The Crossway

by Guy Stagg

  Each commentary was written by a member of the Maronite Church, linking Christ’s Passion to the persecution of Eastern Christians. A few Lebanese flags flapped above the audience, red and white and wagging in the breeze. As the evening deepened they drooped towards the ground, the fabric seeming to wilt.

  My fingers were cold, and the backs of my knees pinched and pinged. I kept staring at the cinema screens, watching coverage from inside the Colosseum. A wooden cross was being marched round the theatre’s fourteen shrines, every member of the procession holding a flaming torch and jagged light clawing open the arched passageways. At each shrine the cross was handed on, to a woman from India in a saffron sari (Station III), to a priest from China in a crimson-trimmed cassock (Station VI), and to a nun from Nigeria wearing a leather jacket over her habit (Station X).

  By now I was jogging my heels and counting down the stations. The bluish scent of night filled the square, made acrid by the smoke off the torches. Nearby the young men shivered and the elderly couple yawned, their eyes fixed on the stage, waiting for something I could not see.

  Jesus fell for a second time. The procession stepped out into the piazza. He fell for a third time. They paced through a parting in the audience. Candles starred the darkness, the crowd quivering in the candlelight. The procession mounted the steps to the stage. Christ’s clothes were stripped from his skin. They paraded before the throne, the Pope, the temple columns. Christ’s hands and feet were nailed to the cross. Flags fell from the sky. Stars fell from the night. Christ cried out. Christ gave up his life. Silence. All the stage silent and the body of God laid lifeless on the ground.

  It was late when we left the piazza. The motorcade went first, followed by a busload of nuns. Otherwise the roads were closed, so we walked in wide ranks down the middle. Parents carried sleeping children and couples went hand in hand, their expressions a mix of exhausted patience and solemn relief. After standing so long in the crowd, my own mood was flattened out, senses blunted by so much spectacle.

  When I got back to the monastery it was almost midnight. The courtyard, the guesthouse – everything was still. No light in the corridors, no voices on the stairwell. For a moment I thought I heard chanting inside the church, but when I tried the door it would not give. Locked, of course, and the tabernacle bare, and the great tomb sealed shut.

  The Stations of the Cross narrate Christ’s journey to the place of crucifixion. In Jerusalem’s Old City a series of chapels mark the sites where, according to custom, each station took place. The tradition of pilgrims walking the Via Crucis began in the same century as the Roman Jubilees. After the loss of the Holy Land, Franciscan friars were given custody over the region’s Christian sites by its new Mamluk rulers. They started conducting tours of the Old City, and later built shrines in Europe modelled on the Via Crucis. These shrines were copied in cathedrals and churches across the continent, while the fourteen stations became the focus of Good Friday worship.

  As with the friars’ more popular piece of devotional theatre – the nativity crèche – it was a way of bringing the Holy Land home. And, as with the Jubilees, it used the rituals of pilgrimage to shift Christendom’s spiritual centre from the former crusader kingdoms.

  This was important as, soon after the first Jubilee, Rome lost its status at the centre of the Latin Church. Pope Boniface was partly to blame. He kept falling out with European monarchs. Thanks to a feud with the King of France, in 1303 Boniface was locked up in his palace at Anagni. He soon died of a violent fever, inspiring rumours that he had gnawed off his hands and brained himself against the bedroom wall. His successor, Benedict XI, died eight months later – this time it was rumoured to be poisoning – and by the end of the decade Pope Clement V was established in Avignon.

  Pilgrimage to Rome declined in the following decades. Petrarch, the leading poet of the period, explains why: ‘All France, the Low Countries, and Britain, are engulfed in war; Germany and Italy are crippled by civil strife, their cities reduced to ashes; the Spanish kings turn on each other in armed combat, and throughout Europe Christ is unseen and unknown.’ In 1341 Petrarch was made the first Roman laureate since Antiquity. He joined a diplomatic mission to Avignon, trying to convince the current pope, Clement VI, to proclaim a second Jubilee. The original jubilees – Jewish festivals of forgiveness recorded in Leviticus – were held every fifty years, so why not call a second to mark the half-century?

  Although Clement refused to leave Avignon, he gave his permission, and the proclamation went out that winter.

  By 1348 the Black Death had reached Europe. Next year, in September, Rome was hit by the worst earthquake in its history. Thousands were killed or injured, with thousands more left homeless. Petrarch again: ‘The houses fall down, the walls collapse, temples are overthrown, shrines are wrecked, the laws trodden underfoot. The Lateran Palace is razed to the ground and its basilica, mother of all churches, stands roofless, open to wind and rain.’

  Pilgrims who completed the journey to Rome were appalled. Churches were draped in tapestries to hide the damage, but worshippers kept injuring themselves on the cratered floors. Meanwhile, sick and dying citizens littered the streets.

  Historians of pilgrimage often compare the ritual to tourism. They emphasize the pleasures of travel, the temptations of the route, and the celebrations on offer at the major shrines. But hike a few hundred kilometres and what you notice are the hardships. For a medieval traveller there were the added risks of war, disease, and roads made dangerous by bandits. The Jubilees give us some idea why anyone would endure this ordeal, because the festivals made Rome feel like the centre of the world again, and salvation seem near at hand. Yet they also exposed the mindlessness of collective devotion, for as Dante suggested, they were displays not of piety but power. Ringed round by believers, all doubts were quelled, all fears quieted. It was the same draw as those flagellant ceremonies: the hope and fear and the awful thrill of surrender.

  In 1350 up to a million pilgrims came to the city over the course of the year, and when the Veronica was displayed on Sundays and feast days, the crowds were such that four, six, even twelve people were trampled to death at each gathering. On that occasion the Basilica of St John Lateran was added to the churches pilgrims must visit to receive the indulgence. Petrarch was one of those pilgrims and his account of the visit shares in their sense of excitement. The basilica’s Sancta Sanctorum housed the most prized relics in the Roman Church – Jesus’ foreskin and umbilical cord – and for Petrarch this was the climax of the journey, proving that Rome was no longer the city of martyrs or apostles, but home to Christ himself. Forget the crusader states: here was the New Jerusalem.

  Ironically, the 1350 Jubilee was also a swansong for Rome’s status, as over the coming decades rival popes split the Latin Church.

  In 1378 a new pope, Urban VI, was elected in Rome. However, an antipope remained in Avignon, dividing Catholic nations. The kingdoms of France, Castile, Aragon and Naples were loyal to Avignon; those of England, Poland, Hungary and Sweden sided with Rome; and the Holy Roman Empire shifted between the two.

  Once again, pilgrim numbers declined. In response, Urban proclaimed a third Jubilee for the year 1390, but died eleven weeks before the event. The year was a flop anyway, with those who supported the antipope forbidden from attending. Yet Rome’s next pope, Boniface IX, could not announce an additional Jubilee for the expected date – the year 1400 – without discounting the last.

  In the final summer of the fourteenth century another penitent movement sprang up on the Ligurian coast. Its followers were known as Bianchi because they dressed in white and performed ceremonies mixing flagellation and forgiveness. While one branch of the movement pinballed across the Po Valley, a second branch marched south through Tuscany. By September they had reached Rome, and that autumn they processed round the capital, chanting the Stabat Mater and calling for peace.

  Rome’s citizens welcomed the penitents, but Church authorities were unsure how to respond. One of
the Bianchi claimed that he was John the Baptist reborn, clearing the way for Christ’s return, and there were reports of all-night processions filling the city with flagellants.

  Boniface IX was a weak pope. The Bianchi made him nervous. Soon a rumour started that he had put the movement’s leaders in prison.

  The Pope could have suppressed this sudden outburst of piety, but instead he decided to reward it. When a second flock of pilgrims showed up in the late autumn, these ones hoping for a Jubilee, Boniface let the celebrations go ahead. Though no proclamation was made, the Holy Door at St Peter’s was opened and the relics of the apostles put on display. Once more the pilgrims processed in front of the Veronica; once more the plenary indulgence was granted. Thousands came to Rome over the course of the year and the Jubilee tradition was saved.

  Easter Sunday. I left the monastery at daybreak. All week the streets had been busy, but that morning they were bare. The buildings on the Campo de’Fiori shifted from deep blue to dull silver, and when I crossed the Tiber a porcelain light parted the clouds, paling the river water.

  It was still early when I reached Via della Conciliazione, the arcade leading from Castel Sant’Angelo to St Peter’s Square. A porter waited at the doors of a hotel, and three vendors laid out racks of plastic souvenirs: spangled crosses, gaudy icons, and keychains stamped with pictures of popes. Otherwise the arcade was empty, its rows of palazzos – schools, embassies, Vatican headquarters – shut up for the day.

  At the end of the road a cordon of police stood smoking and drinking coffee. There were more police inside the square, along with camera crews and workmen wearing fluorescent waistcoats.

  As I approached St Peter’s, the great colonnade arced out on either side, a vast basin formed by twin trains of fourfold pillars. An altar stood in the middle of the square, wrapped in woven gold. Behind it, the basilica was decorated with flowers, with lilies and forsythia swagged yellow and white, as well as ranks of tulips stepping down from the Holy Door, palm fronds plaiting the columns, and crates of mixed gerberas circling the plinths, a pell-mell pattern of cream and orange and candyfloss pink.

  Soon the Easter pilgrims would be here. Before they arrived, I tried to imagine the square already filled, populating it with the crowds from the fourth Jubilee.

  By 1450 the schism had ended and Rome was the uncontested capital of Western Christianity. That year, roughly forty thousand pilgrims showed up each day, with a million gathering in the city for Easter. Every inn, hostel and guesthouse was occupied, forcing the poor to camp in church porches. Supplies ran low, prices soared, and the streets were choked with people. On Sundays, when Pope Nicholas V greeted visitors from St Peter’s Basilica, he drew such crowds that the guards had to beat them back with sticks.

  The Pope cut the amount of time pilgrims needed to stay in Rome to receive the indulgence, eventually reducing it to a single day. However, their numbers only diminished after a plague that summer.

  Come autumn, the worst of the epidemic was over and the pilgrims returned. Once more the inns were occupied, the supplies ran low, and the poor camped out in church porches.

  During the run-up to Christmas, a final surge of visitors arrived in the city, hoping to catch the closing weeks of the indulgence. On 19 December, the last Sunday of Advent, St Peter’s Square filled as usual, but for some reason the papal blessing was delayed and then abandoned. In the late afternoon the audience was sent away. Daylight failing, they moved towards the Sant’Angelo Bridge, and even though vendors and carts obstructed their path, thousands filed onto the crossing. Meanwhile a small party approached from the opposite side, led by a Venetian cardinal who would one day be appointed Pope Paul II. Despite the mass of people coming the other way, the cardinal pushed on and the bridge was blocked.

  As I stood in the square that morning, trying to imagine the medieval crowds, I heard voices behind me. Looking round, I realized I was no longer alone. It was eight o’clock and the first pilgrims were arriving. I could see a line of seminarians in brand-new vestments, movements poised like children in their parents’ clothes; and a line of scouts in shorts and socks, marching upright with puffed chests; and a family dressed for a wedding, the men wearing fawn-coloured waistcoats, the women in mantillas of black silk.

  By nine o’clock the new arrivals were joining queues. By ten o’clock those queues had become entire pitches of people, surrounding the altar and spilling out to the colonnades.

  The steps of St Peter’s were bustling now. There were bands of cardinals in scarlet mozzettas and rochets of white lace. And there were bands of bishops in purple cassocks and tufted birettas. And rows of choristers in gowns of the same shade, standing without moving, wondering where to put their hands. A garrison of Swiss Guard formed up at the base of the steps, wearing blue capes and starched collars, striped tunics and striped breeches, golden-corded armour and boots of mirrorblack, their helmets plumed with feathers, their halberds hung with flags. Organ music swelled from the basilica, but pilgrims were still entering the square. Pilgrims in tailored suits and designer dresses, in stiff uniforms and dark robes. Pilgrims carrying embroidered standards, painted banners, printed signs and collaged pennants. Pilgrims wearing badges and brooches and pins tipped with holy insignia: the medals of chivalric orders, or the fivefold cross of Jerusalem, or the scallop shell from Santiago. Voices in a dozen – two dozen – languages, shouting and cheering and squealing with excitement. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, more people than I had seen in the past three months put together – and then something split. I could feel the weight of the sky and the texture of the air. I could feel the morning on my face, but harsher now, as if a layer of skin had been peeled from my body, or the lids had been sliced from each eye. The people near me were swarming, jostling, wrestling. They were pressing at my mouth, dragging at my throat. We were too many. We were too close.

  The panic came in waves. Fat colours. Blunt noises. Swells of confused movement. My breath was short – the ribcage clamped, the pressure lost from each lung – and my vision tunnelled, until no space remained in that vast square. It was as if the atmosphere had collapsed – the air rushing out, the clouds dropping down – or the heavens were falling on our heads.

  We were too many. Too close.

  I slipped between a set of barriers and walked up one of the aisles. The choir had started to sing, but already I was pushing through the police cordon that sealed St Peter’s Square, not stopping to listen as the chorus cried out, nor pausing to watch as Pope Francis approached the altar – no, turning my back on the cardinals and bishops, the priest and guards, on the brutal splendour of the basilica and the great basin flooded with people, turning away and hurrying down Via della Conciliazione, past the succession of grand palazzos, past the souvenir vendors, hotel porters, and tourists arriving late for mass, pacing the whole length of the street until I reached the Sant’Angelo Bridge.

  Soon I was standing on the bridge, leaning against the balustrade. A breeze came off the river, brushing against my palms and cooling the sweat that filmed my face. The Vatican was behind me; the palaced streets of Ponte were in front. The Tiber turned at my feet, with no waves except the crease of the current. Then the sun showed between the clouds, stunning the surface of the water, and a bell began chiming from the far bank, another bell, another, the sound cascading together.

  They were still chiming as I stepped off the bridge, arms stretched wide for balance. And as I sat in the doorway of a nearby church – Santi Celso e Giuliano – counting my breaths to keep calm.

  I could picture it now, that dreadful Sunday evening. December, bitter cold, a few days shy of the solstice. Dusk when the pilgrims began crossing the river, their shoulders hunched, their heads bowed, footsore from standing all afternoon. The bridge packed with stalls, selling rosaries and ex-votos and badges of copper and tin. And the cardinal coming the other way, painted and jewelled and sat fat on his horse.

  The light was failing, so nobody leaving the square cou
ld see what was happening ahead. Restless with waiting, they pressed forwards, meaning those on the bridge-head were crushed against the bank. Meanwhile, those on the bridge were jammed in place, and as the pressure increased, they started to suffocate. Some tried to jump into the Tiber, others tried to crawl away, but most were smothered where they stood.

  When I closed my eyes, I could hear it too. Hear shouts going up in French and German, Spanish and Italian, English, Armenian, and Greek. Hear flesh pressed into flesh, hear skin beginning to burst. Hear collarbones popping, ribs cracking, and the bridge’s fracturing foundations. Up there – Can you see? – a man crawling on the heads of his neighbours. Down there – look, look – a woman kneeling as if praying, her body balled up and trampled into the floor. Limbs pulled loose, clothes torn away, and flagstones wrenched from the floor. Men throwing themselves off the parapet, their arms wheeling, their legs flailing, round and round and – smash! – against the water.

  Eventually the castellan of Sant’Angelo sent in his guards. Bodies were carried off the bridge one at a time, with more bodies dredged from the river. In the end two hundred dead were counted. Three horses, also crushed, completed the toll.

  The dead were taken here, to Santi Celso e Giuliano. That evening, families knelt in the church, raising cupped candles to each tortured expression in turn. When it lit on the face of their brother or sister, their parent or child, they would cry out and let the candle flame drop to their feet.