St. Veronica was the woman who was healed by touching the hem of Christ’s garment. She greatly longed for a portrait of Christ, and brought a cloth to Luke, who was a painter, to make one. But he tried three times to make a good portrait and failed. And Veronica being distressed, Christ told her He would help her if she would go home and prepare a meal, which He would take with her. She prepared the meal, and Christ went at the time appointed; and on receiving from her a cloth to wipe His face after washing it, He pressed it to His face, and it received a miraculous portrait of His features. This He gave to her, and it performed afterwards many miracles. The Emperor hearing of these miracles, sent for Veronica to show him the portrait. She went to Rome with it, and was received with great honour, and showed it to the Emperor, who, on seeing it, was immediately cured. Others say that Veronica was a compassionate woman, who, seeing the drops of agony on the brow of Christ, as He was bearing the cross to Calvary, wiped His face with a napkin, or with her veil, and then she found His likeness miraculously stamped upon the cloth. She afterwards came to Europe in the same vessel with Lazarus and Mary Magdalene, and suffered martyrdom in Provence or Aquitaine.
HILLEL RELATED TO JESUS.
Of the Great College which inspired and guided Jewish thought, the chief luminary had been Hillel, surnamed the Great. Hillel was a Babylonian Jew by birth, though in blood (on his mother’s side at least) he belonged, like Joseph of Bethlehem, to the royal line. Hence he was of kin to Mary and Jesus. Like Joseph, too, he was a craftsman in one of the noble trades. When he left the Farther East for Syria, he was already forty years of age; when he came to Jerusalem and entered himself a student in the school of Menachem the Essene and Shammai the Pharisee, he had to labour for his college fees and daily bread. He sat under Sammias and Pollion. Each of these eminent scholars had risen by his virtues and learning to the high rank of rector of the Great College. Under him the college made a new start for fame. He invented the seven rules. A thousand pupils entered his classes: eighty are said to have become famous as men of letters, doctors, and scribes. He lived to the age of a hundred and twenty, and died when Jesus was fourteen years of age (in the tenth year of our era). He may have been one of the doctors with whom Christ talked in the Temple. Simeon succeeded his father in the rectorship, and was still alive when Jesus began to preach, and died two years after the Crucifixion.
THE SANHEDRIM AT JERUSALEM.
The Sanhedrim’s strength had been reduced first by Herod the Great, afterwards by the Roman governors of Judæa. Herod, on capturing Jerusalem, had seized the whole body of the Sanhedrim, thrown them into prison, and, with two illustrious exceptions, put them all to death. Around Hillel and Shammai, the men whom Herod had spared, a new council had been formed; but the prestige of the Sanhedrim could never be restored. Pilate abridged their rights, taking from them more particularly the power of life and death; yet even after they had lost the right to torture prisoners and stone offenders, they still exercised a vast authority in Jerusalem, and in every other Jewish city. Pilate could not dispute their jurisdiction over Jews, however, in whatever land they dwelt, so long as they did not encroach on the civil powers. The Sanhedrim comprised three classes—priests, Levites, and ordinary Jews. The priestly element was strong. Caiaphas, being the official high priest, had a right to preside. In his absence the chair was filled by Simeon, rector of the Great College. Whoever filled the chair was considered as sitting in the place of Moses.
THE WORKING MAN IN CHRIST’S TIME.
No handicraft could be followed by a slave, and none but a freeman could learn a trade. Some trades were indeed less eminent than others—to wit, the art of a tanner was condemned as noisome; the arts of a barber, a weaver, a fuller, a perfumer, were all considered mean; and no man following these crafts could be allowed on any pretence to serve in the sacred office. A tanner, like Jose of Sephoris, might become a rabbi; he could never be made high priest. Not so with the craft of carpenter—a craft which had a part of its functions in the synagogue and Temple, which was often adopted as a profession by men of noble birth, and which enjoyed the same sort of repute among the Jews that is given in England to the Church, the Army, and the Bar.
THE PHARISAIC NICETIES.
The Pharisees were so rigid that, according to Buxtorf (“Syn. Judaica”), if an ox or other animal fell into a pit, it was deemed lawful to draw it out only when leaving it till Sabbath would involve risk to life. When delay was not dangerous, the rule was to give the beast food sufficient for the day; and if there were water in the bottom of the pit, to place straw and bolsters below it that it might not be drowned. The same author states that it was a breach of the law to let a cock wear a piece of ribbon round its leg on Sabbath, for it was making it bear something. It was also forbidden to walk through a stream on stilts, because, though the stilts appear to bear you, you really carry the stilts. While scrupulously observing the law which prohibited the cooking of food on Sabbath, they did not by any means make the holy day a day of fasting.
THE SIEGES OF JERUSALEM.