Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

VIA DOLOROSA

The traditional path walked by Jesus from Pilate’s praetorium through the Old City of Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Lat. “the Sorrowful Way”).

As early as the 4th century a.d. pilgrims visited Jerusalem with a desire to pray at the places hallowed by Jesus’ last hours. Egeria (ca. 380) reports an annual (not weekly) procession: after spending the night of Holy Thursday on the Mount of Olives, worshippers descended at cockcrow to Gethsemane for readings commemorating Jesus’ agony and betrayal. Then they mounted up to the city, entering with singing through the eastern gate at first light. They passed through the city on approximately the same route as the present Via Dolorosa and moved without stopping to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The present Way grew out of the new devotion to the humanity and wounds of Jesus, central to the piety of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Bonaventure (1221-1274), and St. Gertrude (1256-1301).

The route has not changed much since the 13th century, but the number and order of stations has developed. The present Way with exactly 14 stations was definitively fixed only in 1914. The stations commemorate in succession (1) Jesus’ condemnation, (2) the imposition of the cross, (3) his fall under the weight of the cross, (4) meeting his mother, (5) placing of the cross on Simon of Cyrene, (6) Veronica’s wiping of his face, (7) falling a second time, (8) his words to the daughters of Jerusalem, (9) falling a third time, (10) removal of his garments, (11) nailing to the cross, (12) death on the cross, (13) his body taken from the cross, (14) his burial. Jesus’ falling three times, meeting his mother, and encountering Veronica are not attested in the NT but have become fixed features of the Way.

The route was established at a time when Jesus’ condemnation was believed to have taken place at the Fortress Antonia, serving as Pilate’s praetorium. It is now thought that the praetorium is to be identified with Herod’s palace to the west of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and not with the Antonia to the east. Thus pilgrims walking the Via Dolorosa are probably traveling in the opposite direction from the historical path.

Bibliography. A. Storme, The Way of the Cross (Jerusalem, 1976); H. Thurston, The Stations of the Cross (London, 1906); J. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels in the Holy Land, rev. ed. (Jerusalem, 1981).

Robert Harry Smith

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

VIA DOLOROSA

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)