Chapter XV: Part 15

Christ’s face was covered. Was there, in the action of the ruffians, an unconsciously compassionate desire to spare Him, at least, the sight of His brothers become like beasts? Or was that look of suffering love really unendurable to them? With childish cruelty, they arranged themselves in a circle about Him and first one and then another twitched a fold of His garment, gave Him a blow on the shoulder, thrust Him in the back, struck Him with a staff over the head: “Prophesy! Who is it that smote thee?”

Why did He not answer? Had He not predicted the ruin of the Temple, wars and earthquakes, the coming of the Son of Man on clouds and many other idle stories? How was it that now He could not make such an easy guess, give the name of a person so close at hand? What sort of a prophet was this? Had he lost His power all at once, or had He never had it? He might be able to make those poor countrified Galileans believe His stories, but here we are in Jerusalem, the city which understands prophets and kills them when they do not show a proper spirit. Luke adds, “And many other things blasphemously spake they against him.”

But Caiaphas and the others were in haste and thought that the servile pack had amused itself long enough. The false king must be taken to Pilate that his sentence be confirmed: the Sanhedrin could pronounce judgment, but since Judea was under Roman rule, it had no longer, unfortunately, the Jus Gladii. And the High Priests, Scribes and Elders, set out for the Palace of the Procurator, followed by the guards leading Jesus with ropes, and by the yelling horde which grew larger as they went along the street.

PONTIUS PILATE

Since A. D. 26, Pontius Pilate had been Procurator in the name of Tiberius Cæsar. Historians know nothing of him before his arrival in Judea. If the name comes from Pileatus it may be supposed that he was a freedman or descendant of freedmen, since the Pileo, or skull cap, was the head gear of freed slaves.

He had been in Judea only a few years, but long enough to draw upon himself the bitterest hate of those over whom he ruled. It is true that all our information about him comes from Jews and Christians, who were, of course, his declared enemies; but it appears that he finally lost favor even with his masters, since in A. D. 36 the Governor of Syria, Lucius Vitellius, sent him to Rome to justify himself before Tiberius. The Emperor died before Pilate arrived in the metropolis, but according to tradition, he was exiled by Caligula, exiled into Gaul, where he killed himself.

In the first place the hatred of the Jews came from the profound scorn which he showed from the start for this stiff-necked, indocile people, who must have seemed to him, brought up in Roman ideas, like a snake pit of venomous serpents—a low, dirty crowd, scarcely worthy to be tamed by the cudgels of the mercenaries. To have an idea of Pilate’s personality, make a mental picture of an English Viceroy of India, a subscriber to the _Times_, a reader of John Stuart Mill and Shaw—with Byron and Swinburne on his bookshelves—destined to administer the government over a ragged, captious, hungry and turbulent people, wrangling among themselves over a confusion of castes and mythologies and superstitions for which their ruler feels in his heart the profoundest aversion, looking down on them from the height of his dignity as a white man, a European, a Briton and a Liberal. Pilate, as shown by his questions put to Jesus, was one of those skeptics of the Roman decadence corrupted with Pyrrhonism, a devotee of Epicurus, an encyclopedist of Hellenism without any belief in the gods of his country, nor any belief that any real God existed at all. The idea certainly can never have occurred to Pilate that the true God could be found in this vermin-ridden, superstitious mob, in the midst of this factious and jealous clergy, in this religion which must have seemed to him like a barbarous mixture of Syrian and Chaldean oracles. The only faith remaining to him, or which he needed to pretend to hold because of his office, was the new Roman religion, civic and political, concentrated on the cult of the Emperor. The first conflict with the Jews arose in fact from this religion. When he had changed the guard of Jerusalem, he ordered the soldiers to enter the city by night, without taking off from their ensigns the silver images of Cæsar. In the morning, as soon as the Jews were aware of this, great was the horror and the uproar. It was the first time that the Romans had lacked in external respect for the religion of their subjects in Palestine. These figures of the deified Cæsar planted near the Temple were for them an idolatrous provocation, the beginning of the abomination of desolation. All the country was in an uproar; a deputation was sent to Cæsarea to have Pilate take them away. Pilate refused; for five days and nights they stormed about him day and night. Finally the Procurator, to get himself out of the trouble, convoked them in the amphitheater and treacherously had them surrounded with soldiers with naked swords, assuring them that no one would escape if they did not make an end of their clamor. But the Jews, instead of asking for mercy, offered their throats to the swords, and Pilate, conquered by this heroic stubbornness, ordered that the insignia be carried back to Cæsarea.

But if this clemency did not diminish the hatred of the Jews for the new Procurator, neither did it lessen Pilate’s distaste nor his desire to do them an ill turn. A little while after this, he introduced into Herod’s palace, where he lived when he stayed at Jerusalem, votive tablets dedicated to the Emperor. But the priests heard of it and once more the people were aroused to outraged and furious anger. He was asked to take away the idolatrous objects at once. An appeal to Cæsar was threatened, an appeal supported by evidence of the impositions and cruelties committed by Pilate. Pilate this time also did not yield. The Jews then made the appeal to Tiberius, who decreed that the tablets should be sent back to Cæsarea.

Twice Pilate had had the worst of a dispute. But the third time he was triumphant. Coming from the city of public baths and aqueducts, a friend, as is well known, of ablutions, he noticed that Jerusalem lacked water and he planned to have a fine large reservoir constructed and an aqueduct several miles long. But the undertaking was expensive and to pay for it he used a goodly sum taken from the treasury of the Temple. The treasury was rich, for all the Jews scattered about in the Empire came there to bring offerings, and when they could not come in person sent them from a distance—but the priests cried out on the sacrilege, and the people incited by them made such a commotion that when Pilate came for the Feast of the Passover to Jerusalem, thousands of men gathered in a tumultuous crowd in front of his Palace. But this time he sent among the multitude a large number of disguised soldiers who at a given signal began to lay about them so vigorously, among the most furious of the crowd, that in a short time they all fled away, and Pilate could enjoy in peace the water of the reservoir paid for with the Jews’ money, and make use of it for his various ablutions.

Only a short time had passed since this last encounter and now these very priests who three times had risen against his authority, the very ones who had tried to obtain his deposition, the very ones who hated him heartily, hated him as a Roman, as a symbol of the foreign dominion and of their slavery, and hated him still more personally as Pontius Pilate, as plotter against their religion and thief of their money—these very High Priests were forced to have recourse to him in order to vent another hatred, which for the moment was more bitter in their wicked hearts. Only hard necessity drove them to it, because death sentences could not be carried out if they were not confirmed by Cæsar’s representative.

That Friday, at dawn, Pontius Pilate, wrapped in his toga, still sleepy and yawning, was waiting for them in Herod’s palace, very ill-disposed towards those tiresome trouble-makers, whose contentions had forced him to rise earlier than usual.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

The crowd of the accusers and of the rough populace finally came out into the open place which was before Herod’s palace, but they stopped outside, because if they went into a house where there was leaven and bread baked with leaven, they would be contaminated all day long and could not eat the Passover. Innocent blood does not pollute, but leaven does.

Pilate, warned of their coming, went out on the door-sill and asked abruptly: “What accusation bring ye against this man?”

Those who were before him were his enemies. It appeared that this man was their enemy and Pilate instinctively took his part. Not that he had any pity for him—was he not a Jew like the others, and poor into the bargain? But if he were by any chance innocent, Pilate had no mind to lend himself to a whim of those detestable vermin.

Caiaphas answered at once as if offended: “If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto you.”

Then Pilate who wished to lose no time with ecclesiastical squabbles, and did not think that there was any question of a capital crime, answered dryly: “Take ye him, and judge him according to your law.”

Already in these words appears his wish to save the man without being forced to take sides openly. But the concession of the Procurator, which in any other case would have delighted Caiaphas and his party, this time did not suit them, because the Sanhedrin could inflict only light sentences and now they desired the most extreme sentence of all and could not dispense with the Roman arm. They answered: “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.”

Pilate suddenly understood what sentence they wished passed on the wretched man who stood before him, and he wished to find out what crime He had committed. What might seem worthy of a death sentence to those bigoted rabbis might seem a venial fault in the eyes of a Roman.

The foxes of the Temple had thought of this difficulty before taking action. They knew very well that Pilate would not be satisfied if they told him that this man attacked the religion of their fathers and announced the Kingdom of God. They were prepared therefore to lie. For a man about to commit a base action, one more accessory and subordinate infamy seems of little consequence. Pilate could be conquered only with his own weapons, by appealing to his loyalty to Rome and to the Emperor and to the basis of his office-holding. It was already agreed that they would give a political color to the accusation. If they told him that Jesus was a false Messiah, Pilate would smile. But if they said that He was a seditious inciter of revolt, that He was trying to rouse the common people against Rome, Pilate could not do less than put Him to death.

“We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cæsar, saying that he himself is Christ, a King.... He stirreth up all the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.”

Every word was a lie. Jesus had commanded men to render unto Cæsar that which was Cæsar’s. He paid no attention whatever to the Romans. He said that He was Christ but not in the coarse, political meaning of a King of the Jews: and He did not stir up the people but wished to make of an unhappy and degraded people a blessed kingdom of saints. However grave these accusations might have seemed to Pilate if they had been true, they only increased his suspicions of the priests. Was it probable that those treacherous vipers who detested him and Rome, and who had tried to overturn him so many times and whose one dream was to sweep away the governing pagans and foreigners, should suddenly be kindled with so much zeal to denounce a rebel of their own nation?

Pilate was not convinced and he wished to find out for himself, by questioning the accused man in private. He went back into the palace and commanded that Jesus be brought to him. Disregarding the less important accusations, he went at once to the essential: “Art thou the King of the Jews?”

But Jesus did not answer. How could He ever make this Roman understand! This Roman who knew nothing of God’s promises, misinformed by His assassins, a Pyrrhonic atheist, whose only religion was the artificial and diabolical cult of a living man—and of what a man—Tiberius!—how could He ever explain to this freedman, a pupil of the lawyers and rhetoricians of Rome in the most decadent of all the degenerate foulness of that time; how could He explain that He was the King of a Kingdom not yet founded, of a spiritual Kingdom which would abolish all human kingdoms?

Jesus read the depths of Pilate’s soul and made no answer, as He had kept silent at first before Annas and before Caiaphas. The Procurator could not understand this silence on the part of a man over whom hung the threat of death. “Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee?”

But Jesus answered him never a word. Pilate, who at all costs wished to triumph over those who hated him as much as they hated this man, insisted, hoping to extract a denial which would permit him to set Him at liberty: “Art thou the King of the Jews?”

If Jesus denied this He would betray Himself. He had said to His disciples and to the Jews that He was Christ. He had no wish to lie and save Himself. The better to sound the Roman’s mind He answered Him, as was his wont, with another question: “Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?”

Pilate answered, as if offended, “Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me. Art thou the King of the Jews?”

With the exception of this contemptuous beginning, this answer of Pilate was conciliatory. “For whom do you take me? Do you not know that I am a Roman, that I do not believe what your enemies believe? Your accusers are priests, not I; but they are obliged to give you into my hands: your safety rests with me: tell me that what they say is not true and you shall be free.”

Jesus had no wish to escape death, but still He determined to try to shed more light on this pagan. Everything is possible to the Father: was it not possible that Pilate might be the last convert of the dying man?

“My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.”

The servant of Tiberius did not understand. The difference between “of this world” and “my kingdom is not from hence” was obscure to him. Pilate thought that what is the phrase “not of this world” meant the gods above if there were really any, gods favorable or malignant to men, and below in Hades the shadows of the dead if really there was anything remaining of us when the body had been consumed by fire or worms: the only reality for such a man as Pilate was “this world,” the great world with all its kingdoms. And once more he asked: “Art thou a king then?”

There was no longer any reason to deny. He would say to this blinded man what He had proclaimed to the others: “Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.”

Then Pilate, annoyed by what seemed to him truculent mystification, answered with the celebrated question: “What is truth?”

And without waiting for an answer, he rose to go out. The skeptical Roman had many times been present at the endless disputes of philosophers, and because he had heard so many contradictory metaphysical contentions and so many sophistical quibblings, had become convinced that truth did not exist, or if it did exist, could never be known by men. He did not dream for a moment that this obscure Jew who stood before him as a malefactor could tell him the truth. It was Pilate’s destiny on that one day of his life to contemplate the face of truth, supreme truth made man, and he could not see it. Living truth, the truth which could have made him a new man, was before him clothed with human flesh and rough garments, with buffeted face, and hands tied. But in his arrogance he did not guess what prodigious good fortune was his, a good fortune which millions of men have envied him after his death. If any one had told him that because of this one encounter, because to him was vouchsafed the overwhelming honor of having spoken to Jesus and having sent Him to the cross, his name would be known, although in infamy and malediction, through all the centuries and by all the human race, such a prophecy would have seemed to him like the frenzied ravings of a madman. Pilate was blind with an appalling and incurable blindness, but Christ on that very day was to pardon even him because the blind, even less than others, know what they do.

CLAUDIA PROCULA

Just as Pilate was preparing to go out and give his answer to the Jews, who were muttering restlessly and impatiently before the door, a servant sent by his wife came up to him, giving him this message: “Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.”

No one in the four Gospels tells us what impression was made on the Procurator by this unexpected intercession from his wife. We know nothing of her except her name. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus her name was Claudia Procula, and if this name was really hers she may have belonged to the Gente Claudia, distinguished and powerful at Rome. We may thus suppose that she was by birth and connections of a higher social rank than her husband, and that Pilate, a mere freedman, may have owed to her and her influence in Rome his post in Judea.

If all this was true, certainly the request of Claudia Procula must have made some impression on Pilate, especially if he loved her; and that he loved her, at least as a man of his nature could love, seems proved by the fact that he had asked to take her with him into Asia. The Lex Oppia, although mitigated by a decree of the Senate in the consulship of Cethegus and Varro, forbade the pro-consuls to take their wives with them, and Pontius Pilate had a special permit from Tiberius allowing Claudia Procula to accompany him to Palestine.

The motives for this intercession, so briefly stated, are mysterious. The words of Matthew refer to a dream in which she had suffered because of Jesus: it is probable that she had heard people talking for some time of the new Prophet; perhaps she had seen Him, and found Him very different from the other Jews. The fact that He was neither a vulgar demagogue nor a hypocritical Pharisee must have been pleasing to the imagination of a fanciful Roman woman. She did not understand the language spoken in Jerusalem, but some interpreter of the law courts might have repeated to her some of Jesus’ words, words which would have convinced her that He was not, as they said, a dangerous criminal.

In those days the Romans, especially Roman women, were beginning to feel the attraction of Oriental myths and cults, which gave more satisfaction to the longing for personal immortality than the old Latin religion, a cold, legal, businesslike exchange of sacrifices to obtain utilitarian and political ends. Many patrician women, even in Rome, had been initiated into the mysteries of Mithra, Osiris and of Isis, the Great Mother, and some showed a certain leaning towards Judaism. In that very reign of Tiberius many Jews living in Rome were exiled from the Capital because, according to Josephus, some of them had deceived a matron Fulvia—converted to Judaism—and Fulvia, as we see from a reference of Suetonius, was not the only one.

It is not impossible that Claudia Procula, living in Judea, had been curious to know more in detail about the religion of the people governed by her husband, and that, curious like all women about new things, she had tried to find out what new doctrines were being preached by the Galilean prophet of whom every one in Jerusalem was talking. It is certain that she had become convinced that Jesus was a “just man” and hence innocent. The dream of that night, the terrible dream—for she had “suffered many things” in it—had confirmed her in this conviction, and it is not surprising that relying on the influence which women have with their husbands, even if their husbands love them no longer, she sent this imploring message to Pilate.

It is enough for us that she called Him “That just man”—the man whom the Jews wished to assassinate. Together with the Centurion of Capernaum and with the Canaanite woman, Claudia Procula is the first pagan who believed in Christ, and the Greek Church has good reason to revere her as a Saint.

This message from his wife strengthened Pilate’s reluctance, inclined as he already was to neutrality, if not to clemency, through his animosity to Caiaphas, and perhaps through the words of the Accused. Claudia Procula had not said, “Save Him”—but: “Have thou nothing to do with that just man.” This was Pilate’s idea, also; as if he had a confused divination of the importance of this mysterious beggar who called Himself King. At the very first he had ordered the Jews to judge Him, themselves, but they had not been willing to do this. Then another way to evade the responsibility occurred to him. He went back to Jesus and asked whether He were a Galilean.

This evasion seemed to promise success. Jesus did not belong to his jurisdiction, but to that of Herod Antipas. By good luck Herod was there at Jerusalem at that very time, come as was his wont for the Passover. The Procurator had found a legitimate subterfuge to satisfy his wife—and to free himself from this troublesome perplexity. With one stroke he would ingratiate himself with the Jews, leaving to one of their own race the decisive judgment, and at the same time he would do a bad turn to the patriarch whom he hated with all his heart because he suspected him with good reason of spying on him and tale-bearing to Tiberius. So, losing no time, he ordered the soldiers to take Jesus before Herod.

THE WHITE CLOAK

The third judge before whom Jesus was led was a son of that bloody-minded hog, Herod the Great, by one of his five wives. He was the true son of his father because he wronged his brothers as his father had wronged his sons. When his brother Archelaus, his own half-brother, was accused by his subjects, he managed to have him exiled. He robbed his other brother Herod of his wife. When he was seventeen years old he began to reign as Tetrarch over Galilee and over Berea, and to ingratiate himself with Tiberius, offered himself as a secret tale-bearer of the sayings and doings of his brothers and of the Roman officials in Judea. On a voyage to Rome he fell in love with Herodias, who was both his niece and his sister-in-law, since she was the daughter of his brother Aristobulus, and wife of his brother Herod, and not shrinking from the double incest, he persuaded her to follow him, together with Salome, the daughter of the adulteress. His first wife, daughter of Aretas, king of the Nabatei, went back to her father, who declared war on Antipas and defeated him.

This happened while John the Baptist was beginning to be talked about among the people. The prophet let slip some words of condemnation against these two incestuous adulterers, and this was enough for Herodias to persuade her new husband to have him taken and shut up in the fortress of Machærus. Every one knows how the foul Tetrarch, inflamed by cruel Salome’s lascivious arts, and perhaps meditating a new incest, was forced to offer her the bearded head of the Prophet of Fire on a golden platter.

But even after his decapitation John’s shade disturbed Herod, and when he began to hear talk of Jesus and of His miracles he said to his courtiers, “This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead.”

It seems that he kept his eye on the new prophet, and that at one time he thought of serving Him as he had his precursor; but either for political or superstitious reasons, deciding that he would have no more to do with prophets, he saw that the best way was to force Jesus to leave his Tetrarchy. One day some Pharisees, very probably acting on Herod’s instructions, went to say to Jesus: “Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee.”

“And he said unto them, Go ye and tell that fox ... nevertheless I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.”

And now at Jerusalem near His death, He appeared before that fox. That traitor and spy, incestuous adulterer, assassin of John and enemy of the prophets was the most fitting person to condemn innocence. But Jesus had named him well: he was more fox than tiger, and he shrank from being a substitute for Pilate. Luke tells us, “When Herod saw Jesus he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him.”

The son of the Idumean and the Samaritan woman had scorched himself in John’s fire, and he received Jesus as an old tamer of animals, with the marks of the lion’s teeth still on his arm, looks at a new wild animal brought for him to see. But, like all Oriental barbarians, his mind was obsessed by prodigies, and he imagined Jesus to be a wandering wizard who could, whenever He wished, repeat some of His sorcery. Herod hated Him as he had hated John, but he hated Him partly because he feared Him; the prophets had a power which Herod did not understand and which intimidated him: perhaps the beheading of John had brought him bad luck. He too wished Jesus to be killed, but he had no mind to be in any way responsible for His death.

Seeing that there were no miracles to be expected, he began to put many questions, to which Jesus made no answer. He had broken His silence for Annas, for Caiaphas, for Pilate, but He would not for this crowned rascal! Annas and Caiaphas were His declared enemies, Pilate was a blind man groping along, thinking that he was saving Him, but this Herod was a cowardly fox and did not deserve even an insult. The High Priests and the Scribes, fearing that John’s assassin would be too cowardly to kill Jesus, as in fact he was, had followed their victim there and vehemently accused him. These furious accusations and the silence of the accused man deepened the hidden rancor of Antipas, who, together with his soldiers, abused the Man of divine silences, threw over his shoulders a gorgeous robe, and sent Him again to Pilate.

Like Pilate, but for other reasons, he was not willing to condemn the man baptized by John, and who perhaps was John himself returned from the dead to avenge himself. But when he sent Him away he made Him a gift which bears unconscious witness to the rank of the man about to die. The mantle, shining with whiteness, was, so Josephus says, the garment of the Jewish Kings, and Jesus was accused of wishing to make Himself King of the Jews. Antipas, the astute, wished to ridicule the pretensions of Jesus by ironically making him a present of the regal robe; but when he covered Him with that whiteness, which is the symbol of innocence and of sovereignty, the ignoble fox sent to Pilate a symbolical message which involuntarily confirmed the message of Claudia Procula, the accusation of Caiaphas, and what Christ Himself had said.

CRUCIFY HIM!

Pilate had thought that he had succeeded in extracting himself from the troublesome position in which his adversaries had tried to place him. But when he saw Jesus return wrapped in that regal white garment he understood that he must at any cost get the matter settled.

The bitter fury of those who for so many reasons were objects of suspicion to him, his wife’s compassion, the answers of Christ, the fact that Antipas had refrained from action, all inclined him to refuse to give the Jews the life for which they were asking. Perhaps while Jesus was with the Tetrarch, Pilate had asked some one of his followers about the pretended King, and the information confirmed him in his decision. Jesus had never said anything that would be offensive to Pilate: rather there was much in what He said calculated to please the Roman, or at least that would seem advantageous to the authority of Rome.

Jesus taught love for enemies, and in Judea the Romans were considered enemies; He called the poor blessed, hence He exhorted them to resignation and not to revolt; He advised men to render unto Cæsar that which was Cæsar’s, that is, to pay tribute to the Emperor; He was opposed to the Pharisaical formalism which made the relations of the Romans with their subjects so difficult; He did not respect the Sabbath; He ate with publicans and with Gentiles; and finally He announced that His Kingdom was not of this world, but of a world so metaphysical and remote that it could never endanger Tiberius or his successors. If Pilate knew these things, he must have said to himself with the superficiality of all skeptics, especially when they think themselves expert politicians, that it would be a good thing for him and for Rome if many Jews followed Jesus, rather than fomented rebellion in the councils of the Zealots.

He had therefore decided to save Jesus, but in this indulgence he wanted to put a sarcastic note, something that would be offensive to the High Priests, who three times had set themselves against him and now were importuning him to be their hangman. Up to the last he would pretend to treat Jesus like the King of the Jews. Here is your King, the King that you deserve, wretched and perfidious people! A village carpenter, a vagabond, a beggar, who vapored of reigning beyond earthly life, and who as a matter of fact had as followers only a few fishermen and peasants and a few silly women. See how wretched He is, how miserable! Why do you want to kill Him? Keep Him; you deserve no better King than He. I will follow your example, will amuse myself a little by tormenting Him, and then I will let Him go.

And causing Jesus to be led out, Pilate went to the door and said to the High Priests and the others who crowded about, their faces thrust forward to hear the sentence given at last, “Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man touching those things whereof ye accuse him: No, nor yet Herod: for I sent you to him; and lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. I will therefore chastise him and release him.”

This was not the answer awaited by the ravening hounds, yelling in the square before the Procurator’s house. A bestial cry burst out from those gaping mouths, “Kill Him!”

A flogging would be too light a punishment for this dangerous enemy of the God of Armies and the God of Business. Something quite different from that was necessary to satisfy these butchers of the Temple. They had come to ask for blood and not for pardon.

“Kill Him!” yelled Annas and Caiaphas, and with them the Pharisaical vipers hissed, the sellers of the holy animals shrieked, the money-changers, the men who rented beasts of burden, the porters of the caravans. “Kill Him!” howled the Scribes, wrapped in their theological cloaks, the vendors of the Passover fair, the tavern-keepers of the upper city, the Levites, the servants of the Temple, the hired helpers of the usurers, the errand boys of the priests, all the servile horde assembled before the Procurator’s house.

As soon as this uproar was a little quieted, Pilate asked, “What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call King of the Jews?”

And they all answered, “Crucify him!”

But the Procurator resisted, “Why, what evil hath he done?”

And they cried out the more exceedingly, “Crucify him!”

Jesus, pale and calm in the whiteness of the mocking cloak, looked quietly at the crowd, which desired to give Him what in His heart He had been seeking. He was dying for them, with the divine hope of saving even them by His death, and they were assailing Him, howling as if He had wished to escape His accepted fate. His friends were not there, were hidden; all His people wished to pierce His flesh with nails, and only a foreigner, an idolater, defended His life. Why was Pilate not moved to compassion? Why did He not give Him at once to the crucifiers? Did he not realize that his false pity only lengthened and embittered the anguish? He loved and it was fitting that He should be hated; He brought men back from death and it was fitting that He should be killed; He wished to save others and it was fitting that all men should wish to destroy Him; He was innocent and it was fitting that He should be sacrificed.

But obstinate Pilate did not surrender to the howls of the Jews nor to Jesus’ silent prayer. At any cost he wanted to win his point. He would not give in once more to that fierce, filthy mob. He had not succeeded in transferring to Antipas the disagreeable responsibility of a death-sentence; he had not succeeded in persuading this tigerish and mulish people of the innocence of their wretched king. What they wanted was to see a little blood; on these festival days they wanted to enjoy the spectacle of a crucifixion. He would satisfy them with a bargain, giving them the carcass of a murderer in exchange for the body of an innocent man.

BARABBAS

“I find in him no fault at all. But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover. Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?”

Taken by surprise, the people did not know what to answer. Until then there had been but one name, one victim, one punishment asked for; everything was as clear as the sky on that mid-April morning. But now, in order to save that scandal-maker, this impertinent pagan brought into question another name which confused the whole matter. Pilate wanted to flog Him only, instead of crucifying Him: and now he wanted to crucify another delinquent in His place. By good fortune the Elders, Scribes and Priests were still there and they had no intention of letting Jesus escape. In a flash they suggested the right reply. So that when Pilate asked them a second time which of the two they wished him to free, they answered with one voice, “Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas!”

He was not an ordinary delinquent, the man whom the Procurator offered as blood-ransom to those men with such a morbid relish for crucifixions. The common tradition has preserved his memory as a street ruffian, a criminal by profession. But his surname—Bar Rabban, which means Son of Rab, or rather disciple of the Master, since the scholars of the Rabbis were called their sons—shows us that through birth or through study he belonged to the caste of Doctors of Law. Mark and Luke say expressly that he was accused of having committed murder during a sedition, hence a political assassin. Jesus Barabbas, a student in the school of the Scribes, lamenting over the loss of the Jewish Kingdom, and hating Judea’s pagan masters, was probably a Zealot and had been captured in one of the unsuccessful revolts, so common at that time. Was it likely that such an absurd bargain would satisfy the Sadducee and Pharisee assembly which shared the sentiments of the Zealots, even if for reasons of state they hid them, or out of weakness of soul forgot them?

Barabbas, although an assassin, and indeed precisely because he was an assassin—was a patriot, a martyr, persecuted by the foreigners. Jesus, on the other hand, although He had never killed any one, had wished to overturn the law of Moses, and to ruin the Temple. The first, in short, was a sort of national hero, the other an enemy of the nation: there could be no doubt about their choice. “Free Barabbas! Let this man die!” Once more Pontius Pilate had failed to save Christ or himself. He ought to have realized before this, that the leaders of the Jews would not loose their hold on the flesh into which they had already set their teeth, the only flesh which could stay their hunger. Their need for it that day was like their need for bread and air. They would not have left that spot, not even to eat, until they had seen that Bastard Messiah fastened with four nails upon two beams.

Pontius Pilate was cowardly. He was afraid that he was committing an injustice; he was afraid of displeasing his wife; he was afraid of giving satisfaction to his enemies; but at the same time he was afraid to put Jesus in a place of safety; he was afraid to have his soldiers disperse that sullen, arrogant crowd; he was afraid to decide with a clear-cut act of authority that Jesus, the innocent man, should be released, and not Barabbas, the assassin. A real Roman, a Roman of antiquity, of the true Roman stock, would either at once have satisfied the demands of that turbulent crowd and would not have wasted a moment in defending an obscure visionary; or would at once have decreed, from the beginning, that this man was innocent and was under the august protection of the Empire.

By his stratagems, half-measures, indolent questionings, hesitations and partially executed maneuvers Pilate found himself slowly pushed towards a decision he did not wish to make. The fact that he had not at once decided the question with a yes or no had increased the insolence of the High Priests and the excitement of the people. Now there were only two alternatives: either to give in shamefully after resisting so long, or to risk starting a tumult which on those days, when Jerusalem included almost a third of the population of Judea, might become a perilous uprising.

Undone by his cowardly wavering, deafened by the yells, the only thing that came into his mind was to ask once more the advice of men to whom he should have issued orders.

“What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?”

“Crucify him, let him be crucified!”

“Why, what evil hath he done?”

“Crucify him! Crucify him!”

What affair is it of this odious foreigner if Jesus had done evil or not? According to our faith He is an impostor, a blasphemer, an enemy of the people and deserves death. Even if He has done no evil He deserves death because His words are more dangerous than any wicked actions.

“Crucify him! Crucify him!”

“Take ye him and crucify him,” cried Pilate, “for I find no fault in him.”

“We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.”

The silence of Jesus was more potent than this bestial outcry. They were fighting for the possession of His body, and He seemed scarcely to be aware of it. He knew that from the beginning of time His destiny was sealed and that this was His day. The battle was so uneven! On one side a Gentile, who knew nothing and understood nothing of Him, who did not defend Him through love but through Hate, who did not defend Him openly but with tricks and quibbles, who was more afraid of a revolt than of an injustice, who was stubborn through punctilio and not because of his certainty of Christ’s innocence. On the other hand, a threatened clergy, a vindictive bourgeoisie, a crowd, like all crowds, easily incited to evil deeds. It was easy enough to foresee the outcome.

But Pontius Pilate would not yield the point. He would restore Barabbas to his accomplices, but he would not give up Jesus. His first idea came into his head again: to have Him scourged; perhaps when they saw the bruises and the blood dripping from His back they would be satisfied with that punishment and would leave in peace the innocent man who looked with equal pity on the cowardly shepherd and the unruly wolves.

The Procurator had said that he found no fault with Him, and yet he was to have Him scourged with rods. This contradiction, this half-injustice, this compromise, is characteristic of Pilate. But it was to be of no avail; like his other efforts, it was merely to add one more shame to his final defeat.

The Jews were still shrieking, “Let him be crucified!” But Pilate went back into his house and gave Jesus over to the Roman soldiers to be flogged.

A CROWNED KING

The mercenaries, who (in the provinces) were the majority in the legions, had been waiting for this decision. Throughout the long dispute the soldiers of the Procurator’s guard had been obliged to look on, silent and motionless, at this mysterious colonial uproar, of which only one thing seemed clear to them, that their commanding officer was not cutting the best figure. For a while they had been amused by watching the sinister faces, the excitability and the gesticulation of that Jewish swarm; and they had become aware that the Procurator, somber and perplexed, was vainly trying to unravel the tangled threads of this early-morning quarrel. They kept their eyes on him, as dogs watch an unskillful hunter, circling about without making up his mind to fire, although the quarry is close at hand.

Now at last something to their taste happened. They were to have their turn at amusing themselves. To flog a Jew, hated by the Jews themselves, was an amusement neither dangerous nor very tiring,—just enough to exercise their arms, to stretch the muscles contracted by the morning chill, and to start the blood circulating.

All the company was ordered into the court-yard of the palace, and the white cloak given by Antipas was taken from Jesus’ back—the first spoils of the enterprise—together with part of His other clothes. The lictors chose the rods, and the strongest among the soldiers snatched at them. They were practical people who knew how to flog energetically and according to the rules.

Jesus, half of His body bared, tied to a pillar, that He might not lessen the force of the blows by bending forward, silently prayed to the Father for the soldiers about to scourge Him. Had He not said: “Love those who hate you, do good to those who persecute you, offer the left cheek to him who has struck the right”? At that moment He could reward his scourgers only by interceding with God for their forgiveness. These soldiers were prisoners as much as He, and they knew not whom they were flogging with such innocent heartiness. They themselves had been flogged sometimes for small breaches of discipline, and they saw nothing out of the way in the fact that the Procurator, a Roman officer, had them scourge a delinquent belonging to a subject and inferior race.

Strike hard, O legionaries, for of this blood which now begins to flow, some drops are shed for you. This was the first blood drawn by men from the Son of Man. At the Last Supper His blood had been symbolized by the wine, on the Mount of Olives the blood which mixed with the sweat, stood in drops on His face, came from a suffering altogether spiritual and inner. But now, at last, men’s hands shed blood from the veins of Christ; knotty hands of soldiers in the service of the rich and the powerful, hands which wield the scourge before taking up the nails. That livid back, swollen and bloody, was ready for the cross; torn and raw as it was, it would add to the suffering of crucifixion when they stretched it out on the rough wood of the cross. Now they could stop, the courtyard of the cowardly stranger was stained with blood. Servants that very day might wash away those spots, but they would start out again on the well-washed white hands of Pontius Pilate.

The number of blows prescribed had been duly administered, but now, after their taste of amusement, the legionaries did not wish to let their plaything escape at once. All they had done so far was to execute an order; now they wished to have some entertainment of their own. This man, so said the Jews howling out there in the public square, pretended to be a king. Let us give Him His wish, this madman, and thus we will enrage those who refuse Him His royal dignity.

A soldier took off his scarlet cloak, the red chlamys of the legionaries, and threw it over those shoulders, red with blood; another took up a handful of dry thorns, kindling for the brazier of the night-watch, twisted a couple of them together like a crown and put it on His head; a third had a slave give Him a reed and forced it into the fingers of His right hand; then, roaring with laughter, they pushed Him upon a seat. One by one, passing before Him, they bent their knees awkwardly, crying: “Hail, King of the Jews!”

But some were not satisfied with this burlesque homage, and one of them struck a blow at the cheek, still showing the marks of the fingers of Caiaphas’ servants; one, snatching the reed out of His hand, gave Him a blow on the head, so that the thorns of His crown pierced the skin and made about His forehead a border of drops red as His cloak.

They would perhaps have thought of some other amusing diversion if the Procurator, coming up when they were making merry, had not ordered them to lead the scourged King outside. The jocose disguise invented by the legionaries fitted in with the sarcastic intention of Pilate. He smiled, and taking Jesus by the hand, led Him to the crowd of wild animals there, and cried: “Behold the man!”

THE WASHING OF THE HANDS

“Behold the man!”

And he turned Christ’s shoulders towards that expanse of yelling muzzles that they might see the welts left by the rods, red with oozing blood. It was as if he said: Look at Him, your King, the only King that you deserve, in His true majesty, tricked out as befits such a King. His crown is of sharp thorns; His purple cloak is the chlamys of a mercenary; His scepter is a dry reed. These are the ornaments merited by your degraded King, unjustly rejected by a degraded people like yourselves. Was it His blood you desired? Here is His blood; see how it drops from the thorns of His crown. There is not much of it, but it ought to be enough for you, since it is innocent blood. It is shed as a great favor to you—to satisfy you. And now be off from here, for you have troubled me long enough!

But the Jews were quieted neither by these words nor by that spectacle. They demanded something quite other than a flogging and a masquerade before they would go their ways. Pilate thought that he could make mock of them, but he would realize that this was no time for feeble jokes. They had had the best of him twice already and they would again. A few bruises and a practical joke played by the soldiery were not enough to punish this enemy of God as He deserved; there were trees in Judea and nails to nail Him to them. And their hoarse voices shouted all together, “Let him be crucified! Let him be crucified!”

Too late Pilate realized that they had driven him into a tangle from which he could not disengage himself. All his decisions were combated with a pertinacity he had not foreseen. By a flash of inspiration he had pronounced the great words, “Behold the man!” But he himself did not understand that proclamation which transcended his base soul. He did not realize that he had found the truth he was seeking: a half-truth, but deeper than all the teachings of the philosophers of Rome and Greece. He did not understand how Jesus was really Man, the symbol of all humanity, sorrowing and humiliated, betrayed by its rulers, deceived by its masters, crucified every day by the Kings who oppress their subjects, by the rich who cause the poor to weep, by priests who think of their bellies rather than of God. Jesus is the Man of Sorrows announced by Isaiah, the man without form or comeliness, despised and rejected of men, who was to be killed for all men; He is God’s only son who had taken on man’s flesh, and who would ascend in the glory of power and of the new sun, in the midst of the blaring of the trumpets calling the dead to life. But now to the eyes of Pilate, to the eyes of Pilate’s enemies, He was only a wretched, insignificant man, flesh for rods and for nails, a man and not Man, a mortal and not a God. Why did Pilate lose time with those sibylline remarks before delivering Him to the executioner?

And yet Pilate still did not yield. Standing beside that silent man, the Roman felt his heart heavy with an oppression he had never known before. Who could this man be whom all the people wished to kill, and whom he could neither save nor sacrifice? He turned once more to Jesus, “Whence art thou?”

But Jesus gave him no answer.

“Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?”

Then the insulted King raised His head, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.”

Caiaphas and his associates were the guilty ones; the others were dogs incited by Caiaphas, mere tools of Caiaphas. Even Pilate was only an indocile instrument of priestly hatred and of the Divine will.

But the Procurator in his perplexity found no new expedient to free himself from the net about him, and returned to his fixed idea, “Behold your King!”

The Jews, infuriated by this repeated insult, burst out, enraged, “If thou let this man go, thou art not Cæsar’s friend; whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Cæsar.”

At last they had hit on the right words to bring pressure on weak, cowardly Pilate. Every Roman magistrate, no matter how high his rank, depended on Cæsar’s favor. Pilate’s reputation might be ruined by an accusation of this sort, presented with ability, by malicious advocates—and there were plenty of those among the Hebrews, as was shown later by the memorial of Philo. But in spite of the threat, Pilate cried out his last and weakest question, “Shall I crucify your king?”

The High Priests, feeling that they were on the point of winning, answered with their last lie, “We have no king but Cæsar.”