WAY
570
WAY
Passion. About the same time the Blessed Eustochia,
a Poor Clare, constructed a similar set of Stations in
her convent at Messina. Others that may be enu-
merated were those at Gorlitz, erected by G. Emmerich,
about 1465, and at Nuremberg, by Ketzel, in 146S.
Imitations of these were made at Lou vain in 150.5 by
Peter Sterckx; at St. Getreu in Bamberg in 1507; at
Fribourg and at Rhodes, about the same date, the
two latter being in the commanderies of the Knights
of Rhodes. Those at Nuremberg, which were carved
by Adam Krafft, as well as some of the others, con-
sisted of seven Stations, popularly known as "the
Seven Falls", because in each of them Christ was
represented either as actually prostrate or as sinking
under the weight of His cross. A famous set of Sta-
tions was set up in 1515 by Romanet Boffin at Romans
in Dauphine, in imitation of those at Fribourg, and a
similar set was erected in 1491 at VaraUo by the
Franciscans there, whose guardian, Blessed Ber-
nardino Caimi, had been custodian of the holy places.
In several of these early examples an attempt was
made, not merely to duplicate the most hallowed spots
of the original Via Dolorosa at Jerusalem, but also to
reproduce the exact intervals between them, mea-
sured in paces, so that devout people might cover
precisely the same distances as they would have done
had they made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land
itself. Boffin and some of the others visited Jerusa-
lem for the express purpose of obtaining the exact
measurements, but unfortunately, though each
claimed to be correct, there is an extraordinary diver-
gence between some of them.
With regard to the number of Stations it is not at all easy to determine how this came to be fixed at fourteen, for it seems to have varied considerably at different times and places. And, naturally, with varying numbers the incidents of the Passion com- memorated also varied greatly. Wey's accoimt, written in the middle of the fifteenth century, gives fourteen, but only fi;'e of these correspond with ours, and of the others, seven, viz.: The house of Dives, the city gate through which Christ passed, the probatic pool, the EcceHomo arch, the Blessed Virgin's school, and the houses of Herod and Simon the Pharisee, ;xre only more or less remotely connected with our Via Crucis. When Romanet Boffin visited Jerusalem in 1515 for the purpose of obtaining correct details for his set of Stations at Romans, two friars there told him that there ought to be thirty-one in all, but in the manuals of devotion subsequently issued for the use of those visiting these Stations they are given variously as nineteen, twenty-five, and thirty-seven, so it seems that even in the same place the number was not determined very definitely. A book entitled "Jerusalem sicut Christi tempore floruit", WTitten by one Adrichomius and pubhshed in 1584, gives twelve Stations which correspond exactly with the first twelve of ours, and this fact is thought by some to point conclusively to the origin of the particular selection afterwards authorized by the Church, espe- cially as this book had a wide circulation and was tran.slated into several European languages. Whether this is so or not we cannot say for certain. At any rate, during the sixteenth century, a number of devo- tional manuals, giving [)rayi'rs for use when making the Stations, were published in the Low C^ounlries, and some of our fourteen appear in them for the first time. But whilst this was l)ring done in Kuroiie for the benefit of those who could not visit the Holy Laud and yet could reach Louvaiii, Nuremberg, Romans, or one of the other reproductions of the Via Dolorosa, it api)ears doubtful whether, even up to the end of the sixteenth century, there was any settled form of the devotion performed i)ublicly in .lerusalem, for Zual- lardo, who wrote a book on the subject, ])uWisheil in Rome in 1.5S7, although he gives a full. series of prayers, etc., for the shrines within the Holy Se])ulchre, which
were under the care of the Franciscans, provides none
for the Stations themselves. He ex-plains the reason
thus: "it is not permitted to make any halt, nor to
pay veneration to them with uncovered head, nor to
make any other demonstration ". From this it would
seem that after Jerusalem had passed under the
Turkish domination the pious exercises of the Way of
the Cross could be performed far more devoutly at
Nuremberg or Louvain than in Jerusalem itself. It
may therefore be conjectured, with extreme proba-
bility, that oiu- present series of St.ations, together
with the accustomed prayers for them, comes to us,
not from Jerusalem, but from some of the imitation
Ways of the Cross in different parts of Europe, and
that we owe the propagation of the devotion, as well
as the number and selection of oiu^ Stations, much
more to the pious ingenuity of certain sLxteenth-
century devotional writers than to the actual practice
of pilgrims to the holy places.
With regard to the particular subjects which have been retained in our series of Stations, it maj' be noted that very few of the medieval accounts make any mention of either the second (Christ receiving the cross) or the tenth (Christ being stripped of His garments), whilst others which have since dropped out appear in almost all the early hsts. One of the most frequent of these is the Station formerly made at the remains of the EcceHomo arch, i. e. the balcony from which these words were pronounced. Additions and omissions such as these seem to confirm the supposi- tion that our Stations are derived from pious manuals of devotion rather than from Jerusalem itself. The three falls of Christ (third, seventh, and ninth Sta- tions) are apparently all that remain of the Seven Falls, as depicted by Ivrafft at Nuremberg and his imitators, in all of which Christ was represented as either falling or actually fallen. In explanations of this it is supposed that the other four falls coincided with His meetings with His Mother, Simon of C>Tene, Veronica, and the women of Jerusalem, and that in these four the mention of the faU has dropped out whilst it survives in the other three which have nothing else to distinguish them. A few medieval writers take the meeting with Simon and the women of Jerusalem to have been simultaneous, but the major- ity represent them as separate events. The \'eronica incident does not occur in many of the earlier accounts, whilst almost all of those that do mention it place it as having happened just before reaching Mount Calvary, instead of earlier in the journej- as in our present arrangement. An interesting variation is found in the special set of eleven stations ordered in 1799 for use in the Diocese of Vienne. It is as follows: (1) the Agony in the Garden; (2) the betrayal by Judas; (3) the scourging; (4) the crowning with thorns; (5) Christ condemned to death; (6) He meets Simon of Cyrene; (7) the women of Jerusalem; (S) He tastes the gall; (9) He is nailed to the cross; (10) His death on the cross; and (11) His body is taken down from the cross. It will be noticed that only five of these correspond exactly with ova' Stations. Tlio others, though comprising the chief events of the Passion, are not strictly incidi'uts of the \'ia Dolorosa itself.
Another variation that occurs in ditTerent churches relates to the side of the cluirch on which the stations begin. The Oo.sjiel side is perhaps the more usual. In reply to a question the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences, in is;57,said that, although nothing was ordered on this point, beginning on the Ciospel side seemed to be the more appropriate. In deciding the matter, however, the arrangement and form of a church may make it more convenient to go the other way. The ]>osition of the figvires in the tableaux, too, may sometimes determine the direction of the route, for it seems more in accordance with the spirit of the devotion that the procession, in pa.-ising from station to station, should follow Christ rather than meet Him.
