As I write, observant Christians everywhere are observing Good Friday, and non-Christians everywhere are observing Christians observing Good Friday.
The commemoration on Good Friday of a historically documented crucifixion that occurred in Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago evokes in the modern nonbeliever responses ranging from disinterest, to polite curiosity, to outright incredulity.
Yet those reactions are as nothing compared to the stunned stupefaction with which a visitor from antiquity would view modern Christianity’s iconography of the cross, and the widespread acceptance, indeed reverence, attached to it. And this reaction pales in comparison to the feelings of shock and terror that a modern would experience were he forced to observe a crucifixion in first century Rome.
Why?
Because our age, for all its violence and depravity, has little understanding, and no equivalent, of a crucifixion, a ritual form of capital punishment and social control that instilled in the peoples of antiquity unimaginable feelings of horror and dread.
Introduced to the Hellenic world by the Persians, and to Rome by the Phoenicians, crucifixion was reserved for slaves and criminals in time of peace, for deserters and conquered rebels in time of war. Designed to be administered simply and efficiently, its painful, prolonged, and degrading form of agony soon gave rise to the Latin cognate “excruciating.” One privilege of Roman citizenship was exemption from its depredations.
The spectacle began with a formal, public condemnation of the accused, followed by scourging, a legal preliminary to every Roman execution that served a two-fold purpose: to “bloody-up” the victim for maximum deterrent effect and to lower the body’s vital resistance. The Gospel depictions of Christ before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, are historically accurate renditions of this phase of the ritual. The victim was stripped, then flayed with a flagrum, an instrument consisting of a short handle to which were attached leather thongs. Sewn into the ends of the thongs were the round anklebones of a sheep (“tali”) or lead balls. The former cut into the skin; the latter caused deep contusions. Rome placed no limit on the number of “stripes” administered. Horace writes of one condemned “so torn by the whips as to disgust those in charge.”
Once scourged, the naked, bloodied victim was forced to “carry his cross” through the city to the place of execution. Here Christian devotional art departs from Roman practice. Because both in Rome and in the provinces crucifixions were commonplace, there developed the practice of performing them quickly and efficiently by keeping the upright section of the cross (the “stipes cruces”) permanently installed at the place of execution. Thus it was the horizontal piece only, the patibulum, that was placed on the naked victim’s shoulders and to which his arms were tied. A functionary preceded him, bearing a titulus, a tablet - later affixed to the stipes - on which was inscribed the victim’s name and offence (e.g., “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”).
The crucifixion site (in ancient Jerusalem: “Golgotha” – Hebrew for “The Place of the Skull”) was located outside a main gate to the city and on high ground, to minimize the spread of disease from the rotting cadavers and to put visitors on notice of the punishment that awaited wrongdoers. Upon arrival, the condemned received a narcotic to numb pain and induce stupor, not out of mercy but to facilitate the task of the executioners (usually legionnaires).
In another departure from what is depicted in devotional art, except in unusual cases the vertical stipes was only set at a height of about two meters. This was so that the attending legionnaires could easily attach the crosspiece without resort to ladders, and so that wolves and other scavengers could access the vitals of the corpse. The nailing of the condemned to the cross required some skill and was usually performed by legionnaires. In yet another conflict between devotional art and Roman practice, the victim’s arms were affixed to the patibulum not by the palms but by the wrists. When placed correctly, the nails penetrated without encountering bone through a natural tunnel formed by the capitate, the semi-lunar, the triquetral, and the hamate bones (Destot’s space), and the resulting purchase was strong enough to support the full body weight. A practiced executioner could drive the nail so that it abraded the median nerve without severing it - like rubbing a taut violin string - causing convulsive pain throughout the entire nervous system.
Once the arms were secured, the patibulum with the victim suspended from it was lifted up and placed over the stipes, probably by means of a tenon and mortice joint, forming a “T” rather than the traditional cross. The legs were crossed, flexed, and nailed with a single nail just above the ankles.
There then ensued a rhythmic tableau of the macabre, the essence of every crucifixion. The writhing victim, experiencing terrible cramping, tetany, and the sensation of progressive suffocation, rose and fell in waves of agony, alternating between hanging from the nails in the wrists until pain and cramping in the arms, shoulders, and thorax became unbearable, then using his flexed legs to push up on the nail-pierced ankles for breath and relief, then slumping again when that became intolerable, and over and over again until death by asphyxiation.
Christ took many hours to die, others days.
It is a measure of the horror of crucifixion that the practice of breaking the legs of the crucified was regarded as an act of mercy.
