PRETORIO. — Etymologically, it is the place where the Roman praetor established the judge’s office.
The early Christian tradition, however, does not seem to have adopted either of these locations, instead fixing the PRETORIO in the Tyropoeon Valley that separates the two cities (cf. the Pilgrim of Bordeaux, of the year 333), where in the 5th century the “church of Pilate” was erected (Peter the Iberian, c. 500), later called in the 6th century the “church of St. Sophia” (Theodosius, c. 530). In the Middle Ages, memories, at first vague and divided between Mount Sion and the vicinity of the Temple, came to be fixed in the 13th century at the Antonia near the Ecce Homo arch (v.), in whose vicinity a large aristocratic structure was discovered, believed to be the Lithostratos where Our Lord was judged and from which the Via Crucis begins.