It’s a very ancient Christian tradition. Helena, Emperor Constantine’s mother, probably followed it, St Jerome wrote about it, medieval pilgrims toughed it out to experience it, St Francis blessed it and his ­followers protected it, as they still do today: Christ’s last journey from courtroom to cross and tomb along Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa.

Praying the Stations of the Cross
MARGARET ADAMS PARKER & KATHERINE SONDEREGGER
(William B. Eerdmans, 128 PP, £14.99)

It’s a very ancient Christian tradition. Helena, Emperor Constantine’s mother, probably followed it, St Jerome wrote about it, medieval pilgrims toughed it out to experience it, St Francis blessed it and his ­followers protected it, as they still do today: Christ’s last journey from courtroom to cross and tomb along Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa. A journey of stopping points (stations), meditation and prayer. Once Islam controlled the Holy Places, it became much more difficult to do on site, and even before, as early as the fifth century, returning travellers had placed a set of stations in the Church of San Stefano in Bologna. By the eighteenth century, the Pope had ruled that all Roman Catholic churches should display them, now codified as 14 – numbers had varied from six to 30. More recently, many Protestant churches have embraced the custom.

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