CALVARY. - Place where Jesus "suffered outside the gates (of Jerusalem)" (Hebr. 13, 2), called the "place of the skull" (κρανίου τόπος) and in Greek Γολγοθά (Io. 19, 17). Golgotha 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 shape of this "little hill" (CSEL, XXXIX, p. 22). But already Origen, "to whom such a tradition came," explains the term "by the fact that the skull of Adam 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.
"Wicked men filled the place with much earth piled up there and built upon it a dark cavern of the demon whom they call Venus" (Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 26: PG 20, 1085; ed. Heikel, I, p. 89). "From the times 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 layout of the pagan temple (37 × 137 m.), the Holy Cross remained in the open air: "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). Still in the time of Willibald, the crosses "are not inside the church, but stand outside the church under a shed" (T. Tobler-A. Molinier, Itineraria Hierosolymitana et descriptiones Terrae Sanctae, I, Geneva 1880, p. 263). It was, it seems, Constantine Monomachos (ca. 1042 ff.) who, in rebuilding the church of the Holy Sepulchre destroyed by the Muslims in 1009, gathered 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 Calvary 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" that is shown in the choir of the Greeks.
The fissure of the rock that occurred at the death of Jesus (Mt. 27, 51) is attested by St. Cyril of Jerusalem: "Golgotha even today bears witness how the stones were split for Christ" (Catech., XIII, 39: PG 33, 819). An even older testimony is found in the account of St. Lucian Martyr (d. 312), preserved by Rufinus (Hist. Eccles., IX, 6; Eusebius,
Hist. Eccles., IX, 7; ed. E. Schwartz: CB, IX, II, p. 815). Even in the following centuries pilgrims sometimes speak of this "fissure that occurred at the death of Jesus" (Theodoric, ca. 1172: D. Baldi, Enchiridion Locorum Sanctorum, Jerusalem 1935, p. 853).
The authenticity of the little hill of Calvary results from the testimony of the emperor Hadrian, who wished to desecrate that place, then venerated by Christian tradition. To anyone who might object that Calvary was outside the walls, the ruins of that gate which Tsar Alexander II bought in 1857 respond: it demonstrates that the walls of Jerusalem were then to the east of Calvary (Vincent, p. 57).
When the rock of Calvary was adapted to the church in which it was enclosed, it was reduced with the pickaxe into the form of a cube about 5 m. on each side. Today it occupies the southern side of the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, to the right of the single door. Two chapels adorn the surface of the sanctuary of Calvary; their space (11.45 × 9.25 m.) exceeds that of the rock. The southern chapel (adjoining the wall of the Basilica, to which was later added the chapel of the Franks 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 Virgin of Sorrows and of St. John. Between the place of the Cross and the Latin altar (station XI) is included the altar of Our Lady of Sorrows.
Beneath the chapels of Calvary there is a crypt which is the chapel of Adam, which would have contained the skull of Adam, sprinkled by the blood of Christ that descended through the fissure of the rock; there the sacrifice of the patriarch Abraham is also venerated. Two stairways lead the pilgrim, and above all the procession of the Latins that each day traverses these holy places, to the place of the Holy Cross.
Bibliography3 works
Urbano Holzmeister