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.

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.

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]

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.

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 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.

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 question can hardly fail to suggest itself: What probability is there that the _Via Dolorosa_ now venerated in Jerusalem really represents the path trodden by our LORD’S sacred feet on His last painful journey to Calvary? It is not quite easy to answer such a question satisfactorily within moderate limits. What we have already seen in the foregoing pages of the growth and fluctuation of tradition, as well as the adaptability of these same traditions to new ideas when any strong pressure from without renders compromise desirable, will have prepared us to find that the popular and general acceptance of a belief even for a long period together can afford no satisfactory guarantee that the belief has solid foundation in fact. It is to archæological considerations and the evidence of the earliest centuries that we must turn for a solution rather than to any living voice, even though it represent an uninterrupted succession of teachers stretching back to the middle ages. It must be obvious that the first question to be decided is the position of the Prætorium of the Roman governor and of the Lithostrotos or paved courtyard of which the gospel tells us. No reasonable doubt can be felt that our SAVIOUR will have been led from the place of sentence to the place of execution by the shortest available route. The _terminus ad quem_ we may assume to be determined by the position of Constantine’s basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. Recent scientific research has made clear the futility of the reasons for seeking Golgotha in any other quarter than that assigned by tradition. The one serious objection to the identification of the present Church of the Holy Sepulchre with the scene of the crucifixion was the doubt—which formerly seemed well founded—whether this site could possibly have stood outside the wall of the city in the time of our LORD. Thanks to the researches of the German archæological expert, the late Herr Conrad von Schick, we may take it as satisfactorily proved that the course of the city wall did not originally take in the ground now covered by Constantine’s basilica, but nevertheless ran close up to it.[138] Hence if our SAVIOUR was crucified upon the spot which Christians ever since the beginning of the fourth century have venerated as the rock of Calvary, He truly “suffered outside the gate,” as the Epistle to the Hebrews says with emphasis,[139] while on the other hand the place was so near one of the main entrances into the city that St John might well insist that the title affixed to the cross could be read by multitudes of wayfarers.[140]

But with regard to the _terminus a quo_ of the Way of Sorrows things are by no means so clear. A Catholic professor has recently published a long article in a leading theological review to prove that from the testimony of Josephus it necessarily follows that the Prætorium of Pilate was situated on Mount Sion.[141] If that be so, our LORD must have approached Calvary from an entirely different quarter than that indicated by the traditional _Via Dolorosa_. He must have descended to the place of crucifixion from the south side, instead of toiling upwards from the east. On the other hand, a distinguished Dominican, Father Zanecchia, has been led by the description of early pilgrims to locate the Prætorium deep in the Tyropœan Valley, which separates the east and west hills, upon which Jerusalem is built. In this view he has been followed by the Assumptionist professors of Notre Dame de France in their recently published guide-book, “La Palestine, Guide Historique.” If this theory were correct, it would be equally impossible to regard the traditional _Via Dolorosa_ as the true path of our SAVIOUR to Calvary. Let me hasten to explain that neither of these two hypotheses regarding the location of the Prætorium appears to me satisfactory. The first proceeds upon the assumption that the Christians of ancient Jerusalem retained no memory of the sites of our LORD’S Passion, and that the descriptions of early pilgrims are consequently worthless; surely a needlessly violent and extreme position. The second view, on the other hand, seems to exaggerate the inferences to be deduced from the accounts of Antonius and the Bordeaux pilgrim, and to ignore the equally valuable evidence obtainable from other quarters. I am inclined therefore to associate myself with the criticisms which have been directed against Padre Zanecchia’s theory by Frère Barnabé d’Alsace and Dr Karl Mommert,[142] and to accept the solution of the last-named that the Prætorium of Pilate stood near the head of the Tyropœan Valley, on the ground at present occupied by the Armenian convent, where pilgrims now venerate the fourth station of the cross. In a recent article in the “Dublin Review” I have touched upon the reasons which have led me to this conclusion, though for a fuller exposition I must refer to the important work of Dr Karl Mommert, who discusses the subject in great detail. It may be sufficient to say here that while the account of the Bordeaux pilgrim (A.D. 333) is precise in locating the ruins of the Prætorium in the valley below Mount Sion, and on the right hand of a man who is travelling northward from Mount Sion to the Damascus Gate, the archæological evidence testifies strongly to the existence of a paved courtyard of the Roman period, which seems to have extended from the _Ecce Homo_ Arch to the present Armenian convent at the head of the Tyropœan Valley. This has long been identified with the Lithostrotos spoken of by St John, called in Hebrew “Gabbatha.” Now we know that in the fourth and fifth century a considerable basilica dedicated to the Holy Wisdom (_Sancta Sophia_) was erected on the site of the Prætorium, and that a stone, believed to be that on which our Blessed LORD stood to be judged, was specially venerated there. I will content myself with quoting the account which passes under the name of St Antoninus of Piacenza, _c._ 570.

“We pray,” he says, “in the Prætorium where the LORD was tried, which is now the basilica of Holy Wisdom. In the church itself is the seat upon which Pilate sat when he tried our LORD. There is also a square stone which used to stand in the midst of the Prætorium, upon which the accused was placed during his trial, that he might be heard and seen by all the people. Upon it our LORD was placed when He was tried by Pilate, and there the marks of His feet still remain. The portrait which during His lifetime was painted and placed in the Prætorium shows a beautiful small delicate foot, a person of ordinary height, a handsome face, hair inclined to curl, a beautiful hand with long fingers. And many are the virtues of the stone on which He stood, for men take the measure of His footprints, and bind them upon their bodies for various diseases, and are healed. The stone itself is adorned with gold and silver.”[143]

Further, this veneration paid to the marks of our SAVIOUR’S footprints in the Church of Holy Wisdom as the place where He stood to be judged is attested to the beginning of the seventh century by St Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.[144]

This basilica of the Holy Wisdom probably fell into ruin during the early years of the Mohammedan occupation. No one has pretended to identify it with any existing building. But in certain recent explorations undertaken in the neighbourhood of the Armenian convent traces of a Byzantine building have been found, and in particular a mosaic representing the imprint of two small feet or rather shoes. Without supposing that this was the actual stone, “ornamented with gold and silver,” which was once honoured there, it seems extremely probable that such a pattern as that of two footprints might have been largely used in the decoration of the basilica of the Holy Wisdom, and that we have struck here upon the traces of the church erected upon the site of the ruined Prætorium. For the fuller exposition of the argument I must refer the reader to the work of Dr Mommert, but I may note that this result is in very fair agreement with the conclusions arrived at from their different standpoints by such devoted students of Jerusalem topography as M. Clermont Ganneau, Comte de Vogüé, Herr von Schick, Professor Zaccaria and Père Lagrange. Finally, let me note that if Dr Mommert’s hypothesis be accepted as, on the whole, the most probable theory which has yet been advanced, the received traditions as to the course of our SAVIOUR’S sad journey to Calvary have not been so very far wrong. We may perhaps have to surrender the belief that He passed under the _Ecce Homo_ Arch and down the lane in which the first three stations are now shown, but His way must roughly have coincided with the rest of the _Via Dolorosa_, and the general direction of the painful ascent must have been that which we have always supposed.

That we can never hope to recover the actual path sanctified by contact with His sacred feet must be plain from one very simple consideration. The level of the soil in such a city as Jerusalem is constantly changing; the hollows are continually being filled up, the elevations are in some measure denuded. Near the Armenian convent, where we may believe the true _Via Dolorosa_ to have begun, the rock is now fifty feet below the surface. In our LORD’S time, as the evidence of excavations prove, there was a far less depth of soil, and the little slope of Calvary must have been by so many feet the steeper.

Before ending this chapter a word may be added on the imitations of the _Via Dolorosa_ in the West.

It must not be assumed that the arrangement of Stations which meets us in Adrichomius’s book and which was later popularized by St Leonard of Port Maurice and other great Franciscan missionaries, was the only system to win any measure of popular favour. On the contrary, the Way of the Cross compiled by Father Adrian Parviller, S.J., seems in the last half of the seventeenth, and in the first half of the eighteenth century to have had a very great vogue. A large number of editions of the little book were called for, and it was translated into almost every language. For example, four different editions in Breton are to be found in the library of the British Museum; while the English translation of Father Parviller’s method was apparently printed and reprinted some time before any other arrangement of the Stations of the Cross was known in this country.

According to Father Parviller’s method the first station was the supper chamber, the second the grotto of the garden of Olives, the third the gate of the garden of Olives where JESUS was arrested, the fourth the brook Cedron, into which, as they crossed it, our SAVIOUR was thrown through the brutal violence of His captors. Then we have in due order the houses of Annas, Caiphas and Herod, followed by the chamber of the scourging and the Prætorium of Pilate. This brings us to the tenth station, the titles of which and of those which follow, we may give more exactly.

Station X. The _Ecce Homo_ Arch where our LORD was put into comparison with Barabbas, and Barabbas preferred before Him.

Station XI. The spot where our Blessed Lady swooned away with sorrow at the sight of her Son carrying His cross to Calvary.

Station XII. The cross-roads where our SAVIOUR fell under the weight of His cross and was raised up and aided to carry it by Simon of Cyrene.

Station XIII. The place where the women and devout maidens of Jerusalem lamented at the sight of our LORD.

Station XIV. The house of holy Veronica, who wiped with her kerchief the face of our LORD, covered as it was with sweat, with blood and with spittle.

Station XV. The Judicial Gate, where our SAVIOUR heard His sentence read aloud.

Station XVI. Calvary, where our LORD was crucified between two thieves.

Station XVII. The Holy Sepulchre in which the dead Body of our SAVIOUR was laid.

Station XVIII (the last). The Mount of Olives, whence our LORD, after the Resurrection, ascended into heaven.

So far as I can ascertain, no general rule prevailed in the sixteenth or even in the seventeenth century, as to the number, order or character of the devotional Stations of the Way of the Cross, which were set up in many religious houses, churchyards and other sacred enclosures. In the English Augustinian convent at Bruges, which has occupied the site which it occupies now ever since the early part of the seventeenth century, traces are preserved of two interesting sets of Stations.[145] In both cases the selection of subjects coincides as little with the arrangements of Parviller or Quaresmius as it does with the set of fourteen Stations which is alone familiar at the present day. Again there are many examples of old sets of Stations in the public churches of Germany, France and the Netherlands, sometimes within the building, as at St Roch in Paris, but more frequently out of doors, the subjects of which by no means agree with those now in vogue.

Footnote 105:

Readers familiar with the life of St Ignatius Loyola will readily
recall the summary way in which he was shipped back to Europe when he
visited the Holy Land in 1523, and would fain have lingered in
Jerusalem.

Footnote 106:

Zuallardo was not himself a Franciscan, but his book is largely
founded upon the work of Brother Bonifacius of Ragusa, O.F.M., who was
custodian of the holy places and a high authority on the subject.

Footnote 107:

The title of Amico’s work is “Trattato delle Piante et Immagini de’
sacri Edifizi di Terra Santa.” The numerous plans and sketches which
it contains seem to have been executed by Fra Antonio d’Angioli, who
lived eight years in the Holy Land. See the first edition, 1610, p.
20. In the second edition, 1620, an account of the _Via Dolorosa_ was
added to the original text.

Footnote 108:

“Historica, Theologica et Moralis Terræ Sanctæ Elucidatio”; auctore
Francisco Quaresmio, Ordinis Minorum Theologo, olim Terræ Sanctæ
Præside, et Commissario Apostolico, 2 vols, folio (1639). In a printed
notice at the end the author states that the work was begun in 1616,
completed in 1625, that the printing commenced in 1634, and was
completed in 1639. After his manuscript had been finished and
censored, the author again returned to reside in the Holy Land, and
was there able to compare the descriptions in his book with the actual
sites, subjecting the whole to a thorough revision.

Footnote 109:

Quaresmius, “Elucidatio,” vol. II, pp. 179 seq. The good Franciscan
criticizes rather more severely Adrichomius’s identification of the
_Ecce Homo_ arch with the Xystus described in Josephus. The Xystus, as
Quaresmius shows, lay to the south-west of the Temple, while the arch
is on the north side. See ib. pp. 206-208.

Footnote 110:

“CHRIST aussi se reposa un peu icy regardant la haulte montagne
pargrande anxiété et douleur” (Pérégrination, p. 148). “Ende hier was
CHRISTUS wat rustende, ænsiende den hooghen berch met grooter
benautheden” (Eeen devote maniere), etc., fol. 112 verso.

Footnote 111:

The little work of the pilgrim priest, Heer Bethlem, mentioned above,
pp. 77-79, is also cited by Adrichomius amongst his authorities.
Bethlem agrees with Pascha in the extraordinary exaggeration of the
distance from Simon to Veronica and from Veronica to the Judicial
Gate, but while in Pascha the distance from Veronica to the Judicial
Gate is almost double that from Simon to Veronica (336 paces to 191
paces) Bethlem makes them almost identical (300 ells to 282 ells).
Adrichomius makes no comment, but follows Pascha implicitly.

Footnote 112:

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

Footnote 113:

Surius, Bernardin, O.F.M. (Recollect, Président du Saint Sepulcre et
Commissaire de la Terre Saincte, des années 1644, 1645, 1646, 1647);
“Le Pieux Pélerin,” Brussels, 1666, p. 440.

Footnote 114:

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

Footnote 115:

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

Footnote 116:

Vol. I, p. 205, ed. Bacchi.

Footnote 117:

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

Footnote 118:

Philippus says they were the stones our LORD rested upon when He was
carrying the cross.—See “Oest. Vierteljahresschrift f. kat.
Theologie,” 1872, p. 53.

Footnote 119:

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

Footnote 120:

This is quite explicitly stated by M. Tschudi (1519) in his “Reyss und
Bilgerfahrt zum heyligen Grab,” p. 222. He also, like Poggibonsi, saw
an inscription on the arch “in Latin, Greek and Hebrew characters,”
but he does not say that it was engraved on the two stones.

Footnote 121:

Horn, “Ichnographia,” p. 125.

Footnote 122:

If this is true, then the mosaic representing the print of two feet
discovered of late years in the Armenian convent is not likely to have
had anything to do with our Blessed Lady’s Swoon.

Footnote 123:

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

Footnote 124:

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

Footnote 125:

“Se encontra huma columna de marmore que mostra o lugar onde o
Salvador cahio a primera vez.”—Joao de Jesus Christo, “Viage de hum
Peregrino a Jerusalem,” 3rd ed. Lisboa, p. 187.

Footnote 126:

“A great stone built into the wall at the corner where JESUS fell” is
also mentioned at this spot, in connexion with Simon of Cyrene, by
Duke Frederick II of Liegnitz in 1507. See “Zeitschrift d. deutsch.
Palästina Verein,” 1878, p. 187.

Footnote 127:

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

Footnote 128:

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

Footnote 129:

From Tschudi’s careful description, who saw the stone in 1519, it
seems to have been very small—less than a foot square. According to
him it was marked with only one cross, and was ten paces distant from
the church (“Reyss,” p. 191).

Footnote 130:

N. C. Radzivil, in his “Hierosol. Peregrinatio,” also speaks of the
falls. But he, like Quaresmius (II, p. 209), may only be quoting
Adrichomius.

Footnote 131:

Antonio de Castillo, O.F.M., “El Devoto Peregrino, Viage de Tierra
Santa.” The book contains the usual crowd of official approbations. A
similar inconsistency is even more conspicuous in Father Gonzalez’s
“Hierusalemse Reijse,” a work written in Flemish and published at
Antwerp in 1673.

Footnote 132:

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

Footnote 133:

His plan in many details bears a curious resemblance to that of Father
Elzearius Horn, O.F.M., recently published from a Vatican MS. by
Father Golubovich. Hietling and Horn must probably have copied from
some common source.

Footnote 134:

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

Footnote 135:

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

Footnote 136:

“Peregrinus in Jerusalem,” Vienna, 1735.

Footnote 137:

Letter of Dom Geramb, written in 1832.

Footnote 138:

An excellent summary of the question may be found in Herr von Schick’s
paper in the “Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund”
for April, 1893.

Footnote 139:

Heb. xiii, 12.

Footnote 140:

John xix, 20.

Footnote 141:

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

Footnote 142:

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

Footnote 143:

Antoninus, ed. Geyer, p. 206.

Footnote 144:

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

Footnote 145:

One consists of diamond-shaped stones—the series unfortunately is
incomplete—erected originally in the garden. The tablets which survive
bear the following numbers and inscriptions: (3) Our LORD before
Caiphas; (5) Our LORD going to Herod; (7) Our LORD carrying His cross;
(8) Our LORD’S first fall; (9) Our LORD meeting with His Blessed
Mother; (10) Simon helps to carry our LORD’S cross; (11) Fall of our
LORD; (15) Our LORD’S nailing to the cross; (16) Our LORD hanging on
the cross. The other set are a series of pictures. They seem to have
been painted in Rome for Lady Carrington and to have been sent by her
to Lady Lucy Herbert, who was the Reverend Mother Prioress at Bruges
in the first half of the eighteenth century. The subjects are the
following: (1) The Last Supper; (2) The Agony in the Garden; (3) The
Apprehension; (4) CHRIST before Caiphas; (5) CHRIST before Pilate; (6)
The Ecce Homo; (7) The Scourging; (8) The Crowning with Thorns; (9)
Veronica; (10) The Taking Down from the Cross; (11) The Burial; (12)
The Resurrection.