Then Pilate, annoyed by what seemed to him truculent mystification, answered with the celebrated question: “What is truth?”
And without waiting for an answer, he rose to go out. The skeptical Roman had many times been present at the endless disputes of philosophers, and because he had heard so many contradictory metaphysical contentions and so many sophistical quibblings, had become convinced that truth did not exist, or if it did exist, could never be known by men. He did not dream for a moment that this obscure Jew who stood before him as a malefactor could tell him the truth. It was Pilate’s destiny on that one day of his life to contemplate the face of truth, supreme truth made man, and he could not see it. Living truth, the truth which could have made him a new man, was before him clothed with human flesh and rough garments, with buffeted face, and hands tied. But in his arrogance he did not guess what prodigious good fortune was his, a good fortune which millions of men have envied him after his death. If any one had told him that because of this one encounter, because to him was vouchsafed the overwhelming honor of having spoken to Jesus and having sent Him to the cross, his name would be known, although in infamy and malediction, through all the centuries and by all the human race, such a prophecy would have seemed to him like the frenzied ravings of a madman. Pilate was blind with an appalling and incurable blindness, but Christ on that very day was to pardon even him because the blind, even less than others, know what they do.
CLAUDIA PROCULA
Just as Pilate was preparing to go out and give his answer to the Jews, who were muttering restlessly and impatiently before the door, a servant sent by his wife came up to him, giving him this message: “Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.”
No one in the four Gospels tells us what impression was made on the Procurator by this unexpected intercession from his wife. We know nothing of her except her name. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus her name was Claudia Procula, and if this name was really hers she may have belonged to the Gente Claudia, distinguished and powerful at Rome. We may thus suppose that she was by birth and connections of a higher social rank than her husband, and that Pilate, a mere freedman, may have owed to her and her influence in Rome his post in Judea.
If all this was true, certainly the request of Claudia Procula must have made some impression on Pilate, especially if he loved her; and that he loved her, at least as a man of his nature could love, seems proved by the fact that he had asked to take her with him into Asia. The Lex Oppia, although mitigated by a decree of the Senate in the consulship of Cethegus and Varro, forbade the pro-consuls to take their wives with them, and Pontius Pilate had a special permit from Tiberius allowing Claudia Procula to accompany him to Palestine.
The motives for this intercession, so briefly stated, are mysterious. The words of Matthew refer to a dream in which she had suffered because of Jesus: it is probable that she had heard people talking for some time of the new Prophet; perhaps she had seen Him, and found Him very different from the other Jews. The fact that He was neither a vulgar demagogue nor a hypocritical Pharisee must have been pleasing to the imagination of a fanciful Roman woman. She did not understand the language spoken in Jerusalem, but some interpreter of the law courts might have repeated to her some of Jesus’ words, words which would have convinced her that He was not, as they said, a dangerous criminal.
In those days the Romans, especially Roman women, were beginning to feel the attraction of Oriental myths and cults, which gave more satisfaction to the longing for personal immortality than the old Latin religion, a cold, legal, businesslike exchange of sacrifices to obtain utilitarian and political ends. Many patrician women, even in Rome, had been initiated into the mysteries of Mithra, Osiris and of Isis, the Great Mother, and some showed a certain leaning towards Judaism. In that very reign of Tiberius many Jews living in Rome were exiled from the Capital because, according to Josephus, some of them had deceived a matron Fulvia—converted to Judaism—and Fulvia, as we see from a reference of Suetonius, was not the only one.
It is not impossible that Claudia Procula, living in Judea, had been curious to know more in detail about the religion of the people governed by her husband, and that, curious like all women about new things, she had tried to find out what new doctrines were being preached by the Galilean prophet of whom every one in Jerusalem was talking. It is certain that she had become convinced that Jesus was a “just man” and hence innocent. The dream of that night, the terrible dream—for she had “suffered many things” in it—had confirmed her in this conviction, and it is not surprising that relying on the influence which women have with their husbands, even if their husbands love them no longer, she sent this imploring message to Pilate.
It is enough for us that she called Him “That just man”—the man whom the Jews wished to assassinate. Together with the Centurion of Capernaum and with the Canaanite woman, Claudia Procula is the first pagan who believed in Christ, and the Greek Church has good reason to revere her as a Saint.