March 18, 2008. Copyright, 2008, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Tracing the route of the Via Dolorosa
By Elisabeth Ribbans

LONDON, March 18, Graphic News:  This Good Friday, Christian pilgrims will walk JerusalemÕs Via Dolorosa in commemoration of ChristÕs death as they have for centuries. For how many centuries is not certain. Nor can they be sure that the route taken -- known also as the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross, and the Stations of the Cross -- is more than a symbolic reconstruction of JesusÕs path to Calvary.

Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans less than 40 years after ChristÕs death and has since been remodelled many times, making identification of the likely route the subject of intense archaeological and religious debate.

The Gospels make reference to only nine of the incidents represented at the 14 ÒstationsÓ where todayÕs pilgrims stop to pray, and the precise location of some of these events is again open to interpretation. The sixth station, for example, which marks JesusÕs encounter with Veronica, is based on a story popularized in the medieval mystery plays.

As Father Jerome Murphy-OÕConnor writes in The Geography of Faith: ÒThe Via Dolorosa is defined not by history but by faith. It is the achievement of generations of Christians who desired above all to be in contact with what was tangible in the life of Christ.Ó

Legend says that Mary, mother of Jesus, retraced her sonÕs final steps every day from the time of his crucifixion. And St Jerome, writing in around the 4th century AD, mentions crowds of foreign pilgrims visiting the Holy sites. It is not until the 12th century, however, that travellers mention a settled route, and nothing connects it to the present-day course.

According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, the first reference to the stations comes from an account by English pilgrim William Wey who visited the city in the 1460s. He lists 14 stations -- though not all corresponding to todayÕs stops -- but at various times there seems to have been between 12 and 31 places.

It is thought Franciscan Friars who were made custodians of the Holy Land a century earlier established the stations for pilgrims. And that from this tour came the name Via Dolorosa, introduced in the 16th century and meaning Way of Sorrows.

The Via Dolorosa runs from the Antonia Fortress, a barracks where many assume Jesus was condemned by Pontius Pilate, to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Calvary, also known by its Greek name Golgotha. However, some historians over many centuries have put Pilate in the more lavish palace built by King Herod on the west side of the city.

American theologian Dr. Ernest L. Martin makes a more controversial claim that the place of the crucifixion is incorrect. In his book The Secrets of Golgotha, he points to the report in LukeÕs Gospel of the centurion seeing the curtain of the Temple torn in two at the exact moment of JesusÕs death.

ÒTo see the curtain means that he had to be looking westwards toward the outer curtain of the Temple. The geographical scenario...demands that the centurion was standing east of Jerusalem and at an elevated region. This placed the centurion in only one area of Jerusalem -- on the upper slopes of the Mount of Olives.Ó
/ENDS