Book 5, lines 481-503

[Previous: lines 432-480]

Jesus has reached Golgotha.

Huc simul atque emensus iter miserabilis heros
pervenit, sensitque sibi crudele parari
supplicium, atque trabem vidit iam stare nefandam;
dejectos oculos porrò huc jactabat et illuc,
omnia collustrans, comitum si fortè suorum,                      [485]
si quem fortè acies inimicas cerneret inter.
Fidum in conspectu nullum videt, agmina tantùm
saeva virûm, campique armis fulgentibus ardent.
Cari deseruere omnes diversa petentes;
non aliter quàm, cùm cœlo seu tactus ab alto                    [490]
pastor, sive ferae insidiis in valle peremptus,
continuò sparguntur oves diversa per arva
incustoditae, resonant balatibus agri.
Iamque trabem infandam scandens, pendensque per auras
horruit, atque, Deum veluti se oblitus, acerbi,                   [495]
pertimuit dirum leti genus; aestuat intus,
atque animum in curas labefactum dividit acres,
tristia multa agitans animo; totosque per artus
pallentes mixto fluit ater sanguine sudor;
et patriam crebrò reminiscitur, aetheris aulam.                  [500]
Tum cœlum aspectans, haec imo pectore fatur:
“Heu! quianam extremis Genitor me summe periclis
Deseris? aut nati quò iam tibi cura recessit?”

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The hero, miserable, came to his road’s end
and saw the cruel punishment prepared for him:
torment, the unspeakable dread of the beam.
His downcast eyes glanced in all directions,
shining out, hoping to see his disciples—                       [485]
but everyone he saw there hated him.
Not one faithful friend, just an army of
savage men, their bright weapons raised.
His friends had left him, fleeing in all directions:
as when lightning strikes from its stormy height            [490]
and hits a shepherd—and, waylaid by some wild beast,
his sheep scatter to different fields and valleys
unguarded, filling the land with bleating.

He mounted the foul unspeakable beam, hung there,
shaking, forgetting he was God, the bitterness              [495]
of death filling him with dread—chaos in
his anxious and sharply-divided mind,
great sorrow hurting his soul. All his pale
body covered with dark blood and running sweat.
He remembered his father’s house in heaven                  [500]
and, gazing at the sky, spoke heartfelt words:
“Ah! Why at this utmost end, father, have you
abandoned me? Do you no longer love your son?”

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The epic simile in lines 490-94 is interesting: Christ has been abandoned by his friends, who have fled in all directions. This, we might think, leaves the crucified man in a more vulnerable and helpless position; but actually (says) Vida it’s the other way around—Jesus is like a shepherd struck by lightning, and his disciples are the silly sheep scattering unprotected as the wolves close in. A pedant might object: would it really do the sheep any good to stay with the thunderstruck shepherd? He’s dead, or soon will be, and is in no position to fight-off the wolves. But by saying so, clearly, I’m overthinking things.

‘He remembered his father’s house in heaven and, gazing at the sky …’ (lines 500-01) is ( et patriam crebrò reminiscitur, aetheris aulam/ Tum cœlum aspectans … ) a riff on Aeneid 10:782-3: Sternitur infelix alieno volnere caelumque/ aspicit et dulcis moriens reminiscitur Argos. In battle Mezentius and Aeneas are swapping spear throws, and one goes astray and happens to kill Antores: ‘he falls, unlucky man, by a wound meant for another, and gazes on the sky, and dying dreams of sweet Argos.’ Poor old Antores.

This is, we might say (if it didn't seem impertinent to use such phraseology) the money-shot: Christ actually crucified, the core of all Christian faith. Christ ‘mounts’ the cross (line 494: scando, ‘I climb, ascend, mount’) seemingly unassisted (the nailing happens later in this book, lines 703-720). Then Vida gives us one of the ‘Seven Last Words of Christ’, this one from Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ These seven sayings were often the object of meditation, prayer and sermon in Vida's Renaissance, so it's a little odd how cavalier he is with them. Here are the seven as recorded, in order, in the Gospels:

1. Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
2. Today you will be with me in paradise.
3. Woman, behold, thy son! Behold, thy mother!
4. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
5. I thirst.
6. It is finished.
7. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

The order of these famous sayings builds its own narrative momentum. But Vida cuts straight away to 4, then steps away to a lengthy interlude in Heaven, with God having to restrain an indignant army of angels eager to rush down and save Jesus, before returning to 3 and 1. Then 2, 5 and 7. It's not clear to me what this reordering accomplishes.

Given how very many artistic representations of Jesus crucified there are in the world, it is strange to consider how few of them have even the most tenuous relationship to how crucifixion actually happened in the Roman empire. A few days ago I quoted Joseph Hewitt’s observations that

early crucifixions show the Saviour in no apparent pain, but often crowned and triumphant, not exactly hanging from his cross but rather standing in front of it. In the very earliest instances the cross is merely hinted at or is quite obscured. Somewhere about the thirteenth century the emphasis changes. The figure writhes, the face shows agony, blood flows profusely. Together with this the method of inflicting death grows in crudity, if not in cruelty. The spear-wound, historically inflicted after death, is used to increase the impression of suffering. A horrible thorn-crown replaces the royal crown or the rope-like wisp of mild bramble. [Joseph William Hewitt, ‘The Use of Nails in the Crucifixion’, The Harvard Theological Review 25:1 (1932), 30]

There are almost no representations of the crucifixion at all until the 8th-century; for in the early centuries of the church the cross retained its connotations of shame, wretchedness, the worst kinds of criminality, especially amongst the pagans (whom the Christians were working to convert).

Only with a critical mass (no pun intended) of Christians in society at large did the cross start to become an object of veneration, and by the end of the first millenium the cross has become the key Christian icon. During the medieval period the numerological implications contend with one another. One nail for both feet (the right foot placed in front of the left) and one each for the hands gives us three nails, a meaningful number for a trinitarian religion. Here's Titian's 1558 canvas, for instance.

But three nails are not enough to support the weight of an adult man: so in some representations, as with the Goya at the head of this post, each foot gets its own nail; and a footrest is added to support the weight. But four is a rather less pleasing numerological figuration; so the wound in the side is often added to paintings—though the gospels say Jesus was speared only after his death—and mystic signification spun out of this five-ness.

The (excuse the scare-quotes) ‘reality’ wasn’t in the least like this. Joseph Zias and Eliezer Sekeles report on ‘the accidental discovery in 1968 of a burial cave at Giv'at ha-Mivtar, in which the remains of a male crucified during the Roman period’ noting that ‘despite ample literary evidence attesting to the frequency of crucifixion in the Mediterranean region, this was the first direct anthropological evidence of the practice.’ The Giv'at ha-Mivtar doesn’t give us much to go on: a collection of bones, including a heel-bone, or calcaneum, with an 11.5 cm. iron nail through it.

But sifting the evidence, Zias and Sekeles come to a number of conclusions as to how crucifixion was actually practised in Roman Judea:

In reconstructing the crucifixion we have used the skeletal evidence which was available in conjunction with observations by Haas, Barbet and the ancient historical sources. According to these sources, the condemned man never carried the complete cross, as is commonly believed; instead the crossbar was carried, while the upright was set in a permanent place where it was used for subsequent executions. Furthermore, we know from Josephus that during the first century C.E., wood was so scarce in Jerusalem that the Romans were forced to travel ten miles from Jerusalem to secure timber for their siege machinery. Therefore, one can reasonably assume that the scarcity of wood may have been expressed in the economics of crucifixion in that the crossbar as well as the upright would be used repeatedly.

Thus, the lack of traumatic injury to the forearm and metacarpal of the hand seems to suggest that the arms of the condemned were tied rather than nailed to the cross. There is ample literary and artistic evidence for the use of ropes rather than nails to secure the condemned to the cross. Moreover, in Egypt, where according to one source crucifixion originated, the victim was not nailed but tied. It is important to remember that death by crucifixion was the result of the manner in which the condemned man hung from the cross and not the traumatic injury caused by nailing. Hanging from the cross resulted in a painful process of asphyxiation, in which the two sets of muscles used for breathing, the intercostal muscles and the diaphragm, became progressively weakened. In time, the condemned man expired, due to the inability to continue breathing properly.

Regarding the positioning of the lower limbs and their relation to the upright, the evidence suggests that the most logical reconstruction would have the condemned straddling the upright with each foot nailed laterally to the cross (our Fig. I). The calcaneum is the largest bone in the foot, which is presumably the reason why the executioners chose to place the nail here. The olivewood plaque, the remains of which were found beneath the nail head, may have been intended to prevent the condemned man from pulling his feet free from the nail. The plaque in effect enlarged the diameter of the head of the nail, thus increasing the efficacy of the process. [Joseph Zias and Eliezer Sekeles, ‘The Crucified Man from Giv'at ha-Mivtar: A Reappraisal’ Author(s): Israel Exploration Journal, 35:1 (1985), 26]

Here’s their fig 1:

(It seems the nail used in this particular instance caught on a knot of wood in the beam and its point got bent down, which meant that whoever retrieved the body after death, in trying to pull the heel off its pinion, ended up yanking the whole lot, shard of wood, nail and heel, off the cross's timber, leaving the shaft of the nail in the dead man's foot.)

It's a mistake to believe that crucified individuals died from being nailed (as it might be expiring slowly of their puncture wounds). The point of crucifixion was to rob—slowly and agonisingly—the condemned man of his breath, so that he gasped himself to death. Indeed crucifixion could happen without any nailing whatsoever, as was the practice in Roman Egypt. A crucified man will slowly grow thirstier and thirstier, and increasingly lose the ability to draw breath. But it takes a long time (that is the point of it, of course: its cruelty) and there's always the danger a man might wriggle free from ropes, howsoever tightly tied; so the nails are added to ensure the body remains in place as it asphixiates. As a lifelong asthmatic, the ghastliness of this mode of death speaks to me more directly, and more pitiably, than the sharper pain of the nail.

 At the head of the post: ‘Christ Crucified’ (also known as ‘Crucifixion’ or ‘Christ on the Cross’), painted in 1780 by Francisco de Goya. A perhaps surprisingly unbloody Goya, this; though the expression on Christ's face as he calls out ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ is full of Romantic pathos.

[Next: lines 504-534]