Jesus Christ Is Condemned by Pilate to Scourging and Death

While Jesus Christ remained in Herod’s palace, the crowd gathered before Pilate’s house grew larger hour by hour (Lk 23:13)—not so much to witness the trial of the Prophet of Galilee (His arrest could not yet have become known to the whole city), but to take part in casting votes for the prisoner’s release. For at that time the Jews had a custom, in honor of the Passover feast, of granting freedom to one criminal condemned to death. The people were given full right to choose whomever they wished. This was a remnant of the freedom with which the Romans liked to flatter the peoples they had conquered. The choice of candidate was, no doubt, agreed upon beforehand. Since Pilate governed Judea and Samaria proper, the voices of those who lived within his own provinces, especially the people of Jerusalem, naturally carried more weight and made themselves heard above the rest. The Pharisees, enjoying the people’s trust, could exert considerable influence over such a choice. On the Sanhedrin’s return, Pilate, against his will, had to resume a trial that was for him thoroughly disagreeable. Word of the mockeries Jesus Christ had suffered at Herod’s palace, and the clownish robe in which He had been brought back, gave Pilate to understand that the ruler of Galilee considered this Prisoner a mere dreamer, not deserving to be punished by ridicule alone, but by something more…

So, calling to himself the members of the Sanhedrin and the people, the procurator said: «Here, you have brought this Man to me as a disturber of the public peace; but I have questioned Him myself, in your presence, and found Him entirely innocent of what you accuse Him. Herod, to whom I sent Him, is, as far as I can see, of the same mind; at any rate, he found nothing in His conduct deserving death; so I cannot condemn Him as you wish. If you like, I will have Him punished; but afterward I must restore His freedom to Him, as to one who is innocent» (Lk 23:14-16).

In these words a certain concession on Pilate’s part is already noticeable. Before, he had maintained that the Prisoner deserved not the slightest punishment; now he agrees to apply a corrective one. His conviction of Jesus Christ’s innocence had not changed, as we shall see; only the circumstances had changed. Imposing some punishment on the Prisoner seemed necessary, partly to show regard for his new friend Herod’s hint about His being a mere dreamer, but still more as a concession to the Sanhedrin, so that it might drop its pursuit of an innocent man without any particular shame. That such a turn of events would cost the Righteous One undeserved suffering was no concern of Pilate’s; he counted it a triumph of his own sense of justice if, under these circumstances, he could manage to save at least His life.

But the chief priests, seeing this concession made to them, grew only the more insistent, and declared flatly that they demanded the death penalty and would accept no other punishment. The Lord stood before the tribunal in Herod’s robe; there was no need to question Him again, for the charges were the very same as before. Pilate was in plain indecision what to do…

The noise of the crowd drew him out of his perplexity. The idle mob was voicing its displeasure that the hegemon, occupied with the trial of Jesus Christ, was delaying the customary act—releasing one prisoner in honor of the feast. This insolence, which at another time would have offended him, was now welcome to Pilate, since it offered him a way out of his difficulty. It was known that the people intended to ask for Barabbas, a dangerous criminal who had raised a revolt and committed murders, and who now sat in prison with his accomplices, awaiting execution—probably by crucifixion. «What—Pilate thought—if I set Jesus beside this robber and let the people choose between them? Surely the Jews would not prefer a rebel and a murderer to Jesus?» This last seemed altogether unlikely; for Pilate knew that the people did not share the chief priests’ hatred of Jesus, and that, on the contrary, the people’s love for Him was the very cause of their envy and ill will.

Having weighed all this in an instant, the hegemon turned to the people: «Very well—he said—I am ready to grant your request; I hear that you wish to ask for Barabbas’s release. I do not stand in your way. But I also offer you another to choose alongside him. Would you have me release to you Jesus, called the Christ, the King of the Jews?» (Mt 27:17; Mk 15:9; Jn 18:39.) Pilate said nothing more in Jesus Christ’s favor. Coming from his own lips, such praise might well have had the opposite effect, and seemed an infringement on the freedom of choice the people, longing for their ancient rights, prized so highly. But whatever praise he might have given was, in a way, already contained in calling the Prisoner Christ, King of the Jews—a title Pilate seems to have used as a mark of favor. For with that title were bound up all the pleasing memories, all the flattering hopes, of the Jewish people, who had once had kings of their own, and now waited eagerly for a Messiah-King from David’s line. The people’s very sense of national honor demanded that freedom and life be granted to this Man, whose whole crime consisted in calling Himself King of the Jews.

Only on the lips of the Roman procurator could the title of Jesus Christ as King of the Jews appear ambiguous, even mocking. If not the people themselves, then certainly Jesus’s enemies could construe it as though the hegemon were jeering at them, by asking freedom for the King of the Jews…

In any case, Pilate’s proposal to the people, that they choose Jesus Christ, was quite extraordinary. «See—Chrysostom observes—how the order of things has been reversed! It is the people who ought to be asking Pilate for a criminal’s freedom, and now it is the procurator himself who asks it of the people.»

The chief priests and the people withdrew a little way to confer. Pilate remained at the judgment seat, in the middle of the tribunal, to try the other prisoners.

While Jesus Christ was thus abandoned by everyone, and Pilate himself, against his own conscience, was already beginning to incline toward severe measures, His innocence found, for a time, a defender in the last place one might have expected. The procurator’s wife sent her servant to him with a private request not to condemn this extraordinary Prisoner, and, if possible, to keep entirely clear of passing judgment on Him: «For—she said—last night I saw a strange dream, and suffered much on account of this holy Man».

Lacking any historical record, it would be useless to guess exactly what Pilate’s wife saw in her dream; to do so would mean resorting to conjecture that is purely arbitrary. Yet everything suggests that Procula was convinced by her dream not only of Jesus Christ’s innocence, but that He was a Righteous One—a word which, on pagan lips, meant a man of extraordinary virtue, a favorite of the Godhead. One may also suppose that the dream revealed to Procula, to a greater or lesser degree, both the exalted dignity of Jesus’s person and the terrible fate awaiting His enemies and unrighteous judges.

On Pilate, his wife’s warning must have worked all the more powerfully, the more it coincided with the conviction of his own heart, and the better he knew his wife’s moral worth. Had he not already proposed to the people a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, he might perhaps have found a pretext to end the proceedings at once, on his wife’s advice. As it was, circumstances still allowed Pilate to set his wife’s mind at ease about the Righteous One’s fate, since many means still lay in his hands to save Him, if not from punishment, then at least from death.

Meanwhile, while Pilate was speaking with his wife’s messenger and trying the other prisoners, the chief priests and elders brought every means to bear to turn the people against Jesus Christ. This was all the easier for them, since the people of Jerusalem (who had the greater right of voice) were more devoted to the Pharisees than others, disliked the Galileans, and were, in general, more corrupt and more arrogant. Among other things, they might have said, by way of incitement: «The full Sanhedrin, in plenary session, twice examined Jesus under oath, with all impartiality; and, on the basis of His own words, found in Him a godless man, exceedingly dangerous to the welfare of the Jewish people… The deeds He has done are strange; but who does not see that dark powers have helped Him, that He is an envoy of Beelzebub (Mt 9:34)? For when did He do them? — On the Sabbath, in defiance of the law of Moses, to the dishonor of our religion (Mt 12:2-8). And what does He teach? — He overturns every tradition (Mt 15:2), threatens to destroy the very temple (Mt 26:61), reviles everything sacred, not excepting us, the chief priests. And how does He live? — He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners (Mt 9:11, 11:19); He keeps company with Samaritans (Jn 8:48); every despised person is of one mind with Him. And such a Man calls Himself ’the Son of God!’ If He were truly the Messiah, would He have come to His present state, would He have allowed Himself to be treated like a slave, would He have consented to be made a laughingstock for Herod’s servants? Where are the prophets Moses and Elijah, who are to announce the Messiah’s coming to all (Jn 1:21)? On the contrary, this Man was betrayed by His own disciple: so little do even His own friends value Him! And who expects the Messiah to come from Nazareth (Jn 1:46), from a carpenter’s house? No, it cannot be that foolish and insolent Galileans should give us a king: Jerusalem will not bow down to Nazareth! What is there to rejoice in about the Messiah’s coming? Is it not that He will free the Jewish people from its enemies, and restore the throne of David (Lk 19:11)? But look at this Man: is this the victorious descendant of David, who trembles as he awaits mercy or death from the sentence of a Roman knight? He, even when He was free, never stopped repeating: pay tribute to Caesar! This is a messiah—only not a Jewish one, but a Roman one! The honor of the nation demands that we obtain for Him the most shameful death there is. Do you not see that Pilate, calling Him our king and asking His freedom, is mocking us? Oh, if the Lord had not humbled us for the sins of our fathers, we would show the uncircumcised how to insult Israel! At the very least, guard the honor of the Sanhedrin, of the temple, of the name of the God of Israel—you who are Israelites! Cursed be anyone who says even a word in favor of the son of Joseph!»

Barabbas’s crimes, too, could be excused and minimized. Nothing prevented the Pharisees from representing the revolt he had raised as an act of patriotic zeal for the law of Moses and the traditions. Uprisings in Palestine were, at that time, a common occurrence; and for all the misfortunes that came of them, a people prone to political dreaming looked on rebels as men in whom the spirit of freedom breathed, and who therefore deserved a better fate. The Messiah, by contrast, who had made not a single attempt to throw off the Roman yoke, seemed, for that very reason, to many, not the true one.

The incited crowd drew near the tribunal. «So then, which of the two do you want me to release to you—Pilate asked—do you want me to release the King of the Jews?» (Most unfortunately he uses this title again, which to the incited crowd sounded like a biting mockery.)

«Not Him—came from every side—not Him, but Barabbas!»

In confusion, still unable to think of any way out, Pilate, as if reluctantly, asked the people: «What, then, am I to do with the man they call King of the Jews?» «To the cross with Him, to the cross!» — the mob shouted, as if it had truly been given the right to decide every matter.

(Their unanimous specification of the very manner of execution shows that those who had incited them had forgotten no detail.)

«But what evil has He done?»

«To the cross, to the cross!» — nothing else could be heard anymore.

«No—Pilate answered, irritated by his failure and unused to enduring such insolence—what I said before still stands: I will have Him punished, and afterward release Him».

After this, the order was given at once: Barabbas to be released, and Jesus Christ subjected to scourging. By this punishment the hegemon hoped, as we shall see, to appease entirely the fury of His enemies.

Scourging (flagellatio), with which Pilate thought to replace the death penalty, was one of the most degrading and agonizing punishments with which the Romans, for grave crimes, afflicted for the most part slaves and those who held no rights of Roman citizenship. In the Jewish synagogues too, men were punished with rods, but the fixed number of blows was small, and the one punished did not even lose his civic honor. The Romans, by contrast, subjected men to scourging for grave crimes, and usually before carrying out a death sentence. The number of blows and other particulars were not fixed by law, but left to the humanity or inhumanity of the soldiers, who among the Romans carried out every execution. The scourges were made of ropes or straps, into which sharp pieces of bone or metal were woven at intervals. Condemned men not infrequently died under the lash. It was with this very punishment that Pilate meant to show leniency—even toward His enemies and accusers!..

Having received the order, the soldiers stationed with Pilate took Jesus Christ from the tribunal and led Him into the praetorium—into the procurator’s own courtyard, where such punishments were carried out; then they called together the greater part of the military cohort, numbering from six hundred to a thousand men; for scourging was a kind of amusement for these coarse men. The evangelists do not mention that the Lord’s most pure body was bound to a pillar during the scourging, but a widespread tradition affirms that it was. Cruel in itself, the scourging was now crueler still: each of the soldiers wanted to let the supposed rival of Caesar—the praetorians’ own deity—feel the full strength of his arm.

Having sated their cruelty, the soldiers passed from torment to mockery—whether from the ordinary mixture, in coarse men, of barbarity and amusement, or in imitation of Herod and his courtiers. They took it into their heads to make the Prisoner act out a king being raised to royal dignity. For this, over the Lord’s bare body, covered with wounds and blood, they threw a scarlet cloak—a kind of short ceremonial mantle, covering only half the body, fastened at the right shoulder, and worn by high-ranking military men. It goes without saying that this cloak was some worn-out, unusable castoff. By this military garment they meant only to signify Jesus Christ’s supposed pretension to supreme authority over the Jews. Then some of the soldiers, for the same purpose, hastily wove a wreath and set it on the Lord’s head. Thorny branches were used to weave the crown, but which tree or plant exactly (for there are many thorny kinds) cannot be determined from the bare meaning of the Gospel’s original words, since the Greek word (akantha) denotes any prickly plant. The Fathers of the Church, beginning with Clement of Alexandria, hold that it was thorn in the strict sense of the word. Indeed, though the crown was devised not so much to increase the agony as in mockery, the soldiers’ inhuman caprice no doubt did not miss the chance to take the thorniest plant to be found anywhere in the procurator’s courtyard. And so the name crown of thorns for Jesus Christ’s crown corresponds both to the meaning of the word used in the original and to church tradition.

Now only the last mark of royal power was lacking—a scepter: in its place, one of the soldiers put into Jesus Christ’s hand a stalk of Palestinian reed, which resembles our own reed, only much thicker and stiffer.

After this mock-royal robing, which was in itself already a mockery, the crudest jeering began. In the East, reverence for kings is usually shown by falling on one’s knees before them. The same was now done. Falling (one after another) on their knees before Jesus Christ, they said: «Hail, King of the Jews!» With these words each soldier spat in the Lord’s face, took the reed from His hands, and struck Him on the head with it.

That such inhumanity was gratuitous, and even contrary to the laws, did not occur to the soldiers. A self-styled king, a Galilean, despised even by the Jews, who were themselves despised, seemed to them a criminal for whom no torment could be excessive.

Amid these humiliations Jesus Christ appeared exactly as the prophet, centuries before, had foreseen Him, when, in divine inspiration, he declared: «As a lamb led to the slaughter, so He does not open His mouth» (Is 53:7). Being reviled, as the apostle observes, He did not revile in return; suffering, He made no threats, but committed both Himself and His tormentors to His Father, the righteous Judge (1Pet 2:23).

Meanwhile the chief priests and the people, despite the procurator’s declaration that the scourging of Jesus Christ was to settle the whole matter, went on standing before the praetorium, with the plain intention of demanding His death. The leniency shown them, and the growing crowd of people, who during the scourging might have been incited still further, only pushed them toward fresh stubbornness and insolence. Pilate saw this. As an absolute judge, he might have said the matter was closed; but his absolute power was unsteady before so vast a mob of rebellious commoners, who, emboldened by the presence of their own leaders, might dare anything. He had to hear out the Sanhedrin and the people, and not provoke them openly.

Leaving the tribunal, Pilate went into the praetorium to the soldiers, to see how his order had been carried out. Alas, it had been carried out only too zealously!.. Carried out in a way the Roman, not indifferent to the Prisoner’s fate, most likely had never expected!.. The sight of the Prisoner’s pitiful state, the inhumanity shown toward Him, and the gentle, divine bearing of the Sufferer only confirmed the procurator further in the thought that, if some punishment had indeed been unavoidable for the Accused under the circumstances, He had already been punished more than enough. But how to save Him? Show Him to the people in this very state? «Surely—Pilate thought—even this pitiful sight will move His enemies, especially those of the Jews who bear Him no personal hatred?»

With these thoughts the procurator left the praetorium, bidding Jesus follow him. «Here—he said to the people—I bring Him out to you, that you may know once more that I find no fault in Him at all» (Jn 19:4).

At the same moment the Lord too came out of the praetorium, His body drenched in blood and half-covered by the purple robe, the thorny crown on His head, which was likewise wounded and bloodied…

«Here is the man!» — Pilate cried out, evidently moved by the pitiful sight of the divine Prisoner.

(Look, is there anything defiant, anything seditious in His face; anything dangerous to the government in His condition! Look how, to please you, He has been mocked and tormented!)

These words, and the Lord’s state, did indeed move many of the Jews. A few voices still cried out: «Crucify, crucify Him!» — but no longer with the same ferocity. The chief priests, elders, and scribes noticed this, and themselves began shouting along with the crowd (Jn 19:6). The great mass of their servants and partisans shouted too; the moment was the most decisive of all…

And Pilate began to lose his judicial composure. «Well—he said—if you are so stubborn, then take Him and crucify Him yourselves (if you can), and I will tell you once more that (to my own mind, and under Roman law) I find no fault in this Man at all». The procurator’s stern bearing showed that he meant to keep his word.

The chief priests, for all their wish to see the Lord condemned under Roman law, were forced for the time to abandon that hope, and turned once more to accusing Him of violating their own national statutes. This course had at least one advantage: that Pilate, as a pagan with no right to judge sacred Jewish law, and therefore no right to judge its violation, would necessarily have to rely on the word of the Jewish scribes, who, with the help of Pharisaic legal skill, had no difficulty concluding that the Lord, under the law of Moses, deserved death.

«What does it matter—the chief priests answered Pilate—that you do not find Him deserving of death under your laws: we have our own law, by which He must be put to death; for, among other things, He claimed to be the Son of God». But this accusation produced on Pilate an effect quite different from what Jesus’s enemies had hoped. The procurator, as St. John observes, on hearing this word (Jn 19:8)—that is, that Jesus Christ called Himself the Son of God—grew still more afraid. Until now he had feared to condemn an innocent man, a righteous one, an extraordinary man, perhaps even a favorite of the gods; now he dreaded pronouncing sentence on the Son of God, for whom God, His Father, whoever He might be, would surely take terrible vengeance on him—for Pilate, as a pagan, was by no means a stranger to the belief that the gods sometimes came down to earth in human form and fathered demigods. He found nothing impossible in the thought that such a demigod might have appeared in Judea, been put in chains, and stood before his own tribunal, since pagan religion allowed that even the gods themselves sometimes took the form of poor wanderers, and that demigods were sometimes even subjected to insult and humiliation. On the contrary, the surmise that a demigod might now stand in his own tribunal explained for Pilate a great deal he had previously been quite unable to understand: his wife’s strange dream in favor of a Prisoner unknown to her, and of a foreign faith; and the Lord’s extraordinary conduct—His silence, His extraordinary patience, the loftiness of His thoughts and feelings.

To question the accusers as to what sort of Son of God the Accused had claimed to be seemed inappropriate. The exasperated chief priests might simply have told Pilate that he had no right to meddle in matters of their religion, which stood under the emperor’s own protection. It seemed better to turn to the Prisoner Himself, and learn from Him the mystery of His divine origin.

Full of fear and doubt, Pilate went at once into the praetorium, signaling Jesus Christ to follow him.

«Where are You from?» — was his first question. He was not asking about His birthplace, for Pilate had already heard that the Lord was born in Galilee, but about His origin—whether He was born of men, or of the gods. He wanted the Lord to disclose His origin—natural or supernatural.

If it had not been hard before for Jesus Christ to win the judge over to His side, it was easier still now. For all his skepticism, the superstitious, frightened pagan seemed ready to believe whatever marvel the Prisoner might tell him about His origin. But Jesus «gave him no answer» (Jn 19:9)!..

Was a superstitious pagan, who questioned the Lord not out of love for the truth but out of fear—after having, in flat defiance of his own conscience, subjected Him to an agonizing scourging—worthy to know the holiest of mysteries? Pontius was incapable of grasping the mystery of the eternal origin of Jesus’s person, a mystery so lofty that it could find no place even in the minds of the chief priests and scribes, who rested always on the law of Moses. Everything Pilate had heard or read about the sons of the gods, with whom Greek and Roman mythology abounds, would not have helped him grasp the mystery of Jesus’s person; on the strength of such fables, Pilate would most likely have compared Him in his own mind to some Hercules or Romulus. Besides, to save Himself from death by a tale of His heavenly origin would have been wholly unworthy of Jesus Christ’s moral character. We have seen that, having resolved to lay down His soul for the salvation of the world, He had at the same time renounced every supernatural means of securing His own release; it was His will to be judged as a man, and not as the Son of God.

Yet if the Lord—as some, even among the learned interpreters of God’s word, unfortunately suppose in our own day—had descended from earthly parents, and had not come, as He Himself said, «from heaven», from «the Father», then perhaps love of the very truth for whose sake He was born might now have moved Him to lead Pilate out of his error, saying: «I, like all men, descend from mortal parents; I am not the Son of God in the strict sense of that word, and called Myself so only in the sense in which every virtuous man may be called a son of God». Pilate, perhaps, would not have been incapable of understanding what this moral sonship to God consisted in. But since Jesus Christ was, and is, the true, natural Son of God, it was fitting for Him to answer Pilate’s question as He did—with silence.

Since the reasons why he was getting no answer were beyond Pilate’s grasp, and since, at the same time, such silence seemed altogether out of place, for a Roman knight’s pride, in a Prisoner who, son of the gods or not, stood so close to the cross—he, wishing to break the silence, asked with hauteur: «What? You will not answer me either? Do You not know that I have the power to crucify You, and the power to release You?»

Despite the arrogance of these words, they still betrayed a certain readiness in Pilate to grant the Lord His freedom; but where had his fear gone? Back to where it came from. Rashness had begotten it, and rashness dispelled it. Yet the Roman dignitary’s habitual cunning may also have been at work here: he may have been concealing his own fear, deliberately trying to frighten Jesus Christ with his power, so as to judge, by the effect the threat produced on the Prisoner, whether He was a mere man, or a son of the gods.

Meanwhile, by his arrogant words, «I have the power to crucify You, and the power to release You», Pilate unwittingly exposed the hidden nature of his own justice, and of his own conscience. «See—St. Chrysostom observes—how he pronounces sentence on himself beforehand! For if everything was in your power (Pilate), why, having found no fault in Him, did you condemn Him to the cross?»

The judge’s boasting did not go without rebuke, a rebuke which no doubt seemed as extraordinary to Pilate as it was fitting from the Lord. «Jesus answered: You would have no power over Me at all, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason, the one who handed Me over to you bears the greater sin» (Jn 19:11).

Blessed Augustine rightly observes, of these words, that Jesus Christ «when He was silent, was silent as a lamb; and when He spoke, spoke as a shepherd». In these words is heard the true voice of the true Shepherd, who, having resolved to «lay down His soul for the sheep», does not leave even the wild boars that hunt His life without a word of instruction. Pilate, wishing to know what he had no right to know—the heavenly origin of Jesus Christ—had entirely forgotten the truth he ought first of all to have remembered: that earthly courts, like all human deeds, stand under the unseen governance of the Heavenly Judge, who will one day demand a strict account from unrighteous rulers. And so the Lord, without satisfying Pilate’s untimely curiosity, nonetheless brings aid to his weak conscience, calling to his mind the truth that the matter now occupying him is subject, besides his own tribunal, to a far higher, divine judgment, and that he himself remains but an instrument of that judgment on earth. By the words, «the greater sin lies with him who handed Me over to you», the future fate of Jesus’s enemies, and Pilate’s own, was made as clear to him as he needed for his own instruction. He is given, in advance, to hear his own future sentence from the Heavenly Judge, for not having saved the Righteous One from death—to hear with full precision that an inescapable punishment awaits him too, though a lighter one by comparison with the punishment of Jesus’s personal enemies and betrayers.

The Roman’s conscience, this time too, was not deaf. Jesus Christ’s bold appeal to the Heavenly Judge, His plain hint at the unhappy fate awaiting His persecutors, His firm resolve to fulfill His own great purpose, His insight into the secret of Pilate’s own conscience—all this, it seems, entirely dispelled whatever unfavorable turn of mind might otherwise have arisen in Pilate from the Lord’s silence before his questions, and even his threats. If the judge had heard no confession from the Accused that He was the Son of God, neither had he heard a denial. He might well suppose, meanwhile, that this extraordinary Prisoner had some particular reason of His own for not disclosing the mystery of His person and origin. And so, on coming out of the praetorium, Pilate, as St. John observes (Jn 19:12), not only did not abandon his former stance as defender of Jesus’s innocence, but began seeking still more earnestly some way to save Him from death. The evangelist’s silence does not allow us to say with certainty just what means the procurator turned to for this purpose, or what he said to the chief priests.

The procurator plainly could not assert that the Accused denied His guilt in assuming the title of Son of God, since, besides the fact that the Lord had not denied this title before him, the chief priests could at once produce witnesses that He had called Himself the Son of God; nor could Pilate declare that the charge of Jesus Christ calling Himself the Son of God was not a crime deserving death, since it was not his place to judge the gravity of offenses touching the Jewish religion. But he could, with all the more right, declare to the chief priests that the Prisoner, if guilty of anything at all, had already been punished for it more than enough, and that it would be unjust to punish the same offense twice, so severely; he could once more put off a final decision, on the pretext of needing to confer with Herod, in whose jurisdiction Jesus Christ belonged; he could even, as Caesar’s own representative, openly take the Lord under the protection of Roman justice, as a man persecuted by the Sanhedrin for personal motives.

Be that as it may, Pilate’s defense was so effective that the chief priests were forced to drop the charge of violating national law, and thought it best to return once more to a single criminal accusation—treason against Caesar. During Pilate’s last examination, the Pharisaic and Sadducean false politicians had had every opportunity to agree among themselves, and to find a way of strengthening this charge and making it irresistible for the procurator. «So then—the chief priests cried out haughtily—you wish to save Him from execution? Do as you please, but know that if you release Him, you are no friend of Caesar’s: whoever calls himself a king sets himself against Caesar» (Jn 19:12). The incited mob shouted the same thing, reproaching Pilate for his disloyalty to his own sovereign.

At these unexpected words, all of Pilate’s firmness suddenly vanished…

«Friend of Caesar» was a title in which the most eminent men in Rome, governors of the vastest provinces, took pride. Herod the Great himself counted it a special honor to be called, and known among the people as, a friend of Augustus. All the more, then, must a Roman knight prize this title, who was himself still very far from having the master of the world call him his friend…

«If you release Him, you are an enemy of Caesar’s»—these words, spoken before the whole people by the mouth of the entire Sanhedrin, were more terrible than thunder. They made plain that the chief priests were prepared to carry the case to Caesar’s own tribunal, there to accuse, along with Jesus Christ, Pilate himself as a traitor who was careless of his master’s honor and interests. For Pilate, these threats carried all the more weight, the less free he was, as governor of Judea, from misdeeds for which he could justly, and with success, be accused before Caesar—especially by enemies who worked in Rome with both gold and intrigue.

The charge of treason before Caesar would have been far less terrifying had Augustus, or someone like him, then sat on the Roman throne. One might have hoped that the Roman demigod would weigh the case magnanimously, in its true light, and not hold against Jesus Christ the mere fact of calling Himself a king. But Rome then groaned under the iron scepter of Tiberius—a monster who, having neither trust nor pity even for his own kin, feeding on suspicion and pretense, tormented anyone on the slightest suspicion; a man with whom the most shameless denunciations always found a hearing, and a reward.

Besides the future danger from Caesar, there was also a present one to fear—from the people. The unruly mob, incited by the Pharisees, was growing more insolent and more turbulent by the hour. Its savage cry already showed it ready for any violence. A handful of praetorians meant nothing against the countless multitude of Jews gathered from every corner of the world for the Passover feast. And beyond the danger of a popular uprising, he would still have had to answer for it before Caesar. What, if Tiberius should learn that the sole cause of the uprising was the Roman procurator’s refusal to grant the Jewish people the execution they demanded of a personal enemy of Tiberius’s own—as they took the supposed pretender to the Jewish throne to be?!

Such thoughts could disturb even a man like Pilate, whose conscience was not yet wholly extinguished, who had some notion of justice and a certain inclination toward it, but who, from childhood, following the example of the Roman nobility, had grown accustomed to placing his own advantage above morality—to looking not so much to conscience as to circumstance, to holding the pleasing of Caesar as the highest law of his conduct, appearing just wherever he could do so without harm to himself, at least no serious harm; a man unacquainted with true religion, with the finest experiences and hopes of the human race—those experiences that make true heroes of virtue, those hopes without which the loftiest morality remains unsteady and unreliable.

To renounce Caesar’s friendship publicly, for the defense of an innocent man, to disregard the danger to his own life—even in paganism, so lofty a sacrifice demanded the firm spirit of a Regulus, the disinterestedness of a Cincinnatus; but the spirit of the Reguluses and Cincinnatuses had long since left the Capitol, now filled with flatterers of Augustus and slaves of Tiberius.

Let us add one more thought. If some of the ancient teachers of the Church have supposed that Judas sold his Teacher in the hope that He would free Himself from His enemies’ hands by supernatural power, it is still more reasonable to suppose that Pilate, having resolved to condemn Jesus Christ to death, probably hoped that the gods, if He were their son, would not delay in saving Him from an execution so shameful to their divine dignity.

Weighing all this, it is easy to understand how «the outcry of the people and the chief priests» overpowered the judge’s weakening will.

Having resolved to yield to necessity, Pilate mounted the judgment seat to bring the trial to its end. The Lord, who had remained in the praetorium until now, was brought out to the tribunal to hear the sentence. The accusers, too, drew near; in place of the uproar came silence: everyone waited to hear what Pilate would say, and how so extraordinary a case would end.

«Here is your King!» — Pilate cried out involuntarily, at the sight of the One whom, against his own conscience and will, he now had to condemn to death.

«Crucify, crucify Him!» — the unruly crowd shouted, eager to end a spectacle that was not easy even for them.

«What? Crucify your King?..»

«Crucify, crucify Him!»

«We have no king—the chief priests added—but Caesar».

That was not how they spoke in their own synagogues; there they most often repeated: «We have no king but God». And besides, everyone was waiting for the Messiah-King, everyone hoped that He would throw off Caesar’s yoke; this was prayed for in the temples, in homes, and on the road, by old men and children, morning, noon, and evening. And yet, to destroy Jesus, the whole Sanhedrin, before all the people, was not ashamed to acknowledge itself the lawful slave of a Caesar it hated; to renounce the nation’s own hopes and glory, and, in a certain sense, even the Messiah Himself! The few decades that passed between the Lord’s crucifixion and the destruction of Jerusalem showed just how faithfully the chief priests and Pharisees kept their loyalty to Caesar: there was not a single act of treason that was not committed there, several times over, before nothing was left of Jerusalem but stones.

Now it remained to pronounce sentence on «a righteous man, a favorite, perhaps, of the gods’ own son». This thought was still too heavy for the Roman to bear. In such straits men look for some prop to their conscience. Pilate, unfortunately, soon found one.

It was a custom among the Jews, which had even hardened into law, that if a dead body was found somewhere, the elders of the nearest town were to wash their hands over the head of a heifer, saying: «Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes did not see the murder» (Deut 21:6). Pilate, having lived a fair amount of time in Judea, knew of this custom, which had its counterpart among the pagans as well, who likewise performed a washing as a sign of their innocence and for the cleansing of sins. Poor in courage and weak in conscience, the pagan judge resolved to resort publicly to this rite, which, bringing his conscience some relief, was now useful too in that the Jews standing at a distance, who could not hear Pilate’s words over the noise, could understand from the judge’s washing of his hands that he was condemning Jesus Christ against his own will. «I am not guilty—Pilate cried out, washing his hands—I am not guilty of the blood of this Righteous Man! See to it yourselves! You force me to shed it: you will have to answer for it!»

These words could not have been spoken except with the deepest and bitterest feeling. It was the only instance in history of a Roman judge expressing, with such force, his conviction of the innocence of a prisoner he was condemning to death. Had the procurator not been deeply moved, mere self-regard alone would have made him pronounce the sentence as briefly as possible, so as not to appear forced into it. Pontius, above all, must now have regretted, and reproached himself, that he had not put a stop to the Lord’s condemnation when he received his wife’s warning, and instead let it proceed, because he thought he still had enough means in his hands to save Him.

The unruly crowd, for all its fury, understood what the procurator wanted, and the state of his soul; but, incited by its blind leaders, it had already gone too far to turn back all at once; the fear of condemning an innocent man, which does the pagan so much credit, seemed a small thing to worshippers of Jehovah, who had been taught the notion of justice from childhood. As though wishing to shame or embolden the procurator’s faint-heartedness, all cried out: «Let His blood fall on us, and on our children!»

(These words, terrible in themselves, appear still more terrible when we remember that they must be understood without any qualification, in the fullest literal sense; for the Jews, in keeping with the teaching of the prophets, firmly believed that God punishes all the descendants of a nation for the crime of its ancestors.)

At last the earthly judge, «seeing that nothing was to be gained, but rather that the tumult grew worse» (the popular uproar), pronounced the death sentence on the Judge of the living and the dead.

This sentence, in keeping with Roman judicial custom, consisted of a few brief words, that «such and such a man, for such and such a crime», was condemned «to such and such a death».

In addition to the Gospel history of Jesus Christ’s trial, it is not out of place to note that Pilate later sent to Tiberius a report describing Jesus Christ’s life, His miracles and holiness, his own trial of Him, and the reasons that led him to condemn Him to crucifixion. The existence of this report, whose original was lost long ago, cannot reasonably be doubted, given the testimony of Justin Martyr and Tertullian, who cited it as unquestionable proof in their own apologies addressed to the Roman senate and people. Tiberius, according to the testimony of these same writers, was so struck by the account of Jesus Christ’s miracles and holiness that he proposed to the senate that He be numbered among the Roman gods; but the senate, for reasons unknown, would not agree to this, and Tiberius contented himself with forbidding, on pain of death, the persecution of Christians.

Let us note, too, that Pilate, by his unlawful condemnation of Jesus Christ to death, did not escape the very danger he had feared. Four years after this he was summoned to Rome for trial on a Jewish denunciation, and, failing to justify himself, was banished to Vienne, where he ended his own life.

The fate of Jesus’s other judge, Herod Antipas, was little better than Pilate’s. Egged on by the power-hungry Herodias, he set out for Rome to seek, in place of his tetrarchy of Galilee, royal authority over all Judea, wishing to hold it undivided, after the example of his father, Herod the Great. But this pursuit took so unhappy a turn that Antipas, instead of a royal crown, was exiled to Lyon, and died in poverty.