EMMAUS. - 1. A city famous in the history of the Maccabees (1 Macc. 3:40; 4:3; 9:50), capital of a toparchy in 47 B.C. (Fl. 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, having fallen under Muslim power, it lost its importance. Today it is Amwās, a village near Latrun, 30 km. from Jerusalem on the road to Jaffa.
2. Terrain of E
It was ceded by Vespasian to a colony of 800 veterans, 30 stadia from Jerusalem. The name of E. is very doubtful, since the Latin version has Amasa, which corresponds to Amosa of Josh. 18:26, identified with the village of Qolānijjeh 6.5 km. from Jerusalem.
3. Village of E
Jesus, on the day of the Resurrection, appeared there to Cleopas and his companion (Lk. 24:13-26). Three places claim the honor of being the Gospel E., but the text, tradition and ruins do not lead to explicit preferences. The majority of the most important codices and versions fix the distance from Jerusalem to the village at 60 stadia; 6 Greek uncial codices, among them the Sinaiticus (4th cent.) and some minuscules, have 160 stadia instead. Critics generally prefer the reading 60, opining that the Greek letter for the number 100 was added to the figure 60 in order to harmonize the text with the then prevailing tradition of the Gospel E. at Nicopolis, distant, by the most traveled and convenient road, 160 stadia from Jerusalem. Ancient tradition (Ori-
(Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Jerome, Sozomen) down to the Crusader era knows only the Nicopolis E. and does not find it improbable that the two Gospel pilgrims covered, between going and returning, in a single afternoon, 320 stadia, that is, 60 km.
The Crusaders at first recognized the Castellum E. at Qolānijjeh, 30 stadia from Jerusalem, in the place today called Abū Gāš, where the church built in 1145 by the Hospitallers above the so-called "fountain of E." is preserved. In 1172 the pilgrim Theodoric pointed out there the "Castellum E. quod moderni Ponteneid vocant." But later (the documentation begins in 1282), all pilgrims indicate and visit the Gospel E. at a village 11 km. (= 60 stadia) northwest of Jerusalem, called by the Arabs el-Qubejbeh.
The imposing ruins of Amwās, where able archaeologists have recognized a church with three apses, built in the 3rd century, with transformations in the 6th century and in the 12th, have offered no positive attestation in relation to the Gospel event, and there is no lack of specialists who recognize in it a Roman monument adapted in the 4th or 6th century into a church. At el-Qubejbeh, which recent excavations have shown was already inhabited in the Maccabean era, in 1901 the Franciscan Fathers rebuilt the Crusader church, on remains of the Byzantine era, with the walls of a house that the pilgrims said was that of Cleopas incorporated into the northern nave. The place, although in harmony with the figure of 60 stadia and with the circumstances of the Gospel narrative, nevertheless lacks a toponymic tradition, however significant it may be that the Crusaders designated it as Castellum E., and lacks an archaeological consensus on the antiquity of the remains of the house, said to be that of Cleopas, and of the primitive construction of the church.
Bibliography3 works
Donato Baldi
ICONOGRAPHY OF EMMAUS
The representations in Christian art referring to the passage in the Gospel of St. Luke fall into three groups: the meeting of Christ with Cleopas and his companion, their journey toward E., and the supper.
In a fragment of a sarcophagus preserved in the Museo delle Terme in Rome, some scholars have believed they could recognize the representation of the supper at E. However, although three figures appear seated at a table, one of them, bearded, in the act of narrating and the other two paying great attention to his account, archaeologists have generally rejected that suggestive interpretation (Wilpert).
On the other hand, the representation of Christ's journey toward E. and of his meeting with Cleopas and his companion is quite frequent during the Middle Ages. We see the journey in the mosaics of S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, in the Greek Evangeliorio no. 74 of the Library of Paris, in the frescoes of S. Angelo in Formis, which are from the 11th century, in the mosaics of Monreale from the 12th century, while in a manuscript that is in Munich and belongs to the 9th century, Christ appears as a priest at an altar beside two figures. Still other scenes of the meeting at E. and of the supper are in the Salterio Albaud of Hildesheim and then in the art of the 13th and 14th centuries, for example, in the Maestà by Duccio in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Siena.
They will become even more frequent in the painting of the Renaissance. Fra Angelico will represent the scene of the meeting in a lunette of the Convent of S. Marco in Florence, where Christ is in pilgrim's garb while Cleopas and his companion wear the habit of the Dominican Friars, while with more veristic intentions the scene of the supper is represented by Giovanni Bellini in the church of S. Salvatore in Venice and then by Titian and Paolo Veronese in two paintings of the Louvre and by Rembrandt in a painting likewise in the Louvre. Caravaggio too will paint a supper at E. in a canvas formerly in the Patrizi collection in Rome and now in the Galleria di Brera in Milan, while Jacopo Chimenti da Empoli will depict it, by then almost a genre scene for the realism of its details, in a canvas of the Schiff-Giorgini collection in Rome. - See plate XXVII.
