- Feb 5, 2002
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Some popular devotions arise as a substitute for something else. The scapular is a cut-down habit. The rosary is a simplified Psalter. The Hours of Our Lady is a smaller Liturgy of the Hours.
And the Way of the Cross is a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The idea that the Stations of the Cross developed as European versions of a Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem when pilgrims could no longer safely travel due to the crusades it not quite right. A journey of several thousand miles (one way) was no picnic in the 14th century with or without Ayyubids or treacherous Palaiologoi, and even under the Ottomans some kings were able to negotiate access to Jerusalem. More to the point, the 14 Stations that we know today didn’t assume their final form until long after the last Holy Land crusade, and didn’t have exact corollaries in Jerusalem until after they took form in Europe.
What we find instead is a gradual process of development linked to pilgrimage, but also to piety. Proof that a path known as the Via Dolorosa, marked from early days and already practiced in the time of Constantine, is lacking, and the modern path is approximate due to two millennia of shifting geography. Indeed, there is nothing in the records of pilgrims of the first ten centuries that includes the Way of the Cross as we know it today.
Continued below.
And the Way of the Cross is a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
The idea that the Stations of the Cross developed as European versions of a Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem when pilgrims could no longer safely travel due to the crusades it not quite right. A journey of several thousand miles (one way) was no picnic in the 14th century with or without Ayyubids or treacherous Palaiologoi, and even under the Ottomans some kings were able to negotiate access to Jerusalem. More to the point, the 14 Stations that we know today didn’t assume their final form until long after the last Holy Land crusade, and didn’t have exact corollaries in Jerusalem until after they took form in Europe.
What we find instead is a gradual process of development linked to pilgrimage, but also to piety. Proof that a path known as the Via Dolorosa, marked from early days and already practiced in the time of Constantine, is lacking, and the modern path is approximate due to two millennia of shifting geography. Indeed, there is nothing in the records of pilgrims of the first ten centuries that includes the Way of the Cross as we know it today.
Continued below.
