Behold the Man. St John Chapter xix. 1-5

St John Chapter xix : Verses 1-5

Contents

• St John Chapter xix. 1-5
   Douay-Rheims (Challoner) text, Greek (SBLG) & Latin text (Vulgate); 
• Annotations based on the Great Commentary of Cornelius A Lapide (1567-1637)

St John Chapter xix. 1-5

Ecce homo. Behold the Man.
J-J Tissot. Brooklyn Museum.

1 Then therefore, Pilate took Jesus, and scourged him.  

2 And the soldiers platting a crown of thorns, put it upon his head; and they put on him a purple garment.  

3 And they came to him, and said: Hail, king of the Jews; and they gave him blows.  

4 Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith to them: Behold, I bring him forth unto you, that you may know that I find no cause in him.  

5 (Jesus therefore came forth, bearing the crown of thorns and the purple garment.) And he saith to them: Behold the Man.

1 Τότε οὖν ἔλαβεν ὁ Πιλᾶτος τὸν Ἰησοῦν καὶ ἐμαστίγωσεν.

1 Tunc ergo apprehendit Pilatus Jesum, et flagellavit.  

2 καὶ οἱ στρατιῶται πλέξαντες στέφανον ἐξ ἀκανθῶν ἐπέθηκαν αὐτοῦ τῇ κεφαλῇ, καὶ ἱμάτιον πορφυροῦν περιέβαλον αὐτόν,

2 Et milites plectentes coronam de spinis, imposuerunt capiti ejus : et veste purpurea circumdederunt eum.  

3 καὶ ⸂ἤρχοντο πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ⸃ ἔλεγον· Χαῖρε, ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων· καὶ ἐδίδοσαν αὐτῷ ῥαπίσματα.

3 Et veniebant ad eum, et dicebant : Ave, rex Judaeorum : et dabant ei alapas.  

4 ⸂καὶ ἐξῆλθεν⸃ πάλιν ἔξω ὁ Πιλᾶτος καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· Ἴδε ἄγω ὑμῖν αὐτὸν ἔξω, ἵνα γνῶτε ὅτι ⸂οὐδεμίαν αἰτίαν εὑρίσκω ἐν αὐτῷ⸃.

4 Exivit ergo iterum Pilatus foras, et dicit eis : Ecce adduco vobis eum foras, ut cognoscatis quia nullam invenio in eo causam.  

5 ἐξῆλθεν οὖν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἔξω, φορῶν τὸν ἀκάνθινον στέφανον καὶ τὸ πορφυροῦν ἱμάτιον. καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· ⸀Ἰδοὺ ὁ ἄνθρωπος.

5 ( Exivit ergo Jesus portans coronam spineam, et purpureum vestimentum.) Et dicit eis : Ecce homo.

Annotations

    1. Then therefore, Pilate took Jesus, and scourged him.That is afterhe had said (Luke xxiii. 22), “I will chastise Him and let Him go.” The tradition is that He was first scourged with thick ropes, then with knotted ropes and iron scorpions, then with chains, and lastly with rods of thorns. But Ribera says that these traditions are of little account, as the inhabitants of the country have so often changed, and the old traditions were not kept up.

    2. And the soldiers platting a crown of thorns, put it upon his head; and they put on him a purple garment.—See notes on S. Matt. xxvii. 30, also [Pseudo] Athanasius, de Cruce, who says that Christ bore in the purple robe the blood of men (because the devil had polluted the earth with murders), in the thorns their sins, in the reed the hand-writing with which the devil had enrolled us as his own; for all these Christ took away by His Passion. He adds that when Christ took the reed, the devil armed him with a weapon against himself, for the reed is said to be fatal to serpents, and that Christ took the reed to deliver us from the serpent’s subtilty.

    Symbolically: “In the scarlet robe,” says S. Jerome, “the Lord bears the blood-stained works of the Gentiles.” “He bare,” says S. Athanasius, “in the scarlet garment a resemblance to the blood wherewith the earth had been polluted.” And Origen, “The Lord, by taking on Him the scarlet robe, took on Himself the blood, that is, the sins of the world, which are bloody and red as scarlet; for the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

    Anagogically: S. Gregory, “For what is purple save blood, and the endurance of sufferings, manifested for love of the Kingdom?” And again, “The Lord made His empurpled ascent in a triumphal litter, because we attain to the Kingdom that is within through tribulation and blood.”

    S. Mark and S. John call this a purple garment (not scarlet). S. Ambrose says they were two different garments, and that He was arrayed in both. Gretser (Lib. 1, de Cruce) gives authorities for there being only one garment, called indifferently purple or scarlet. Perhaps the garment had been twice dyed,—with the murex and the coccus; and garments thus dyed are of a more lasting colour. Now this was a kingly dress, and thus did they make Christ a King in mockery. This robe or chlamys was shorter and tighter than the pallium, and soldiers wore it over their armour. The one then used seems to have been the worn out dress of some Roman soldier, but being purple, was of the imperial colour.

    Symbolically: S. Cyril (in John xii. 15) says, “By the purple garment is signified the sovereignty over the whole world, which Christ was about to receive.” So, too, Origen, S. Augustine, and others. But this He obtained for Himself by fighting and shedding His blood. African and other soldiers anciently wore red garments. See, too, Nahum 2:3.

    And the soldiers platting a crown of thorns, put it upon his head; This was done both for insult and for torture. It was done, too, by Jewish insolence, and not by Pilate’s order, though he permitted it (see above on ver. 25). These thorns were those of the sea-rush or of the blackthorn; perhaps the two sorts were twisted together. S. Helena brought two of them to Rome and placed them in the Church of Santa Croce. S. Bridget (Rev. i. 10) says that the crown was placed a second time on His head when on the Cross; that it came down to the middle of His forehead, and that such streams of blood flowed from the wounds as to run down to His eyes and ears, and even to His beard; that He seemed one mass of blood. He could not indeed see His Mother till the blood had been squeezed out of His eyelids. All pictures represent Him as crucified with the crown of thorns, as Origen and Tertullian distinctly assert He was. The torture of all this was very great, for the thorns were very sharp, and also driven into the head and brain. The literal object of this was to insult and torture Christ for pretending to be King of the Jews.

    But Origen gives its mystical meaning, “In this crown the Lord took on Himself the thorns of our sins woven together on His head.” For S. Hilary says “the sting of sin is in the thorns of which Christ’s victorious crown is woven.” “Let me ask you,” says Tertullian (de Con. Milit. ad fin.), “what crown did Jesus wear for both sexes? Of thorns, methinks, and briars, as a figure of those sins which the earth of our flesh hath brought forth unto us, but which the virtue of the Cross hath taken away, crushing (as it did) all the stings of death by the sufferings of the head of the Lord. For besides the figurative meaning there is assuredly the contumely, disgrace, and dishonour, and, blended with them, the cruelty, which thus both defiled and wounded His brows.”

    Tropologically: The thorns teach us to wound and subdue the flesh with fastings, haircloths, and disciplines. “For it is not fitting that the members of a thorn-crowned Head should be delicate,” says S. Bernard. And Tertullian (ut supra) teaches us that Christians, out of reverence for Christ’s crown of thorns, did not wear crowns of flowers, as the heathen did. Christ offered S. Catharine of Sienna two crowns,—one of jewels, the other of thorns,—on condition that if she chose one of them in this life she should wear the other in the next. She seized at once the crown of thorns from His hand, and fixed it so firmly on her head that she felt pain for many days, and therefore she received a jewelled crown in heaven. S. Agapitus, a youth of only fifteen, when live coals were put on his head, said exultingly, “It is a small matter that that head which is to be crowned in heaven should be burned on earth,” &c. Think, then, when enduring any kind of pain, that Christ is giving thee one of the thorns from His crown.

    Anagogically: S. Ambrose (in Luke xxii) says, “This crown placed on His head shows that triumphant glory should be won for God from sinners of this world, as if from the thorns of this life.”

    Symbolically: S. Bernard (de Pass. Dom. cap. xix.) says, “Though they crown Him in derision, yet in their ignorant mockery they confess Him to be a crowned King. Therefore is He proved to be a King by those who knew Him not.” And S. Augustine (Tract. cxvi. in John) says, “Thus did the Kingdom which was not of this world overcome the proud world, not with fierce fighting, but lowly suffering. [Jesus comes forth] wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, not resplendent in power, but overwhelmed with reproach.” “Purple,” again says Elias Cratensis, “exhorts good rulers to be ready to shed their blood for the benefit of their subjects.” Hence the purple is given to Cardinals to remind them that they should shed their blood for the Church; and S. Germanus, Patriarch of C. P. (Orat. in Sepult. Christi), says that the purple robe and the crown of thorns which was placed on Him before His crucifixion assured the victory to Him who said, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

    [Pseudo-]Athanasius (de Cruce) strikingly says, “When the Lord was arrayed in the purple, there was raised invisibly a trophy over the devil. It was a strange and incredible marvel, and doubtless a token of great victory, that they placed the ornaments of triumph on Him whom they had struck in mockery and derision. He went forth to death in this array, to show that the victory was won expressly for our salvation.” He points out also that Christ was crowned with thorns to restore to us the tree of life, and to heal our worldly cares and anxieties by taking them on Himself.

    Godfrey of Bouillon refused on this ground to be crowned king of Jerusalem, since it ill became a Christian king to wear a crown of gold in the very city in which Christ had worn one of thorns.

    The tonsure of priests and monks represents this “crown of thorns,” and is a token of their humility and contempt of the world (Bede, Hist. Angl. v. 22, and S. Germanus, C. P., in Theor. rer. Eccles.).

    Anagogically: Tertullian (de Cor. Mil. cap. xiv.) says, Put on Christ’s crown of thorns, “that so thou mayest rival that crown which afterwards was His, for it was after the gall that He tasted the honey; nor was He saluted as King by the heavenly hosts till He had been written up upon the Cross as the King of the Jews. Being made by the Father a little lower than the angels, He was afterwards crowned with glory and honour.” “Christ,” says S. Jerome, “was crowned with thorns that He might win for us a royal diadem.”

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The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.

 

 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.