In celebration of Easter according to the Gregorian calendar, we have decided to dedicate a few lines to one of the most widespread and visually recognizable devotional practices in the Catholic world—the Stations of the Cross, or the Via Crucis practice. This is a spiritual practice that involves the physical participation of believers in order to achieve unity with Christ during the final stage of His suffering. The Stations of the Cross serve as a visual aid guiding the believer through meditation on the individual episodes of the Passion. These stations are: 1. Christ’s trial before Pilate, 2. Christ takes up the cross, 3. Christ falls the first time, 4. Christ meets His mother, 5. Christ and Simon of Cyrene, 6. Christ and Veronica, 7. Christ falls the second time, 8. The women of Jerusalem weep for the Lord, 9. Christ falls the third time, 10. Stripping of the garments, 11. The Crucifixion, 12. Christ’s death on the cross, 13. The removal from the cross, and 14. The laying in the tomb.
Via Crucis – A Spiritual Practice
This practice represents a point of convergence of various devotional elements surrounding the Passion, which did not achieve synthesis or official recognition by the Catholic Church until the 17th century. While the events of Christ’s Passion occurred in Jerusalem, the Stations of the Cross, which commemorate these events, were only introduced into the Holy Land after the practice was formalized through papal bulls by Pope Innocent XI. Their origin lies in Europe, rooted in the late medieval religious sentimentality and heightened interest in the distant sanctuaries of the Holy Land during the mass returns from the Crusades. Upon the return of crusaders, memorial complexes began to spring up across Europe, aiming to imitate as realistically as possible the holy places that had become largely inaccessible to Christians following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
These European imitations of the Holy Land took various forms. Dominican St. Alvaro of Cordoba, upon returning from the Holy Land in 1423, recognized reminders of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives, Tabor, the Kidron Valley, and Golgotha in the landscape surrounding his monastery, and he set up three crosses on a hill, marking them as the “Trayecto Doloroso.” Similarly, Franciscan Bernardo Caimi marked the place of Christ’s suffering with a modest replica of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the hills of Varallo in Lombardy. His chapel sparked immense interest, leading to the construction of 42 elaborately decorated chapels over the next 300 years, becoming a model for religious complexes known as Sacri Monti (Holy Mountains).
The main idea behind these phenomena was to revive the suffering of Christ through imitation and descriptive topography of the places where the final episodes of His earthly life took place. The goal was to create an atmosphere conducive to meditating on the Passion, so that through empathetic identification with Christ, believers could experience the same spiritual benefits as a physical pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The Stations of the Cross are part of this group of memorial monuments, serving as visual guides through meditation, while also determining a penitential path. Like their monumental counterparts, the Sacri Monti, the Stations were initially placed outdoors, only moving indoors after reforms in the 17th century.
The oldest surviving examples are found in Northern Europe, particularly in Germany and Leuven, Belgium. The oldest dated examples are from the late 15th century, but they are only fragmentarily preserved, so it is impossible to reconstruct the appearance of the remaining stations or the scenes they depicted. The earliest complete sets are preserved in Bamberg (c. 1503) and Nuremberg (c. 1505). The Nuremberg stations, created by the talented sculptor Adam Kraft, a friend and contemporary of Dürer, are particularly well-known. Both German examples depict seven scenes from Christ’s Passion, which correspond to the current seven stations of the Way of the Cross. The scenes depicted include: Christ being led to His execution, His meeting with His mother, Simon carrying the cross, the weeping women of Jerusalem, Christ meeting Veronica, Christ falling under the cross, and the Crucifixion.
These stations were not randomly placed; the distance between them reflected the precise measurements of the distance between the events that occurred in Jerusalem. This desire to define the length of Christ’s final walk on Earth is one of the earliest indications of interest in Christ’s bearing of the cross. Distances were measured in steps, and in 1422, pilgrim Martinus Polonius measured a distance of 450 steps from Pilate’s house to Golgotha. Polonius’ measurements led to the creation of numerous illustrated books and guides that transmitted these distances, often written by authors who had never set foot in the Holy Land but instead consulted earlier works on the same topic.
Via Crucis emerged as a form of private devotion by pilgrims who had visited the Holy Land and wanted to replicate the holy sites they had seen. However, the Stations did not arise solely from religious motivations to attain spiritual purification in a local setting. They also served as a status symbol, marking the pilgrimage of their commissioner and providing an opportunity for meditative travel to other members of the community who were unable to make the actual journey.
Depictions of Christ’s Passion on the Stations are often violent and dramatic, influenced by religious dramas that flourished in the 14th century. The religious theater that developed as part of certain liturgical rituals began to open up to the masses, enriching the stories with details not found in the Gospels. Christ’s falling under the cross, His heartbreaking meeting with His mother during His journey, and His meeting with Veronica, who wiped His face, are folk additions to the Gospel accounts of the Passion. The multiplication of figures in religious art and their violence, directed not only at Christ but also at those closest to Him—Mary, John, and the women accompanying them—represent folkloric elements introduced to art to evoke greater empathy.
In the German examples, the scenes of Christ falling under the cross are particularly interesting, as they are limited to the art of the Rhine region. These scenes are among the most dramatic episodes of His Passion, as they best illustrate the burden of His journey to death. The most famous illustration of this theatrical episode is Martin Schongauer’s engraving “Christ Carrying the Cross” (1475-1480), a prime example of the expressiveness of late Gothic German art, which reached its climax in depictions of Christ’s Passion.
In conclusion, the practice of Via Crucis and the creation of Stations of the Cross arose as a way for believers to commemorate and relive Christ’s suffering through a spiritual journey, providing an opportunity for reflection and empathy.
The form of the twelve Stations of the Cross originated in the literary work of Dutch Catholic priest Christian Adriaan Kraijs, also known as Adrianus Adrichomius, from where it was introduced to Spain during its dominion over the Netherlands. The practice gained such popularity in Spain that believers would visit the stations barefoot every Friday, and the stations could even be found in secular spaces. While the practice of erecting the Stations of the Cross in Northern Europe experienced a decline in the 17th century, it continued to grow in popularity in Spain and was spread to territories under Spanish rule. Much of the credit for popularizing the practice belongs to the Italian Franciscan Leonardo da Porto Maurizio, who, inspired by his encounter with Spanish Franciscans who revealed its popularity in their country, established 572 Stations of the Cross throughout Italy between 1712 and 1751. Through the influence of Western European graphic templates, dramatic illustrations of Christ’s sufferings reached the Russian and Ukrainian regions, and from there, through paths not yet fully researched, found their way into the church decorative programs of Serbian Baroque art. The depictions of Christ’s path to Golgotha in Serbian Baroque art are more varied in form than other scenes from the Passion cycle and correspond to certain episodes of Western European Stations of the Cross. These scenes appear in the second half of the 18th century in isolated depictions on the vaults of naves, on parts of church furniture, and especially in the highest row of icons on the iconostasis.
The modern appearance and form of the Stations of the Cross in the interiors of Catholic churches reflect a complex history, which includes separation from the ritual corpus, enrichment with new details, and the reintegration of the final result into a dogmatic religious ritual. Like many similar religious practices, the Stations of the Cross represent a blend of the finest elements of ritual and folklore, synthesizing the best aspects of both educated, church-based and uneducated, folk culture.
LITERATURE:
Amédée (Teetaert) da Zedelgem, Historical Essay on the Devotion to the Way of the Cross, edited by Amilcare Barbero, Centro documentazione dei Sacri Monti, Calvari e complessi devozionale europei, Ponzano Monferrato, 2004.
Bodin Vuksan, Baroque Themes of the Serbian Iconostasis of the 18th Century, doctoral dissertation, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, 2006, 137-171.
Gertrude Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. 2: The Passion of Jesus Christ, London, 1972.
Massimiliano Brandys, Via Crucis, Enciclopedia Cattolica, XII, Vatican City, 1954, 1348-1351.
Miroslav Timotijević, Serbian Baroque Painting, Matica srpska, Novi Sad, 1996, pp. 322-331.
R.A.K. (sic), Martin Schongauer’s ‘Christ Bearing the Cross’, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1955, pp. 22-30.
Fra. Rafael Barišić, Devotion to the Holy Way of the Cross, Zagreb, 1892.
Herbert Thurston, The Stations of the Cross: An Account of Their History and Devotional Purpose, London, 1906.
Crispino Valenziano, Via Crucis – A Progressive Story for Memory and Imitation, La vita in Cristo e nella Chiesa, No. 2, Rome, 2002.