Via Dolorosa
(Latin for Way of Grief or Way of Suffering)
The Via Dolorosa (Latin for Way of Grief or Way of Suffering) is
a street, in two parts, within the Old City of Jerusalem, held to be the path
that Jesus walked, carrying his cross, on the way to his crucifixion. The
current route has been established since the 18th century, replacing various
earlier versions. It is today marked by nine Stations of the Cross; there have
been fourteen stations since the late 15th century, with the remaining five
stations being inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The route is a place of
Christian pilgrimage.
The main roads - the cardines (north-south) and decumani (east-west) - in Aelia
Capitolina. The Via Dolorosa is the northern decumanus
The Via Dolorosa is the modern remnant of one of the two main east-west routes (Decumanus
Maximus) through Aelia Capitolina, as built by Hadrian. Standard Roman city
design places the main east-west road through the middle of the city, but the
presence of the Temple Mount in the middle of this position required Hadrian's
planners to add an extra east-west road at its north. In addition to the usual
central north-south road (cardo), which in Jerusalem headed straight up the
western hill, a second major north-south road was added down the line of the
Tyropoeon Valley; these two cardines converge near the Damascus Gate, close to
the Via Dolorosa. If the Via Dolorosa had continued west in a straight line
across the two routes, it would have formed a triangular block too narrow to
construct standard buildings; the decumanus (now the Via Dolorosa) west of the
Cardo was constructed south of its eastern portion, creating the discontinuity
in the road still present today.
The first reports of a pilgrimage route corresponding to the Biblical events
dates from the Byzantine era; during that time, a Holy Thursday procession
started from the top of the Mount of Olives, stopped in Gethsemane, entered the
Old City at the Lion's Gate, and followed approximately the current route to the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre; however, there were no actual stops during the
route along the Via Dolorosa itself. By the 8th century, however, the route went
via the western hill instead; starting at Gethsemene, it continued to the
alleged House of Caiaphas on Mount Zion, then to Hagia Sophia (viewed as the
site of the Praetorium), and finally to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholics of Jerusalem split into two
factions, one controlling the churches on the western hill, the other the
churches on the eastern hill; they each supported the route which took pilgrims
past the churches the faction in question controlled, one arguing that the Roman
Governor's mansion (Praetorium) was on Mount Zion (where they had churches), the
other that it was near the Antonia Fortress (where they had churches).
In fourteenth century, Pope Clement VI achieved some consistency in route with
the Bull, "Nuper Carissimae," establishing the Franciscan Custody of the Holy
Land, and charging the friars with "the guidance, instruction, and care of Latin
pilgrims as well as with the guardianship, maintenance, defense and rituals of
the Catholic shrines of the Holy Land." Beginning around 1350, Franciscan friars
conducted official tours of the Via Dolorosa, from the Holy Sepulchre to the
House of Pilate—opposite the direction traveled by Christ in Bible. The route
was not reversed until c. 1517 when the Franciscans began to follow the events
of Christ’s Passion chronologically-setting out from the House of Pilate and
ending with the crucifixion at Golgotha.
From the onset of Franciscan administration, the development of the Via Dolorosa
was intimately linked to devotional practices in Europe. The Friars Minor were
ardent proponents of devotional meditation as a means to access and understand
the Passion. The hours and guides they produced, such as Meditaciones vite
Christi (MVC), were widely circulated in Europe.
Necessarily, such devotional literature expanded on the terse accounts of the
Via Dolorosa in the Bible; the period of time between Christ’s condemnation by
Pilate and his resurrection receives no more than one or two lines in all four
gospels. Throughout the fourteenth century, a number of events, marked by
stations on the Via Dolorosa, emerged in devotional literature and on the
physical site in Jerusalem.
German Lutheran Church
The first stations to appear in pilgrimage accounts were the Encounter with Simon of Cyrene and the Daughters of Jerusalem.These were followed by a host of other, more or less ephemeral, stations, such as the House of Veronica, the House of Simon the Pharisee, the House of the Evil Rich Man Who Would Not Give Alms to the Poor, and the House of Herod. In his book, The Stations of the Cross, Herbert Thurston notes: "…Whether we look to the sites which, according to the testimony of travelers, were held in honor in Jerusalem itself, or whether we look to the imitation pilgrimages which were carved in stone or set down in books for the devotion of the faithful at home, we must recognize that there was a complete want of any sort of uniformity in the enumeration of the Stations."
This negotiation of stations, between the European imagination and the physical
site would continue for the next six centuries. Only in the 19th century was
there general accord on the position of the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth
stations. Ironically, archaeological discoveries in the 20th century now
indicate that the early route of the Via Dolorosa on the Western hill was
actually a more realistic path.
The equation of the present Via Dolorosa with the biblical route is based on the
assumption that the Praetorium was adjacent to the Antonia Fortress. However,
like Philo, the late-first-century writer Josephus testifies that the Roman
governors stayed in Herod's palace while they were in Jerusalem, carried out
their judgements on the pavement immediately outside it, and had those found
guilty flogged there; Josephus indicates that Herod's palace is on the western
hill, and it has recently (2001) been rediscovered under a corner of the Jaffa
Gate citadel. Furthermore, it is now confirmed by archaeology that prior to
Hadrian's 2nd-century alterations, the area adjacent to the Antonia Fortress was
a large open-air pool of water.
Text from Wikipedia
Old Jerusalem
Armenian Hospice
station 3
Jesus falls under the weight of the cross
station 4
Jesus' mother watches him pass by
station 5
Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross
station 6
Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
station 7
Jesus falls a second time