The message from Pilate's wife (Notes)

Saint Matthew - Chapter 27

The message from Pilate's wife. J-J Tissot

[19] Sedente autem illo pro tribunali, misit ad eum uxor ejus, dicens : Nihil tibi, et justo illi : multa enim passa sum hodie per visum propter eum.
And as he was sitting in the place of judgment, his wife sent to him, saying: Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.

When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day (this night) in a dream because of Him. This act of Pilate’s wife is a fresh effort to deliver Him. Her dreams were full of threats against her husband and herself, if he condemned Christ. Some suppose them to have been the work of an evil angel, wishing to prevent His death, lest sinners should be saved by Him. (See the Sermon on the Passion, apud S. Cyprian; S. Bernard, Serm. i. in Pasch.; Lyranus, Dionys. Carthus., Rabanus, and others.)

Origen, S. Hilary, S. Chrysostom, S. Augustine, S. Ambrose, and others more correctly suppose that it was the work of a holy angel, and that the dream was sent to Pilate’s wife (not himself):

1. That both sexes (as well as all the elements afterwards) might witness to Christ’s innocence. 
2. That she might make it publicly known by telling her husband. 
3. Because she appears to have been a noble, tender-hearted, and holy woman. Origen, S. Chrysostom, and others consider that she was in this way brought to a true belief in Christ. S. Augustine (in Aurea Catena) says, “that both husband and wife bore witness to Christ;” “thus presaging,” says S. Jerome, “the faith of the Gentiles.” And S. Augustine (Serm. cxxi. de Temp.), “In the beginning of the world the wife leads the husband to death, in the Passion she leads him on to salvation.” Joanna, too, the wife of Chusa, Herod’s steward, was one of those who ministered to Christ of their substance.

The Greek Menology terms her Procula; some suggest that she was Claudia (2 Tim. 4:21), as she probably remained at Rome when he was banished. S. Augustine implies that she converted him (Serm. iii. de Epiph.). “The Magi came from the East, Pilate from the West. They accordingly witnessed to Him at His birth, he at His death, that they might sit down with Abraham, &c., not as their descendants in the flesh, but as grafted into them by faith.” Tertullian, too (Apol. cap. xxi.), speaks of Pilate as a Christian.

But all this is at variance with what others say of his banishment and his self-inflicted death.

When Pilate then is termed a Christian, it must mean a favourer and protector of His innocence. He yielded, it is true, at last to the threats of the Jews; and so it was that by the just retribution of God he was himself the victim of the like false charge from the Jews, who caused him to be exiled.

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

Pilot has left the Praetorium to parley with the Jews were waiting below opposite the loggia.  He is seated in a movable chair of state raised on several steps as a sign of his high rank and power.  His servant hastens in, bringing a message from his wife, whose name according to tradition was Claudia Procula all Prrocla.

The servant brings with her the ring of her mistress as a proof of the authenticity of the message.  The noble, touching tenor of this message shows that Procla has a soul worthy of conversion to Christianity; so that it is by no means difficult to believe that she did become, as tradition relates, a follower of the Saviour.  The Greek menology[1] even go so far as to place her in the rank of the Saints, and certain legends relate that Pilate, who was always alight ambitious and irresolute, persecuted her to such an extent that she left him to join the Christian community.

[1] A hagiographical collection of a type compiled in the Byzantine Empire from the 9th cent. onwards, in which the saints' lives, usually of substantial length and often interspersed with homilies or verses, are arranged in the order of the dates on which their subjects are commemorated.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam