CALVARIO. — The place where Jesus «suffered outside the gates (of Jerusalem)» (Hebr. 13:2), called «the place of the skull» (κρενίου τόπος) and in Greek Γολγοτά (Io. 19:17). Golgota is an Aramaic name formed from the Hebrew gulgōleth, with the elimination of the second l so that the two syllables would not end in the same way (G. Dalman). The name seems to derive from the form of this «hillock» (CSEL, XXXIX, p. 22). But Origen, «to whom this tradition had come», already explains the term «by the fact that Adam’s skull was buried there» (In Mt. Comm., 126th series: PG 13, 1777; ed. E. Klostermann, X, p. 265); St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome (PG 41, 844; PL 22, 485), and others agree.
«Impious men filled the place with much earth piled up there and built there a cave of the demon which they call Venus» (Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 26: PG 20, 1085; ed. Heikel, I, p. 89). «Since the time of Hadrian, the statue of Venus was venerated on the rock of the Cross» (Jerome, Ep., 58, 3: PL 22, 581); St. Ambrose therefore calls the place «Venereus» (In Ps., 47, 5: PL 14, 1203). When Constantine covered the entire site with a splendid building (Martyrium Anastasis), constructed according to the plan of the pagan temple (37 × 137 m.), the Holy Cross remained in the open: «Ipse locus subdivanus est» (Etheria, 37, 4: CSEL, XXXIX, p. 89). The Christians placed there a very large silver cross (Arculf and Bede: CSEL, XXXIX, pp. 233 and 304). Even in the time of Willibald, the crosses «are not inside the church, but stand outside the church under a canopy» (T. Tobler-A. Molinier, Itineraria Hierosolymitana et descriptiones Terrae Sanctae, I, Geneva 1880, p. 263). It seems to have been Constantine Monomachos (ca. 1042 onwards) who, rebuilding the church of the Holy Sepulchre destroyed by the Muslims in 1009, brought this holy place under the same roof as the church of the Holy Sepulchre.
From Ps. 73 (74):12 («God wrought salvation in the midst of the earth») the conclusion was drawn that C. is the middle of the earth. Thus St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Cat., 13, 28; cf. Didymus, De Trin., I: PG 33, 805, and 39, 324. Even today this error persists in the «navel of the earth» shown in the choir of the Greeks.
The fissure in the rock that occurred at Jesus’ death (Mt. 27:51) is attested by St. Cyril of Jerusalem: «Golgotha still today bears witness to how the stones were split for Christ» (Catech., XIII, 39: PG 33, 819). An even earlier testimony is found in the account of St. Lucian the Martyr (d. 312), preserved by Rufinus (Hist. Eccles., IX, 6; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., IX, 7; ed. E. Schwartz: CB, IX, II, p. 815). In the following centuries too, pilgrims sometimes speak of this «fissure that occurred at the death of Jesus» (Theoderic, ca. 1172: D. Baldi, Enchiridion Locorum Sanctorum, Jerusalem 1935, p. 853).
The authenticity of the hillock of C. is established by the testimony of the Emperor Hadrian, who wished to profane that place, then venerated by Christian tradition. To those who objected that C. was outside the walls, the ruins of that gate purchased by Tsar Alexander II in 1857 provide the answer: they demonstrate that the walls of Jerusalem were then east of C. (Vincent, p. 57).
When the rock of C. was adapted to the church in which it was enclosed, it was reduced with the pickaxe to the form of a cube approximately 5 m. on each side. Today it occupies the southern side of the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, to the right of the only door. Two chapels adorn the surface of the sanctuary of C.; their space (11.45 × 9.25 m.) extends beyond that of the rock. The southern chapel (abutting the wall of the Basilica, to which the chapel of the Franks was later added outside the
wall of the Basilica) belongs to the Catholics, and contains stations X, XI, XIII of the Way of the Cross. The principal chapel, to the left (north) of the preceding one, was occupied by the schismatic Greeks, who possess the place of the Holy Cross, erected there together with the images of the Most Holy Sorrowful Virgin and St. John. Between the place of the Cross and the Latin altar (station XI) is enclosed the altar of Our Lady of Sorrows.
Beneath the chapels of C. there is a crypt that is the chapel of Adam, which is said to have contained Adam’s skull, sprinkled with the blood of Christ descending through the fissure in the rock; the sacrifice of the patriarch Abraham is also venerated there. Two stairways lead the pilgrim, and first of all the procession of the Latins that every day traverses these holy places, to the site of the Holy Cross.