Way of the Cross

WAY OF THE CROSS. - This name is customarily used to indicate the journey that Jesus, bearing the Cross, made from praetorium of Pilate to Mount Calvary, where he was crucified and died. In the proper sense the V. C. is a devotional practice consisting in the meditation of certain episodes of the Passion of Jesus Christ distributed over a determined number of stations, in order to recall to the veneration of the faithful Christ's journey toward Calvary.

The origin of this devotion is not known, but it undoubtedly received a strong impulse in the 12th-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 own lands, they took care to erect in their countries memorials of Calvary, of the Holy Sepulchre and of the other places of the Passion, in order to inflame the faithful and to stir up in them more greatly devotion to the Passion of Christ.

The various stations at the beginning were not fixed and varied also in their subject, because they were the fruit of private devotion. It was only in the 18th century that ecclesiastical authority intervened by establishing at 14 the number of the stations of the V. C. and the episode commemorated in each individual station. Of these episodes some are explicitly drawn from the Gospel, while others are a plausible dramatization of it: the falls under the Cross, the encounter with the Mother and with Veronica (v.). This provoked in the 18th century a literary controversy on the part of certain scholars of Jansenist tendency, such as Puiati and Ricci, of whom the former dared to propose a series of stations of his own invention.

In propagating this extra-liturgical but soundly popular devotion, the Friars Minor were especially distinguished, to whom already from the 14th century the custody of the Holy Places of Palestine had been entrusted. They spread this pious exercise everywhere, and in their churches and at their convents they erected stations of the V. C., exhorting the faithful to remember the Passion of Christ and the Mysteries of the Redemption. Its principal propagator was St. Leonard of Port Maurice, who in the course of his missions throughout Italy (1731-51) erected 572 V. C. At his request Clement XII, on 3 April 1731, through the S. Congregation of Indulgences, issued special Monita ad recte ordinandum devotum exercitium V. C., which even today, with certain modifications on the part of the Apostolic Penitentiary, dated 13 March 1938, constitute the fundamental norm that regulates the erection of the V. C. and the indulgences attached to it.

The provisions that are in force today on the basis of 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 ones in which by apostolic indult Mass is celebrated. 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, at a distance from one another, and over each one there must be a clearly visible wooden cross, even if small. Crosses of stone or metal are not permitted. That the individual stations be painted or sculpted is not strictly necessary, but it is recommendable in order better to fix the meditated Mystery in the minds of the faithful. - 3) In order that the faithful may gain the indulgences granted, it is necessary that the stations be canonically erected by a priest provided with the due faculty. The formula of the blessing is found in the Roman Ritual. According to cann. 239 and 349 of the CIC, cardinals, bishops, the superiors of the Orders of Friars Minor and the priests of the same Orders delegated for this by their respective superiors have the faculty to erect and bless the stations of the V. C. Other priests need a special faculty from the Apostolic Penitentiary. - 4) The faithful who practice the pious exercise of the V. C. gain the plenary indulgence each time, provided they fulfill the conditions required by the Church, and the partial indulgence of 10 years for each individual station, should they be unable to complete them all. To gain these indulgences, a movement of the body, even a minimal one, is required between one station and another, as if to follow Christ's journey toward Calvary. However, when the multitude of the faithful hinders their movement because of the narrowness of the place, it is enough that one person in the name of all go through the individual stations, accompanied spiritually by the others. Special prayers are not prescribed for carrying out the V. C. profitably. It is required only to meditate during the visit of the stations on the Passion of the Savior according to the capacity of each one.

Massimiliano Brandys

ART

In the cyclic representations of the Passion of Christ that have come 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 was seen carrying the Cross. This is the case, for example, in the 14th-century frescoes by Barna at San Gimignano.

Series of depictions, which set out in an always homogeneous manner the unfolding of the Passion of Christ, appear for the first time in the popular art of southern Germany around the middle of the 15th century. They initially consist of only seven scenes, and only in the 18th century did they reach the number of 14, by then called "stations."

The individual stations must depict, in the following order: 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 placed in the tomb.

From the second half of the 18th century down to today there are countless V. C. in painting, in prints, in sculpture, of which not many have true artistic value. A very rare example of high value is the 18th-century V. C. in the church of S. Polo (Venice), a work by Gian Domenico 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 of the church of Cristo Re and that of the church of S. Eugenio, due to various sculptors. - See t.v. CXL.

Witold Wehr