GETHSEMANI (Hebrew Gath-Šēmānîm, "Oil Press"). - A place (Lk. 22:40), a garden (Jn. 18:1), a plot of land (Mk. 14:32; Mt. 26:36; Vulg. villa, praedium) in Jerusalem, beyond the brook Kidron, at the foot of the Mount of Olives (Lk. 22:39; Jn. 18:1-2) where Jesus prayed, agonized and was arrested.
It may be pictured, according to the Eastern type, as a rustic property with olive trees enclosed by a dry-stone wall, with a cave fitted up as a dwelling where there was an oil press from which it took its name. Here Jesus, during his stays in Jerusalem, was accustomed to spend the nights (Lk. 22:39; Jn. 18:2) as the guest of the owner, a friend or relative; and on the evening of Holy Thursday, having left the eight disciples there to rest, he went further into the garden and, having also separated himself from Peter, James and John, he immersed himself in prayer, to rejoin all the disciples afterwards, when Judas, who knew the place (Jn. 18:2), arrived there to have him arrested. The two places - cave and garden - were from the earliest centuries objects of veneration, and Eusebius in 330 says that the faithful "even today" gather there to pray; St. Jerome, in the Latin translation of Eusebius' Onomasticon (390), adds "nunc ecclesia desuper aedificata" (On., 75), erected therefore between 330 and 390, probably by the emperor Theodosius (379-95). The pilgrim Etheria or Egeria (395) relates in her itinerary that on the evening of Holy Thursday the Jerusalem clergy went first to the "elegant church" of the Prayer where the Gospel of the agony was read, and then descended into G. (the cave) where the Gospel of the betrayal and arrest was read.
The Theodosian church, destroyed at the coming of the Persians (611) and rebuilt by the Crusaders under the title of St. Saviour, fell again into ruin in the 13th century. Since the local clergy of necessity transferred the office to the cave, there was imperceptibly a shift in the sacred memories; the agony was placed in the cave, the betrayal and arrest in the garden.
Today the place has resumed the appearance impressed upon it by the primitive tradition. In a garden enclosure that preserves 8 centuries-old olive trees, probably witnesses of the Passion, there has stood since 1924 the new Basilica, rebuilt through the work of the Franciscan Fathers of the Holy Land on the level of the 4th-century church rediscovered in 1919.
About 100 m. distant from the garden, the cave, which on its bare walls bears the signs of ancient veneration, has resumed the title of "cave of the betrayal and arrest". - See pl. XXV.
Bibliography2 works
Donato Baldi