Golgotha / Calvary (Notes)

From The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J-J Tissot (1897)

With a view to helping the reader to form an accurate idea of the scene of the Crucifixion, which is so much importance for all who would follow the Gospel narrative, we have done our best to give a faithful restoration of Calvary and the districts surrounding it, as they were to 1000 years ago.  At the present day, all the sacred sites are covered over with buildings: temples, chapels, galleries, courts, domes, etc., enshrining them like relics in a reliquary, and these various structures at first sight appear very complicated and confusing, too much so, perhaps.  As a matter of fact, the erection of these various works necessitated a very considerable levelling of the soil, and the slopes of the little mountain have been constantly tampered with from early Christian times until the present day.

Jerusalem. J-J Tissot

Our plans will serve to give some idea of the original appearance of the district.  To begin with, here is the elevation known as Calvary or Golgotha which was, has already stated, but a few feet high.  The first of these names is the Latin translation of the second, which signifies "the place of a skull" or merely a skull.  What was the origin of this name it is difficult to say.  Some are of opinion with  Saint Jerome that it simply indicates the place where capital sentences were carried out; but in reply to this we must call attention to the fact that amongst the ancients there were no special spots set apart for execution, and, moreover, if this interpretation were correct, the word skull should be in the plural.

Others suggest that the name of skull merely referred to the form of the hill, which originally more or less resemble that of a cranium, and this is the interpretation more generally have received by writers of the present day, who in this respect follow Cyril of Alexandria.  Lastly, according to an old legend, the hill was called the ''place of a scull'' because the skull of Adam, which had been preserved by Noah, was buried in it.  Saint Jerome, alluding to this tradition, says: "it tickles the ears of the people, but for all that it is not true."

Calvary as seen from the Gate of Judgement. J-J Tissot

On the summit of Calvary can be seen the holes in which the three crosses were placed, a low wall encircling the sacred spot.  In the foreground a ruin will be noticed, at the bottom of which is a pit into which the beams which had formed the instruments of the execution, that is to say, the crosses of the Saviour and of the two thieves, were thrown after the crucifixion.  It was Saint Helena who in the first instance discovered them, when she was having some excavations made under the guidance of an old Jew who knew the tradition relating to the site. 

At the top of the slope leading down to this pit is the spot where the soldiers cast lots for the garments of Jesus, and a little lower down is the cistern to which the Master is said to have been allowed to retire was the cross was got ready for His execution.  Beyond Golgotha, on the slope to the right, can be seen the entrance to the Garden of Joseph of Arimathæa, surrounded by low wall, above which is seen the top of the Holy Sepulchre, whilst in the background rises the Palace of Herod, with its towers standing out against the landscape between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Calvary as seen from Herod's Palace. J-J Tissot

In this restoration, the three holes in which crosses were placed can be seen again in their little enclosure, whilst behind them are the walls of the town and the Gate of Judgment.  In the distance, beyond the massive buildings of the Temple and the Antonia Tower, rises the Mount of Olives with Mount Scopus on the left where Titus encamped when he besieged Jerusalem.  Below the summit of Calvary is the cave named after Melchisedech. 

According to the legend quoted above relating to the skull of Adam, that skull was placed in this cave by Shem, who received it from Noah as a special privilege, on account of his having been the founder of the favoured race which was to give birth to the Messiah.  And Shem, actuated by prophetic insight, deposited the skull on the very spot on which she knew that the Messiah was to die, and, continues the legend, when the Saviour died and the rocks were rent in twain, the blood which flowed from the cross ran down through the fissures of the cave till some of it reached the skull and washed away the sins of the first man.  The words of St. Paul (in Ephesians, chapter 5 verse 15): " Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" are by some critics supposed to refer to this incident. 

Hence Saint Ambrose, commenting on the Gospel of Saint Luke, teaches that Christ was crucified on Golgotha because it was fitting that the life which we should receive through the Redeemer should begin where he through whom death first entered the world was buried.  It is necessary to add, however, that the Doctors of the Church never gave any serious credit to this quaint legend, which was, moreover, rendered still more incredible from the childish details added to it from time to time.  If the early Christian writers did sometimes turn it to account, it was only out of condescension to the popular belief, and they have generally, even then, referred to it in a doubtful kind of way.  In the 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas quotes the legend only to refute it as altogether untrue, and he confirms what was said on the subject by Saint Jerome.  He adds that it is but at clumsy invention, for, on his part, he fails to see the special significance of the presence of the skull on Golgotha which is the foundation of the story, pointing out that if the blood of Christ did flow onto the skull of Adam, that could only be looked upon as a sign of the personal salvation of the first man, but that if, as is more generally supposed, that blood flowed into the common sepulchre of those who had suffered death on this place of execution, the symbol at once assumes a far higher signification, in that it shadows forth the salvation of the whole human race and the rescue from eternal damnation brought about by the death of Christ upon the cross.

Plan of the Holy Sepulchre Church. J-J Tissot

In front of the cave is a flat stone called the Stone of Anointing, on which the body of Jesus was placed after the deposition from the Cross, to be washed and anointed with spices.  Nearer to the spectator is another flat stone of considerable size, on which it is said some of the Holy Women stood at the beginning of the crucifixion.  Later, the Blessed Virgin with Mary Magdalene and Mary Salome, approached the platform of Calvary on the right, to look on from thence at the execution.  On the left can still be seen the wall of the Garden of Joseph of Arimathæa, which is partly hewn out of the living rock.  Still farther to the left is a suburb of Jerusalem with its numerous houses. 

This is what happened to the spot here depicted after the death of Christ, and which explains how it came about that Calvary is now within the walls of Jerusalem.  That hiatus having destroyed the city, it was rebuild by degrees, and at the time of the revolt of Bar-Coceba there were a very great many Jews in the town.  Hadrian was compelled to besiege it yet again; it was once more converted into a ruin, and Tyrannus Rufus, then Governor of Judæa, was ordered to pass the plough over the site where the Temple had once been, to mark the fact that unless by express order of the Roman senate the spot should never again be built upon.  At the same time Hadrian forbade the Jews under pain of death to return to Jerusalem, and he established in the once Jewish City a Roman colony, which he called Aelia Capitolina.  The new town was not, however, built on exactly the same site as the old had been, but extended father to the north, so that the site of Calvary became almost the centre of Aelia Capitolina, and has remained in that position until the present day.  The site was, in fact determined beyond a doubt twelve years after the death of Christ by the building of an enclosure wall by Herod Agrippa.

Calvary with Church of Holy Sepulchre. J-J Tissot

Certain scholars have of late contested on topographical grounds the authenticity of perhaps Golgotha, that is to say, of the site hitherto recognized as that of Golgotha, and they have made a great fuss about their pretended discovery.  Their assertions can, however, be triumphantly overthrown, and there is absolutely no doubt that the Golgotha we know was the scene of the death of the Saviour.  Authors who recognise it as the usual place of execution with the Jews, remark with good reason what a change was wrought in the fate of the little mountain by the crucifixion of Christ on it.  Instead of an isolated, insignificance spot, it has become so to speak, the centre of the universe; instead of a cursed place, it has become the focus of the veneration and adoration of the whole human race.  For, to quote from the celebrated hymn writer Seduliuss, Christ has clothed suffering with honour and has rendered even torments blessed:

Pœnam vestivit honore
Ipsaque sanctificans in se tormenta beavit

With a view to enabling our readers to understand what Calvary was like in the time of Our Saviour we have given a plan of the ancient Golgotha and also one of the buildings now occupying the site of the scene of the Crucifixion.  A comparison between the two cannot fail to throw some light upon the identification of the various features of the sacred spot, for, as Lamartine has justly remarked (Voyage en Orient, vol. one, page 434), "the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary are confounded together and as it were merged in the vast labyrinth of domes, buildings and streets environing them", and it is equally difficult to determine the exact site of Calvary and that of the Holy Sepulchre, which, in spite of the impression given by the Gospel narrative, must have been upon an isolated hill outside the walls and not in the centre of Jerusalem.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam