Appendix C—Relative Antiquity of the Various Stations
Reading edition
In “La Palestine, Guide Historique,” by the Assumptionist Professors of Notre Dame de Sion a list is given of the Stations with the dates of their earliest appearance in the narratives of pilgrims to the Holy Land. As my conclusions differ in many respects from those there enunciated, a few notes may be added upon this subject.
I. The Prætorium seems perhaps to be first quite unmistakably assigned to the site which has now become traditional by Riccoldo (1296), and this, as I judge, for the thoroughly sound and scientific reason that the Prætorium must have lain within the city wall, and consequently could not have been situated on Mount Sion. They accordingly located it where there were signs of the existence of a paved courtyard (lithostrotos) near the Ecce Homo Arch.
II. The receiving of the cross is first indicated as a special object of devotion by Bethlem, c. 1475. See above, p. 78.
III. The idea of the first of a series of falls, as distinct from the fall at the corner where the station of Simon of Cyrene used to be indicated, is also clearly traceable to Bethlem. He and other contemporaries suppose that this first fall took place upon the steps of the Scala Santa outside Pilate’s Prætorium.
IV and V. The meetings with our Lady and with Simon of Cyrene seem first to be plainly commemorated in Riccoldo 1296.
VI. Veronica’s house first appears amongst the holy places of Jerusalem in the Proœmium of James of Verona. This pilgrimage was made in 1335, but the Proœmium must be a later addition. It is, however, in any case older than 1420.
VII. A fall at the gate of the city is very clearly indicated in the preface to Burchard, 1283. Possibly it was from this source that Bethlem (? 1475) came to speak of “a heavy fall” at the Judicial Gate.
VIII. The meeting with the women of Jerusalem is mentioned by most pilgrims of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, though they consider that it is closely associated with the coming of Simon of Cyrene. Our Lord spoke to the women as soon as He was relieved of the weight of the cross and was in consequence able to raise His head.
IX. Verona (1335) and Poggibonsi (1346) speak of the stone in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, upon which our Saviour fell, or, as other accounts say, rested for a while when climbing the steep of Calvary.
X, XI, XII. These stations are made prominent as separate incidents by Pascha (?c. 1539). The stripping appears among the seven Falls before 1500. See pp. 65, 72 and 73.
XIII and XIV. It can by no means be said, as in “La Palestine, Guide Historique,” that the thirteenth and fourteenth stations were only added to the Way of the Cross in the eighteenth century at the earliest. Both these episodes are separately commemorated and illustrated by pictures in the “Geystlich Strass,” 1521. See illustration above at p. 154.
Footnotes
Transcriber’s Notes: Footnotes have been collected at the end of the text, and are linked for ease of reference.