VIA CRUCIS
The Condemnation of Jesus, painting by G. D. Tiepolo (18th century). 1st station - Venice, church of S. Polo.
Praetorium of Pilate to Mount Calvary, where you were crucified and died. In the proper sense, the V. C. is a practice of piety consisting in the meditation on certain episodes of the Passion of Jesus Christ distributed in a fixed number of stations, to recall for the veneration of the faithful the journey of Christ toward Calvary.
The origin of this devotion is unknown, but it undoubtedly received strong impetus in the 13th-14th centuries at the time of the Crusades, when it became possible to reconstruct that journey ideally along the streets of the city. As the Crusaders and pilgrims returned to their homelands, they took care to erect in their countries memorials of Calvary, the Holy Sepulchre, and the other places of the Passion to inflame the faithful and to excite in them greater devotion to the Passion of Christ.
At first the various stations were not fixed and varied even in their subject matter, being the fruit of private devotion. It was only in the 18th century that ecclesiastical authority intervened by establishing the number of stations of the V. C. at 14 and the episode to be recalled at each single station. Of these episodes, some are explicitly drawn from the Gospel, while others are a plausible dramatization: the falls under the Cross, the meeting Veronica (v.). This provoked in the 18th century a literary controversy on the part of some doctors of Jansenist tendency, such as Puiati and Ricci, the first of whom dared to propose a series of stations of his own invention.
In propagating this devotion, which is extraliturgical but soundly popular, the Friars Minor distinguished themselves especially, to whom since the 14th century had been entrusted the custody of the Holy Places of Palestine. They spread this pious exercise everywhere, and in their churches and near their convents they erected stations of the V. C., exhorting the faithful to recall the Passion of Christ and the Mysteries of Redemption. The principal propagator was St. Leonard of Port Maurice, who in the course of his missions through Italy (1731-51) erected 572 V. C. At his urging, Clement XII, on 3 April 1731, through the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences, issued special Instructions for the proper ordering of the devout exercise of the V. C., which even today, with some modifications by the Apostolic Penitentiary on 13 March 1938, constitute the fundamental norm regulating the erection of the V. C. and the attached indulgences.
The provisions now in force in accordance with the cited decrees are: 1) the stations of the V. C. may be erected in churches and in public and semi-public oratories and also in private oratories in which Mass is celebrated by apostolic indult. For domestic oratories special faculties are required, which are granted by the Minister General of the Friars Minor. They may also be erected outside churches, in cemeteries, along avenues, etc. — 2) The stations must be 14, spaced one from another, and above each must stand a wooden cross, clearly visible even if small. Stone or metal crosses are not permitted. It is not strictly necessary that the individual stations be painted or sculpted, but it is recommended in order to fix the Mystery being meditated more firmly in the minds of the faithful. — 3) In order that the faithful may gain the indulgences, it is necessary that the stations be canonically erected by a priest possessing the proper faculty. The formula for the blessing is found in the Roman Ritual. According to canons 239 and 349 of the Code of Canon Law, the following have the faculty to erect and bless the stations of the V. C.: cardinals, bishops, superiors of the Orders of Friars Minor, and priests of the same Orders delegated by their respective superiors. Other priests need a special faculty from the Apostolic Penitentiary. — 4) The faithful who practice the pious exercise of the V. C. gain a plenary indulgence each time, provided they fulfill the conditions required by the Church, and a partial indulgence of 10 years for each single station, if they cannot complete all. To gain these indulgences it is necessary to move from one station to another, even slightly, as if following the path of Christ toward Calvary. However, when the crowd of the faithful makes movement difficult because of the narrowness of the place, it suffices that one person in the name of all pass through the individual stations, accompanied spiritually by the others. No special prayers are prescribed for performing the V. C. with profit. It is required only to meditate during the visit to the stations on the Passion of the Savior according to each one’s capacity.
ART
In the cyclic representations of the Passion of Christ handed down to us from the late Middle Ages, the presentation of the various successive scenes depended on the choice of the artist himself, who usually conceived them as complementary to the main image, in which Christ is seen bearing the Cross. Thus it is, for example, in the 14th-century frescoes of Barna at S. Gimignano.
Series of representations that uniformly set forth the unfolding of the Passion of Christ appear for the first time in the popular art of southern Germany about the middle of the 15th century. They initially consist of only seven scenes and only in the 18th century reached the number of 14, now called “stations.”
The individual stations must depict the following sequence: 1) Jesus condemned to death; 2) Jesus loaded with the Cross; 3) Jesus falling for the first time; 4) Jesus meeting his most holy Mother; 5) Jesus helped by Simon of Cyrene; 6) Jesus wiped by Veronica; 7) Jesus falling the second time; 8) Jesus consoling the pious women; 9) Jesus falling the third time; 10) Jesus stripped and given gall to drink; 11) Jesus nailed to the Cross; 12) Jesus dead on the Cross; 13) Jesus taken down from the Cross; 14) Jesus laid in the sepulchre.
From the second half of the 18th century to the present there are innumerable V. C. in painting, in prints, in sculpture, of which not many have true artistic value. Very rare are examples of high value, such as the 18th-century V. S. Polo (Venice), Tiepolo (v.). Truly good is the V. C. by Poma in the cathedral of Treviso. Among those reproduced in bronze, mention should be made in Rome of that in the church of Cristo Re and that in the church of S. Eugenio, the work of various sculptors.
- See plate CXL.