EMMAUS. - I. A celebrated city in the history of the Maccabees (1 Macc. 3:40; 4:3; 9:50), the chief town of a toparchy in 47 B.C. (Flavius Josephus, *Bell. Jud.*, III, 5), reduced to ashes by Varus in 40 B.C. (id., *Antiq. Jud.*, XIV, 122). In the 2nd-3rd centuries it was rebuilt and received the title of Nicopolis, but in 637, after falling under Muslim rule, it lost its importance. Today it is 'Amwas, a village near Latrun, 30 km from Jerusalem on the road to Jaffa.
II. The territory of Emmaus
It was ceded by Vespasian to a colony of 800 veterans, 30 stades from Jerusalem. The name Emmaus is quite doubtful, since the Latin version gives Amassa, which corresponds to Amosa in Jos. 18:26, identified with the village of Qoloniijeh, 6.5 km from Jerusalem.III. The village of Emmaus
On the day of the Resurrection, Jesus appeared there to Cleophas and his companion (Lk. 24:13-26). Three places claim to be the Emmaus of the Gospel, but the text, tradition, and ruins do not allow for an explicit preference. Most important codices and versions place the distance from Jerusalem at 60 stades; six Greek uncial manuscripts, including the Codex Sinaiticus (4th cent.) and some minuscules, give 160 stades instead. Critics generally prefer the reading 60, supposing that the Greek numeral 160 was added to harmonize the text with the then-current tradition locating the Gospel Emmaus at Nicopolis, which is 160 stades from Jerusalem by the most frequented and convenient route. The ancient tradition (OriTHE CONGREGATIONS OF EMMAUS. - Christian art representations relating to the passage in the Gospel of St. Luke fall into three groups: the meeting of Christ with Cleophas and his companion, their journey to Emmaus, and the supper.
In a fragment of a sarcophagus preserved in the Museum of the Baths in Rome, some scholars have believed they recognize the representation of the supper at Emmaus. However, despite three figures appearing seated at a table, one of them bearded, in the act of speaking and the other two paying close attention to his narrative, archaeologists have generally rejected this suggestive interpretation (Wilpert).
More frequent during the Middle Ages is the representation of Christ’s journey to Emmaus and His meeting with Cleophas and his companion. We see this journey in the museums of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, in the Greek Evangelary no. 74 of the Paris Library, in the frescoes of Sant’Angelo in Formis (11th cent.), in the museums of Monreale (12th cent.), while in a manuscript now in Munich (9th cent.) Christ appears as a priest at an altar beside two figures. Scenes of the Emmaus meeting and supper also appear in the Albini Psalter of Hildesheim and thus in 13th- and 14th-century art, e.g., in Duccio’s *Maestà* in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Siena.
They became even more frequent in Renaissance painting. Fra Angelico depicted the meeting scene in a lunette at the Convent of San Marco in Florence, where Christ is dressed as a pilgrim. Cleophas and his companion wear the habit of the Dominican friars, while a more realistic rendering of the supper scene is found in Giovanni Bellini’s work in the church of San Salvatore in Venice, and later in Titian and Paolo Veronese with two paintings in the Louvre, and Rembrandt with a painting also in the Louvre. Caravaggio painted a supper at Emmaus in a canvas formerly in the Patrizi collection in Rome and now in the Brera Gallery in Milan, while Jacopo Chi-
EMMAUS — EMMERICK, ANNA KATHARINA
menti of Empoli portrayed it, almost as a genre scene for the realism of its details, in a canvas in the Schiff-Giorgini collection in Rome.
- See pl. XXVII.