Chapter IV: The “Seven Falls”

Although we have already taken note of some isolated attempts to imitate in western lands the construction or relative position of the sanctuaries of Jerusalem, there seems to be no evidence of the erection of anything like a definite “Way of the Cross” before the closing years of the fifteenth century. It is not quite easy to determine what is the earliest example of any system of devotional Stations in stone or wood intended to recall the road to Calvary. Perhaps from their nearness to the source of inspiration a set of seven columns at Rhodes, of which we hear something at the beginning of the sixteenth century, may have the best claim to take precedence, but I must confess that my efforts to gain any authentic information about these interesting pillars have been unsuccessful. An almost equal degree of obscurity attends the erection at Görlitz of a series of Stations which are known to have begun with some sort of representation of “Pilate’s house.” A certain George Emmerich, we are told, who visited the Holy Land in 1465, erected a model of the Holy Sepulchre on his return. Besides this he attempted to reproduce the scenes around, building his chapel at the exact distance from the Church of St Peter that Calvary was separated from the Prætorium. A set of Stations was added, two of which, though the subjects can hardly be recognized, are still preserved.[62]

But by far the best known work of this kind of early date[63] is the famous series of carvings executed by Adam Krafft of Nuremberg at the instance of Martin Ketzel, to whose pilgrimage reference has already been made. These Stations were probably completed before 1490, and are still to be seen, though they have undergone several restorations, and some of them, which were more exposed to the weather, have of late years been removed to the museum.[64] They are seven, or more accurately eight, in number, and have inscriptions carved under them, naming the subject of the group, and giving the distance from Pilate’s house. Thus the inscription under the first Station runs: “Here JESUS meets His dear and Blessed Mother, who swooned away for anguish of heart. Two hundred paces from Pilate’s house.”[65] The other six subjects, with their distances, may be more summarily named. The second is Simon of Cyrene, 295 paces; the third, the women of Jerusalem, 380 paces;[66] the fourth, Veronica, 500 paces; the fifth, JESUS sinking under the cross and belaboured by the Jews, 780 paces; the sixth, JESUS prostrate under the cross, 1,000 paces; the last, JESUS laid in the arms of His Blessed Mother.[67] The distances are in each case supposed to be measured from Pilate’s house, but no figures are given in the last case. It seems certain that this and similar arrangements of seven Stations, resembling but not necessarily identical with Krafft’s, were popularly known as the “Seven Falls,”[68] for in all of them our SAVIOUR, if not actually prostrate, was conceived as either sinking under His burden, or staggering again to His feet. In the case of the Nuremberg Stations the evidence for the use of this name is quite unequivocal. A chronicler of the city records that in the year 1508 he (Adam Krafft) had carved in stone and erected before the gate of the Garden of Beasts the Seven Falls of Christ, as they were commonly called, with seven crosses extending to Mount Calvary, that is to say, to the chapel besides St John’s Church, called the Sepulchre Chapel; and there there was a great cross with the two thieves.

The Stations supposed to be imitated from Krafft at St Getreu, in Bamberg, dating from 1507, were also seven in number, and Tilmann Riemenschneider seems to have carried out other sets of a similar character.[69] We may very probably regard an early set of Stations erected by one Peter Sterckx (or Peter Potens) at Louvain after his return from Jerusalem about 1505 as another example of the Seven Falls. There are said to be eight subjects, but it does not seem very clear whether there were eight different halting-places. They ended in a chapel, known as the Capelle van Calvarien, and they began with the House of Pilate, which stood at the corner of St James’s Churchyard. Peter Calentyn, whose devotional work on the Stations will shortly be mentioned, wrote a separate tract on the _Cruysganck_ of Louvain, in which he assigns the exact locality where each sculpture had been erected. After the House of Pilate, which no doubt represented our modern Station, “JESUS is condemned to death,” there follows (2) the first fall, (3) Simon of Cyrene (this stood near the house of the Irish Dominicans), (4) Veronica, (5) the second fall, (6) the women of Jerusalem, (7) the third fall, (8) the stripping of the garments. It will be noticed that these Stations correspond with those of Adam Krafft neither in subject nor in order; but in spite of this there was great pretence of accurate measurement. From the Louvain Pilatushuys to the Capelle van Calvarien were counted 662 double paces or 1,324 single steps. Each step, Calentyn is careful to note, measured two-and-a-half feet, and each pace consequently five feet. These Stations long continued to excite the devotion of the faithful. A writer who gave a description of them in 1666 tells us: “On y va en pélerinage fort dévotement principalement en la semaine sainte.” We shall see further on that this set of Stations at Louvain has exercised a preponderating influence upon the selection and arrangement of the fourteen now universally adopted in our churches.[70]

The little work of Peter Calentyn on the Stations of Louvain seems to be much more rarely found than his translation of the devotional work of Jan Pascha.[71] I have not been able to meet with a copy of the former, and I know it only from the extracts given by Van Even.

Another set of Stations which has given rise to a whole literature of its own, mostly consisting of volumes absolutely inaccessible outside of France, are those connected with the famous Calvary of Romans in Dauphiné.[72] If we were to attempt any account of the Calvaries which existed in Brittany, Southern France, Italy and Germany, it would be impossible to keep this little book within reasonable limits.[73] But in the story of the foundation of the Calvary of Romans we hear incidentally of two other sets of Seven Stations. One Romanet Boffin, a merchant of Romans, having had occasion for matters of business to travel to Fribourg in 1515, was greatly impressed by certain memorials of the Passion of our SAVIOUR which had been erected in that city. These consisted of a Calvary with seven “pillars,” which a Knight of Rhodes, Peter of Englisberg, who had been made commander of the commandery of St John Baptist of Fribourg, forthwith set up as an exact reproduction of seven other pillars existing in the Isle of Rhodes, which commemorated in their turn the holy places of Jerusalem. Romanet Boffin was so edified that he asked the permission of the magistrates of Fribourg to erect a similar set of Stations in his native city, and was presented with a document, still extant, which attests that he had accurately measured the distances.[74]

Boffin had previously sought and obtained the approval of the magistrates of his native town, who gave him leave to appropriate the sites which were necessary for his purpose.[75] His plans seem to have developed and to have grown more ambitious as he found that the scheme gained in popularity. He accordingly obtained a Bull from Leo X giving him permission to visit the Holy Land, and there is also extant an indulgence granted to this Calvary a few years later.

The story is rather obscure, but the Calvary at Romans seems to have consisted of a multitude of Stations, which varied greatly in number at different epochs. Two friars of Jerusalem told Boffin that there ought to be thirty-one in all. In certain books of piety published about the Romans Calvary as early as 1515 twenty-five are named. In the “Voyage et Oraisons du Mont Calvaire de Romans,” printed by Jacques Kerver in 1556, the number is nineteen. In the “Directoire du Voyage” of Friar Archange de Clermont in 1638 there are as many as thirty-seven.

Although it is extremely interesting to hear of these seven Stations at Rhodes, from which the Stations of Fribourg were copied, it may perhaps seem rash to infer that all such sets of seven, like Krafft’s, represented the seven falls.[76] Curiously enough, however, a piece of evidence which at first sight appears to create a serious difficulty proves on examination to tell the other way.

We may find in Sanderus’ “Chorographia”[77] a mention of the cemetery of the Franciscans at Antwerp, which had seven sculptures, depicting the seven dolours of our Blessed Lady. “So great,” he says, “is the devotion of the populace to these Stations, that people are to be found making them at all hours of the day. Especially on Fridays, after Compline, the friars all go two and two to the altar of our Lady of Sorrows, and there two cantors intone aloud the ‘Stabat Mater,’ to which the community respond very beautifully in harmony. Then they all go out to the Stations, a great crowd of people following behind. The whole assembly kneels down before each Station in turn, and three ‘Our Fathers’ and ‘Hail Marys’ are said by each person in silence. At the end is sung the antiphon, ‘Sancta Maria,’ etc., by way of conclusion. This is not,” says Sanderus, “a modern devotion. It was famous in this place as far back as the year 1520, when Leo X granted an indulgence of 100 days for each Station.”[78]

Now it would of course seem at first sight that a series of seven sculptures consecrated to the dolours of our Lady almost necessarily excluded the idea of any other object of devotion, and notably the seven falls of our Blessed LORD. But this, as appears on further examination, would be a rash inference.

In the National Museum at Stockholm are to be found an extremely interesting series of fifteenth-century engravings representing simultaneously the seven falls of our LORD _and_ the Seven Sorrows of His Blessed Mother. They bear inscriptions as follows:

“1. This picture shows the first painful fall, when the LORD JESUS, tied as He was with bonds, was thrown down off the bridge into the brook Cedron.

“2. This picture shows the second painful fall when the LORD JESUS in the open street fell, heavily to the ground on His way from Herod to Pilate.

“3. This picture shows the third murderous fall, when the LORD JESUS fell heavily swooning upon the steps [apparently before Pilate’s judgement seat].

“4. This picture shows the fourth pitiful fall, when the LORD JESUS, after the scourging, fell fainting beside the pillar.

“5. This representation shows the fifth lamentable fall, when the LORD JESUS fell to the ground under the cross upon which he had been condemned to die. [Simon of Cyrene is shown trying to help to lift our LORD.]

“6. This picture shows the sixth painful fall, when the LORD JESUS was cruelly thrown down naked upon the cross [‘mütternackt,’ as naked as when He was born].

“7. This design [‘hochentworff’] shows the seventh heart-breaking fall, when the LORD JESUS, already nailed to the cross, was again cast down to earth. ‘O Mary help us, Amen.’” (The cross is supposed to have fallen forward out of its socket.)

In each of the seven pictures our Lady is shown with the sword in her heart. No exact date, or even approximate estimate, is assigned by Schreiber for this series.[79]

Another similar set of woodcut pictures is described by the same authority in nos. 645, 647, 653, 655 and 683. (To these we may add perhaps 643, the fall into the Cedron, where our Lady is represented with a sword in her breast, an engraving dated by Schreiber, _c._ 1490.) This second series seems once to have had an inscription repeated in each picture: “O mensch betracht dy siben vell CHRISTI und di siben hertzenlayd Marie.—O man, contemplate the seven falls of CHRIST and the seven heart-breaking sorrows of Mary.”

645 represents a fall in the street. There is no cross, but Mary and John are there looking on. No sword is represented.

647. JESUS falls on being dragged up the steps to the Governor Pilate. Mary, with sword in her breast, and John are present.

653. JESUS, in a swoon, falls to the ground beside a pillar. Judas is looking in through one window; Mary and John through another.

655. JESUS falls under the cross. Simon of Cyrene tries to help Him. Mary looks on with a sword piercing her heart; John stands besides her.

683. Erection of the cross. Mary, with the sword in her heart, is standing by.

The series is incomplete.

The subjects represented in these two sets of the “Seven Falls” are apparently identical, and they must be compared with the pious contemplations contained in a little devotional booklet called the “Mount of Calvary” (“Dit is den berch van Calvarien”), printed at Leyden in Holland about 1520.[80] Here we find suggested a pious method of following with prayers and aspirations the Passion and seven falls of our SAVIOUR, though these are not in any way identical with Krafft’s, but begin, like the series just mentioned, with the legendary fall of our Blessed LORD in crossing the brook of Cedron (_de torrente in via bibet_). The booklet is illustrated with woodcuts of the roughest description, but it is noteworthy that these include both the sentencing of CHRIST to death by Pilate and the stripping of the garments. As for the falls, the seven enumerated are (1) at the brook of Cedron, (2) on the way to Herod, (3) on the steps of Pilate’s house when sentence was passed, (4) at the scourging, (5) during the carrying of the cross, (6) when thrown down for the nailing, (7) when the cross, with our LORD upon it, was allowed to slip back just after it had been raised, so that His sacred face was once more dashed against the ground.

This is not supposed to be an exhaustive list of the falls of our SAVIOUR; for the text of the book expressly states that our LORD revealed to a holy virgin that He fell thirty-two times “between Jerusalem and Calvary.” As the reader who may compare this list with that given above will see at a glance, the series of falls contemplated here is identical with that delineated in the Stockholm woodcuts. On the other hand, they are quite different, as already noticed, from the Seven Falls of Adam Krafft, though the purpose of both exercises is identical. This purpose is plainly declared upon the first page of the “Berch van Calvarien,” where the title runs: “This is the Mount of Calvary: a very devout handbook for a Christian man, to teach him how men ought to climb the Mount of Calvary and help our LORD to carry His heavy cross, when He has become very weary through the grievous dread of death.”

We may conjecture perhaps that the exercises of the booklet are really older than the time of Martin Ketzel, Krafft and Sterckx, and that these latter considered that they would accomplish their devout purpose better if, to make the exercise still more realistic, they confined the set of Seven Falls to the incidents of the journey from Pilate’s house to Calvary. The inclusion by Sterckx of the stripping of the garments as one of the “falls” (see above, p. 65), must, one would think, be more than a coincidence.

Before quitting this subject I may call attention to a paragraph about the Seven Falls, occurring in an English Catholic book of devotion of the early seventeenth century. It is abridged from a Flemish volume of much older date, about which we shall have much to say in the next chapter. The passage runs as follows:

“Considering it is almost impossible, for a Pilgrim to goe a longe way without fallinge, thou shalt recollect the seaven fallings of CHRISTE our LORD, takinge one of them for every day in the weeke.

“The first, the falling our LORD being taken, when they hastened Him to passe over the water of Cedron.

“The second, the falling of our LORD in the streete, being sent from Pilate to Herod and back againe, thrust and thronged by the Jewes.

“The third, the fallinge of our sweete REDEEMER with His face upon the steppes of Pilate’s House.

“The fourth, His fallinge after His scourging through His extreme debilitie and weakness.

“The fifth, in His voiage to the Mount of Calvarie, falling seaven sundry times to the earth by the way under the heavie burden of His crosse.

“The sixth falling was when so inhumainly He was thrown downe upon the crosse, and most lamentably nayled and stretched thereon.

“The seventh fallinge, when He was nayled, lifted up and let fall into the mortice of the crosse, with a most stronge torture and rueful paine to al His holy members.”[81]

Two points are noteworthy in this extract. First it will be observed how the writer, or rather the sixteenth-century Flemish original which he is summarizing, shows his consciousness, under heading five, of the prevalence of a twofold system of falls, one embracing the whole of the Passion, the other confined, like Adam Krafft’s sculptures, to the carrying of the cross to Calvary. Secondly the change in the character of the seventh fall should not be overlooked. In the examples hitherto cited we have heard of the cross falling again to earth after it had been fixed in its place. Here it is assumed that by the seventh fall of our SAVIOUR we are only to understand the terrible shock with which the cross settled down into the hole prepared for it. This last, of course, is a much less extravagant supposition, but there can be no question that the former legend was current among many writers at the beginning of the sixteenth century. A prayer in the little Flemish book, “Den Berch van Calvarien,” already mentioned, leaves no room for ambiguity; this is how it is worded:

“O sweet LORD JESUS, I thank You from the bottom of my heart, and remind You of that most painful fall when You were lifted up upon the cross, and those ferocious Jews made You fall down again so cruelly with the cross, that Your holy Face was imprinted on the earth, and all Your veins rent and all Your sinews torn. And this was the greatest pain that You suffered on this earth. O holy, strong and sweet GOD, I pray You by this most heavy fall imprint again on me Your divine image and forgive me the seven deadly sins in so far as I may have been guilty of them. Have mercy on me, dear LORD, and receive me again into Your divine grace. Amen.”

Footnote 62:

See Lutsch, “Die Kunstdenkmäler des Reg. Bezirks Liegnitz,” part IV,
pp. 676-677. This erection was commemorated in verse a century later
by Bartholomew Andreade, who writes, for instance:

Quosque per anfractus DOMINUS salebrasque viarum
Robora sustinuit bajulus alta crucis,
Hos certo referet quem pingimus ordine tractus,
Unum ut qui novit, norit utrumque locum.

See C. G. Hoffmann, “Scriptores Rerum Lusaticarum,” vol. I, part ii,
pp. 129-120.

Footnote 63:

Mgr von Keppler quotes Wadding’s “Annales” for the statement that
Philip of Aquila in 1456 erected a set of Stations in the Franciscan
friary to which he belonged. I can find no justification for this
assertion in Wadding or in the “Acta Sanctorum.” Wadding states only
that B. Philip built little oratories, but no mention is made of the
Passion or the Way of the Cross.

Footnote 64:

Daun, “Adam Krafft und die Künstler seiner Zeit,” 1897, p. 65; and cf.
“Mittheilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg,” II,
1880, p. 83.

Footnote 65:

“Hir begegnet JESUS seiner wirdigen lieben Mutter, die vor grossem
herzenleit anmechtig ward; IIc. schrytt von Pilatus haus.” The two
Stations represented opposite have only been superimposed for
convenience sake. Originally of course they stood many hundred yards
apart, as the inscriptions indicate. The fourth of the series is
reproduced in the frontispiece.

Footnote 66:

How untrustworthy all these data are, may be seen from the fact that
by several of the earlier fifteenth-century pilgrims the meeting with
Simon of Cyrene and the women of Jerusalem is represented as taking
place at the same point of the crossroads, and yet according to these
measurements these two spots are nearly one hundred yards distant from
each other.

Footnote 67:

Although another carving, now very much mutilated, represents the
Crucifixion, it would almost seem that this and the last are intended
to form but one Station.

Footnote 68:

“Anno 1508 hat er (Adam Krafft) vor dem Thiergärtnerthor in Stein
gehauen und aufgerichtet die _Sieben fäll_ CHRISTI, welche man
gemeiniglich nent bei den 7 Kreutzen bis hinaus _ad montem Calvariæ_,
zu dem Capellein bey S. Johannes, zu dem Heiligen Grab genandt,
dasselbig grosse Creuz, mit samt der zween Schäger” (J. Neudörffer,
apud Daun, “Adam Krafft,” p. 140).

Footnote 69:

Bishop von Keppler, “Kreuzweg,” p. 33; Weber, Riemenschneider, p. 24.

Footnote 70:

We learn from Adrichomius that other sets of the Seven Falls,
apparently copied from that at Louvain, existed at Mechlin (for many
years the residence of Jan Pascha), Vilvorde and other towns of
Brabant.

Footnote 71:

“Een devote maniere om gheestelyck pelgrimagie te trecken tot den
heyligen lande,” Louvain, 1563. Three editions of this—two in Flemish
and one in French—are in the British Museum. The Museum does not,
however, possess a copy of the first edition. There was a second
edition of the French translation, which Röhricht in his “Bibliotheca”
seems to have mistaken for an original work. Another Flemish edition
was printed at Ghent in 1612.

Footnote 72:

A full bibliography is given by U. Chevalier, “Bulletin d’Histoire
Ecclésiastique des diocéses de Valence,” etc., vol. IV, p. 68.

Footnote 73:

The famous Sacro Monte of Varallo was first instituted by Blessed
Bernardino Caimi, Guardian of the Franciscan Observants in 1491. He
had twice resided in the Holy Land, and had been _custode_ of the holy
places in 1477 and 1487. See “Miscellanea di Storia Franciscana,” I
(1886), p. 61, and Galloni, “Uomini e Fatti Celebri in Valle Sessia,”
p. 84. Cf. also Motta, “Il beato Bernardino Caimi” (1891), p. 16, and
S. Butler, “Ex Voto,” pp. 46-56.

Footnote 74:

“Société Départementale d’Archéologie, etc., de la Drôme, Bulletin,”
vol. XV, p. 228; “Archives de la Société d’Histoire du Canton de
Fribourg,” vol. V, p. 274 (1891). We learn that this set of Stations
began with “la maison dudit Ponce Pilate, en laquelle la croix feust
mise sur son pouvre doz.” The sites of these Stations at Fribourg can
still be traced.

Footnote 75:

“Le 1 Octobre, 1516, a esté exposé, par honneste homme Romanet Richard
(he is described elsewhere as Boffin, dit Richard) marchand de ceste
ville qu’il a faict faire sept piliers de pierre qui sont
demonstratifs des saincts Lieux de Jérusalem, les quels il voudroit
mettre et asseoir en certaines places et lieux de ceste ville, comme
il a été compassé par le prestre de monsieur de Sainct-Pol et autres
religieux de Jérusalem: ce qu’il n’oseroit faire sans le bon vouloir
et consentement de mes dicts seigneurs les consuls et de la ville. A
la quelle chose sont accordés les dicts messieurs les consuls et
l’assemblée et que iceluy Romanet puisse prendre les lieux a luy
nécessaires sans contradiction quelconque” (Extract from the Consular
Registers of Romans, “Bulletin de la Société d’Archéologie de la
Drôme,” vol. XV, p. 229).

Footnote 76:

There can be little doubt that these seven pillars really corresponded
to the Stations we have been describing. Speaking of the house of
Pilate at Romans, Chevalier says: “C’est la première station qu’érigea
Romanet Boffin, suivant le dessein qu’il avait d’abord conçu de faire
sept piliers, dont le premier était placé dans le cimétière de Saint
Bernard. Sur ce pilier on voyait un Ecce Homo.” Further he remarks of
the Station representing the third fall, now the twenty-first in the
series of Romans: “C’est la dernière station avant d’arriver au
Calvaire... Elle a remplacé le sixième pilier du voyage primitif”
(“Bulletin d’Histoire Ecclésiastique,” vol. III, pp. 226-229).

Footnote 77:

Sanderus, “Chorographia Brabantica,” vol. II, Antwerp, FF. Min., pp.
7, 8.

Footnote 78:

Leo X apparently granted a good many such indulgences. In some cases
there can have been no question of seven sculptures (See the “Regesta
Leonis PP. X,” ed. Hergenröther, nn. 14237-8, and 14627).

Footnote 79:

Schreiber, nos. 642, 644, 646, 652, 654, 659 and 685. He seems,
however, to be quite satisfied that the engravings are fifteenth
century.

Footnote 80:

“Dit is den berch van Calvarien.” “Een seer dovoet hantboecxken voor
een jegelic kersten mensce hoe men den Berch van Calvarien opclimmen
sal, ende helpen onsen heere zijn swaer cruyce draegen, want hi seer
moede is geworden van swaren ancxte des doots. Ghedruct tot Leyden by
my, Jan Mathijszoon, wonende of die Hoy-graft.” Another edition, of
which there is a copy in the Bodleian, appeared at Amsterdam some
years later.

Footnote 81:

“The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Hierusalem, contayninge three hundred and
sixtie five days,” etc. The Preface is signed R. H. The book is
abridged from Jan Pascha’s “Gheestelyck Pelgrimagie,” and must have
been printed abroad about the year 1630.