, inhabited by good peasants, who, observing the unfailing passing by of the Virgin, invited her to sit and refresh herself in the shade; and she frequently would come out of the road, sit down and rest her frail maiden limbs.”

PART OF BERNARDINO AMICO’S MAP OF JERUSALEM, 1609-1620
The right hand side of the Map is the North. 47—Prætorium. 48—Herod’s Palace. 1—The Ecce Homo Arch. 12—St Mary’s Swoon. 4—Simon of Cyrene. 30—Daughters of Jerusalem. 6—Veronica’s House. 27—Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 37—The Temple (the Mosque of Omar).

From this rough resting-place Brother Fabri describes her as rising:

“So having resumed her strength, which she had not lost, but which had been in abeyance at the aforesaid place, she came down the foot of the mount into the valley, where after visiting the sepulchres of some of the prophets, she came to the sepulchre of her own most chaste husband, Joseph, who was buried there in a cleft of a rock, before which sepulchre she would stand and remember him with tender emotion. From thence, crossing the bridge over the brook, she would go up again to Mount Sion, and when there would go to the place where she herself and the disciples received the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, where again she would be filled with fresh joy.”[31]

It was in like manner that the pilgrims of the fifteenth century, after their short course through the city, spent the greater part of the day on the Mount of Olives and the places outside Jerusalem. For nearly two hundred years (i.e., from about 1350 to 1530), in what we may call the officially conducted pilgrimages, this route was invariably followed. It was only by degrees that a select few among the sites so visited, partly in consequence of the more liberal indulgences attached or believed to be attached to them, seem to have acquired a special prominence.

Fabri’s account of our Lady’s pilgrimage will seem to many very fanciful, and the most ardent defender of local traditions will probably admit that no great reliance can be placed upon the details of this description of our fifteenth-century traveller. None the less, the good Dominican’s narrative, in its frankness, simplicity and voluminousness, holds a unique position among such records. It is very valuable for the insight which it affords into the devotional spirit of the pilgrims of that age, and before passing on to other topics I am tempted to make some further quotations illustrating the conditions under which pilgrimages were then made, and the patient endurance with which humiliations of all kinds were met. We hear so much of the decay of faith and piety in the closing decades of the period preceding the Reformation that one is glad to call attention to the evidence of earnestness involved in the cheerful endurance of so many hardships. No man can have held his religion lightly who was willing to encounter the very real perils entailed by a journey to Jerusalem, and that without any prospect of tangible gain. However, we are not for the moment concerned with the graver dangers from ship-wreck, pirates or pestilence, but rather with those minor humiliations and discomforts which must, we might be tempted to think, have been so great a hindrance to devotion.

A word has already been said above of the locking-up of the pilgrims in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where they were free to venerate those holy shrines now honoured in the five last Stations of the Cross. This is the account which Fabri gives of his experiences:

“On the fourteenth day, beginning the day from the evening of the day before, because the procession to the holy places is appointed in that fashion, when the sun was setting, warning was given to all the pilgrims that they should straightway present themselves at the court or yard which lies before the [door of the] Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and that they should hurry over their supper, because the Moorish lords who keep the keys of the holy church were waiting for us there. So we made haste, and having taken with us the things which we meant to use, we came down to the courtyard of the aforesaid church, wherein we found a great disorderly crowd of eastern Christians and Saracens—men, women and children. Also dealers in precious wares sat there and sold them, and some had loaves of bread, eggs and grapes for sale, whereof we bought some, and put them in our scrips for the repast which we should take within the church. Now, as soon as all the Saracen lords who had to do with the opening of the church were present at the door of that holy temple, they took their places gravely and seriously. Before the door on either side thereof great stones of polished marble have been placed for benches, upon which these men sat, with their faces turned away. They were men of a fine presence, well stricken in years, handsome, wearing long beards, and of solemn manners, dressed in linen clothes, and with their heads wrapped round and round with countless folds of very fine linen. When all of us were collected together before those doors, they opened the church doors with their keys, and, standing beside them, let us in two by two, counting us even as they did when we came out of our ship on to the land, as aforesaid, and they looked at us very keenly. It is said of them that they are greatly skilled in the art of physiognomy, and that as soon as they look upon any man they perceive his station in life, his disposition and his desires. We went by them with shame and blushing, because it is a great confusion that Christ’s faithful worshippers should be let into Christ’s church by Christ’s blasphemers; and they let in whom they please, and keep out whom they please; for they drove away from the church-doors, with blows from their staves and fists, many Christians of other rites who wanted to come in together with us. I confess that while I was passing between them into the church I was filled with confusion and covered with blushes, nor could I look them straight in the face by reason of the shame which I felt: not because of the badge of the cross which I bore on my clothes, but because of their unrighteous and impious power over those who bear the cross. There sat those dogs, as though they were our judges, and doubtless judged us to be fools because of the cross of Christ, because the name and sign of the cross is foolishness to them that are appointed to perish (1 Cor. i, 23). Thus, however, is it ordered by the divine wisdom, that the followers of the Crucified should be brought to the place where the cross stood by those who scoff at the cross, that by the foolishness of the cross they may believe and be saved. Now, as soon as we were all inside, the Saracens straightway pulled back the doors of the church quickly behind our backs, locked them with bolts and locks, as men are wont to do after they have pushed robbers violently into a dungeon, and went away with the keys, thus leaving us prisoners in the most delightful, lightsome and roomy of prisons, in the garden of the most precious sepulchre of Christ, at the foot of the Mount of Calvary, in the middle of the world. Oh, how joyous an imprisonment! how desirable a captivity! how delightful an enclosure! how sweet a locking-in, whereby the Christian is locked in and imprisoned in the sepulchre of his Lord!”[32]

It is easy to see from the tone of Fabri’s narrative that the relief of being free for a time from the contemptuous and often threatening glances of the Saracen conquerors gave free play to devotional feelings of which we should otherwise have had a very imperfect idea. The following incident affords a very pleasing insight into the character of the narrator:

“Lo, my brethren! the truth compels me to begin by telling you of my own stupid carelessness and grievous irreverence, for which I beseech you to pray to God on my behalf, that He may not lay up my misdeeds for punishment at the last. This was what befell me, unhappy wretch that I was, on my first pilgrimage. When we had been locked into the church, and no longer feared any one, because no infidel was with us, we began in our joy to run to and fro through the church, seeking the holy places without any regular order, and every man went whithersoever he would at the bidding of his own spirit. I did not hurry, but went with a slow step towards the middle of the church, walking without any set purpose, and after I had gone forward about seventeen paces I stopped, and lifting up my face, looked at the vault above me. I cast my eyes upon the upper windows with curiosity, as ill-bred men stare about in strange places and houses without respect for any one, and so I stood by myself with wandering eyes. As I stood thus thoughtlessly, there came to me two ladies who were pilgrims; one of them was a German, Hildegarde by name, and they fell down before my feet and lay there weeping and sobbing, kissing the stone whereon I was standing. I was surprised and astonished, and said in German to her: ‘What is the matter, Lady Hildegarde, that you should do so?’ She answered me, scarce able to speak for weeping: ‘Lo, my brother! the stone whereon you stand is that whereon Joseph and Nicodemus laid the most precious body of our Lord when He was taken down from the cross, and they anointed Him and wrapped Him in His shroud upon this table of stone.’ When I heard this I trembled, and drawing back my feet with horror, I fell on the earth before the stone. I scarce dared now to touch with my mouth that which before I had not feared to tread irreverently upon with my shod feet. ‘O Lord,’ I prayed, ‘remember not the past sins of my youth, and the present sins of my ignorance. O Lord my God, Thy chosen servant Moses was bidden by Thee when in the desert of Midian to put his shoes from his feet because the ground whereon he stood was holy; and the holy Joshua did not dare to stand shod in the field of Jericho, yet I, who am devoid of all holiness, full of vices, have dared to trample with my shod feet all irreverently upon the place which Thou Thyself hast sanctified with Thy most precious body, naked and wounded; nor can I find any excuse, for we read that Uzzah was stricken dead by Thee because he put forth his hand to the wain which bore Thy ark when it was like to fall. And behold, here we have incomparably more beneath our feet than the land of Midian or the field of Jericho; and a stone which is more worthy of honour than the wain or the ark. Therefore, Lord God, have patience with me, and I will pay Thee all reverence and honour at Thy holy places, and will render to Thee whatever else is Thy due with all the piety of which I am capable, and which Thou Thyself shalt bestow upon me.’ After having prayed thus, I arose, and sought my lords and companions throughout the church, and found them sitting together in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, waiting till the procession should be formed.”

I trust that the reader will not take in bad part the prolixity of Brother Fabri’s Scripture references. They bring out something of the moral conditions under which medieval pilgrimages were made, just as the material conditions are well illustrated in the passage which follows.

“Now the Father Guardian called together all the pilgrims, and set forth to them the rules and customs of the Church, which he reduced to thirteen heads:

“First, he told us that every pilgrim must buy a wax taper, which he must carry lighted in the procession. For many merchants had come in with us having wax tapers and other things for sale.

“Secondly, he bade the pilgrims take care to walk orderly in the procession, so that one should not get in the way of another nor push against him, as also we were bidden to do in the sixth article given to us at Rama.

“Thirdly, that we should consecrate this night to God, and take part in Matins and other services without any slackness.

“Fourthly, that we should not make the house of prayer into a house of merchandise, and not sit and waste our time trafficking with the Eastern merchants.

“Fifthly, he begged all such as were priests to go and celebrate Mass without disputing one with another. For they are wont to quarrel about places, and all of them want to celebrate Mass in the holy Sepulchre of our Lord, which is impossible in one day.

“Sixthly, he appointed four altars for the celebrants—that is to say, one in the Holy Sepulchre, one on Mount Calvary, one at the place of the unction of Christ, whereof I have already spoken, and a fourth in the chapel of the Virgin Mary. Besides these there are many other altars in different parts of the church; but they belong to schismatics and heretics, wherefore we did not celebrate Mass at them.

“Seventhly, he bade all pilgrims make ready to confess themselves, and every one of them receive holy Communion after the service.

“Eighthly, he gave authority to all pilgrim priests, and to his own brethren who had entered the church with us, to hear confessions both actively and passively[33] and to absolve from all sins, even from those reserved for the Holy See, for the guardian of Mount Sion has this power delegated to him by the pope.

“Ninthly, he forbade any priest to administer the Eucharist to any pilgrim as he stood at the place where he celebrated Mass, but he ordered that all should receive the Sacrament after High Mass on Mount Calvary from the priest who officiated there, unless he should grant any special privilege to any one.

“Tenthly, he warned the pilgrims not to lay down or leave about their property while they were making the round of the holy places in the church, lest they should lose it, because thefts often took place there, when suspicion and much disturbance arose.

“Eleventhly, in case any one should wish to give alms at the holy places, and in giving them should wish to favour the Catholics rather than the schismatics, he explained to them which were the places of the Catholics and which were those of the schismatics.

“Twelfthly, he warned us that, as has been already treated of in the first of the articles delivered to us at Rama, we must not break anything off at the holy places, neither must any man draw his coat of arms there, lest by their means holy places should be defiled.

“Thirteenthly, he besought us that each of us would rouse himself to a spirit of lively devotion and that we would profit by these most holy places, showing them that honour and reverence which is due to them.”

Of the emotions suggested by the procession itself as it passed from shrine to shrine within the enclosure—the friars of Mount Sion arrayed in their sacred vestments, the pilgrims following with lighted candles, the precentor at the head of the procession intoning the “Salve Regina,” as they started, “in a loud and cheerful voice” while all present took up the strain—we shall have opportunity of speaking in a later chapter. Fabri enumerates seventeen separate shrines which were thus visited, including of course the place of the Crucifixion, the Holy Sepulchre, the stone of unction, and the spot where our Lord was stripped and nailed to the cross. Appropriate hymns and prayers were appointed for each, and the ceremony must have taken some hours. In what follows the narrator again reveals the spirit of the earnest pilgrim.

“When the procession was over, the pilgrims drew together according to their several companies, into the various corners of the church, each company sitting in its own place, for we were wearied and worn out, and we made a sober meal. After we had eaten, we laid our heads against the wall for a short rest, and lay asleep against the pavement. I myself abode with the brethren of Mount Sion in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, who had given me a quiet place to sleep in, but I could by no means close my eyes to sleep. Wherefore I arose straightway, lit my candle, and joined the watchers at the holy places; for indeed the greater part of the pilgrims were wandering about all the aforesaid holy places as each one pleased, passing hither and thither as the spirit of prayer moved them; for a pilgrim may enter the Holy Sepulchre, ascend the Mount Calvary, or descend into the chapel of the Invention of the Cross, and the other places as often as he pleases. In these solitary visits to the holy places men feel greater devotion and abstraction from the world than when they do so in the general procession, in which there is much pushing and disorder and disturbance and singing and weeping, whereas in the other case there is silence and peace. As I went the round of the places for the second time I went down to the place of the Invention of the Cross, and there said my matins. I took great delight in that underground place, because it was quiet and suited to me, for the Mount Calvary and the Lord’s Sepulchre and the other places up above were filled with an unbroken throng of pilgrims, and very noisy. Meanwhile some of my lords and their servants were running to and fro in the church up above me, hunting in every corner, seeking for me to hear their confessions, and never guessed me to be in that place. At last they came down to where I was, and I heard them there, sitting in the chair of St Helena.”

A quaint and very frank description follows of the struggle among the priests to say Mass at the most coveted altars, and then good Brother Fabri tells us briefly how:

“After we had finished our services and Masses, there came the pagan Moorish lords, who threw open the gates of the church, making a great noise with the doors, that we might go forth more quickly. On hearing this we were frightened and distressed at our separation from such delightful places, and we ran round from one holy place to another kissing them; but as the pilgrims delayed their going by acting thus, the Moors became angry, banged the doors of the church so violently that the hinges creaked, and ran about with frightful yells among the holy places, from which they drove the pilgrims by force, and turned every one of us out of the church, except only the usual guardians. When they had turned us out they shut the church doors and went their way, leaving us in the courtyard outside. There we addressed ourselves to the visiting of certain holy places near to the church.”

It is not very difficult to understand in the light of these descriptions, first, that if men were resolute enough to face the hardships of such a pilgrimage, the consolation and merit of visiting the holy places must have appealed to them very strongly; and, secondly, that among those unable to leave their homes a very ardent desire must often have been felt to replace the actual pilgrimage by some domestic practice of devotion. It is undoubtedly to this longing to share the privileges of those who travelled beyond seas that we owe both the first suggestion and the later developments of the exercise of the Way of the Cross.

THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
From a Drawing by W. H. Bartlett, c. 1835.

Chapter III—The Earliest Stations and their Sequence

The word statio (station) appears in Christian literature from a very early date, with a special and quasi-liturgical signification. It is not quite easy to trace its primitive development. There can be little doubt that its Christian meaning grew out of the military use of the term to designate an outpost or picket, especially for night duty.[34] Early in the second century it is familiar to Hermas[35] in the sense of a “fast,” possibly, because on certain days, stationes (i.e., vigils) were kept up during the night and early morning beside the tombs of the martyrs, such vigils being, perhaps, marked by a fast, or at least a semijejunium. This, however, is quite uncertain. In the time of St Cyprian, the word frequently had reference to the “synaxis,” or gathering of the faithful for liturgical purposes, which took place on those fast-days. In the indications still retained in the Roman Missal, e.g., “Statio ad S. Anastasiam, Statio ad S. Laurentium,” etc., statio no doubt denotes rather the service itself than the meeting-place in which it was held. Such a rubric was intended to convey that the statio, i.e., solemn Mass, with its accompanying procession, etc., took place on this day at the Church of St Anastasia or of St Laurence. But the further use of the term in the general sense of halting-place in a procession, or site calling for special veneration, was obvious, and became familiar in the vulgar tongue of most European countries during the middle ages. The “Stations of Rome,” for instance, is the title of a fourteenth-century English guide-book, which gives in rude verse an account of all the more conspicuous churches and of the holy places in the city where indulgences could be gained.

In this sense the word statio has been applied to the different halting-places along the Via Dolorosa. Curiously enough, the first instance of its consistent use, with this signification, meets us in the narrative of an English pilgrim, Master William Wey, one of the original fellows of Eton College. Wey visited Palestine on two separate occasions—in 1458 and 1462. On both occasions he went to Jerusalem, and made the ordinary round of the holy places (through the the city, and to the Mount of Olives and back), under the guidance of the Franciscans of Mount Sion. He obviously took special interest in the minute details of these tours, for he has not only written a twofold account of most of them, but he has invented an elaborate memoria technica, of which more anon, for recalling them to mind in their proper order. Now, while Wey gives minute descriptions, providing also memorial verses for each, of several other tours, namely, the holy places around Bethlehem, the places within the precincts of the Holy Sepulchre, the holy places beside the Jordan, the holy places on Mount Sion, etc., he reserves the name Stations for one tour, and one tour only, that within Jerusalem, which begins with the sites of the Via Crucis. If these places had been but once referred to in the volume which he has left us, we might easily have supposed that the word stationes appeared there by accident, but seeing that it occurs four separate times in the same connexion, and nowhere else, it would hardly be reasonable to explain its presence in these passages by mere coincidence. First, we note that among the headings of the memorial verses the tour beginning with the Via Crucis is entitled “Loca Sancta in Stacionibus Jerusalem.” In none of the rest does the italicized word appear, though we have “Loca Sancta in Monte Syon,” “Loca Sancta in templo sancto Christianorum,” “Loca Sancta in Bethlehem,” etc., in any one of which we might have expected to find it. Again, in the general account, which is given apart, when Wey begins a detailed description of the same tour, starting eastwards from the Holy Sepulchre, we meet the rubric, “Hic incipiunt sancte Staciones,” the other tours being headed like those just referred to—“Peregrinaciones Vallis Josaphat,” “Peregrinaciones Montis Oliveti,” “Peregrinaciones sacri Montis Syon,” etc. Then, in Wey’s narrative of his first pilgrimage, the same word is twice repeated in connexion with the same series of sites under the form “Peregrinaciones ad loca Stacionum,” and, finally, in the account of the second journey of 1462, the term seems to be introduced with emphasis into the text itself. It will be well to translate this brief passage:

“After supper,” says the writer, “we lay down upon mats, and at early dawn the brothers came to call us to make the round of the stations (veniunt fratres vocantes nos ad peragrandum staciones). And so, upon July 20, we traversed those sites (ivimus per ista loca). First, the stone with crosses upon it on which Christ fell;[36] second, that paved street in which Christ carried the cross; third, the house of the rich man that was damned; fourth, the meeting of the ways where Christ fell with His cross; fifth, the place where the women wept over Christ; sixth, where Veronica received the countenance of Christ upon her napkin; seventh, where the Blessed Virgin Mary swooned; eighth, the gate through which Christ was led out to death; ninth, the pool where the sick were healed at the moving of the waters; tenth, where are two white stones built into the wall over the head of the passers-by, upon which Jesus stood when He was sentenced to death by Pilate; the eleventh is the school of the Blessed Mary, where she learnt to read; and along that road on the other side is the house of Pilate, in which Christ was scourged and condemned to death; and so on for the rest of the places in Jerusalem—Josaphat, the Mount of Olives, the Valley of Siloe and Mount Sion, as I have described them in my preceding itinerary.”

It seems to me not wholly accidental that Wey interrupts his list at the house of Pilate. We may remember that the famous stations erected in Nuremberg, at the instance of Martin Ketzel, begin with a Pilatushaus, and were suggested seemingly by the pilgrimage he made in Palestine about 1468, six years after Wey’s last visit to the Holy Land. We may also remember that in the next century there is strong evidence of a special cultus paid to this clearly-defined portion of the tour (peregrinatio, circulus or Umgang). Hence it seems likely that Wey himself regarded the road along which our Saviour travelled to His death as standing out in some conspicuous manner from the rest.

Other pilgrims in the latter part of the fifteenth century use the name Stationes, though not seemingly with such an exclusive reference as this English traveller to the sites along the Holy Way. The matter deserves fuller investigation, although, on account of the very large number of those who have left accounts of their pilgrimages at this period, the undertaking would be a serious one. I may be content to notice here the prominence given to the word Stations in the Pilgrims’ Guide of Antonio de Aranda, a Spanish Franciscan, who wrote in 1530. The book is particularly important, because it does not, like so many of the others, record merely the fleeting and necessarily inaccurate impressions of a single hurried visit to the holy places, but the writer, who was guardian of the important Franciscan Friary of Alcalà, seems during a considerable period to have been the honoured guest of his brethren of Mount Sion, and to have had constant opportunities of obtaining information from those who lived on the spot.[37] Of Aranda’s volume we shall have to speak further, but for the present it will be sufficient to notice that he uses the word estaciones frequently, and that it seems to be particularly applied to the sites on the way to Calvary, and not so commonly to be employed of the sites, even though richly indulgenced, in the pilgrimages outside Jerusalem. Thus Chapter XIV bears the following heading, conspicuous among the few such headings in which the word estaciones is introduced:

“Cap. XIV.—Of the Stations [estaciones] which there are from the House of Caiphas up to Calvary along the Road which Christ travelled.”

In this chapter, when referring more particularly to the way between Pilate’s house and Calvary, Aranda makes the further statement that “in this road there are three stations.” The first station so specified is the meeting-place of our Blessed Lady and her Son. The second is that of the meeting with the women. The third the house of Veronica.

Now, whether we look to the sites which, according to the testimony of travellers, were held in honour in Jerusalem itself, or whether we look to the imitation pilgrimages which were carved in stone or set down in books for the devotion of the faithful at home, we must recognize that there was a complete want of any sort of uniformity in the enumeration of the Stations. As so much has just been said of William Wey’s pilgrimage, we may conveniently take the first two verses of his memoria technica, which by a coincidence happen to commemorate just fourteen sites. They run as follows: In Wey’s own manuscript, and in the reproduction of it for the Roxburghe Club, the words of which the verses are made up are written in a very large hand, while the explanations of each, here given in footnotes, are added in minute writing over the word to which they have reference. The crosses, which in the MS. have been written in red ink, indicate the places where plenary indulgences may be gained.[38]

“Loca Sancta in Stacionibus Jerusalem

“Lap[39] strat[40] di[41] trivium[42] flent[43] sudar[44] sincopizavit[45]

“Por[46]☩pis[47]☩lap[48]☩que schola[49]☩domus[50]☩ Her[51] Symonis[52] Pharisey.”

Those of my readers who do not understand the Latin explanations may be referred back to the passage already translated from Wey (p. 48). The places there mentioned are the same as those cited here, except that two others, viz., the house of Herod and the house of Simon the Pharisee are here added. It should be observed, too, that the memorial verses continue without any break or division to indicate nearly thirty sites, some within Jerusalem, some outside the walls. In all, the holy places about Jerusalem number in his reckoning more than a hundred. It will be seen that the fourteen Stations on this list by no means correspond to those with which we are familiar. If we count the first mentioned by Wey (Lapis cum crucibus, i.e., the stone with crosses shown in the courtyard before the church of the Holy Sepulchre,) as the equivalent of the scene of His third fall, we have only four others which can be properly identified with ours. These are trivium, the “cross-road” where Simon of Cyrene was made to assist our Lord; flebant, the weeping women; sudar, i.e., sudarium, the napkin of Veronica; and sincopizavit—“she swooned,” the meeting with Mary. Strat, the paved way leading to the hill of Calvary; di, the house of the rich glutton of the parable; por, the judicial gate of the old city: pis, the probatic pool; lap, the two stones in the Ecce Homo arch; schola, our Lady’s school; and the houses of Pilate, Herod and Simon the Pharisee, expressed by the words dom, Her, Symonis Pharisey, are only remotely related to the Way of the Cross as we know it. For purposes of comparison it may be interesting to quote the narrative of another English pilgrim, a layman of distinction, who made the same round of stations about fifty years later, in 1506, and who has left an account in the vernacular. He also, like Wey, travelled eastwards from Calvary, but the pilgrimage, which in Wey’s time was performed in one day, seems in 1506 to have been spread over several. The site which Wey mentions first as lapis cum crucibus (the stone with crosses) is included by Sir Richard Guylforde[53] in the series of “stations” at the Holy Sepulchre, being referred to in the following words:

“And withoute, forthe before the entre into this Temple (of the Holy Sepulchre), X paces in distaunce, is put a stone in memorye and token that our Savyour Criste, berynge His Crosse, for very feblenesse, fell there to the grounde undernethe the crosse.”

Then under the heading, “Pylgrymages within Iherusalem,” Guylforde continues:

“[7] And so this day aforesayde we vysited all ye longe wey by the whiche our Savyour Criste was led frome the hous of Pylate unto the place of His crucyfyinge.

“[6] And firste, as our way laye, we came to the house of Veronica, whiche is from Pylate’s house 550 paces, where as our blessyd Savyour impressyd ye ymage of His face in her wympell whiche is at Rome, and is there called the varnacle.

“[5] And from thens we went to the house of Diues Epulonis, qui sepultus est in inferno, etc.

“[4] And from thens we went to a place called Bivium, that is as moche to say as a crosse strete, or a crosse wey, where ye women of Jherusalem stode and sorowfully wepte whan oure Savyour was led to His deth, to whom He sayde, ‘Wepe ye not vpon me, ye daughters of Jherusalem, but wepe ye vpon yourself and vpon your children,’ etc.

“[3] Item nexte is the place where ye Jewes constreyned Symeon Cirenen, comynge from the towne, to take the crosse after our Savyour, etc.

“[2] The next place yt we come to is wher our blessyd Lady stode when she met with her dere Sone berynge His crosse, where, for ouer moche sorowe and dolour of herte, she sodenly fell into a sowne and forgetfulness of her mynde; and this place is called Scta Maria de Spasmo. Saynt Elyn buylded a churche there, but it is downe, and ye Sarrasyns haue often attempted to buylde there, but their edifying wold not stande in no wyse.

“[1] Item, as we passyd by ye strete, there standeth an arche ouer ye way, vpon ye whiche stoude ii large whyte stones; vpon the one of them our Savyor stode whan he was juged to deth, and upon ye other stode Pylate whan he yaue sentence yt he shuld be crucyfied.”

I have prefixed numerals in square brackets to these paragraphs to call attention to an interesting change in the practice of the pilgrim guides at Jerusalem. Eleven years after the voyage of Sir Richard Guylforde to the East, another English pilgrim, Sir Richard Torkington, a priest, set out to visit the holy places, and he also compiled an account of his adventures. In accordance with a custom very prevalent in the days when literary copyright was yet unknown, Torkington freely availed himself of the descriptions left by previous travellers. Guylforde’s pilgrimage had been printed by Pynson in 1511, and from this source Torkington has copied almost verbatim the account there given of the various shrines and stations in Jerusalem. But there is one noteworthy modification. In his description of “the longe way by whiche our Savyour Christe was led unto the place of His crucyfyinge,” Torkington, while borrowing sentence by sentence the exact words of his predecessor, has carefully arranged the sites in the reverse order. From this it seems clear that in 1517 the good Franciscans at Jerusalem had for some reason changed their practice and now conducted the pilgrims along the way of the Cross towards Calvary, as our Lord Himself had travelled on His last sorrowful journey. At any rate, so far as I am aware, we do not after this date find in the descriptions of the Via Dolorosa that the sites are any longer enumerated in the reverse order from Calvary eastward.

But to return to Sir Richard Guylforde’s description. It may be noted from what follows that he passes without perceptible break from the Stations of the Way of the Cross to other sanctuaries. We may fairly infer that in 1507 the Way of the Cross was not yet generally recognized as a separate object of devotion:

“From thens we went vnto ye hous of Pylate, in ye whiche our Savyoure was scorged, betyn, crowned with thornes, and put to all iniuryes yt myght be deuysed, and fynally condempned to deth; there is also clene remyssyon.

“And there is also the way that gothe to the Temple, by the whiche, when the Jewes came from the Temple, they cryed, ‘Crucifige,’ etc.

“From thens we went vnto the hous of Herode, that is on the lefte hand of Pylates hous, and standeth hygher vpon the fronte of the hyll, into the whiche hous our Savyour was presented unto Herode by Pylates sendynge, accusyed by ye Jewes; neverthelesse, the sayde Herode clothed hym in a whyte garment, and sent hym agen to Pylate, et facti sunt amici Herodes et Pilatus in illo die, etc., and thyse ii houses of Pylate and Herode be yet now moch what the fayrest houses in Jherusalem, and specyally the house of Herode.

“Therby is an other fayre hous yt was sometime a fayre churche of Saynt Anne, but now ye Sarrasyns have made thereof a muskey [mosque], that is to say, theyr temple, and that is the selfe place yt was Saynt Anne’s house, and there she died; and in a vaught vnderneath is the very selfe place where our blessyd Lady was borne; and there is plenarye remyssyon. The Sarrasyns wyll suffre no man to come into this place, but pryuely or for brybes, because it is theyr muskey.

“Nota that relyques of the stones of the place there our Lady was borne is remedy and consolacion to women that travayll of childe, etc.

“Item, a lytell therby is Probatica Piscina, where our Savyour healyd many men that were seke, as the Gospell sheweth, etc.

“From thens we went to the hous where the synnes of Mary Magdalene were foryeuen.”[54]

MAP OF JERUSALEM
From MS. Addit. 33566, at the British Museum, drawn about 1616 by Giovanni Cales to illustrate the Viaggio di Gerusalemme of Vincenzo Favi. The dotted line from 29 to 38 represents the Via Dolorosa. The other dotted line represents what Cales believed to be the position of the City Wall in the time of Our Lord. The principal sites, as indicated by the numbers, are thus explained by the artist: 12-14. The Temple, now the Mosque of Omar. 29. Pilate’s House. 30. Herod’s House. 31. Supposed place of the Scourging. 32. Arch from which Christ was shown to the people. 33. Church of Our Lady’s Swoon. 34. Place where Simon of Cyrene came to help our Lord. 35. The Glutton’s House. 36. The House of the Pharisee. 37. House of Veronica. 7. Judicial Gate. 38. Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 9. Mount Sion and the Cenacle.

However, despite a good deal of variation in the selection, arrangement, number and distances of the Stations, it is clear that at Jerusalem in the early part of the sixteenth century the traversing of the route of our Saviour from Pilate’s house to Calvary had already begun to be regarded as a special exercise of devotion which was in some sense complete in itself. Aranda, who, by the by, sets down the distance at 1,862 passos,[55] tells us that this is the Holy Way, par excellence, “Esta es la via sancta particularmente ansi llamada de los Cristianos”; and he remarks further, “Also it is to be observed that this road from Pilate’s house to Calvary is that which we friars (nosotros los frayles) are wont to follow when for our devotion, and out of reverence for our Saviour, we set out to traverse the very road which, as we believe, His most compassionate Majesty Himself trod.”

Undoubtedly one of the earliest indications of special veneration attaching to the holy “Cruysganck,” i.e., the carrying of the Cross, is the practice of measuring the distance from the Prætorium to the place of Crucifixion. The first traveller who seems to attach importance to the exact distance from Pilate’s house to Calvary, and who professes to have carefully measured it, is Martinus Polonus, in 1422.[56] Polonus estimates the length of our Lord’s last journey at 450 paces. Martin Ketzel, who had the famous Stations erected at Nuremberg, lost the measurements he made during his first pilgrimage (c. 1468), and actually undertook a second pilgrimage some few years later in order to take the measurements again. In spite of all the care supposed to have been used by Polonus and others the most extraordinary diversity prevails in the measurements given, which, for fear of the Turks, could only be made in paces. Thus, while Polonus, in 1422, gives the distance from Pilate’s house to Calvary at 450 paces, it is set down by sundry different travellers—as Tobler[57] points out—in 1479, at 1,050 paces; in 1491, 1000; in 1507, 1,067; in 1508, 500; in 1519, 846; in 1586, 750; in 1593, 1,321 (this last measurement is that of Adrichomius); in 1611, 850. It is to be noted that by passus some travellers must have meant a double step, others a single stride, but even so the divergence is difficult to explain. Probably the main cause of the discrepancy was the fact, as we shall have occasion to note further on, that the ground between the old Judicial Gate and Calvary was all built over. Hence pilgrims could only guess at the path actually followed by our Lord.

The only satisfactory way of bringing home to the reader the wide divergence between the Stations in Jerusalem itself, as known to travellers between 1300 and 1720, and those of our modern Way of the Cross would be to draw up an elaborate table recording the dates of the principal narratives and all the sites mentioned in them. This can hardly be attempted here save on a very small scale, which does not in any way make apparent to the eye the complete absence of any record regarding the first two falls, the sentence by Pilate or the stripping of the garments. On the other hand, if we accept the mention of the Ecce Homo Arch—i.e., the two stones, as Wey calls them—as the equivalent of the reception of the cross, and the stone marked with crosses before the Holy Sepulchre as the site of the the third fall, it may be said that these two stations—the second and the ninth—appear in the narrative of almost every early traveller.[58] This disposes of six stations, and the four last—the nailing to the cross, the crucifixion, the taking down and the entombment of our Saviour—call for no comment. We are left, therefore, with four variable stations, which may be thus indicated: the meeting with our Blessed Lady by M, that with Simon of Cyrene by S, that with the women of Jerusalem by W, and that with Veronica by V. With regard to these, the data of our selection of travellers may be tabulated as follows. The order of these meetings is that in which they would have occurred as our Saviour made His painful way from the Prætorium towards Calvary.[59]

1294 | Ricoldo | W | M | S |
1320 | Pipinus | M | S | W |
1350 | Dublin MS. | W | M | S |
1384[60] | Gucci | M | M[61] | S |
1391 | Swinburn and Brigg | M | | S |
1395 | Ogier d’Anglure | M M | W | S |
1419 | Nompar de Caumont | M | { W | |
| | | { S | |
1422 | Johannes Polonus | M | { W | |
| | | { S | |
1435 | Lochner | M | V W | S | V
1436 | Georg Pfintzing | M | W | S | V
1458 | Wey | M | V | W | S
1480 | Fabri | M | W | S | V
1483 | Breydenbach | M | S | W | V
1484 | Francisco Suriano | M | W | S | V
1491 | Dietrich von Schachten | M | { W | V |
| | | { S | |
1496 | Harff | M | W | V |
1506 | Guylforde | M | S | W | V
1530 | Aranda | M | S | W | V
1586 | Zuallardo | M | S | W | V
1620 | Bernardino Amico | M | S | W | V
1639 | Quaresmius | M | { S | V |
| | | { W | |
1646 | Surius | M | S | W | V
1656 | Parviller | M | S | W | V
1674 | Nau | M | S | W | V
1694 | Caccia | M | S | W | V
1713 | Hietling | M | S | V | W
1716 | Turpetin | M | S | W | V
1724 | Francisco Jesus Maria | M | S | W | V
1735 | Myller | M | S | V | W
1736 | Antonio do Sacramento | M | S | V | W
1744 | Horn | M | S | V | W

It will be remarked that no mention of Veronica occurs before the account of Lochner in 1435. In his narrative, her name appears twice, though that marked V(1) is but a casual allusion. In all the later descriptions down to 1713, with the single exception of Wey in 1458, the meeting with Veronica comes nearest to Calvary. Wey is so painstaking in his descriptions that when we couple his divergence from the commoner arrangement with the double mention of Veronica in Lochner we are led to the conclusion that the tradition about the site of Veronica’s house remained rather vague and uncertain until some years after we first hear of it. During the same period the meeting of our Lord with Simon of Cyrene and that with the holy women were uniformly regarded as having taken place close together. It is noteworthy, then, how completely our present arrangement of stations, which separates the holy women and Simon of Cyrene by Veronica and by the second fall, contradicts all local tradition. But upon this point there will be occasion to speak further in a later chapter.

Chapter IV—The “Seven Falls”

Although we have already taken note of some isolated attempts to imitate in western lands the construction or relative position of the sanctuaries of Jerusalem, there seems to be no evidence of the erection of anything like a definite “Way of the Cross” before the closing years of the fifteenth century. It is not quite easy to determine what is the earliest example of any system of devotional Stations in stone or wood intended to recall the road to Calvary. Perhaps from their nearness to the source of inspiration a set of seven columns at Rhodes, of which we hear something at the beginning of the sixteenth century, may have the best claim to take precedence, but I must confess that my efforts to gain any authentic information about these interesting pillars have been unsuccessful. An almost equal degree of obscurity attends the erection at Görlitz of a series of Stations which are known to have begun with some sort of representation of “Pilate’s house.” A certain George Emmerich, we are told, who visited the Holy Land in 1465, erected a model of the Holy Sepulchre on his return. Besides this he attempted to reproduce the scenes around, building his chapel at the exact distance from the Church of St Peter that Calvary was separated from the Prætorium. A set of Stations was added, two of which, though the subjects can hardly be recognized, are still preserved.[62]

THE SECOND STATION.

THE FIFTH STATION
Carved by Adam Krafft at Nuremberg. See pp. 64 and 63 note.

But by far the best known work of this kind of early date[63] is the famous series of carvings executed by Adam Krafft of Nuremberg at the instance of Martin Ketzel, to whose pilgrimage reference has already been made. These Stations were probably completed before 1490, and are still to be seen, though they have undergone several restorations, and some of them, which were more exposed to the weather, have of late years been removed to the museum.[64] They are seven, or more accurately eight, in number, and have inscriptions carved under them, naming the subject of the group, and giving the distance from Pilate’s house. Thus the inscription under the first Station runs: “Here Jesus meets His dear and Blessed Mother, who swooned away for anguish of heart. Two hundred paces from Pilate’s house.”[65] The other six subjects, with their distances, may be more summarily named. The second is Simon of Cyrene, 295 paces; the third, the women of Jerusalem, 380 paces;[66] the fourth, Veronica, 500 paces; the fifth, Jesus sinking under the cross and belaboured by the Jews, 780 paces; the sixth, Jesus prostrate under the cross, 1,000 paces; the last, Jesus laid in the arms of His Blessed Mother.[67] The distances are in each case supposed to be measured from Pilate’s house, but no figures are given in the last case. It seems certain that this and similar arrangements of seven Stations, resembling but not necessarily identical with Krafft’s, were popularly known as the “Seven Falls,”[68] for in all of them our Saviour, if not actually prostrate, was conceived as either sinking under His burden, or staggering again to His feet. In the case of the Nuremberg Stations the evidence for the use of this name is quite unequivocal. A chronicler of the city records that in the year 1508 he (Adam Krafft) had carved in stone and erected before the gate of the Garden of Beasts the Seven Falls of Christ, as they were commonly called, with seven crosses extending to Mount Calvary, that is to say, to the chapel besides St John’s Church, called the Sepulchre Chapel; and there there was a great cross with the two thieves.

The Stations supposed to be imitated from Krafft at St Getreu, in Bamberg, dating from 1507, were also seven in number, and Tilmann Riemenschneider seems to have carried out other sets of a similar character.[69] We may very probably regard an early set of Stations erected by one Peter Sterckx (or Peter Potens) at Louvain after his return from Jerusalem about 1505 as another example of the Seven Falls. There are said to be eight subjects, but it does not seem very clear whether there were eight different halting-places. They ended in a chapel, known as the Capelle van Calvarien, and they began with the House of Pilate, which stood at the corner of St James’s Churchyard. Peter Calentyn, whose devotional work on the Stations will shortly be mentioned, wrote a separate tract on the Cruysganck of Louvain, in which he assigns the exact locality where each sculpture had been erected. After the House of Pilate, which no doubt represented our modern Station, “Jesus is condemned to death,” there follows (2) the first fall, (3) Simon of Cyrene (this stood near the house of the Irish Dominicans), (4) Veronica, (5) the second fall, (6) the women of Jerusalem, (7) the third fall, (8) the stripping of the garments. It will be noticed that these Stations correspond with those of Adam Krafft neither in subject nor in order; but in spite of this there was great pretence of accurate measurement. From the Louvain Pilatushuys to the Capelle van Calvarien were counted 662 double paces or 1,324 single steps. Each step, Calentyn is careful to note, measured two-and-a-half feet, and each pace consequently five feet. These Stations long continued to excite the devotion of the faithful. A writer who gave a description of them in 1666 tells us: “On y va en pélerinage fort dévotement principalement en la semaine sainte.” We shall see further on that this set of Stations at Louvain has exercised a preponderating influence upon the selection and arrangement of the fourteen now universally adopted in our churches.[70]

The little work of Peter Calentyn on the Stations of Louvain seems to be much more rarely found than his translation of the devotional work of Jan Pascha.[71] I have not been able to meet with a copy of the former, and I know it only from the extracts given by Van Even.

Another set of Stations which has given rise to a whole literature of its own, mostly consisting of volumes absolutely inaccessible outside of France, are those connected with the famous Calvary of Romans in Dauphiné.[72] If we were to attempt any account of the Calvaries which existed in Brittany, Southern France, Italy and Germany, it would be impossible to keep this little book within reasonable limits.[73] But in the story of the foundation of the Calvary of Romans we hear incidentally of two other sets of Seven Stations. One Romanet Boffin, a merchant of Romans, having had occasion for matters of business to travel to Fribourg in 1515, was greatly impressed by certain memorials of the Passion of our Saviour which had been erected in that city. These consisted of a Calvary with seven “pillars,” which a Knight of Rhodes, Peter of Englisberg, who had been made commander of the commandery of St John Baptist of Fribourg, forthwith set up as an exact reproduction of seven other pillars existing in the Isle of Rhodes, which commemorated in their turn the holy places of Jerusalem. Romanet Boffin was so edified that he asked the permission of the magistrates of Fribourg to erect a similar set of Stations in his native city, and was presented with a document, still extant, which attests that he had accurately measured the distances.[74]

Boffin had previously sought and obtained the approval of the magistrates of his native town, who gave him leave to appropriate the sites which were necessary for his purpose.[75] His plans seem to have developed and to have grown more ambitious as he found that the scheme gained in popularity. He accordingly obtained a Bull from Leo X giving him permission to visit the Holy Land, and there is also extant an indulgence granted to this Calvary a few years later.

The story is rather obscure, but the Calvary at Romans seems to have consisted of a multitude of Stations, which varied greatly in number at different epochs. Two friars of Jerusalem told Boffin that there ought to be thirty-one in all. In certain books of piety published about the Romans Calvary as early as 1515 twenty-five are named. In the “Voyage et Oraisons du Mont Calvaire de Romans,” printed by Jacques Kerver in 1556, the number is nineteen. In the “Directoire du Voyage” of Friar Archange de Clermont in 1638 there are as many as thirty-seven.

Although it is extremely interesting to hear of these seven Stations at Rhodes, from which the Stations of Fribourg were copied, it may perhaps seem rash to infer that all such sets of seven, like Krafft’s, represented the seven falls.[76] Curiously enough, however, a piece of evidence which at first sight appears to create a serious difficulty proves on examination to tell the other way.

THE INCIDENT OF SIMON OF CYRENE
An illustration of the “Geystlich Strass,” Nuremberg, 1521. See pp. 79-80. The pillar form affected in these illustrations undoubtedly bears witness to the familiar occurrence of such stations erected at carefully measured distances in churchyards, or by the wayside. The artist who designed these illustrations has clearly been inspired by Adam Krafft’s carving.

We may find in Sanderus’ “Chorographia”[77] a mention of the cemetery of the Franciscans at Antwerp, which had seven sculptures, depicting the seven dolours of our Blessed Lady. “So great,” he says, “is the devotion of the populace to these Stations, that people are to be found making them at all hours of the day. Especially on Fridays, after Compline, the friars all go two and two to the altar of our Lady of Sorrows, and there two cantors intone aloud the ‘Stabat Mater,’ to which the community respond very beautifully in harmony. Then they all go out to the Stations, a great crowd of people following behind. The whole assembly kneels down before each Station in turn, and three ‘Our Fathers’ and ‘Hail Marys’ are said by each person in silence. At the end is sung the antiphon, ‘Sancta Maria,’ etc., by way of conclusion. This is not,” says Sanderus, “a modern devotion. It was famous in this place as far back as the year 1520, when Leo X granted an indulgence of 100 days for each Station.”[78]

Now it would of course seem at first sight that a series of seven sculptures consecrated to the dolours of our Lady almost necessarily excluded the idea of any other object of devotion, and notably the seven falls of our Blessed Lord. But this, as appears on further examination, would be a rash inference.

In the National Museum at Stockholm are to be found an extremely interesting series of fifteenth-century engravings representing simultaneously the seven falls of our Lord and the Seven Sorrows of His Blessed Mother. They bear inscriptions as follows:

“1. This picture shows the first painful fall, when the Lord Jesus, tied as He was with bonds, was thrown down off the bridge into the brook Cedron.

“2. This picture shows the second painful fall when the Lord Jesus in the open street fell, heavily to the ground on His way from Herod to Pilate.

“3. This picture shows the third murderous fall, when the Lord Jesus fell heavily swooning upon the steps [apparently before Pilate’s judgement seat].

“4. This picture shows the fourth pitiful fall, when the Lord Jesus, after the scourging, fell fainting beside the pillar.

“5. This representation shows the fifth lamentable fall, when the Lord Jesus fell to the ground under the cross upon which he had been condemned to die. [Simon of Cyrene is shown trying to help to lift our Lord.]

“6. This picture shows the sixth painful fall, when the Lord Jesus was cruelly thrown down naked upon the cross [‘mütternackt,’ as naked as when He was born].

“7. This design [‘hochentworff’] shows the seventh heart-breaking fall, when the Lord Jesus, already nailed to the cross, was again cast down to earth. ‘O Mary help us, Amen.’” (The cross is supposed to have fallen forward out of its socket.)

In each of the seven pictures our Lady is shown with the sword in her heart. No exact date, or even approximate estimate, is assigned by Schreiber for this series.[79]

Another similar set of woodcut pictures is described by the same authority in nos. 645, 647, 653, 655 and 683. (To these we may add perhaps 643, the fall into the Cedron, where our Lady is represented with a sword in her breast, an engraving dated by Schreiber, c. 1490.) This second series seems once to have had an inscription repeated in each picture: “O mensch betracht dy siben vell Christi und di siben hertzenlayd Marie.—O man, contemplate the seven falls of Christ and the seven heart-breaking sorrows of Mary.”

645 represents a fall in the street. There is no cross, but Mary and John are there looking on. No sword is represented.

647. Jesus falls on being dragged up the steps to the Governor Pilate. Mary, with sword in her breast, and John are present.

653. Jesus, in a swoon, falls to the ground beside a pillar. Judas is looking in through one window; Mary and John through another.

655. Jesus falls under the cross. Simon of Cyrene tries to help Him. Mary looks on with a sword piercing her heart; John stands besides her.

683. Erection of the cross. Mary, with the sword in her heart, is standing by.

The series is incomplete.

The subjects represented in these two sets of the “Seven Falls” are apparently identical, and they must be compared with the pious contemplations contained in a little devotional booklet called the “Mount of Calvary” (“Dit is den berch van Calvarien”), printed at Leyden in Holland about 1520.[80] Here we find suggested a pious method of following with prayers and aspirations the Passion and seven falls of our Saviour, though these are not in any way identical with Krafft’s, but begin, like the series just mentioned, with the legendary fall of our Blessed Lord in crossing the brook of Cedron (de torrente in via bibet). The booklet is illustrated with woodcuts of the roughest description, but it is noteworthy that these include both the sentencing of Christ to death by Pilate and the stripping of the garments. As for the falls, the seven enumerated are (1) at the brook of Cedron, (2) on the way to Herod, (3) on the steps of Pilate’s house when sentence was passed, (4) at the scourging, (5) during the carrying of the cross, (6) when thrown down for the nailing, (7) when the cross, with our Lord upon it, was allowed to slip back just after it had been raised, so that His sacred face was once more dashed against the ground.

This is not supposed to be an exhaustive list of the falls of our Saviour; for the text of the book expressly states that our Lord revealed to a holy virgin that He fell thirty-two times “between Jerusalem and Calvary.” As the reader who may compare this list with that given above will see at a glance, the series of falls contemplated here is identical with that delineated in the Stockholm woodcuts. On the other hand, they are quite different, as already noticed, from the Seven Falls of Adam Krafft, though the purpose of both exercises is identical. This purpose is plainly declared upon the first page of the “Berch van Calvarien,” where the title runs: “This is the Mount of Calvary: a very devout handbook for a Christian man, to teach him how men ought to climb the Mount of Calvary and help our Lord to carry His heavy cross, when He has become very weary through the grievous dread of death.”

We may conjecture perhaps that the exercises of the booklet are really older than the time of Martin Ketzel, Krafft and Sterckx, and that these latter considered that they would accomplish their devout purpose better if, to make the exercise still more realistic, they confined the set of Seven Falls to the incidents of the journey from Pilate’s house to Calvary. The inclusion by Sterckx of the stripping of the garments as one of the “falls” (see above, p. 65), must, one would think, be more than a coincidence.

Before quitting this subject I may call attention to a paragraph about the Seven Falls, occurring in an English Catholic book of devotion of the early seventeenth century. It is abridged from a Flemish volume of much older date, about which we shall have much to say in the next chapter. The passage runs as follows:

“Considering it is almost impossible, for a Pilgrim to goe a longe way without fallinge, thou shalt recollect the seaven fallings of Christe our Lord, takinge one of them for every day in the weeke.

“The first, the falling our Lord being taken, when they hastened Him to passe over the water of Cedron.

“The second, the falling of our Lord in the streete, being sent from Pilate to Herod and back againe, thrust and thronged by the Jewes.

“The third, the fallinge of our sweete Redeemer with His face upon the steppes of Pilate’s House.

“The fourth, His fallinge after His scourging through His extreme debilitie and weakness.

“The fifth, in His voiage to the Mount of Calvarie, falling seaven sundry times to the earth by the way under the heavie burden of His crosse.

“The sixth falling was when so inhumainly He was thrown downe upon the crosse, and most lamentably nayled and stretched thereon.

“The seventh fallinge, when He was nayled, lifted up and let fall into the mortice of the crosse, with a most stronge torture and rueful paine to al His holy members.”[81]

Two points are noteworthy in this extract. First it will be observed how the writer, or rather the sixteenth-century Flemish original which he is summarizing, shows his consciousness, under heading five, of the prevalence of a twofold system of falls, one embracing the whole of the Passion, the other confined, like Adam Krafft’s sculptures, to the carrying of the cross to Calvary. Secondly the change in the character of the seventh fall should not be overlooked. In the examples hitherto cited we have heard of the cross falling again to earth after it had been fixed in its place. Here it is assumed that by the seventh fall of our Saviour we are only to understand the terrible shock with which the cross settled down into the hole prepared for it. This last, of course, is a much less extravagant supposition, but there can be no question that the former legend was current among many writers at the beginning of the sixteenth century. A prayer in the little Flemish book, “Den Berch van Calvarien,” already mentioned, leaves no room for ambiguity; this is how it is worded:

“O sweet Lord Jesus, I thank You from the bottom of my heart, and remind You of that most painful fall when You were lifted up upon the cross, and those ferocious Jews made You fall down again so cruelly with the cross, that Your holy Face was imprinted on the earth, and all Your veins rent and all Your sinews torn. And this was the greatest pain that You suffered on this earth. O holy, strong and sweet God, I pray You by this most heavy fall imprint again on me Your divine image and forgive me the seven deadly sins in so far as I may have been guilty of them. Have mercy on me, dear Lord, and receive me again into Your divine grace. Amen.”

Chapter V—The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Jan Pascha

The booklet just mentioned, “Den Berch van Calvarien,” is only one of a group of similar devotional works which seem to have had great vogue in Germany and the Netherlands at the beginning of the sixteenth century. If I am not mistaken in my conclusions, it is to one particular ideal pilgrimage of this type, of which more anon, that we are primarily indebted for the form in which the exercise of the Way of the Cross is practised at the present day. But before we turn our attention to the volume in question, it will be well to say a few words regarding some other similar booklets which must have influenced many pious minds and have familiarized them with the idea of a spiritual accompanying of our Saviour on His journey to the summit of Calvary.

The earliest work[82] of this sort of which I have found mention has unfortunately proved inaccessible. This is the more to be regretted as its title seems to promise much that would be of interest to our present inquiry. The book is briefly described in Campbell’s Bibliography of Dutch Incunabula, and I must content myself here with translating the title which he has copied. The drift of the little volume is sufficiently indicated in this summary description:

“The Journey which our Lord Jesus made from Pilate’s House up to the Mount of Calvary.

“This is the journey which our Lord Jesus made from Pilate’s house, loaded with His heavy cross, up to the Mount of Calvary, and it is arranged in thirteen points which are very devout to read.”[83]

The thirteen points probably correspond to as many stations. As regards date the little volume is certainly older than 1501, and was probably printed in 1499.

Another early “Stations” book which deserves special mention is a tiny brochure of sixteen leaves, with many rough illustrations, of which I have seen two editions both printed at Antwerp, one of 1536, the other of 1561. It is possible that this little treatise had been in use for many years, as it is difficult to trace and has no proper title.[84] The heading states that it is a collection of meditations on the Passion of our Lord with the measurements from one to another of the places at which He suffered for us. The book is also arranged according to days of the week. The considerations begin with Monday, and for that day is arranged the journey from the room of the Last Supper to the Garden of Olives, of which the distance is said to be “xxxc ellen” (3,000 ells, say 4,000 yards). Then from the place where He left the apostles to where He left Peter, James and John (34 ells), from thence to the grotto of the Agony (12 ells), and further to the place of the meeting with Judas (34 ells). A “Pater” and “Ave” are to be said at each of these stopping-places. On Tuesday we are conducted to Annas, Caiphas, Pilate and Herod, all the distances as estimated by the writer being given as before. The Wednesday is taken up with the journey back to Pilate’s house where sentence is pronounced; and to this are added two other Stations, one the place where the cross was laid on our Lord’s shoulders (11 ells from the place of judgement), and the other, the site of the Scala Santa (25 ells further on) upon which stairs Jesus, crushed under the weight of the cross, met with a terrible fall. On the Thursday we are bidden to contemplate the journey from “the place of the fall” to the Ecce Homo Arch (23 ells), from the arch to the place of our Lady’s swoon (100 ells), thence again to the place of meeting with Simon of Cyrene (72 ells), thence again to the house of St Veronica (282 ells), and finally to the Judicial Gate (recht poorte) 300 ells further on, where He again fell prostrate and could not rise. The journey of 230 ells from thence to Calvary is meditated on Friday, and with it the stripping of the garments and the crucifixion. Finally, the Saturday is given to devotions at the Sepulchre. Much care has been spent upon the printing of the 1536 edition of this little book, copies of which exist both in the Bodleian and at the British Museum. The earlier copies inform us that the meditations were written by a devout priest named Heer Bethlem,[85] who had sojourned for a long time at Jerusalem and had measured all the holy places over again. For some reason or other the author’s name is omitted in the edition of 1561. There is much earnest and simple piety conspicuous in the prayers with which the exercises are diversified.[86]

Another book published in 1521 at Nuremberg is typographically a much more important work. The printing is good, and the woodcuts, several of which have been reproduced here,[87] are said by modern authorities to show distinct traces of the influence of the seven sculptures of Adam Krafft.[88] There are fifteen, or more strictly sixteen stations, and a picture corresponding to each. This represents a group or groups of sculpture raised upon a pillar. The subjects begin much further back than ours, the first representing our Saviour taking leave of His blessed Mother at Bethany; the second, the Last Supper; and the third, Gethsemani. With each Station certain psalms and prayers are printed for recitation. The purpose of the whole book is clearly indicated in the verses which form its only title page, and which are reproduced opposite.

TITLE-PAGE (reduced) OF THE “GEYSTLICH STRASS” Nuremberg, 1521.

Die geystlich strass bin ich genant

Im leyden Christi wol bekant.

Wiltu die geng gantz gnaw ausrechen,
So hastu psalmen die magstu sprechen;
Hastu lust zum heyligen lande,
Was da sey, findst auch zuhande.[89]

In close accord with these verses are the following remarks freely summarized from the preface:

“Our Lord said that the love of many should wax cold, and St Paul, in his Epistle to Timothy, said that men would be lovers of themselves rather than lovers of God. We see that these sayings are verified, and especially that of St Paul to the Philippians: ‘All seek their own and not the things of Jesus Christ.’ Thus from the exceeding wickedness of mankind the love of Christ is forgotten, and although the image of Christ is placed in the churches and streets, men have so little compassion for His sufferings that they scarce pause to say an ‘Ave Maria’ before the picture, or consider what it means. Such pictures are called the lay-folk’s books, because men may read therein and lay to heart the words of our Lord in the Book of Lamentations: ‘O all ye that pass by, behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow.’

“Amongst the common simple people one finds much love for the Passion of Christ. Some men also show their devotion by setting up various memorials to awaken the piety of others, as for instance the cross, or a representation of the Last Supper or the Mount of Olives. Some choose the Seven Falls or the seven bloodsheddings, and some again the carrying of the cross, with all the episodes which happened until He came to Calvary, such as the meeting with Mary, the compelling Simon to bear the cross, the meeting with Veronica, and the like. These are often set up nowadays with their descriptions, measures and distances, according as noble pilgrims have brought back the measurements from the Holy Land, or themselves have set them up. In order, therefore, to keep in remembrance the sufferings of Christ, I have not only considered our Lord while on His cross, but from the beginning to the end of His Passion, that is, from Bethany to the crucifixion. And what happened at one time or in one place I have put together, as, for example, the three incidents on Mount Sion, i.e., the passover, the washing of feet and the institution of the Blessed Sacrament. So, again, three events took place on Olivet, where the Lord went with His three disciples alone, and where He prayed three times, and where the Jews came and took Him. Then at Mount Calvary, whither He is brought; in one place the cross is made ready, in another spot our Lord is left until the cross is ready; afterwards He is led to the cross, stripped and crucified. All these I have set forth in order, each in its proper place, and each stage has a picture belonging to it. But in these four incidents, viz., Sion, the Mount of Olives, Pilate and the Judgement-place,[90] the same picture contains several episodes. Also in each stage we ought to contemplate, not only what Christ suffered by the way, but also what happened at each place from which or to which He is led. And it is particularly to be observed that a passage of the holy Gospels is always set down along with the picture so as to explain it, as well as a passage from the prophets or psalms. I have also added the distances of the holy places, etc. Lastly, as my desire has been to bring to men’s contemplation the sufferings of Christ, therefore I have adopted this method of portraying them to the eyes, to the heart and to the lips, by picture, by meditation and by prayer. Rich and poor, religious and seculars may use this book in private or in public. The rich may have similar sculptures set up, the poor, in looking upon them, can say their psalm-prayer or ‘Pater noster,’ or what they will. Nay, every man can erect these stations in his own house. A simple cross will serve to mark them. There is no need to reproduce the exact distances from one to another, or to take as many paces as are measured here. It is much better to make pilgrimage with one’s heart than with one’s feet.”

The book does not seem to be particularly rare, though it is not known that there was more than one edition of it.

A third devotional work of still greater importance is the volume already alluded to, written by John Pascha,[91] and edited by Peter Calentyn, at Louvain, in 1563. Its title in French is “La Pérégrination Spirituelle.” The pilgrimage is to occupy 365 days, and it is made very realistic by the assigning for each day a definite section of the journey to the Holy Land, along with a subject for meditation, and certain general devotions as explained in the introductory chapter. On the first day, for instance, the pilgrim imagines himself to travel from Louvain to Tirlemont, and is directed to meditate upon the truth that God is the final end of all creation; on the second, he travels from Tirlemont to Tongres, and meditates upon the creation of the angels, and so on. But when we get to the Holy Land and, on the 188th day, are visiting the scene of the agony in the garden, we have a new exercise interpolated with this conspicuous heading:

“Here begins the first prayer of the long journey of the Cross.☩

“And the prayers of this Way of the Cross are fifteen in number, and they are good to say also outside the time of pilgrimage, for instance, on Fridays, or on other days, for affairs of great importance.”[92]

The second station is given under the 193rd day at the house of Annas; the third, under the 196th day, at the spot where Christ is kept a prisoner and mocked. Then, under the 206th day, when the pilgrim has meditated upon our Saviour’s trial before Pilate, we have another noteworthy interruption of the text, with the heading: “Hier beghint den rechten Cruysganck na den berch van Calvarien—Here begins the proper Way of the Cross to Mount Calvary.”

The prayer for the fourth station, which follows, has reference to the condemnation of Christ by Pilate.[93]

Then follow the succeeding stations in order, still mixed up with the days of the pilgrimage, but frequently supplemented from this time onwards with measurements in feet or double paces (= five feet) of the distances from one station to another. The fifth station is the place where Christ receives the cross; it is thirteen paces from the place where He was sentenced. The sixth station is at the spot where Christ met His Blessed Mother, and where also He fell for the second time; and here the author is careful to tell us that between this spot and the place where our Lord received the cross there had already been a first fall when He had advanced forty paces. The meeting with His Blessed Mother was 418 feet (in Louvain measurement) from the place of His sentence. The seventh station, 179 feet further on, is where Simon of Cyrene took the cross, and Jesus fell a third time. The eighth station, 478 feet from the last, is the scene of the meeting with Veronica, and also of the fourth fall; and after another 842 feet we reach the foot of the ascent to Calvary, where Christ fell a fifth time, but this is not counted as a station. The ninth station is 872 feet further on up the ascent. Here Christ turned to the women of Jerusalem, and here also He fell a sixth time. After another 404-1/2 feet Calvary itself is reached. Here is the stone engraved with crosses, just outside the church of the Holy Sepulchre. This marks the place of the seventh and last fall, and is the tenth of Jan Pascha’s stations. The prayer for the eleventh station, nine paces further on, is taken up entirely with the theme of our Saviour’s being stripped of His garments, but no special name is given to this station. The twelfth station is still six paces further, and commemorates the nailing to the cross. We are also told that the total distance from the place where our Lord was sentenced by Pilate to this spot is 3,306 feet (of Louvain). The thirteenth station commemorates the death of Christ upon the cross, and the fourteenth station the taking down from the cross. Finally is given a prayer for the fifteenth station, which is concerned with the burial of Christ.

A PAGE OF THE 1568 EDITION OF PASCHA’S “GHEESTELYCK PELGRIMAGIE”
If this woodcut of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre be compared with that of Breydenbach on p. 28, it will be noticed that this illustration has been clumsily imitated from Breydenbach, but reversed in cutting the block. The tower should of course stand on the left hand side of the entrance porch.

Let me furthermore point out that precise details are everywhere given with such confidence and with such minuteness that it is not wonderful that the book should have produced the impression of having been written out of abundant and scientific knowledge. A single specimen will suffice.

“Now you must know,” says Pascha, “that the cross was fifteen feet long and the arms together eight feet, and the said cross weighed 100 pounds. From the place where Christ was sentenced to the place where the cross was laid upon His shoulders there were thirteen strides, and from the same spot where the cross was laid upon Him to the place where He fell for the first time under the cross there are forty strides. And also from this same spot where He fell for the first time to the place where His Mother stood upright in front of Him there are thirty strides and three feet. The number of persons who accompanied our Saviour was 15,000.”

And here in the French version the translator interpolates a note of his own.

“It will be well,” he says, “to explain here in order to the understanding of what has just been said above and also of other passages which follow, that a stride (enjambée) is the space you leave between one leg and the other [‘l’espace qu’on faict d’une jambe à l’autre’—he really seems to mean the space between the print of one foot and the next imprint of the same foot], and it contains two paces, in other words five feet. For by one pace (avant pas) we mean the distance ordinarily covered in going or walking at an ordinary rate, and a footstep (un pas) is nothing but the sign or mark of a foot. We are compelled to render it thus and to give you notice in our translation, on account of what we find in the Dutch original which cannot be otherwise expressed.”[94]

Now, any reader who will have the patience to study these details in Pascha’s book, and to compare them with the subjects of the fourteen stations now universally adopted, will perceive at once that this old Flemish pilgrimage supplies the key of the whole problem. The order of Pascha’s Stations is exactly the order of our modern Stations. Though the number is greater, and the starting-point seems different, Pascha himself, or his editor, Calentyn, by remarking that “the proper way of the cross” begins with Pilate’s house, has suggested the very modification which, in fact, has come to prevail. It has been commonly asserted, e.g., by Bishop von Keppler and by Doctor N. Paulus, that our present Stations are to be traced back to the book of Adrichomius, “Jerusalem sicut Christi tempore floruit,” published in 1584. This, in a sense, may be true, for Adrichomius enjoyed a very wide popularity, and was early translated into most European languages, even into English, Polish and Czech. His delineation of the stations along the Via Crucis, in his map of Jerusalem, has been reproduced on a reduced scale opposite, and the attentive student will perceive that, while Adrichomius makes no mention of the last two Stations, the first twelve are exactly those of our modern Way of the Cross. But Adrichomius, who cites Pascha amongst his authorities, has undoubtedly borrowed both the arrangement and all the measurements of the much older Flemish pilgrim. Dr N. Paulus, in his extremely valuable article in the “Katholik” (April, 1895), had already suggested this as a possibility, but as no copy of the “Gheestelyck Pelgrimagie” was accessible to him at Munich, he was unable to confirm his conjecture.[95]

REPRODUCTION, MUCH REDUCED, OF PART OF THE MAP OF JERUSALEM, BY ADRICHOMIUS (1584), SHOWING THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
The Stations begin in the upper right hand corner with the condemnation of Christ. 121 marks the receiving of the cross; 122, first Fall; 123, Mary; 124. Simon of Cyrene; 44, Veronica; 247, second Fall; 248, Women of Jerusalem; 249, third Fall; 250, stripping; 251, nailing; 252, raising on cross. The left is the North side, but, as explained elsewhere, the details of the map are quite inaccurate.

Perhaps the most interesting result of a comparison between the books of Pascha and Adrichomius is the light which we are enabled to throw upon the origin of that most puzzling feature in the Stations, the triple fall of our Saviour beneath His cross. It arises clearly from a curious blending of the old stational system of seven falls (as depicted by Adam Krafft at Nuremberg, and by his imitators) with certain traditional sites pointed out to pilgrims in Jerusalem. Four of these falls are supposed by Pascha to have synchronized with other episodes, i.e., the meetings of Christ with His Mother, Simon of Cyrene, Veronica and the women of Jerusalem. In these four cases the mention of a fall is suppressed, but it survives in the remaining three, which have nothing otherwise to distinguish them.[96] The first fall, which precedes the meeting with Mary, and the fifth fall, which follows that with Veronica, are not counted by Pascha as stations. Adrichomius, however, seeing that he begins only with the condemnation at Pilate’s house, finds room for them as separate stations in his system. The seventh and last fall at the summit of Calvary was commemorated by a stone marked with crosses, and is mentioned by almost every pilgrim in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though they speak of no other falls. This stone is the first item, lap(is), in Wey’s memoria technica (reverse order), and Breydenbach in his pilgrimage (1486) gives an excellent illustration, reproduced on page 28, of the pilgrims kissing it.

Allusion has been made above to an English abridgement of Pascha’s book, which, under the title of “The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Hierusalem,”[97] was printed abroad about the year 1630. Jan Pascha’s name is not mentioned, but there can be no question that it is his work, which has been partly translated, partly adapted by “R. H.,” a writer whom it is not easy to identify. Two copies of this little volume are in the Bodleian Library. Even in its condensed form the allegorical setting of the original has been retained, as for instance where we are told on the 43rd day, as the pilgrim is supposed to be setting sail for Venice, “pray for a good wind and say Veni Creator Spiritus.” The English version has been slightly adapted to suit the circumstances of its new readers, and thus it ends on the 365th day not at Louvain but with “thy lodgings in London or from where thou departedest.” It is particularly interesting that in “the Way of the Cross” the curious amalgamation of the old Seven Falls with the new system of stations has been retained by the translator. Hence we have such headings as, “The 111th day, to the place where Jesus turned to the women that bewailed Him. Here was the sixth falling.”

A PAGE OF THE FRENCH TRANSLATION (1566) OF PASCHA’S “GHEESTELYCK PELGRIMAGIE”
Note the indication of distance and the indulgence, and also how “le troisieme tombement ou cheute” (i.e., the Third Fall of the old system of Seven Falls) is identified with the coming of Simon of Cyrene. See p. 88.

On the whole it seems true to say that the selection of the Stations owes much more to the pious ingenuity of devotional writers in Europe than to the actual practice of Jerusalem itself. At Jerusalem the merit of this exercise seems to have consisted rather in the good-will of wishing to trace our Lord’s footsteps and in the fatigue and and unpleasantness encountered on the way, than in any set devotions at assigned halting-places. Aranda tells us how Mary fell to the ground on meeting her Son. The stone she fell on was subsequently built into the wall. The Christian pilgrims used to try to kiss it, but the Turks, regarding it as idolatry, would not allow it, and constantly profaned the stone.[98]

That no proper exercise of the Stations could have been performed publicly in Jerusalem at the close of the sixteenth century appears very clearly from the extremely interesting book of Zuallardo,[99] published a year or two after that of Adrichomius. He prints at the end of this work a copy of the prayers and hymns used by the pilgrims in visiting the different sites, the which prayers agree closely with those contained in a little treatise widely circulated in the middle ages and printed in Venice in 1491.[100]

Thus we have the hymn proper to the spot “where St James the Less hid himself during the time of the Passion,” the spot “where St Peter wept bitterly”—a site which of late years has given rise to some rather lively controversy between the representatives of different religious orders in Jerusalem[101]—the spot “where the Jews attempted to carry off the holy body of our Blessed Lady after her death,” “where the angels brought the palm to our Blessed Lady,” “the grave of Lazarus,” “the spot were Christ stood when Martha said, ‘Lord, if Thou hadst been here,’” etc., “the spot where the Virgin Mother used to rest when she revisited the holy sites,” “the spot before the Golden Gate where Christ foretold the last Judgement,” “the place where Isaias was sawn in two,” “the pool of Siloe,” and many others, all of them being places outside the city, upon the Mount of Olives, or in Bethlehem, or at any rate in parts where no great concourse of people was likely to be found. Now, for each of these, even the most unimportant, there is assigned in Zuallardo a special versicle and prayer; but for the scene of Ecce Homo, of the Scourging, of the mocking before Herod or of the various incidents of the journey to Calvary, though these are all sites of the very deepest devotional interest, no provision of hymns and prayers is made. Noting the absence of any recognition of those sites now so honoured, I was at first inclined to conjecture that the printed edition of 1491 was incomplete, and that some sheets had fallen out, but an examination of Harleian MSS. 2333 and 3810 showed me that the omissions were not peculiar to the printed text. Zuallardo’s fuller account explains the reason:

“In Pilate’s house,” he remarks, “where our Redeemer was scourged and crowned with thorns and sentenced to death, at the Ecce Homo Arch, and in other spots where it is impossible to enter, an ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary’ are said as the pilgrims pass along.”[102]

Similarly in the descriptive part of his work Zuallardo remarks of the different sites along the Via Dolorosa, which he is one of the first to call by that name:

“Of all these holy places we had no more consolation than just to see them as we passed on our way, since it is not permitted to make any halt nor to pay veneration to them with uncovered head, nor to make any other demonstration, nor to look at them fixedly, nor to write nor take any notes in public.”

As long as this state of things prevailed it is obvious that the pious exercises of the Way of the Cross could be performed far more devoutly beside the artificial Stations of Nuremberg, or Louvain, or Rhodes, than in Jerusalem itself. If any one individual can lay claim to the honour of formulating our present devotion, that distinction seems to belong more justly to the pious Flemish Carmelite, Jan Pascha, than to any other person.

None the less, even Pascha seems to be dependent for his measurements upon the data supplied him by Peter Sterckx (Petrus Potens) and carved in stone at the base of the seven Stations which, as mentioned above, were erected in Louvain in the first years of the sixteenth century. How far it was Sterckx and how far it was Pascha who elaborated the whole series of incidents repeated by Calentyn and Adrichomius, it is impossible to determine. The one thing which may be affirmed with certainty is that our present series of Stations of the Cross comes to us, not from Jerusalem, but from Louvain.

Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in this rather remarkable history is the way in which those who possessed an intimate knowledge of the Holy Land and of the practice of the pilgrims allowed the inventions of the Louvain Religious to spread uncontradicted. No doubt they felt that such imaginary pilgrimages could only promote devotion to the Passion of our Lord and serve the cause of piety. It was no business of theirs to contradict what had been asserted by pious men who lived before their time. The facts did not accord with the tradition of Jerusalem in their own day, but they might conceivably be true and, at any rate, they had no positive evidence to the contrary. Aranda, Bonifacius (represented by Zuallardo), Quaresmius, Surius, Caccia and a host of others were intimately acquainted with Jerusalem. Several of them had been for many years the official custodians of the holy places. They were not contemporaries, but they cover nearly the whole period from 1520 to 1680. They agree closely with each other, but are all ignorant of—and for some points in absolute contradiction with—the statements of Pascha and Adrichomius. None the less, the fictions of Adrichomius, who it appears never visited the Holy Land, but compiled his map from pre-existing accounts, have won the day simply by reason of the wide diffusion of the volume which he published; and now, even in the Holy City itself, the attempt has been made to bring local traditions into accord with the practice of our modern Stations. But on this point it will be necessary to speak more fully in the next chapter.

For the present, before passing further, it may be interesting to give some illustration of the manner in which the Stations must often have been made in early times even without the aid of sculptures or pillars. The document from which I am about to quote seems to have been copied by a certain Sister Barbara de Langhe, in a convent in Antwerp in the year 1664. It was probably transcribed from an original of much earlier date and it is obvious that the idea of travelling the exact distance traversed by our Blessed Lord must have been very prominently before the mind of the framer. The distinction made between “the long way of the cross”[103] and “the way of the cross proper,” or “the short way,” as it is here called, is also particularly interesting in the light of the similar distinction which we have just noticed in Pascha. Hardly less noteworthy for our present purpose is the retention of the system of Seven Falls at so late a date as 1664. Not to be tedious I omit the prayers and quote only the directions or rubrics which accompany them. The document begins thus:[104]

“Item. For those who wish to make the long way of the cross (den grooten Kruyswech).

“They must begin in the Church, which shall represent the place where Christ took His last supper with His Apostles; then they must go round the garden six times and the seventh time must kneel at the last door outside the cloister by the school, and there is the Garden of Olives. The first prayer, ‘O Lord Jesus Christ,’ etc.

“Go now as far as the churchyard door to the Poor Clares’ wall, there Jesus Christ is kissed by Judas. The second prayer, ‘O Lord,’ etc.

“Now make the round of the garden six times, and the seventh time kneel down at the third door into the cloister (pant), and this will be the house of Annas. The third prayer.”

Omitting for brevity’s sake, the journey to Caiphas, Pilate and Herod, we take the next entry.

“Go now three times round [the garden], and in the fourth round you must kneel at the first door of the cloister, and this may count as Pilate’s house [dat is tot Pilatus, i.e., that is as far as Pilate].

“Here we begin the short way of the cross. The seventh prayer.

“Go now as far as the last door in the cloister, and this is the first fall with the cross. The eighth prayer.

“Next go on as far as the churchyard door to the wall of the Poor Clares and this is the second fall. The ninth prayer.”

No other incidents are specified except the Seven Falls, which are duly measured out in order, but the corresponding prayers would probably show that, as in Pascha’s book, four of these falls were identified with the incidents of Mary, Simon, the Women and Veronica. Finally we have:

“Now go on to the last window of the workroom; this is the seventh fall. The fourteenth prayer.

“Go on now to the last door in the cloister, and there Christ is crucified. The fifteenth prayer.

“Then go on as far as the churchyard, and there say Miserere and De profundis for the dear souls [Sielkens, a diminutive of endearment or compassion], and then go to the door by the pump; there Christ is buried, being laid in the sepulchre. The sixteenth prayer.

“Go now to the church, and offer your prayers Then it is finished.”

Chapter VI—The “Via Dolorosa” at Jerusalem from the Seventeenth Century 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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chapter VII—The Devotional Aspect of the Stations

It must be evident from the contents of the preceding chapters that, so far as concerns many details of the exercise of the Way of the Cross the historical foundation of our present system of Stations is quite of the slenderest. We have no sufficient warrant for the episode of Veronica, none for the meeting with our Blessed Lady, none for the three falls, while the order adopted for these various incidents does not depend even upon the medieval traditions current in Jerusalem, but upon a work of the imagination belonging to relatively modern times which first saw the light in Flanders. To some readers this uncertainty may seem to involve the unwelcome conclusion that the whole practice is tainted with superstition, and that amid such turbid waters all reference to the Passion of Christ as a pure fountain of devotion becomes singularly out of place. This, however, will not, I think, be the inference drawn by any one who takes a large and generous view of the subject. On the contrary, the curiously complicated development of the Stations of the Cross seems to the present writer to illustrate, in a conspicuous way, the working of a law akin to that of the survival of the fittest, a law which meets us, more often than might be expected, in this and many similar matters of popular piety. If one particular set of Stations has prevailed in preference to another, this, I conceive, is ultimately to be attributed to the fact that the one appeals more strongly than the other to the pious imagination or to the devotional needs and feelings of the faithful at large. While we may recognize, in the most emphatic way, the desirability of more rigorous scrutiny into the authenticity of relics, indulgences, legends, patristic apocrypha and other such matters of pious credulity, we have after all to remember that these things are the aids and means of devotion, but not its final cause. Historical research concerns itself with such matters, and the verdict of science most certainly should be respected. But historical research is not possible for the rank and file of Christian believers, nor even ex professo for the pastors of the Church. Provided that the large element of uncertainty which enters into such matters be admitted, no great harm can arise from the prevalence of any particular legend which, though historically doubtful, is not in itself extravagant or disedifying. As the celebrated Dominican, Père Lagrange, has admirably said when speaking of the authenticity of certain of the holy places, venerated by the faithful and enriched with indulgences:

“If Origen, Eusebius, St Jerome, Sozomen, are all mistaken, not merely as to the precise situation of the house of Cleophas, but about the identity of Emmaus Nicopolis with the Emmaus of the Gospels, how can we expect a pilgrim prostrate in the dust at a street corner to hold for certain that at this identical spot our Saviour fell for the second or the third time? We are told the pilgrims come to make the Stations of the Cross, and that if they have not a blind confidence in the hic (here) of the lay-brother who is taking them round, they lose all devotion. Surely this is a poor compliment to pay them. The faithful know very well that when the Church proposes some special mystery of our Lord’s life for their veneration, the word hodie (to-day) which is used in the liturgy has only an approximate value. The pilgrims are no more the slaves of the hic than they are of the hodie. They are happy to follow the footsteps of Christ, to make protestation of their gratitude to the God made Man; to kiss the stone in token of their humility and adoration; but their devotion will only be the more free and spontaneous if it is not necessarily taken for a stolid act of faith in the assertion of a topographical fact. If it were otherwise, we should have to remind them that our Saviour has taught us to adore the Father in spirit and in truth.”[146]

Once the symbolical character of so many of our aids to devotion is understood and allowed for, we can use them without danger as stepping stones to a higher knowledge and a deeper love of the Source of all grace. We venerate them for what they symbolize and for that which they help to bring nearer to us, but we are comparatively indifferent at such moments to questions of history or fact. It is sufficient for us that they possess a certain relative truth. Dives and Lazarus may or may not have been actual living persons, but when we are meditating upon the lessons of our Lord’s parable, it does not occur to us to press the inquiry whether it was founded upon an incident that had actually occurred.

It has just been said that we have probably arrived at our present series of fourteen Stations by a sort of process of the survival of the fittest. Without attempting any rigorous proof of such a proposition, it is at least easy to see that some of the incidents which are from an historical point of view most open to question, are also, devotionally speaking, among the most helpful to piety. Take, for example, the sixth station, the episode of St Veronica. Few of our Lord’s sufferings on His toilsome journey to Calvary have suggested more beautiful thoughts to those who have commented on the Stations than this parable of loving charity. This is how the episode has moved the devout fancy of Cardinal Newman. It will be remembered that the meeting with our Blessed Lady and the call of Simon of Cyrene are the Stations which immediately precede. Of Veronica Cardinal Newman writes thus:

“The relief which a Mother’s tenderness secured is not yet all she did. Her prayers sent Veronica as well as Simon—Simon to do a man’s work, Veronica to do the part of a woman. The devout servant of Jesus did what she could. As Magdalen had poured the ointment at the feast, so Veronica now offered Him this napkin in His passion. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘would I could do more! Why have I not the strength of Simon, to take part in the burden of the cross?’ But only men can serve the great High Priest, now that he is celebrating the solemn act of sacrifice. O Jesus, let us one and all minister to Thee according to our places and powers. And as Thou didst accept from Thy followers refreshment in Thy hour of trial, so give to us the support of Thy grace when we are hard pressed by our foe.”[147]

To that great sufferer and lover of the poor, Henri Perreyve, the same Station suggests a quite different train of thought, but one not less beautiful. I take the following passage from a recently published Anglican translation:

“I adore Thee, Lord, as I behold the holy Veronica wiping with a linen cloth Thy sacred face bathed in sweat, in tears and in blood. She is not deceived by Thy wan bruised face, Thy weary step, Thy soiled garments. It does not astonish her that Thou now dost realize the vision of the completed sorrow which afflicted the eyes of Isaiah, that Thou art the man of sorrows acquainted with grief, wounded and bruised, whom the prophet confessed that he did not recognize. The love of Veronica is not mistaken in Thee, to her Thou art always Jesus. Nothing stops her, neither the dense crowd through which she must break, nor the noise of the people, nor the presence of the guard, nor the disdainful glances of the Pharisees, nor the stately progress of the public procession, nor the prancing of the horses, neither false shame nor the fear of death. She does not hesitate, she runs and touches Thee, and tenderly wipes Thy face, her hands trembling the while with holy fear; all was impossible, but she has dared all, she has accomplished all.

THE VIA DOLOROSA, NEAR VERONICA’S HOUSE, LOOKING DOWNHILL
From a recent Photograph.

“O Master, in this scene Thou art the perfect type of all humanity, poor and suffering; and Veronica is the type of charity. While Thou art dragging after Thee Thy cross, little resembling the perfect Man, but rather, as the psalmist dares to say, ‘a worm and no man,’ Thou bearest in Thy person all the poor; but on the other hand, the least of the poor who suffer hunger and cold in our great cities bears Thy image, O Jesus, and recalls the practical teaching of thy gospel. As there is in the Holy Eucharist Thy real presence, so also there is another real presence of Thee in the persons of the poor, and therefore Thou hast said plainly that what is done to the meanest of them is done unto Thyself.

“More happy than Veronica, whose trembling hand touched Thee but once, Christian charity is able, every day and every moment to dry Thy tears, to wipe the sweat from Thy brow, the brow of Thy poor. Who will teach us to love Thy poor sufficiently, who will teach us to regard their sorrows, to worship them as the sacrament of Thy passion? Who will teach us always to see beneath their features, disfigured though they may be by physical and moral misery, the features of Jesus? Who will give us the spirit of Veronica, her unquenchable hope, her irresistible courage, her conviction that she will succeed, and the degree of love which we need to accomplish all that we have undertaken? Thou only, O divine Master, canst kindle in our souls those flames of love, which would fain devour all the evils of the earth, and will not die down in Thy Church while there yet remains one sorrow in the world.”[148]

Veronica as a personage—she must be distinguished from her napkin, often also called by the name Veronica (in English Vernicle)—was not a very familiar character in the devotional literature of the middle ages. Her house was not shown in Jerusalem before the fourteenth century at earliest,[149] and it is not generally spoken of by pilgrims before 1435. Hence, in the York mystery plays, though we find the incident of the napkin and the miraculous portrait, it is not Veronica, but one of the three Marys who presents the napkin to our Lord.

But the beautiful symbolism of the episode itself did not fail to impress the imaginations of our pre-Reformation forefathers. The Salve sancta facies nostri Redemptoris was one of the most popular of medieval hymns, and when Veronica does appear in medieval drama, we may detect, if I mistake not, a very tender note in the few brief words assigned to her. Thus in the Coventry mysteries dating from the early fifteenth century, we read:

Veronica. “Ah! ye synful pepyl! Why fare thus?

For sweat and blod He may not see!

Alas! Holy prophete, Chryst Jhesus!

Careful (i.e., full of care) is myn heart for Thee.”

And she wipeth His face with her kerchy.

Jhesus. “Veronica, thy wiping doth me ease;

My face is clene, that was black to see.

I shall them kepe from alle mysese

That lokyn on thy kerchy and remember me.”

Again there is undoubtedly something which makes a special appeal to man’s weak and sin-laden heart, both in the conception of the fall of Jesus under His cross and in the circumstance of its triple repetition. “Who is it,” asks St Leonard of Port Maurice, “that has thus again stricken down the Lord of heaven and earth? It is I, I who have heaped sin upon sin, who have added torment to torment.” Or, if I may again quote the beautiful language of Cardinal Newman:

“Yes, it is as I feared; Jesus, the strong and mighty Lord, has found for the moment our sins stronger than Himself. He falls—yet He bore the load for a while; He tottered, but He bore up and walked onwards. What, then, made Him give way? I say, I repeat, it is an intimation and a memory to thee, O my soul, of thy falling back into mortal sin. I repented of the sins of my youth and went on well for a time, but at length a new temptation came when I was off my guard, and I suddenly fell away. Then all my good habits seemed to go at once; they were like a garment which is stripped off, so quickly and utterly did grace depart from me. And at that moment I looked at my Lord, and, lo! He had fallen down, and I covered my face with my hands and remained in a state of great confusion.”

It is difficult to quote translations after such perfect English as this, but in turning again to the Stations of the saintly Henri Perreyve I will venture this time to cite with modifications the text of an older English version of Catholic origin:

Jesus falls beneath the weight of the Cross.

“I adore Thee, Lord Jesus, falling beneath the weight of the cross. Thou didst erewhile receive it with the steadfast courage of love for Thy creature man. In that courage the sad procession set out. But as the Victim advances the anguish of the sacrifice increases. That cross which at first seemed supportable has become an overwhelming burden. O Master! Thy strength hath failed Thee, Thou hast fallen prostrate by the wayside.

“And so also is it with human sorrows in this world, when they follow one upon the other, accumulating force with time. Such stricken souls may often be seen strong and courageous at first, yet they are at last crushed to earth by the ever-growing weight of their desolation. It is a beloved child that has been taken, but two remained; death comes again and takes a second, and then the other. It is too much, all strength fails, the cross is too heavy; it is no longer that cross of yesterday, which was still endurable. No, it seems a mountain, a very world of woe. The soul gives up the struggle and itself sinks to earth amid the ruin of all that it has loved. Poor tortured soul! when thou hast rallied from that swoon of pain, there is nothing of which I would talk to thee save of the fall of Jesus—Jesus sinking beneath His cross. Look upon Him, I pray thee, look upon Him while I hold my peace. He alone can speak life-giving words capable of raising thy soul from that worst of all agonies, despair.

“O eternal Word! O Son of God! consubstantial with Him in the plenitude of Thy eternal generation, inseparable from that divine nature, one with the Father and the Holy Ghost, distinct only in Person, I thank Thee that, assuming our humanity, Thou wert willing also to fathom the uttermost depths of our weakness. Thou couldst have saved the world without that excess of humiliation, but Thou couldst not without it have consoled us by Thy example in the hour of crushing agony and desolation. For that we needed a Saviour who had known like ourselves the weight of a cross beyond His strength, who could teach us through his own infirmity not to fall into utter contempt of ourselves in those moments of supreme discouragement. My Redeemer, Thy mysterious fall reconciles me to my own weakness. That fall did not hinder Thy sacrifice; it did not prevent Thee from reaching the summit of Calvary. Thou didst stagger to Thy feet and continue to go forward.

“O Jesus, when my strength fails, when the cross becomes too heavy, when I fall, do Thou raise me up, and with the support of Thy divine hand enable me to follow Thee along that road of daily difficulties and sorrow in which Christian virtue is put to its hardest test.”

The reader, I trust, will not be wearied by this series of quotations. It seems to me that they illustrate well the rich vein of spontaneous and devout reflection which the subjects of the Stations open up to reverent minds. Neither need we suppose that it is only men of the intellectual standing of Newman and Perreyve who can find food for thought in such meditations. Here, for instance, is a little prayer which appears originally in Pascha’s “Spiritual Pilgrimage,” and which has been summarized by the seventeenth-century English translator “R. H.” in the following form. It deals with the incident which Pascha called the fifth station, but which is now the second of our series—“Jesus is made to carry the cross:”

“O most noble Kinge and valiant Standard Bearer, who for the love of me didst permit the heavier burthen of the crosse to be laid upon Thy shoulders, which were full sore with stripes, and therewithal all the sins of the world, offering the same by Thy death upon the aultar of the crosse to Thy heavenly Father, I beseech Thee to help me to carrie my crosse that I may willingly sustaine the same and to serve Thee according to my vocation. Amen.”

“O noble King and valiant Standard Bearer” is surely a memorable phrase, rich with subtle memories of the Vexilla Regis and yet within the comprehension of the simplest and the rudest. So is the same writer’s description of our Lord “walking between two thieves as the Captain of them” when He presents Himself to the view of His Blessed Mother, or again the suggestion that His sacred Body was “stretched like a string upon the cross, Thy veins and sinews being so broken therewithal that Thy precious Blood issued forth like fountains of water.”

Of course the ideal attitude of the faithful soul when engaged upon the exercise of the Way of the Cross is that of the actual pilgrim who has journeyed over land and sea to pay homage to the scenes of our Saviour’s passion and bitter death. What deep feelings were aroused in the pilgrims of old, upon their coming within the precincts of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has already been illustrated incidentally by our quotations from Fabri and other early writers. But there is no lack of such testimonies. Neither can we have the least doubt that these pilgrims were just as simple and sincere in the account which they gave of their emotions of piety as they were in their frank comments about matters which were more mundane. It is precisely this quality of unmistakable candour in Fabri which makes his narrative so extraordinarily attractive. Moreover, his diffuseness shows that he has written entirely at his ease. He talks to us with exactly the same freedom with which he would have gossiped with some old schoolfellow and fellow religious in his convent at Ulm, thoroughly enjoying both his own story and the perfect comprehension of his listeners. Perhaps nothing in all Fabri’s wanderings tells us more of the ardent spirit of the old pilgrims than the passage in which he describes himself as unable, when nearing the coast of Palestine, to eat or rest or converse, but as seated all day long in the bows of the vessel straining his eyes to catch the first glimpse of that blessed shore. However, it will be more to our purpose if I quote the account which he gives, first of all of the rock of Calvary and then of the Holy Sepulchre. And before we come to these longer extracts it will be well to preface his remarks by two shorter passages, one descriptive of the feelings of another pilgrim, a good Augustinian friar, who came to the Holy Sepulchre 150 years before Fabri, the other taken from Fabri’s own account of the starting of the procession within the sacred edifice. And, first, this is how Brother James of Verona describes his sensations of awe when after many months of weary pilgrimage he was at last permitted to cross the threshold of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre:

“Upon Monday, August 7, in the year of our Lord, 1335, the Sepulchre of our Saviour was thrown open to me and my companion and to two strangers; there were but four of us in all. It was the third hour, and the door was immediately shut again. And as I entered, sinner though I be, the Lord Jesus Christ wounded my heart, and the ardour of a most burning love possessed me, so that while sober, as regards food and drink, I was intoxicated with a certain heavenly sweetness. I fell prostrate upon the earth, reminding myself that I was unworthy in the presence of so priceless a sanctuary to look upon it with my eyes, to draw near with my feet, to touch it with my hands, or to traverse it with my body. Nevertheless, trusting in the divine Goodness, seeing that it was said by the prophet David: Accedite ad eum, et illuminamini (approach Him, and be enlightened), I did draw near, I looked, I touched and I wrote down what I had seen.”[150]

Fabri, when he visited the Holy Sepulchre, was one of a much larger party. We have already learned the substance of the instructions delivered to the pilgrims by the Father Guardian of Mount Sion. After the summary which he gives of that discourse, Fabri proceeds as follows:

“Having thus received the rules by which we were to be guided while in the holy temple, we each of us went to the merchants, and every one bought candles of the whitest of wax, great or small, ornamented or plain, as he pleased. There was no lack of vainglory even in this, for some had candles curiously twisted and decorated with gilding and painting, which they carried with ostentation, and looked with scorn upon those who carried plain candles, blaming them for close-fistedness. Some bought many candles, which they lighted in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre and then extinguished, and afterwards took them home with them to their own country, where they made their wives hold them lighted when they were in childbed, that they might be delivered without danger, for they say that these candles are useful for that purpose.

“Now, while we were busied about buying our candles, the brethren with the Father Guardian were arraying themselves, putting on their sacred vestments, which they had brought with them from Mount Sion, to make a solemn procession round all the holy places in the same order, wherein they had made that on Mount Sion, as has been told before.

“So when we were all standing in order with our lights burning, the precentor at the head of the procession began in a loud and cheerful voice to sing the Salve Regina, which we all took up, and chanting this hymn we came in procession to the chapel of the glorious Virgin Mary, to the altar in front of the chapel.”

The details of the passing of the pilgrims from shrine to shrine are a great deal too diffusely narrated to be quoted here. Let us come, however, to what our pilgrim tells us of their visit to what he calls: “The most Holy Mount of Calvary, whereon the Lord Jesus hung upon the cross.”

“After we had finished all that was to be done in the holy cave, we presently came up again and re-entered the church through the door. As we resumed our procession the precentor began in a loud voice to sing the hymn, Vexilla regis prodeunt, etc. Singing this we came to the way up to the most holy Mount of Calvary, up which we went by eighteen stone steps from the church below it. Above we entered a light, beauteous chapel, adorned with polished, variegated marble, and wherein there hung many lighted lamps. In it stood three altars, adorned with paintings done in mosaic work. This chapel is built of vaulted work, supported by a marble column in the midst of the building. On the other side of the vault are paintings of David and Solomon, David with the text, Qui edebat panes meos, magnificavit super me,[151] etc., and Solomon with the text, Sapientia ædificavit sibi domum,[152] and a picture of the sacrifice of Isaac. This chapel is built above the Mount of Calvary. When we were all come into it, and now before our eyes was displayed that wondrous stone, that desirable rock, with its admirable socket-hole, wherein the most holy cross bearing the crucified One was inserted—when we beheld these things, scared and bewildered at their exceeding great holiness, we fell down upon our faces on the earth, and one heard no longer psalmody, but lamentation; no longer the singing of hymns, but wailings and groans. No one was there who could withhold himself from tears and cries; for who could have so hard a heart that it would not be rent in that place, where he beheld before his eyes the hardest rock to have been rent? Who would not even weep aloud in the place where Christ our God cried with a loud voice as He hung upon the cross; where likewise He prayed for those who had crucified Him, promised paradise to the thief, commended His deeply sorrowing Mother to the care of John, and drank the vinegar mingled with gall; where He said that all was finished, yielded up His spirit into the hands of His Father, and breathed His last; where the soldier pierced His side with his lance, and there came forth blood and water? Lo, devout pilgrim, it was here that Abel was slain by his brother,[153] and Isaac was bound for sacrifice by his father, the brazen serpent was set up by Moses, the paschal lamb was slain according to the law, God was slain by man, Jesus was crucified in the flesh, thy King was hung upon the cross, thy Lord was condemned to death, the meek and holy and innocent was drenched with blood, offering Himself both as priest and as victim. These thoughts and others of a like nature occurred to our minds at this most solemn place, and we remained for a long time bowed to the earth in prayer. When we had finished our prayer, we went one after another to the holy rock, which projects above the floor, and each one as best he could, crawled to the socket-hole of the cross, kissed the place with exceeding devotion, and placed his face, eyes and mouth over the socket-hole, from whence in very truth there breathes forth an exceeding sweet scent, whereby men are visibly refreshed. We put our arms and our hands into the hole down to the very bottom; and by these acts we gained plenary indulgences.

“On the left hand side of the socket-hole is a great rent in the rock, from the top to the bottom, which is believed to have been made at Christ’s death. We went up to this rent one after another, and kissed it, putting our heads into it and as much of our bodies as we could. Moreover, on either side of the holy socket there are two other sockets, in which the crosses of the two thieves, Dysmas and Gresmas, who were crucified together with Jesus, were placed; but these sockets cannot be seen, because upon them stand low pillars, upon whose heads there are iron spikes, upon which wax candles and lights are stuck, so that these pillars are, as it were, candlesticks. Howbeit, we kissed the pillar which stood at the right hand of the cross.”

Fabri tells us that the whole body of pilgrims remained on Calvary “giving themselves up to prayer and devotion,” for more than an hour. Afterwards, following the course of the passion, they visited the stone of unction and some other shrines. But the climax of this solemn procession was the coming to the Holy Sepulchre. Obviously the joy of that supreme moment was still vividly present to his mind when he wrote his account: He heads this section: How the pilgrims came into the most Holy Sepulchre of the Lord Jesus.

“Rouse up yourselves now, my lords and brother pilgrims, arise and hurry onward with a swifter pace, but come not save in a cheerful mood. Lay aside all sorrow, wipe away the tears from your eyes, refrain from lamentations, and all together sing that sweet Easter song, Alleluia; for after the gloomy Jewish Sabbaths a genial light has shined forth upon the world from the squalid and darksome sepulchre which we are about to enter; for the world has received far brighter light from thence than from the glimmering bodies in the firmament. Come then with joy and praise, look upon the place where the Lord was laid, and behold the end of your pilgrimage. So hereupon the precentor in a pleasant and cheerful voice began the paschal hymn, Ad cænam agni providi, etc., and we walked on in procession chanting it, and came to the most precious sepulchre of the Lord Jesus, before which we rang out our Easter hymns with many an Alleluia, with as great, or it may be with even greater joy than if we had reached happy Easter day after a sad and toilsome Lent. For as on Mount Calvary we pitied our Lord Christ, and shed tears, so here we rejoiced with our Redeemer, and offered to Him sweet tears of joy and lively songs, and rightly so; for Jesus, our Saviour, after His tears and sorrow, after His mockings and scourgings, after His cups of vinegar and gall, after His torture and wounds upon the cross, after His terrible death itself, after His piteous burial, after He had descended into the everlasting shades of hell, after He had broken the iron bars, after He had bound the prince of darkness, and set free all the chosen patriarchs, rose glorious and triumphant from this tomb we now behold. From this darksome cave there shone forth so bright a light, there darted forth so brilliant a ray, there gleamed such snowy whiteness, there appeared such blessed peace, there came forth such happiness, there breathed forth such salvation as made the earth, sea and sky to rejoice together. In this sepulchre, in this tiny hut did the eagle renew its youth, the lion roused up its cub, the phœnix renewed its life, Jonah came forth unharmed from the whale’s belly, the candlestick was clad with gold, the tabernacle of David which had fallen down was set up again, the sun shone forth after being behind a cloud, the grain of wheat which had fallen into the earth and died had quickened, the stag again put forth his horns, Samson bore away the gates and broke through his guards, Joseph was brought forth from prison, shaved, gaily dressed, and made Lord of Egypt. The sackcloth of Christ Jesus was cut away; He was clothed with gladness, and besides all this, our toilsome pilgrimage, our weary wanderings are here ended and brought to rest. Here, then, I pray you, let us lay aside our pious plaints of sorrow, our clouds of grief, and let us draw a quiet breath in happiness: let us who have followed our Redeemer to His tomb with sorrow now take part in the joy of His glorious resurrection. Come, then, gather yourselves together, knights and kindly pilgrims, enter the most holy sepulchre and see with your eyes, feel with your hands, touch with your mouth the place where the Lord lay. So we joyously went in, one after another, into the most precious sepulchre of the Lord Jesus, kissed the most holy bier, and received entire and most plenary indulgences for all sins. We were indeed filled with an especial joy here, greater than what we felt at the other holy places. Thus St Bernard, in the second chapter of his sermon to the Knights Templars, says that the sepulchre hath as it were the pre-eminence among the holy and desirable places, and that something more of devotion is felt at the place where He lay at rest than at those where He moved about in life. Thus, too, the remembrance of His death excites our piety more than that of His life: I suppose because His death was cruel, while His life was pleasant by comparison, and because our human weakness is more attracted by the repose of sleeping than the toil of living among men, more by the safety of death than by righteousness of life. The life of Christ is to me a rule by which to live, His death is my redemption from death. Here we received spiritual refreshment and indulgences, and passed out with joyous thanksgiving, and thus our procession came to an end one hour before midnight.”

As a counterpart to this vivid description of an actual visit to the Holy Sepulchre, I venture to turn to the meditation which Perreyve suggests for those who, in making the Stations of the Cross, would contemplate the Sepulchre in spirit. He takes up and develops an idea which is already suggested by Fabri, that of the grain of wheat falling to the ground. No one of Perreyve’s reflections on the Stations is more beautiful than this.

THE ENTOMBMENT
From the “Geystlich Strass,” Nuremberg, 1521. Even at this early date the Pieta and the Sepulchre were included in the exercise of the Stations of the Cross. See p. 186.

The Sepulchre.

“I adore Thee, Lord Jesus, whilst faithful, loving hands bear away Thy sacred body and lay it in the Sepulchre, of which they close the entrance with a great stone. I adore Thee during the silence of that stupendous night, in which the author of all life seemed bound in the chains of death. The Pharisees, alarmed by the memory of Thy prophecies, cause the stone-closed entrance of Thy tomb to be sealed; guards watch before it; Thy disciples are dispersed; all around is wrapped in silence. It seems as if death had gained the victory, and finally asserted its empire.

“Yet speak, O Master, and tell me what lesson I ought to learn from that last act of Thy Passion.”

Jesus Christ: “My child, you must not see in My tomb a mystery of death, but a mystery of life. Let not My lips now so silent, My body so motionless, My heart so chill and pulseless deceive you; it is not death which triumphs, it is life which withdraws itself for a moment but which will soon rise again to roll away the stone for ever.

“Remember, My child, the parable I one day spoke to My disciples: ‘Unless the grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, itself remaineth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’[154] Think of what a grain of wheat is in the hands of him who sows. The grain at first is hard, shut up in itself, unproductive. Then if the hand of the sower cast it into the furrow, it disappears into the earth, and it remains hidden, covered as with a shroud. Next follows death. The seed is dissolved by rain, by the ardent rays of the sun, by the very action of its tomb; it dies, but immediately all-conquering life springs from the confines of its utter annihilation. Nothing can resist it now, neither stones, nor darkness, nor the winding-sheet that wraps it round, nor the tomb within which it lies; it grows, it climbs, it pierces the earth, and looking fearlessly out upon the sun, it pushes its way upwards, bearing in its bosom an entire harvest. Now this triumphant death of the grain of wheat is the symbol of My death, and of the spiritual death of all My children. It faithfully portrays the transformation of souls, who once for all learn to die with Me, and to await in My sepulchre their hour of resurrection. Happy the soul which realizes that it is only awaiting the moment of release. For you, My child, to whom I have confided My secrets, surely you understand now what it all means.

“‘My sepulchre,’ I have said. Shall I tell you what it is? It is all that hides the Christian from the world and from himself. It is all that humbles you, my child, all that opposes your wishes, defeats your best efforts, checks every generous impulse, reduces your will to impotence, seems to drag you down to nothingness, and to render you unheeded and useless in this world. It may be bodily infirmity, that great contradiction of nature, which twenty times a day breaks down your will; it may be the unintelligent malice of men who do not understand your generous projects, and take pleasure in putting a thousand obstacles in the way of their fulfilment. It must be in any case the cumulative effect of the weakness, the difficulties, the misunderstandings, the misery in yourself and in others, which so often cast a dull and heavy pall over your life and leave you without heart for the struggle. This is your sepulchre. Enter it, My child, enter it as I entered the tomb, in the spirit of obedience to the will of My Father, in the spirit of faith, and, above all, of indomitable hope. Accept sickness, contradiction—that obstacle which all that is worth anything is sure to encounter—accept at My feet the full bitterness of that hour in which everything seems to prove that life is over for you, that you will never again achieve anything among men. Enter, then, as the grain of wheat, into the bosom of the earth, enter into the depths of humiliation, of abandonment, of self-renunciation. Enter fearlessly, for, again I say, this is your sepulchre.

“But in what do you suppose that all these trappings of death are after all to end? What was it that I was meditating in my tomb—the triumph of death or its defeat? Was not that tomb the cradle of all life? Look well into the depths of My sepulchre, My child, and faith will teach you to see therein the germ of all that lives and endures. I tell you, in all truth, that everything is there which was afterwards to come—My resurrection, the inspiration of My Apostles, their courage, which from that day never faltered; the fortitude of My martyrs, the purity of My virgins, the daring of My apologists, the learning of My doctors, the authority of My pontiffs, the strength of My confessors, the light of all Christian ages, all the progress of humanity even to your own days. All these things lie in germ beneath the shroud which covers Me. That great river of life, of strength, of virtue, of immortality wells up from that tiny spring. Do you not see, then, My child, that there is nothing in all the world so full of living promise as My sepulchre?”

And here we may leave this fruitful theme of the devotional suggestiveness of the Stations of the Cross. No exercise by which our Lord’s Passion is honoured is likely to be more practically helpful than this, precisely because of the wide range of thought which it admits and of its contact upon so many sides with the needs and interests of our daily life.

Chapter VIII—The Stations in Modern Times

It is not the purpose of this little volume to provide devotional aids for performing the exercise of the Way of the Cross, neither is it meant to be a manual of information for those who are interested in the minutiæ of ecclesiastical legislation on the subject. Of such books there is already an abundant supply,[155] and the aim of this essay is to throw light upon certain historical questions which have hitherto failed to attract particular attention. But before taking leave of the whole subject it seems desirable to say a few words about the developments of the devotion during the last two centuries, and it is impossible to do this without touching at least briefly upon the obscure and delicate question of the indulgences of the holy places.

If in making the Way of the Cross Catholics have come in modern times to follow one almost uniform system throughout the world, the cause of the uniformity is not far to seek. Even apart from the strong appeal which our present arrangement of fourteen Stations seems to have made to the devotional sense of the faithful, the question of indulgences must undoubtedly have had much to say to the rapid disappearance of all rival methods. According to the terms of the concessions made by various popes at the instance of Friars Minor of the Observance during the last two hundred years the grant of indulgences is, practically speaking, limited to that form of the exercise which we use to-day, the form which was gradually adopted in the West by the sons of St Francis, and which has been placed by the Holy See under their special charge and direction. That the Franciscan Order may justly claim to hold a quite exceptional position with regard to this devotion no one will be tempted to dispute. Ever since the thirteenth century these devoted religious have been the official custodians of the holy places. They have borne the heat and burden of the day during periods of great hardship, danger and humiliation. They have remained faithful at their posts, never faltering in their work of love, and no tongue can tell the countless services they have rendered to successive generations of pilgrims who, thronging from all parts of the world to this barbarous and hostile land, have found themselves almost entirely dependent upon their good offices.

But while in this way the great work of the veneration and maintenance of the holy places owes almost everything to the sons of St Francis, it would not seem that down to the close of the seventeenth century we can connect them with any definite system of honouring the Way of the Cross in western lands. In Antwerp, as we have already seen (p. 69), they favoured an arrangement of seven stations; at Jerusalem itself they counted eight; on the Sacro Monte di Varallo Blessed Bernardino Caimi, O.F.M., arranged for the erection of more than a score of chapels leading up to Calvary.[156] Hence, although before the days of that great apostolic preacher St Leonard of Port Maurice, the Way of the Cross had become a practice of devotion which was almost distinctive of the Franciscan missionaries in Italy and was much relied upon by them, the scheme of Stations was not of their own creation. There can be no doubt that, consciously or unconsciously, they had merely borrowed the arrangement set out by Adrichomius and invented by Pascha, adapting the exercise for popular use by the recitation of a few simple prayers at each halting place and by the singing of hymns as the congregation moved from one to another. It is only with the closing years of the seventeenth century that we begin to meet with a certain number of papal briefs directly connecting the Franciscans of the Observance with the exercise of the Way of the Cross. These were granted at the instance of the General of the Order, and they were the prelude of an important movement which was soon to follow. It would take us a great deal too far to attempt to enter into the exact provisions of these early papal documents. The question all turned upon the possibility of communicating to those who took part in the exercise of the Stations in Europe or elsewhere the extraordinarily rich indulgences which were believed to attach to the veneration of the actual halting places in the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. It is sufficient to say that this communication of privileges was first accepted in principle by Popes Innocent XI and XII, and that after being limited at first to those who were under the jurisdiction of the Franciscan General, either as members of the Order or as tertiaries, etc., it was gradually extended to those who visited the sets of Stations erected in Franciscan churches, and finally was placed within the reach of all the faithful who complied with certain conditions in any church, providing that the fourteen Stations had been canonically erected there by some priest duly empowered, either as himself a member of the Order of Friars Minor[157] or as the appointed delegate of their Father General.

Curiously enough it had been boldly asserted, as far back as the close of the fifteenth century, that those who travelled to Jerusalem in spirit only, might gain all the indulgences offered to the pilgrims who venerated the holy places by their bodily presence. There was certainly at that time no papal authority for any such belief, but the statement is clearly made upon the title page of the little book of Heer Bethlem mentioned above (see p. 79, note),[158] and is developed in the following passage of Bethlem’s Introduction:

TITLE PAGE (reduced) OF THE FRENCH EDITION OF PASCHA’S “GHEESTELYCK PELGRIMAGIE”
This book includes the mention of the usual indulgences to be gained at the Holy Places (see the facsimile, p. 78) though it does not, like Bethlem’s little manual, proclaim them on its title-page.

“This is the indulgence of the holy city of Calvary, which indulgence everyone can gain who follows the painful and heavy way of the cross-bearing of the naked, bleeding Jesus, and thinks with pity on the bitter Passion in his inmost heart. This is not so to be understood as if those only gained it who are in Jerusalem or who travel there, but all persons in what place soever they are, if in their inmost heart they turn to God and meditate with attention and compassion on those holy places where this took place—as much as humanly they can—may gain this indulgence from the mercy of God as often as they themselves wish, and also as entirely as if they were in the city of Jerusalem and visited bodily all these holy places. Still those who travel thither with great labour and expense will, without doubt, be heard by our dear Lord according to the greatness of their labours and their devotions. But those who cannot come there bodily, and who with the powers of their soul meditate on those holy places and salute them with compassion, after the manner hereafter described, to such as these the indulgence of the holy city of Jerusalem and of Calvary shall be as fully granted as if they had been present there in person; because the holy popes have given us this out of the worthy merits of the bleeding, crucified Jesus Christ, our dear Lord, by His holy Wounds and precious Blood poured out, in the same way as the indulgence of Rome is given us to be gained in all churches. Thus those pastors give us power to lessen penalties and remit guilt. This [indulgence] is found true and has been proved, and all Christian men should constantly gain it, that their cold hearts may be inflamed by the hot Blood of Jesus Christ as He suffered His bitter Passion so willingly for us.”[159]

Of the fact that the indulgences of the holy places have now been validly communicated, and are available for those who piously make the Way of the Cross in any church in which it has been properly erected, there can be no doubt whatever. What is not quite so clear is the precise nature of the spiritual treasures which have been thus placed within the reach of all the faithful. From the fourteenth century onwards the numberless accounts which have been preserved to us of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land make particular mention of the large indulgences which were there to be gained upon the simple condition of praying at each of the various shrines to which they were attached. It would even seem that at an early date compendious lists of these holy places, both in Jerusalem and throughout Palestine, naming each shrine and the indulgence attached to it, were in regular use and passed from hand to hand. We have, moreover, much evidence to show that the pilgrims made a practice of copying out these lists and bringing them back with them to Europe, where they too often served the writer, instead of notes of a more personal and trustworthy character, to draw up an account of his visit to the holy places after his return. The items mentioned in this list and the character of the indulgences attached to them often vary considerably; though in saying that the indulgences vary, I do not mean that, as so often happened with devotional shrines in the West, fantastic figures and terms of years were quoted at haphazard. Only two types of indulgence commonly appear—the plenary, which was usually called an indulgence a pœna et culpa (remission of penalty and guilt),[160] and the partial, which was always in these cases an indulgence of seven years and seven quarantines (or lents). The reader is informed in many of these relations that where a cross is marked (☩) a plenary indulgence is to be understood; where some other symbol is used or nothing is said, an indulgence of seven years should be assumed. At the same time, if we compare the narratives of different pilgrims, we find a great many discrepancies. The shrine which according to one witness enjoys a plenary indulgence, according to another is only to be credited with an indulgence of seven years, and in the opinion of yet a third is not indulgenced at all.[161] The general impression derived from these varying statements is not very favourable either to the authenticity of the grants or to the seriousness of the effort to keep an accurate record of them.

There is, however, one point upon which we find that the writers who mention the matter at all, were, practically speaking, unanimous. They maintained that the indulgences attached to the holy places were of the most venerable antiquity. It was Pope St Silvester, they asserted, who granted them at the prayer of the Emperor Constantine and his mother St Helen. Thus, to take an example almost at random, Ogier d’Anglure, in 1395, distinctly asserts[162] that the said indulgences were granted at the prayer of St Helen and of “Saint” Constantine her son. Or to quote the still more formal assertion of Nompar de Caumont in 1419:

“Ci Ensuivent les pérégrinations, endulgences et pardonances de peine et de coulpe de toute la terre sainte, que je, Noper, Seigneur de Caumont, de Chasteau Nuef, de Chasteau Cullier et de Berbeguières, ay ensuités par la grace Nostre Seigneur; lesquelles endulgences furent concedées de saint Silvestre, papa, à la requeste de l’empereur Constantin et de sainte Hellene, sa mere, et furent escriptes en la cipté de Jherusalem le xiiie jour du mois de juillet, l’an mil ccccxix.” Which is to say, in modern English:

“Here follow the pilgrimages, indulgences and pardons from penalty and guilt, of all the Holy Land, the which I, Noper, Lord of Caumont of Chasteau Nuef, of Chasteau Cullier and of Berbeguières, have duly accomplished by the grace of our Lord. And the said indulgences were granted by St Silvester, Pope, at the request of the Emperor Constantine and of St Helen his mother, and they were written down [by me] in the City of Jerusalem the thirteenth day of the month of July in the year one thousand four hundred and nineteen.”[163]

No doubt it may very reasonably be objected that these are statements made by irresponsible private pilgrims, laymen who would naturally in those days have accepted without questioning any pious legend that was current among their contemporaries. But, if this be so, we can only attach the more importance to the deliberate utterances of the official custodians of the holy places. Now among these a certain Brother Francesco Suriano holds an exceptional position. He was twice over guardian of Mount Sion (i.e., Superior of all the Franciscan communities in Palestine) and Commissary Apostolic, and he was evidently a man of scholarly tastes, who gave himself to research, as research was understood in those days. Now, in his book, which he calls distinctly “Indulgentie de Terra Sancta,” he says, with all the deliberation of a man who has taken some pains to investigate the point, that all the indulgences of the Holy Land, with the exception of three, were granted by St Silvester. The other three indulgences, which he specifies, had been granted only a few years before by Pope Sixtus IV,[164] and the document containing them was still preserved in their archives at Jerusalem. But the Bull of Pope Silvester, adds Fra Suriano with much naïveté—he had evidently hunted for it—is not any longer to be found there. Moreover, in another revision of his work, Suriano himself propounds the objection that the institution of plenary indulgences was more recent than the time of St Silvester, for the Portiuncula indulgence of St Francis had been, he declares, the earliest example of such a concession. To this difficulty he finds nothing better to say than that Pope Silvester no doubt granted the indulgences in the form which was customary in his own day. The matter, I may add, is discussed with the same seriousness by Quaresmius, in the most careful and authoritative of all the books ever produced by the Franciscan custodians of the holy places. Quaresmius unhesitatingly accepts the tradition referred to, and is at pains to refute the objections which had been made against the possibility of St Silvester having granted such indulgences as early as A.D. 335.

Now, the modern reader will not require to be told that the supposition of St Silvester having granted indulgences in the time of Constantine is absolutely inadmissible and impossible. If no better authority than that of St Silvester can be found for these indulgences, they are unquestionably spurious. Moreover, so far as regards the middle ages, it is hard to understand why no record should be found at Mount Sion if the grants had really been made by any later pope. By the end of the fifteenth century, for example, it was generally stated that there was an indulgence at the house of Veronica. But the numerous early pilgrims, while mentioning other sites, say nothing of this one. Veronica’s house had only been known for one hundred years at most, and if any indulgence had been attached to it, the grant must have been made in quite recent times. Yet, when Suriano wrote in 1485, no documents were preserved and no memory existed of any such separate concession for Veronica’s house. What is more, we find that in the numerous extant narratives of pilgrimages earlier than about 1345 there is not the least mention of any indulgence attaching to the holy places.[165] Such detailed accounts as those of Wilbrand de Oldenburg (1212), Burchard (1283), Ricoldus (1294), Philippus Brusserius (c. 1287), Simon FitzSimon (1322), Marino Sanuto (1321), or Lodulf Sudheim (1348) may be searched in vain for the slightest trace of any belief to that effect.[166] It is hard to resist the conviction that the whole complexus of these vague, fluctuating and indefinite indulgences was apocryphal.

Now this, of course, is rather a startling conclusion, for it would follow from it that the pilgrims who at the cost of infinite hardship, danger and expense made their way over sea and land to pay honour to the scenes of our Lord’s earthly life were deceived and disappointed in their hope of generous recompense from the spiritual treasury of the Church. Perhaps we may reasonably hold that in the case of an error so widespread and so inculpable “the Church supplied,” and that the well meaning pilgrims were not defrauded of their expectations. But the element of doubt must in any case remain.

With regard to the indulgences of the holy places at a later period, and with regard consequently to the indulgences now communicated to those who make the Stations, matters stand upon a somewhat different footing. It seems to have occurred to Brother Boniface of Ragusa, who was the guardian of Mount Sion in the middle of the sixteenth century, that a grant of indulgences attributed to Pope Silvester was not perhaps the safest form of title-deed upon which these privileges of the Church could be based, and he accordingly applied to Pope Pius IV for a confirmation. This was granted in a Bull dated July 17, 1561, a copy of which in Quaresmius’s time was preserved at Jerusalem among the archives of the Franciscan Custodians of the Holy Places. The Bull of confirmation is in many respects a most remarkable document. It does not specify the indulgences which were to be confirmed, but it states that they were said to have first been conceded by Pope St Silvester and that they were enumerated upon a certain “tabella” in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. When Quaresmius wrote, not much more than fifty years later, he, though himself the successor of Brother Boniface in the office of guardian of Mount Sion, was quite in the dark as to what this “tabella” might be. He knew of nothing of the sort preserved in the Holy Sepulchre Church, but he conjectures that the Bull must refer to a copy of that widely circulated list of the shrines and their indulgences to which we have made reference above. That Pius IV should have confirmed a list of indulgences which professed to emanate from St Silvester but were quite indeterminate in their nature does not seem a very satisfactory proceeding. Neither is the case improved by the clause in the Bull to the effect that the indulgences “are conceded anew in the same manner and form in which they were originally granted.” At the same time the terms of the document leave no doubt that Pius IV intended to remedy all defects and to make a new grant in case the former concession was invalid. How far this Bull of confirmation can be treated as of undoubted force and authority I must leave to more learned theologians to determine. Without in the least questioning the genuineness of the instrument itself, it seems to me to offer certain weak points to an opponent who might be disposed to argue that the Bull was void, owing to the irregular form in which it had been drafted.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the document is the manifest intention of the framer to tie the hands of succeeding pontiffs. Apart from the ordinary non obstantibus clauses familiar in such concessions and the equally familiar formula that the privilege conceded is to “endure for ever,” the Pope seems distinctly to contemplate the case of some subsequent enactment which might revoke his grant. “We declare these present letters,” he says, “to be in no wise included under any dispositions to a contrary effect which may emanate on occasion from us and from the Roman Pontiffs our successors, but seeing the remoteness of these holy places and their sanctity, we declare these present letters to be always excepted from any such dispositions, and as often as they shall be issued so often shall these letters of ours be restored to their primitive and most vigorous state ... and shall be granted and be held to be granted anew.” Let us hasten to admit that the text of the Bull by no means reads so simply and straightforwardly as I have rendered it. There are several intervening clauses which I have omitted, and of one of these I can make no sense whatever. The tenses also as printed by Quaresmius are quite untranslatable. But, in spite of this the general meaning seems plainly to be what I have stated. All things considered, it is probable that we ought to lay stress upon the words attenta locorum distantia et religione, and to conclude that this portion of the document is intended to protect the holy places from any ill-considered general clause in some future papal constitution revoking such concessions. It was no doubt meant that the indulgences attached to the holy places should remain in force until there had been time to represent the matter, and to obtain a final decision upon this special point direct from the Holy See. Whether such provision for the automatic reviviscence of privileges, in case a subsequent pontiff should attempt to abrogate them, was ultra vires concedentis, and whether a concession ultra vires invalidates the whole document in which it is contained, I leave for canonists to determine.

It should also perhaps be noticed here that when Clement XII, in 1731, issued his instructions for making the Way of the Cross in public, the following regulation was included among the rest:

“No announcement should be made either from the pulpit or otherwise, and still less by any written placard set up in the chapels or attached to the Stations, to publish in definite numbers the amount of the indulgences which may be gained by performing the Stations. It has often been discovered that either by inadvertence or by error, or by confusion between one devotion and another, the true character of the indulgences has been wrongly represented. Consequently it will be sufficient to say that whoever meditates on the Passion of our Lord during these holy exercises, by the concession of the sovereign Pontiffs, will gain the same indulgences as if he had personally visited the Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem.”

In his treatise on the Way of the Cross, St Leonard of Port Maurice, at whose instance this instruction of Clement XII had been issued, declares that the regulation just quoted had been made for very wise reasons; for the catalogues which contained authentic details of these indulgences of Jerusalem had been destroyed by fire in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the time of St Pius V (1566-1572). Be it said in passing that there seems to be no record of any such fire. Quaresmius, who was the superior of the Franciscans in Jerusalem a little more than fifty years afterwards and who was anxious to explain the disappearance of the tabulæ, makes no mention of a conflagration in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. On the contrary we know that the building remained intact from the middle ages to the great fire of 1808. Again it is remarkable that Suriano (c. 1495), who was equally guardian of Mount Sion, makes no mention of any “authentic” catalogue of indulgences, although he has every reason to touch upon the subject in the various redactions of his “Indulgentie de Terra Santa.” Supposing, with Quaresmius and Ferraris, that the lost tabulæ were simply a copy of one of the old medieval lists of which we have spoken, we may note that for Quaresmius, who had such a list before him, the Stations of the Cross from the Prætorium to the Holy Sepulchre apparently included six plenary and five partial indulgences. The guide books at the present day indicate six plenary and eight partial indulgences. But the variations in the estimates of the indulgences attaching to the Via Crucis had best be studied in the tabular statement of the data given by various authorities both before and after the Bull of Pius IV, which will be found in the Appendix. In any case these indulgences are extremely moderate when compared with those alleged to belong to the Stations at Rome.

We have already said that the greatest development of the Way of the Cross as a popular devotion dates back to the time of St Leonard of Port Maurice, O.F.M. (he died in 1751), being due partly to the immense zeal with which he propagated this practice of piety, partly to the favour which he enjoyed with Popes Clement XII and Benedict XIV. It was the latter Pontiff who, in 1750, erected the Stations of the Cross in the Coliseum, the great ruined amphitheatre of ancient Rome, and there the exercise used to be conducted processionally every Friday afternoon down to the time of the Italian occupation. Under the influence mainly of the Franciscan Fathers of the Observance, the devotion of the Stations spread rapidly from Italy throughout Europe, in the same form, practically speaking, in which it is familiar to us at the present day. In England it does not appear to have become at all generally known before about 1845, and we may probably attribute its introduction to the devotional revival which took place among English Catholics about that date, under the influence of such men as Dr Gentili, Father Ignatius Spencer and other representatives of a more ultramontane tradition. None the less a booklet upon the Way of the Cross, which was published in Rome in 1834 and was indulgenced by Pope Gregory XVI for private recitation with the same indulgences as if the exercise were performed in a church, was translated into English and issued about 1835 from the Propaganda Press. It seems to have been intended for use in all English-speaking countries, and I have seen a copy printed at Sydney, Australia, in 1840.

Of the conditions regulating the practice of the Stations of the Cross at the present day I may be content to say only a very few words. All the larger modern treatises on indulgences, for example those of Beringer and Mocchegiani, afford the fullest information upon every question that is likely to arise. For the proper performance of the exercise and the gaining of the indulgences it is in the first place necessary that the Stations should be properly erected. This involves the obtaining of the permission of the bishop and the parish priest, and the blessing of the Stations on the spot, according to a specially appointed form, by a Franciscan or some other priest duly empowered for the purpose. The sculptures or pictures need not be blessed, but the crosses which are fastened to them must. These crosses are bound to be of wood, and it is to them that the blessing attaches. In other words, the pictures or sculptures may be replaced as long as the crosses remain. The Stations must be fourteen in number, and should be separated the one from the other by some little interval, while the subjects depicted upon them are not optional, but must be those mentioned in the papal constitutions. Lest any scruple or popular deception should arise from some flaw in the observance of these conditions in the past, the Holy See has several times issued decrees declaring all the sets of Stations, which up to a certain date had been exposed in churches for the veneration of the faithful, validly erected and duly indulgenced, thus supplying for any accidental defect.[167]

With regard to the exercise itself three things only are required: first meditation on the Passion of Christ; secondly, the moving from station to station; thirdly, that the whole fourteen stations should be visited continuously, that is to say, without any notable interruption.

Supposing the state of grace on the part of the person performing the exercise, the indulgences may be fully gained by the devout observance of these three conditions. Moreover, according to the more probable opinion they may be gained toties quoties, i.e., as many times in the day as the exercise is repeated. No recitation of a specified number of “Our Fathers” or “Hail Marys” is prescribed as of obligation; neither is it necessary to meditate upon the subject of each successive station as it is visited in order. Meditation on the Passion in general is sufficient. With regard to the moving from place to place recent decrees have approved the practice of the congregation remaining in their seats when the exercise is being publicly made in a crowded church. Some little external indication that the procession is being mentally followed, as the priest and acolytes pass from one station to another, is all that is recommended.

In practice it is customary when the exercise is performed in public to follow the prayers now to be found in almost every prayerbook. The officially approved “Manual of Prayers for Congregational Use” embodies a concise form of the devotion translated from the Italian of St Alphonsus Liguori. In passing from station to station a strophe of the Stabat Mater is usually sung.

Finally, it should be noticed that for the benefit of invalids, prisoners and others who are unable to obtain access to the stations in a public church, Fathers of the Franciscan Order have power to communicate the stational indulgence to crucifixes for private use. To gain the indulgence it is only necessary to hold the crucifix in the hand and to say twenty Our Fathers, Hail Marys and Glorias with contrition and devotion. For those who are too ill to make this physical effort the conditions may be rendered less onerous.

Appendix A—Heer Bethlem’s “Overwegingen”

A clue which I have only been able to follow up since the foregoing pages were in type leads to the conclusion that in some of its aspects the practice of making spiritual pilgrimages to the Holy Land is rather older than I had supposed. The substance of the little book of Heer Bethlem referred to on pp. 77-79, must undoubtedly have been compiled in the fifteenth century. Besides the British Museum Manuscript (Ad. 24937) another MS. copy of the same tractate exists at Göttingen (MS. Theol. 295, i)[168] and a fragment of the same is contained in MS. 406 of the Pauline Library at Münster.[169] Now as in each case the manuscripts are described by competent authority as belonging to the fifteenth century, it would be unreasonable to doubt that Heer Bethlem’s little work must be somewhat older than say the year 1490. On the other hand, as Pope Sixtus IV is mentioned, it must be more recent than the year 1471. The proper title seems to be “Overwegingen op het Lijden des Heeren voor degenen, die in den Geest de heilige Plaatsen willen bezoeken” (Considerations upon the Passion of our Lord for those who wish to visit the Holy Places in spirit). Although the considerations began as far back as the Last Supper, it is strictly a book of the Stations of the Cross; the distances from place to place are given, the indulgences announced and special prayers assigned. Here we find for the first time the reception of the cross mentioned as a separate station, and here also a fall is distinctly alluded to in connexion with the Judicial Gate. These points at least have seemingly been borrowed by Pascha from Bethlem’s little book. The book was printed in 1518, 1520, 1536 and 1561. It has also been transcribed and reprinted in modern times in the “Bijdragen voor de Geschiedendis van het Bisdom van Haarlem,” by C. J. Gonnet, vol. XI, p. 324.

This Appendix was itself in type when at the very last moment I have found it possible to push the enquiry a stage further. The little tract ascribed to Heer Bethlem must undoubtedly have had a wide circulation. Tiny as it is, and in consequence exceptionally liable to be thrown aside and destroyed, we have already accounted for four Dutch editions. And now it appears that it must have been popular in France as well, for I have discovered two printed French translations in the library of the British Museum.[170] The first may be dated conjecturally 1550, and was published by Jacques Kerver at Paris with this title: “Devote Meditation sur la Mort et Passion de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ et de place en place ou nostre Sauveur a souffert pour nous, avec les oraisons a ce proprices. Et disent quelques uns qu’autant de fois qu’on les dict devotement, on gaigne tous les pardons aussi pleinement comme si on visitoit corporellement toutes les sainctes places en Hierusalem.” In this version a good deal of matter—mostly French verse—has been interpolated. The second translation keeps closer to the original. It seems to have been printed about 1570 by Guillaume Merlin at Paris. The title runs thus: “Sensuyt une devote meditation sur la Mort et Passion de nostre Sauveur et Redempteur Jesus Christ, avec les mesures mises de place en place ou nostre Seigneur a souffert pour nous.”

Among the introductory remarks we read: “Item un honorable homme d’eglise, nommé Sire Barthelemy, qui a demouré long temps en la terre de promission en la cité de Hierusalem a descript ce livre devot. Et il a mesuré bien etroictement et descript toutes les places sainctes ou nostre benoist sauveur et redempteur a souffert pour nous.” The author, therefore, according to this translator, was called Bartholomew. Whether “Bethlem” was a legitimate form of this name, or whether it was due to some error, I am not sufficiently acquainted with Flemish to determine. But there seems in any case reason to suppose that Bethlem was not the original form. About the year 1475 a tiny volume was printed at “Aesii” (i.e., Jesi in the Marches of Ancona), which professed to give the indulgences of the Holy Land and which were written by a certain Bartholomew, Canon of Pola in Istria. Now I believe, from various minor indications too long to detail, that this Bartholomew is no other than our Bethlem. From a copy of this rare little treatise preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris we learn that the title begins: “Queste sono le perdonanzze de terra sancta in ierusalem, lequelle scrise prete bartolome, chanonicho de puole, el quale ando a vixitare lo sancto sepulchro,” etc. The printer was Frederick de Comitibus. See Pellechet, “Catalogue des Incunables,” vol. I.

Appendix B.—TABLE of INDULGENCES

Name | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | XIII | XIV
N. da Poggibonsi (1346) | + | _ | _ | _ | _ | _ | _ | +1 | + | _ | _ | ☦ | ☦2 | ☦
James of Verona(3) (c. 1375) | + | _ | _ | _ | + | + | _ | _ | ☦ | _ | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Simone Sigoli (1384) | + | _ | _ | _ | _ | _ | _ | _ | ☦4 | +5 | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
N. de Martoni (1394) | _ | _ | _ | + | _ | _ | _ | +6 | + | + | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
d’ Anglure (1395) | + | _ | _ | + | + | _ | _ | +8 | _ | _ | ☦ | ☦ | _ | ☦
Nompar de Caumont (1418) | ☦ | _ | _ | + | +9 | _ | _ | _ | + | + | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Georg Pfintzing (1436) | ☦ | _ | _ | + | +9 | _ | _ | _ | + | _ | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Wey (1458) | ☦ | _ | _ | + | + | + | _ | + | + | + | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Bethlem (? 1475) | ☦ | + | ☦ | ☦ | + | + | ☦ | _ | _ | + | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Voyage de la Sainte Cité (1480) | _ | _ | _ | + | +9 | _ | _ | _ | + | _ | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Felix Fabri (1483) | ☦ | _ | _ | ☦ | ☦ | + | _ | + | ☦12 | + | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Francesco Suriano (1490) | ☦ | _ | _ | ☦ | + | + | _ | _ | + | + | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Claes van Dusen(13) (1495) | ☦ | _ | _ | + | + | ☦ | _ | + | _ | + | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Philip van Hagen (1523) | + | _ | ☦ | + | + | + | _ | + | _ | + | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Quaresmius (1624) | ☦ | _ | _ | + | + | + | _ | _ | _ | + | ☦ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Pietr’ Antonio (1700) | ☦ | _ | _ | + | + | + | _ | _ | _ | _ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Antonio do Sacramento (1748) | ☦ | _ | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | ☦ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦
Liévin (1876) | ☦ | ☦ | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | ☦ | ☦ | ☦ | ☦

Name | E.H. | Phar. | Dives | J.G.
N. da Poggibonsi (1346) | _ | + | _ | _
James of Verona (c. 1375) | _ | + | + | _
Simone Sigoli (1384) | _ | + | _ | _
N. de Martoni (1394) | _ | _ | _ | +7
d’ Anglure (1395) | _ | _ | _ | _
Nompar de Caumont (1418) | +10 | _ | + | _
Georg Pfintzing (1436) | _ | + | _ | _
Wey (1458) | ☦11 | _ | _ | ☦
Bethlem (? 1475) | + | _ | _ | _
Voyage de la Sainte Cité (1480) | ☦ | _ | _ | +
Felix Fabri (1483) | + | + | + | _
Francesco Suriano (1490) | + | ☦ | + | _
Claes van Dusen(13) (1495) | + | + | + | _
Philip van Hagen (1523) | _ | + | + | _
Quaresmius (1624) | ☦ | + | _ | +
Pietr’ Antonio (1700) | ☦ | _ | _ | +
Antonio do Sacramento (1748) | ☦ | ☦ | _ | _
Liévin (1876) | ☦ | _ | _ | _

I—Pilate. II—Cross. III—First Fall. IV—Mary. V—Simon. VI—Veronica. VII—Second Fall. VIII—Women. IX—Third Fall. X—Stripping. XI—Nailing. XII—Crucifixion. XIII—Pieta. XIV—Sepulchre. E.H.—Ecce Homo Arch. Phar.—Pharisee. Dives—Dives. J.G.—Judicial Gate.

+: Plenary Indulgence.

☦: Indulgence of Seven Years and Seven Lents.

Notes to Appendix B—Table of Indulgences

1. Poggibonsi supposes the meetings with Mary, the women of Jerusalem and Simon to have all taken place at same spot.

2. I take the indulgences attached to the Stone of Unction as the equivalent of an indulgence for the thirteenth station.

3. These indulgences are marked in the Proœmium to James of Verona’s journey. This is almost certainly a later interpolation. The journey itself took place in 1335.

4. “Where Simon came to help Him,” says Sigoli. He means where Simon ceased to help Him.

5. I take the place of the casting of lots as the equivalent of the stripping.

6. He says “the three Marys,” but he means the women.

7. This might perhaps be counted as an indulgence for the seventh station.

8. Here Christ took the cross from Simon again.

9. Nompar and others suppose that Christ met Simon and the women at the same spot.

10. The two stones on which Christ rested.

11. Wey mentions, “porta civitatis per quam Jesus fuit ductus ad mortem”; it is not clear whether he refers to the Judicial Gate or the Ecce Homo Arch.

12. This assigning a plenary indulgence to the stone in the courtyard is no accidental oversight, but the statement is twice repeated at length.

13. Claes van Dusen made eleven successive pilgrimages to Jerusalem in eleven successive years.

Appendix C—Relative Antiquity of the Various Stations

In “La Palestine, Guide Historique,” by the Assumptionist Professors of Notre Dame de Sion a list is given of the Stations with the dates of their earliest appearance in the narratives of pilgrims to the Holy Land. As my conclusions differ in many respects from those there enunciated, a few notes may be added upon this subject.

I. The Prætorium seems perhaps to be first quite unmistakably assigned to the site which has now become traditional by Riccoldo (1296), and this, as I judge, for the thoroughly sound and scientific reason that the Prætorium must have lain within the city wall, and consequently could not have been situated on Mount Sion. They accordingly located it where there were signs of the existence of a paved courtyard (lithostrotos) near the Ecce Homo Arch.

II. The receiving of the cross is first indicated as a special object of devotion by Bethlem, c. 1475. See above, p. 78.

III. The idea of the first of a series of falls, as distinct from the fall at the corner where the station of Simon of Cyrene used to be indicated, is also clearly traceable to Bethlem. He and other contemporaries suppose that this first fall took place upon the steps of the Scala Santa outside Pilate’s Prætorium.

IV and V. The meetings with our Lady and with Simon of Cyrene seem first to be plainly commemorated in Riccoldo 1296.

VI. Veronica’s house first appears amongst the holy places of Jerusalem in the Proœmium of James of Verona. This pilgrimage was made in 1335, but the Proœmium must be a later addition. It is, however, in any case older than 1420.

VII. A fall at the gate of the city is very clearly indicated in the preface to Burchard, 1283. Possibly it was from this source that Bethlem (? 1475) came to speak of “a heavy fall” at the Judicial Gate.

VIII. The meeting with the women of Jerusalem is mentioned by most pilgrims of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, though they consider that it is closely associated with the coming of Simon of Cyrene. Our Lord spoke to the women as soon as He was relieved of the weight of the cross and was in consequence able to raise His head.

IX. Verona (1335) and Poggibonsi (1346) speak of the stone in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, upon which our Saviour fell, or, as other accounts say, rested for a while when climbing the steep of Calvary.

X, XI, XII. These stations are made prominent as separate incidents by Pascha (?c. 1539). The stripping appears among the seven Falls before 1500. See pp. 65, 72 and 73.

XIII and XIV. It can by no means be said, as in “La Palestine, Guide Historique,” that the thirteenth and fourteenth stations were only added to the Way of the Cross in the eighteenth century at the earliest. Both these episodes are separately commemorated and illustrated by pictures in the “Geystlich Strass,” 1521. See illustration above at p. 154.

Footnotes

1.  This is stated even by Thalhofer, in the second edition of the “Kirchenlexicon,” art. Kreuzweg.

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.

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).

4.  “Pilgrimage of St Silvia,” pp. 15, 16, in the translation of the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society.

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.

6.  “Civiltà Cattolica,” p. 722, September, 1895.

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).

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.

9.  “Acta Sanctorum,” Oct. vol. II, p. 466.

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.)

11.  See Sepp, “Jerusalem und das heilige Land,” 2nd edition, vol. I, p. 504.

12.  See Father John Morris, S.J., “Life of St Thomas of Canterbury,” 2nd edition, p. 508.

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.

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.

15.  Barbier de Montault, “Œuvres,” vol. VIII, p. 152, from the Dominican Breviary.

16.  Wadding, “Annales Minorum,” ad annum 1491.

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).

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.

19.  “Primeira Parte da Chronica de Cister,” Lisbon, 1602, book VI, c. xxxiv, fol. 463.

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.

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.

22.  Keppler, “Die XIV Stationen des hl. Kreuzwegs. Eine geschichtliche und kunstgeschichtliche Studie,” p. 13. Freiburg: Herder. This has been in large measure supplemented by an article by Dr N. Paulus in the “Katholik” for April, 1895, entitled, “Zur Geschichte der Kreuzwegandacht.”

23.  “The Departure of my Lady Mary from this world,” translated from the Syriac by Dr William Wright, “Journal of Sacred Literature,” April, 1865. This account is copied from a MS. of the sixth century. On the apocryphal “Transitus Mariæ,” see O. Sinding, “Mariæ Tod und Himmelfahrt,” and Mommert, “Die Dormitio und das deutsche Grundstück auf dem traditionellen Sion,” Leipzig, 1899.

24.  Tischendorf, “Apocalypses Apocryphæ,” introduction. This account is derived from the Codex Ambrosianus, L. 58.

25.  This, on the whole excellent, translation is the work of Mr Aubrey Stewart. In this and future extracts from Fabri I have occasionally ventured to modify a phrase or two where the original Latin seemed to be less felicitously rendered.

26.  Fabri (P.P.T.S.), vol. I, pp. 505, 506.

27.  According to the statement of an English pilgrim in MS. Harleian 2333, fol. 5a, the Franciscan guides used to explain everything in four languages, “that is to say, latyn, italien, frensche and duche.”

28.  Felix Fabri, p. 440.

29.  “The Book of the Wanderings of Brother Felix Fabri,” vol. I, pp. 393, 394.

30.  “Voyage de la Saincte Cyté de Hierusalem,” ed. C. Schefer, p. 75.

31.  Fabri, pp. 508, 509.

32.  pp. 340, 341.

33.  The Latin is “dedit auctoritatem omnibus sacerdotibus ... active et passive audiendi confessiones.” It probably means that they could both receive the confession and give absolution.

34.  See Professor Funk’s article in the “Real-Encyclopädie der Christlichen Alterthümer” (F. X. Kraus), II, p. 783.

35.  “Pastor”; Sim. v, I.

36.  It will be noticed that Wey, like the pilgrims referred to in our last chapter, travelled in the opposite direction to our Lord, beginning from Calvary and going eastwards.

37.  “Verdadera Informacion de la Tierra Sancta,” by Ant. de Aranda, Guardian de Sant Francisco de Alcalà de Henares. The preface is dated 1530 from the Franciscan monastery of Mount Sion, but the first edition of the book, it is interesting to note, was printed in 1533, by Miguel de Eguya, the printer who harboured St Ignatius at Alcalà, and brother of the Diego de Eguya who became a Jesuit, and who was the saint’s confessor down to the time of his death. I have only had access to the edition of Toledo, 1550.

38.  Wey also copied into his book another account of the holy places at Jerusalem in English verse. This is seemingly of older date than his own, and no mention is made of Veronica. But we read, e.g.:

Ther Jhesu mett with his Modyr Marie
Ther sorowyd together both He and she;
And ther the wymmen of Jerusalem
Wept on Chryst when that He cam.

Another copy of this poem, with many variations, is in MS. Ashmole, 61.

39.  Lapis cum crucibus super quem Christus cecidit cum cruce.

40.  Strata per quam Christus transivit ad suam passionem.

41.  Domus divitis negantis micas dare Lazaro.

42.  Ubi Christus cecidit cum cruce.

43.  Locus ubi mulieres flebant propter Christum.

44.  Locus ubi vidua sive Veronica posuit sudarium super faciem Christi.

45.  Locus ubi beatissima Maria sincopizavit.

46.  Porta per quam Christus transibat ad passionem.

47.  Piscina in qua egroti sanabantur tempore Christi.

48.  Lapides super quos stetit Christus quando judicatus erat ad mortem.

49.  Locus ubi beata Maria transivit ad scolas.

50.  Domus Pilati.

51.  Domus Herodis.

52.  Domus Simonis Pharisey.

53.  Sir Richard Guylforde was Master of the Ordnance, Knight of the Garter and a privy councillor. He died at Jerusalem in the course of his pilgrimage, and the account of his travels was written by his chaplain.

54.  “The Pylgrymage of Sir Richard Guylforde to the Holy Land, A.D. 1506,” pp. 28-30.

55.  He evidently means to be particularly accurate, for he remarks that the said paces are “those which we friars commonly use when we are stepping out freely”; “que comunmente hazemos los frayles quando caminamos a passo largo.”

56.  “Et est notandum quod a loco Calvarie usque ad idem prætorium sunt 450 passus, quos omni diligentia, qua potui, numeravi” (Tobler, “Descriptiones,” p. 229).

57.  “Topographie von Jerusalem,” I, p. 236.

58.  Curiously enough this stone with crosses—“lapis cum crucibus,” as Wey called it—in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, seems to drop out of sight in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is clearly shown in Breydenbach’s woodcut (c. 1487), copied on p. 28, where the pilgrims are seen kissing it. Not only Wey but Fabri asserts that there were many crosses on the stone (see p. 29 above). Yet many other pilgrims state that it was a small stone marked with only one cross. See e.g. M. Tschudi, 1519, “Reyss,” p. 191.

59.  In the narratives of the pilgrims, as explained above, the Stations are nearly always described in the reverse order, as seen by one travelling eastwards away from Calvary.

60.  Where two M’s or two V’s are given there are two mentions of Mary or Veronica, as the case may be.

61.  Dietrich expressly states that Christ spoke to the Holy Women in the very act of being relieved of His Cross by Simon of Cyrene. Aranda suggests the same. Others, e.g., Brasca, remark that He spoke to them as soon as the taking of the cross by Simon enabled Him for the first time to turn His head.

62.  See Lutsch, “Die Kunstdenkmäler des Reg. Bezirks Liegnitz,” part IV, pp. 676-677. This erection was commemorated in verse a century later by Bartholomew Andreade, who writes, for instance:

Quosque per anfractus Dominus salebrasque viarum

Robora sustinuit bajulus alta crucis,

Hos certo referet quem pingimus ordine tractus,

Unum ut qui novit, norit utrumque locum.

See C. G. Hoffmann, “Scriptores Rerum Lusaticarum,” vol. I, part ii, pp. 129-120.

63.  Mgr von Keppler quotes Wadding’s “Annales” for the statement that Philip of Aquila in 1456 erected a set of Stations in the Franciscan friary to which he belonged. I can find no justification for this assertion in Wadding or in the “Acta Sanctorum.” Wadding states only that B. Philip built little oratories, but no mention is made of the Passion or the Way of the Cross.

64.  Daun, “Adam Krafft und die Künstler seiner Zeit,” 1897, p. 65; and cf. “Mittheilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg,” II, 1880, p. 83.

65.  “Hir begegnet Jesus seiner wirdigen lieben Mutter, die vor grossem herzenleit anmechtig ward; IIc. schrytt von Pilatus haus.” The two Stations represented opposite have only been superimposed for convenience sake. Originally of course they stood many hundred yards apart, as the inscriptions indicate. The fourth of the series is reproduced in the frontispiece.

66.  How untrustworthy all these data are, may be seen from the fact that by several of the earlier fifteenth-century pilgrims the meeting with Simon of Cyrene and the women of Jerusalem is represented as taking place at the same point of the crossroads, and yet according to these measurements these two spots are nearly one hundred yards distant from each other.

67.  Although another carving, now very much mutilated, represents the Crucifixion, it would almost seem that this and the last are intended to form but one Station.

68.  “Anno 1508 hat er (Adam Krafft) vor dem Thiergärtnerthor in Stein gehauen und aufgerichtet die Sieben fäll Christi, welche man gemeiniglich nent bei den 7 Kreutzen bis hinaus ad montem Calvariæ, zu dem Capellein bey S. Johannes, zu dem Heiligen Grab genandt, dasselbig grosse Creuz, mit samt der zween Schäger” (J. Neudörffer, apud Daun, “Adam Krafft,” p. 140).

69.  Bishop von Keppler, “Kreuzweg,” p. 33; Weber, Riemenschneider, p. 24.

70.  We learn from Adrichomius that other sets of the Seven Falls, apparently copied from that at Louvain, existed at Mechlin (for many years the residence of Jan Pascha), Vilvorde and other towns of Brabant.

71.  “Een devote maniere om gheestelyck pelgrimagie te trecken tot den heyligen lande,” Louvain, 1563. Three editions of this—two in Flemish and one in French—are in the British Museum. The Museum does not, however, possess a copy of the first edition. There was a second edition of the French translation, which Röhricht in his “Bibliotheca” seems to have mistaken for an original work. Another Flemish edition was printed at Ghent in 1612.

72.  A full bibliography is given by U. Chevalier, “Bulletin d’Histoire Ecclésiastique des diocéses de Valence,” etc., vol. IV, p. 68.

73.  The famous Sacro Monte of Varallo was first instituted by Blessed Bernardino Caimi, Guardian of the Franciscan Observants in 1491. He had twice resided in the Holy Land, and had been custode of the holy places in 1477 and 1487. See “Miscellanea di Storia Franciscana,” I (1886), p. 61, and Galloni, “Uomini e Fatti Celebri in Valle Sessia,” p. 84. Cf. also Motta, “Il beato Bernardino Caimi” (1891), p. 16, and S. Butler, “Ex Voto,” pp. 46-56.

74.  “Société Départementale d’Archéologie, etc., de la Drôme, Bulletin,” vol. XV, p. 228; “Archives de la Société d’Histoire du Canton de Fribourg,” vol. V, p. 274 (1891). We learn that this set of Stations began with “la maison dudit Ponce Pilate, en laquelle la croix feust mise sur son pouvre doz.” The sites of these Stations at Fribourg can still be traced.

75.  “Le 1 Octobre, 1516, a esté exposé, par honneste homme Romanet Richard (he is described elsewhere as Boffin, dit Richard) marchand de ceste ville qu’il a faict faire sept piliers de pierre qui sont demonstratifs des saincts Lieux de Jérusalem, les quels il voudroit mettre et asseoir en certaines places et lieux de ceste ville, comme il a été compassé par le prestre de monsieur de Sainct-Pol et autres religieux de Jérusalem: ce qu’il n’oseroit faire sans le bon vouloir et consentement de mes dicts seigneurs les consuls et de la ville. A la quelle chose sont accordés les dicts messieurs les consuls et l’assemblée et que iceluy Romanet puisse prendre les lieux a luy nécessaires sans contradiction quelconque” (Extract from the Consular Registers of Romans, “Bulletin de la Société d’Archéologie de la Drôme,” vol. XV, p. 229).

76.  There can be little doubt that these seven pillars really corresponded to the Stations we have been describing. Speaking of the house of Pilate at Romans, Chevalier says: “C’est la première station qu’érigea Romanet Boffin, suivant le dessein qu’il avait d’abord conçu de faire sept piliers, dont le premier était placé dans le cimétière de Saint Bernard. Sur ce pilier on voyait un Ecce Homo.” Further he remarks of the Station representing the third fall, now the twenty-first in the series of Romans: “C’est la dernière station avant d’arriver au Calvaire... Elle a remplacé le sixième pilier du voyage primitif” (“Bulletin d’Histoire Ecclésiastique,” vol. III, pp. 226-229).

77.  Sanderus, “Chorographia Brabantica,” vol. II, Antwerp, FF. Min., pp. 7, 8.

78.  Leo X apparently granted a good many such indulgences. In some cases there can have been no question of seven sculptures (See the “Regesta Leonis PP. X,” ed. Hergenröther, nn. 14237-8, and 14627).

79.  Schreiber, nos. 642, 644, 646, 652, 654, 659 and 685. He seems, however, to be quite satisfied that the engravings are fifteenth century.

80.  “Dit is den berch van Calvarien.” “Een seer dovoet hantboecxken voor een jegelic kersten mensce hoe men den Berch van Calvarien opclimmen sal, ende helpen onsen heere zijn swaer cruyce draegen, want hi seer moede is geworden van swaren ancxte des doots. Ghedruct tot Leyden by my, Jan Mathijszoon, wonende of die Hoy-graft.” Another edition, of which there is a copy in the Bodleian, appeared at Amsterdam some years later.

81.  “The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Hierusalem, contayninge three hundred and sixtie five days,” etc. The Preface is signed R. H. The book is abridged from Jan Pascha’s “Gheestelyck Pelgrimagie,” and must have been printed abroad about the year 1630.

82.  The facts now stated in Appendix A go to show that the little book of Herr Bethlem was written earlier than this, though it may not have been printed so soon.

83.  “Die ganck die ons here Jesus ghinck wt Pilatus huse tot opten berch van Calvarien.” Printed by Henrick Lettersnider at Antwerp. It contains only six leaves. See Campbell, “Annales de la Typographie,” nn. 771-772.

84.  A manuscript copy of what is to all intents and purposes the same book is to be found among the Additional Manuscripts of the British Museum, no. 24937. See further in Appendix A, where the conjecture here made concerning the antiquity of the book will be found fully justified.

85.  His real name was perhaps Bartholomew. See Appendix A.

86.  “Dit is een devote meditacie op die passie ons liefs heeren ende van plaetse tot plaetsen die mate geset daer onse lieve heere voor ons gheleden heeft met die figueren, ende met schone oratien daer op dienende. Ende so dicke alsmen dit devotelick leest so verdienentmen alle die aflaten so volcomelic als oftmen alle die heilige plaetsen binnen Jerusalem lichamelick versochte. Ende een devote priester die langhe tyt te Jerusalem heeft ghewoont, die heeft dit ghemeten ende beschreven.” By mi Willem Voorsterman, Antwerp, 1538. The title page is printed in short lines red and black in alternate pairs. I have underlined the red. There is a fine eagle for printer’s device on the back of the last leaf.

87.  See illustrations facing pp. 68, 112.

88.  Daun, “Adam Krafft und die Künstler seiner Zeit,” p. 72.

89.  “I am called the ghostly way [i.e., the way of the soul], well known in the Passion of Christ.... Wouldst thou exactly perform this pilgrimage, thou hast psalms set down for thee to say; hast thou a desire to visit the Holy Land, all that is there thou mayst find here at hand.”

90.  The triple group of the Judgement of our Lord will be found reproduced further on at p. 112.

91.  Jan Pascha is the form of the name which appears on the title page. But in the “Biographie Nationale de Belgique” he is called Jan van Paesschen. He was Prior of the Carmelites at Mechlin and renowned as a preacher. It is not true, as has sometimes been stated, that he was appointed Inquisitor by Charles V.

92.  “Hier beghint dat eerste ghebet vanden langhen Cruysganck.☩

“Ende deser cruys ghebeden zynder alles tot vyfthien, die welcke goet ghelesen zijn ooc buyten tijts op sommighe vrij-dagen, oft op andere daghen voor groote saken” (P. Calentijn and Jan Pascha, “Een devote Maniere on gheestelyck Pelgrimagie te trecken,” Louvain, 1568, p. 93, 2).

93.  The terms used in the French translation, which appeared in 1566, are noteworthy: “S’ensuyt la premiere oraison du chemin ou voyage de la Croix, et ce pour la premiere Station.”

94.  Pascha, “Pérégrination Spirituelle,” Louvain, 1566, fol. 143, recto and verso.

95.  Jan Pascha died about 1532. It is doubtful how far his editor, Peter Calentyn, may have modified his work in preparing it for the press in 1563.

96.  The same thing seems already to have happened in the Louvain Stations erected by Peter Sterckx in 1505.

97.  “The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Hierusalem, contayning three hundred sixtie five dayes Jorney, wherein the devoute Person may meditate on sondrie points of his Redemption.” 16mo, without date or place.

98.  “Y con despecho muchas vezes la hallamos untada, y no de balsamo, asi acaece en todas las que basamos que estan en el campo o en la ciudad sin estar cubiertas, conviene a saber, sin edificio cerrado” (Aranda, fol. xxxiii, ro).

99.  “Il devotissimo Viaggio di Gerusalemme,” Rome, 1587.

100.  “Peregrinaciones Terræ Sanctæ.” See Röhricht, “Bibliotheca,” p. 100; a copy of the Venice edition, “Infrascripte sunt peregrinaciones,” is in the British Museum. Röhricht considers that this collection must date from the end of the fourteenth century.

101.  See Coppens, “The Palace of Caiphas,” 1904.

102.  Zuallardo, p. 381.

103.  This is what is called in Quaresmius the Via Captivitatis as distinguished from the Via Crucis.

104.  I am indebted to M. l’Abbé Van de Velde, Aumônier to the nuns of the English Convent at Bruges, for kindly bringing this document to my notice. The original belongs to Mgr Rembry, Vicar General of Bruges.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

112.  Compare Adrichomius’s map, p. 87, with the sketches on pp. 106-107.

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.

114.  Surius, “Le Pieux Pélerin,” p. 441, ed. 1666.

115.  So says Aramon in 1549. See Schefer and Cordier, “Recueil de Voyages,” vol. VIII, p. 120.

116.  Vol. I, p. 205, ed. Bacchi.

117.  See Père Barnabé d’Alsace, “Le Prétoire,” p. 53.

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.

119.  See C. G. Conrady, “Rheinische Pilgerschriften,” p. 121; and compare Wey’s account (1462) quoted above, p. 48.

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.

121.  Horn, “Ichnographia,” p. 125.

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.

123.  Nau probably only means that the stone was conspicuous, not that it actually lay in the centre of the roadway.

124.  This property was subsequently bought by the Catholic Armenians, and is now the Armenian convent. When Geramb wrote, the bath was still standing.

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.

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.

127.  See Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1896, p. 214.

128.  Laurent, “Peregrinationes Quatuor,” p. 20; cf. ibid. p. 74.

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).

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.

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.

132.  “Peregrinus affectuose per Terram Sanctam et Jerusalem conductus,” auctore C. Hietling, Ord. Min. Strict. Observ. Reform., 1713.

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.

134.  “Guida Fedele alla Santa Città di Gerusalemme,” Venice, 1703.

135.  “Viagem Santa e Peregrinacao Devota,” Lisbon, 1748; Horn, “Ichnographiæ Locorum et Monumentorum Veterum Terræ Sanctæ,” Rome, 1902.

136.  “Peregrinus in Jerusalem,” Vienna, 1735.

137.  Letter of Dom Geramb, written in 1832.

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.

139.  Heb. xiii, 12.

140.  John xix, 20.

141.  The “Theologische Quartalschrift” of Tübingen, for April, 1905; article by Dr van Bebber on “Das Prætorium des Pilatus.”

142.  “Das Prätorium des Pilatus.” By Dr Karl Mommert. Haberland, Leipzig, 1903.

143.  Antoninus, ed. Geyer, p. 206.

144.  See Migne, P.G. vol. LXVII, p. 3822.

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.

146.  Père Lagrange, O.P., in the “Revue Biblique,” 1903, p. 461.

147.  Newman, “Meditations and Devotions,” p. 198.

148.  Perreyve, “Stations of the Cross,” translated by the Rev. E. Day.

149.  The Proœmium to the pilgrimage of James of Verona (1335) contains a mention of “locus ubi Christus dedit Veronicam, id est faciem.” The Proœmium may be a later interpolation, but it is older than 1420. See “Revue de l’Orient Latin,” III, p. 163.

150.  James de Verona, “Liber Peregrinationis,” in the “Rev. de l’Orient Latin,” III, p. 183.

151.  Ps. xli, 9.

152.  Prov. ix, 1.

153.  It might seem that Fabri was speaking metaphorically, and that he only meant that here was the accomplishment of all these types; but from another passage it is clear that he believed that Abel was slain, Isaac offered, etc., in this very spot.

154.  John xii, 24.

155.  I may refer in particular to the long essay or series of essays upon the Way of the Cross to be found in the eighth volume of the collected works of Mgr Barbier de Montault, pp. 14-271.

156.  At present there seem to be some forty-four chapels in all.

157.  These powers were originally committed to the Franciscan Observantines alone. They have been subsequently extended to the Recollect and Capuchin branches of the Order.

158.  As to Bethlem’s book, see further in Appendix A. The great popularity of this little treatise both in France and the Netherlands must have made the idea of the communication of indulgences very familiar. It is for this reason perhaps that the indulgences are also inserted in Pascha’s “Spiritual Pilgrimage.” See facsimile at page 88 above.

159.  The indulgences specified by Bethlem are more ample than those found in the ordinary lists, and include, for instance, one of thirty-three thousand years attached to the House of Veronica.

160.  I may perhaps be allowed to refer the reader to what I have written on this subject in the “Dublin Review,” January, 1900, and in “The Holy Year of Jubilee” (Sands and Co.), pp. 324-349.

161.  For example, the place where our Lord met His blessed Mother is stated by Fabri (1483) and Suriano (1495) to possess a plenary indulgence. By N. de Martoni (1394), by Wey (1465), and by Quaresmius (1625) only a partial indulgence of seven years is mentioned. Others like Sigoli (1384) omit it altogether. Again, Suriano, Martoni and Wey assign a seven years’ indulgence to the stone which marked the last Fall. Sigoli and Fabri speak of a plenary; Quaresmius omits it. See the tabular statement in the Appendix.

162.  Ogier d’Anglure, ed. Bonnardot, p. 13.

163.  “Voyage d’Oultremer de Nompar de Caumont,” ed. La Grange, p. 59; Cf. Röhricht, “Bibliotheca,” p. 101.

164.  This was a grant of a plenary indulgence for the chapel of St Helen in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, for that of St Thomas on Mount Sion, and that of St Mary Magdalen at Bethany.

165.  Niccolò da Poggibonsi (1346) is the earliest pilgrim I know who gives a detailed account of the indulgences of the holy places.

166.  This is the more noteworthy when we find pilgrims to Rome at a much earlier date than this making the most elaborate calculations of the indulgences they gained. See, e.g., Giraldus Cambrensis in his “Speculum Ecclesiæ” (c. 1200).

167.  The last decree of this kind seems to have been issued in 1896.

168.  See “Verzeichniss der Handschriften im Preussischen Staate,” Göttingen, vol. II, p. 477.

169.  See J. Ständer, “Chirographorum Catalogus,” p. 92.

170.  I do not think it would be extravagant to suppose that for one edition which has survived of such a book, five or six have left no trace of their existence.

- Transcriber’s Notes:

- Footnotes have been collected at the end of the text, and are linked for ease of reference.

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Table of Contents

- The Stations of the Cross
- The Preface
- The Contents
- The List of Illustrations
- Chapter I—The Veneration of the Holy Places
- Chapter II—The Beginnings of the Via Crucis

- Chapter III—The Earliest Stations and their Sequence

- Chapter IV—The “Seven Falls”

- Chapter V—The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Jan Pascha

- Chapter VI—The “Via Dolorosa” at Jerusalem from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day

- Chapter VII—The Devotional Aspect of the Stations

- Chapter VIII—The Stations in Modern Times
- Appendix A—Heer Bethlem’s “Overwegingen”
- Appendix B.—TABLE of INDULGENCES

- Appendix C—Relative Antiquity of the Various Stations

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE