sacred head. It so wounded his venerable head, that his eyes were filled with the blood that flowed down. His ears, too, were closed, and his face and beard, as it were, covered and stained with that rosy blood.
His crucifiers and the soldiers immediately quickly removed all the boards placed up against the cross, and then the cross remained alone and lofty, and my Lord crucified upon it.
And when I beheld their cruelty, full of grief, then I beheld his most dolorous mother, as it were, trembling and half dead, — John and her sisters, who stood not far from the cross on the right, consoling her. The new pain of compassion for that most holy mother so transfixed me, that I felt as if a sharp sword of insupportable bitterness pierced my heart. At length his dolorous mother rising, as it were, lifeless in body, she looked on her Son, and stood thus supported by her sisters, overwhelmed with stupor, and, as it were, dead alive, pierced with a sword of grief.
When her Son beheld her and his friends weeping, he commended her in a mournful voice to John, and you might discern by his gesture and voice, that from compassion for his mother, his heart was pierced by the most keen dart of immense sorrow. Then his lovely
