Ecce Homo

"ECCE HOMO." — Words spoken by Pilate (John 19:5), presenting Jesus to the people after the flagellation.

I. ARCH OF THE ECCE HOMO

This is the name given in Jerusalem since the 16th century to the central part of a three-arched archway, which at the beginning of the Via Dolorosa spans the street with its sides embedded in private buildings. It was introduced into the history of the trial of Jesus because it was believed to be the entrance gate to the praetorium, from which Pilate would have shown Jesus to the people while pronouncing those words. Two large stones, on which, it was said, Jesus and Pilate would have stood at the moment of the condemnation or of the E. H., were shown walled up at the top of the arch.

In 1878 the smaller arch or northern archway was enclosed within the basilica, of austere elegance, called that of the E. H., and it harmoniously frames its apse. The southern one was lost and used in private buildings. Although archaeologists ascribe the arch to the 2nd and 3rd centuries and identify it with the eastern gate of Aelia Capitolina, they nonetheless acknowledge its merit in having preserved through the centuries the tradition concerning the trial of Jesus at the Antonia fortress, located north of the Temple, and of which traces have recently been found with the double-arched gate and the wide courtyard or lithostrotos (Jo. 9, 13), in the foundations and surroundings of the Roman arch of the E. H.

Donato Baldi

II. ICONOGRAPHY

Among the scenes of the Passion, that of the E. H. received the least ancient iconographic definition. Indeed it is very unlikely that one can recognize, as some scholars have wished, in figurations earlier than the late Middle Ages the scene in which Christ, His head crowned with thorns and with the evident marks of the scourging on His flesh, holding a reed in His hands in the manner of a scepter and with a red cloth on His shoulders to feign royal purple, is shown by Pilate to the people.

Such a figuration in fact appears for the first time in a well-determined form in German medieval miniature painting (Codex Egberti, bishop of Trier from 977 to 993) and then frequently in Nordic sculpture and painting of the 15th century, and it suffices to cite the painting with the E. H. belonging to the Westphalian school that is in the National Gallery in London, where one sees Pilate intent on washing his hands and Christ, pushed by henchmen, standing beside him, among soldiers and ruffians. The theme is better defined during the 16th century, in paintings and engravings, and is also taken up by Italian art, which leaves notable testimonies of it — to cite but a few examples — in the paintings of Fra Bartolomeo, of Cigoli, and of Sodoma in the Pitti Gallery in Florence and in the paintings of Varallo, the work of Gaudenzio Ferrari.

Linked to the development of this theme, which during the 19th century had its most characteristic expression in the famous painting by Ciseri that is in the Gallery of Modern Art in Florence, is the other figuration, likewise called that of the E. H., consisting of the sorrowful image of Christ alone, almost always half-length, likewise with His head crowned with thorns. The scourged body, while between the arms, bound at the wrists by cords or chains, beyond or instead of the reed, it has a bundle of rods and the whip of the scourging.

This image too, very frequent during the 15th century, and not only in the Nordic countries, takes on a particular diffusion during the 16th century and more in the 17th century with the spread of the naturalistic spirit, logically inclined toward the favorable propagation of such an iconographic type. - See pl. I.

Emilio Lavagnino