Praetorium

PRETORIO. - Etymologically, it is the place where the Roman praetor established his office as a judge.

Originally, in mobile camps, it was the tent of the general-in-chief; then, in garrisons, a complex of buildings, with two or more courtyards, where the residence or dwel-

tation of the praetor along with military, civil, and judicial offices. The necessary furnishings were: the tribunal (βῆμα), a sort of semicircular dais of considerable breadth yet capable of being transported and set up in a suitable place, and the curule seat, placed in the center of the dais. The Roman official, seated upon the chair and surrounded by his counselors placed at the sides of the semicircle, directed the trial, having before him the defendants, the accusers, the witnesses, and the defenders. No special building was therefore required for the trial; the p. was the permanent or provisional place where the Roman official set up the tribunal.

The Evangelists, in narrating the trial of Jesus at the tribunal of Pilate, specify only that the sentence was pronounced by the tribunal or βῆμα placed upon the lithostratos (v.). When the procurator, who resided in Caesarea in the Palace of Herod (πρωταγόριον Ἡρώβου, Act. 25, 5), traveled to Jerusalem, he took up residence in the Palace built by Herod in the upper city, to the west of the present Jaffa Gate (cf. Philo, Legatio ad Caium, 38; Flavius Josephus, Bell. Iud., II, 14, 8; XX, 5, 3), and exceptionally in the lower city, fortress (v.), dominating the Temple esplanade from the north (Antiq. Iud., I, 4, 3; Act. 21, 47).

Early Christian tradition, however, does not seem to have adopted either location, fixing the p. instead in the Tyropean valley that separates the two cities (cf. Pilgrim of Bordeaux, of the year 333), where in the 5th cent. the "church of Pilate" was erected (Peter the Iberian, ca. 500), later called in the 6th cent. "church of St. Sophia" (Theodosius, ca. 530). In the Middle Ages the memories, initially fluctuating and divided between Mount Zion and the vicinity of the Temple, ended up being fixed in the 13th cent. at the Antonia near the Ecce Homo arch (v.), in the vicinity of which a large pavement was discovered, believed to be the lithostratos where Our Lord was judged and from where the Via Crucis begins.