ABSTRACT
Over the course of the mid-fourteenth through the late sixteenth centuries, the friars developed and promoted the Stations of the Cross as a participatory, devotional practice, which reached a height of popularity in the seventeenth century. This chapter examines their motives and methods, which spawned a rich spiritual and artistic legacy evident. The Latin noun statio originally meant an outpost, especially a military base for night duty. By the thirteenth century, the word stationes began to refer to designated stopping points on the Via Crucis where a noteworthy encounter or event was believed to have happened to Jesus of Nazareth on his walk to execution. In Jerusalem in 1229, the friars maintained a house on the Via Crucis near the Fifth Station, and in 1272 they occupied the Cenacle, which was revered as the location of the Last Supper and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost on Mount Zion.
