Christmas with Pontius Pilate

We don't know what Pilate looked like, but the expression Greg Hicks
(from the old film The Robe) is making here seems very appropriate.

A middle-aged Roman prefect stumbles confusedly through an unfamiliar town square.

This is certainly not Jerusalem, he muses, observing the strange garb of the local inhabitants. A careful-thinking man, he does not panic, but tries to retrace his steps that evening. There had been the gift of fine wine from Antipas, perhaps enjoyed a little too willingly in the wake of yet another censorious message from Rome, a lapse of his customary self-discipline. Then on the way home, a swerve into that unfamiliar-looking alley to avoid that idiot rider who couldn't manage his own horse. There was a sort of flash, and disoriented feeling (had he hit his head?), and suddenly he stepped out of what he had assumed was the same cobble-stoned alleyway, only to find he was not in Jerusalem at all.

Nor anywhere in Judea, seemingly. The people here had strange features, and were of every ethnicity, like the diverse masses that poured into Jerusalem for Passover, yet there were faces strange to even his own fairly experienced eye. Some looked more or less Roman, some like the Germanic warriors Tiberius had brought back to parade at his Triumph, some like Egyptian or other African auxiliaries, and others more exotic still.

They were dressed in strange but festive garb, suitable for the cold weather, colder than Jerusalem had been, he now realized. He drew his cloak more closely around him as a frigid blast drove flurries of snow into his face, aquiline features narrowing in disapproval. He did not shiver, a habit cultivated to avoid appearing weak in front of his soldiers, but he knew he would need to find warmer clothing like theirs soon. That left the question of where he was, however, and how he'd get home.

His attention was quickly drawn by music, such music as he had never heard before. The rhythm and instruments were strange to his ears, but he could understand the lyrics well enough: Gloria in Excelcis Deo. "Glory to God in the Highest." But only part of the song was in Latin, the rest was garbled in some kind of barbarian, mumbling tongue full of consonant clusters, though here and there he heard loanwords borrowed from Latin and perhaps Greek. The tongue of some outlying province, then, which knew of the glory of Rome but perhaps did not yet bow to its authority. He should be careful; his obviously Roman garb and bearing might not earn him any good feeling in this place. And "deo" was a bit strange, "god" rather than "gods." Perhaps these people, like the Judeans, worshiped a singular deity. He'd never taken the time to learn the details of Judean religion, that was Antipas' forte, not his. The Judeans didn't like him, and he didn't care for them at all; they were difficult to manage, fussing with religious minutia at one minute, and attempting bloody insurrections the next, then crying to Rome if he so much as slaughtered a handful of them to teach them a good lesson. The Judean position had been a welcome promotion at the time, but he'd soon grown weary of the post, and Rome had not been pleased with his severe interpretation of proper governance. Perhaps they were all going soft back in The City Aeternal, losing the old patrician sternness just like they'd lost the war in Germania, though such rebellious thoughts were dangerous even in the secret palace of his own mind.

What he could not understand was where the music was coming from. To produce such a song would require a choir of reasonably well-trained singers, along with a small band of musicians. But his ears could clearly distinguish the direction of the music, and it seemed to be coming from the air. Perhaps it was a party on an upper floor? Some of the buildings here, he now realized, were taller than any he'd seen before. Gods knew what far-flung royal capital had he been transported to, no doubt in a deep wine-dream he'd regret in the morning, even if his slaves had gotten him safely home to bed.

He walked further down the street, avoiding the pedestrians who mostly ignored him, though several gawked as if they'd never seen a Roman before. He rounded the corner, seeking shelter from the wind, and drew in his breath at the sight that greeted him. A great conifer tree, like those of the forests of northern Germania, completely covered in dazzling lights. How they were contrived he did not know, but one of these would be the talk of Rome if it could be arranged. He drew closer, seeking to understand how it was lit and appointed.

At the base of the tree, he now saw, were some badly-done statues, enacting a scene of some kind, probably religious in nature. There was a baby in a tiny bed of straw, surrounded by improbably diverse livestock, with sheep jostling with cows and what was either a horse or a donkey for space. There was a man and a woman on each side of the baby, probably its parents, and then some other strange characters, with shepherd's crooks but dressed unlike any shepherds he'd ever been forced to take notice of. On the other side were three unusual figures, dressed in exaggerated finery and accompanied by an undersized camel, the kind with two humps from the northeastern provinces that were massive and intimidating in real life, around which the horses of his all-too-few cavalry units were irritatingly skittish.

The whole scene had an air of spiritual significance, both in its placement under the shining tree and with the careful placement of certain characters, as if it were the re-enactment of an important religious ceremony or myth. These mystery religions and their public rituals had become common in Rome and throughout the Empire, though the significance of this one escaped him and didn't particularly concern him. As he was turning his attention back to the tree, to his great surprise a woman tapped him on the shoulder. He glared in startled outrage at her for daring such a familiar gesture, and he a prefect of Rome, before remembering that this was a dream and he'd best play along in hopes of waking up as soon as possible. His wife often had vivid dreams, and claimed they sometimes came true later. Perhaps this was something significant as well. He forced himself to relax his features and looked sternly but inquiringly at her. The woman, who did not at all resemble his wife, with pale skin and hair redder than he had ever seen before, looked momentarily taken aback at his reflexive scowl, but now drew herself up and began prattling at him in her barbarian language with the occasional familiar-sounding word, seemingly both pleased and impatient. He understood nothing from her speech, but she began poking and prodding him toward the scene he had just been contemplating, and to his irritation he understood that she wanted him to stand off to one side and not move.

He did so, feeling very imposed upon by this strange dream, and in response she drew out a small, flat, black object and held it up in front of her, bending forward slightly and appearing to look through it at the scene, though it was solid as far as he could tell. He wondered if she was the designer of the display, and the black object was used for worship in her obscure cultus. It was aimed at him too, he thought, which meant he was being honored as well. Though he didn't hold with barbarian superstition, he decided to play the part, and drew himself up proudly. She made more pleased sounds at this and kept tapping the object in her hand, before straightening up and, to his utter astonishment, raising her thumb in the pollice verso gesture which condemned a defeated gladiator to death. With her beaming countenance completely at odds with the lethal sign, it occurred to him that this might mean something different so far from proper civilization as he clearly was, though it was hard to contemplate. This must be a distant province indeed.

She withdrew after being hailed by some other women, and Pilate took the opportunity to study the scene more carefully before withdrawing. He had assumed the figures were carved from stone and then painted in this rather lurid fashion, but now he saw they were fashioned from some light but tough material, so light that having barely brushed against it he knocked one of the rich kingly figures into its impossibly tiny camel, both falling over. No matter, a slave would take care of that. On the back, he now noticed, were affixed labels, in mostly-legible Latin script. He peered at each of them, and found some names were more or less familiar. "Ioseph" was seemingly their local corruption of the Latin name "Iosephus," for example, though the I was drawn with a foot, like "J". Idly curious, an unnatural mood for him, he came to the child, and lifted it to see what the label on its back might say. Having done so, he dropped the small figure in surprise and passed his hand over his eyes in disbelief. "Jesus Christ." Surely it couldn't be...?

His mind immediately flashed back to that horrible day. Iesus Nazarenus, the one they called Christus. The crowds had been all stirred up at his arrival for their annual celebration, one of several yearly that required the slaughtering of vast numbers of animals, then a few days later turned on him savagely and demanded his crucifixion. But this man was not just a fallen local celebrity. He was... different. The thought was uncomfortable, even years later.

His wife had behaved unusually that day they executed the man. She'd had another one of those dreams, but claimed it was about this Iesus, this Nazarene also called the Galilean, and that Pilate should have nothing to do with him. He'd interrogated the man himself, and to his surprise found that instead of a desperate criminal begging for the clemency of Rome, it was he himself who felt defensive. The one they now called Christus seemed to be walking a fine line between not giving him any legitimate, legal grounds for condemnation, yet also not asking for pardon, throwing the burden of the decision entirely on Pilate. He almost seemed to be inviting Pilate to make a self-sacrificing choice, an altruistic decision altogether at odds with Pilate's own studied pragmatism and enlightened self-interest. That was impossible, yet something deep inside him stirred when the man spoke.

The man hadn't said much, but his few words were efficiently profound, in a way any educated Roman could appreciate. Clearly the man understood philosophy. Pilate had nothing but contempt for those faux-hellenized sophists who called themselves professional philosophers, but this man wasn't like that. He knew some things about the nature of authority, too. Somehow, inexplicably, Pilate had felt proud that the man had said more to him than to Herod. Antipater hadn't gotten a word out of him, though he'd handled the whole impossible situation with more humor than Pilate had anticipated. Things had been better between them after that, for all Antipas' short-comings. But old Antipas was never very deep, nor interested in virtue; this Christus seemed to realize Pilate was a man who lived by a code, and was trying to subvert that code with a higher one. How strange that the natural response of "who do you think you are" seemed impossible to apply to him, even beaten bloody and dressed in tragic finery. The title of King seemed natural to him, yet he'd not boasted of it or even claimed it for himself, simply accepted it but explained it was a different sort of kingdom.

His death felt like a tragic waste. Pilate considered himself a cynic, not a man given to sentimentality, but Iesus Nazarenus had radiated dignity and peace, and a man like that who understood philosophy finding an early death at the hands of a reactionary mob had happened too many times in history already. Pilate hadn't wanted to be the enabler, and was angered by the chief priests' open leveraging of his uneasy standing with Rome. They knew how to stir up the crowds, knew how to get what they wanted, and in the end they'd gotten it from him, and an innocent man had died due to some religious dispute.

In the end he had washed his hands of the matter, of course. In fact he'd found it difficult to stop compulsively washing his hands, sometimes, for a long time after that. His wife said he still did it in his sleep. But when he thought of how the man looked, how he'd not attempted to convince Pilate to spare him, he felt vexed. The man had put him in an unfair position. It's like he wanted to die. Pilate had put a rather significant number of people to death in his day--too many, Rome kept complaining--but somehow this one was like a little burning, itching spark in his sense of moral rectitude that refused to be quenched by either persuasive logic or stone-faced stoicism. Glancing down at the infant-figure's painted face, he scowled deeply. So the Christus had his own cultus here too?

Recently he'd heard rumors of this sort of thing, private meetings and public gatherings of the ones mocked as "christianoi," little christers. It was deeply unsettling somehow. The Galilean had risen from the grave--metaphorically, he hastened to add to himself--though the christianoi all seemed to believe he'd done so in reality as well. Thinking back to the man's eyes, his own soldiers' report of the events that afternoon when everything grew dark... Pilate shuddered at the cold wind. Something was rising in the world, a strange premonition told him, that would shake even the measureless might of Rome to its foundation.

He'd had some of the soldiers who were there put to death, just to be sure. The Judean leaders had given them money, told them to spread rumors that the corpus christi had been stolen. That order had been harder to give than usual, more people dying in connection with the same strange incident, but the fact remained that the soldiers had totally failed in their duty to protect the grave site, and could not even offer a decent reason why. If they'd been able to produce one, perhaps this whole matter would have resolved itself peacefully. As it was, their ridiculous stories about an earthquake and shining figures--the true account, they insisted, not the one they'd been paid to spread--just made it worse. But the real unforgivable crime had been accepting the money. First the religious leaders openly manipulated him in public, and got away with it. Now they'd tried to manipulate the situation in private, bribed his own men, and even convinced them they could shield them from Pilate's anger. He wasn't about to let that kind of corruption spread through the garrison; those soldiers who had believed the lying priests had paid dearly for their naivety, and the lesson had been well taken by the others.

Pilate smiled grimly at the recollection of the priests' displeasure when he'd ordered the sign for the crucifix. "King of the Judeans" seemed an appropriate title, given that was nearly the only accusation they could muster against him. "Quod scripsi, scripsi" he had replied, "What I have written, I have written." One of his better comebacks, and it silenced them for the time being, though the troubles had only begun at that point and he'd lost good soldiers by the end of it. Though it was hard to say if it had really ended, now.

Discipline had improved since then, at least, though rumor had it that even a few of his soldiers now prayed to the Christus. "A fine god for a soldier," he murmured out loud, sarcastically. "A betrayed King who couldn't save himself." The infant figure stared up at him calmly, a mute refutation. A sphinx-like smile played about its lips, one that hadn't been there when the man himself had stood before Pilate, wounded and sorrowful. Yet also calm, and without the least trace of desperation. Almost as if he'd known... almost as if those reports that he'd been spotted a few days later, outside the city...

Pilate turned on a heel and strode away from the scene. The mighty tree, bejeweled and shining like the desert sky on a clear night, now seemed like a monument to Pilate's lapse in judgment. Its joyful aspect mocked him, as if the man who'd died in defeat had won, and Pilate had lost. He gritted his teeth. It wasn't fair. He'd saved himself, preserved public order. Duty to self came before any kind of altruistic nonsense, and duty to Rome above all. Sometimes innocent men died, that was how things were. People died and Rome endured, crawling forward like a mighty siege engine on the backs of slaves and corpses of men down the Viae Romanae from almighty Rome itself to distant barbaric lands like this one he now found himself trapped in. 

But better one innocent man die than the whole nation perish, was it not so? Roman Law even benevolently took pains to try to lessen the killing of innocent people, and Pilate felt on that day he'd really done more than was strictly necessary to defend the Nazarene, who didn't seem inclined to defend himself despite having not broken any real laws. He'd practically put his already unstable career in jeopardy over the situation, surely no more could be expected than that. One man's life didn't count for much, not in Jerusalem. If he'd expected more from Pilate, he'd only gotten his own death as a reward. Yet none of this soothed that little burning spark in his conscience, if anything it grew a little hotter now, turning his mood sour.

The tree was at one end of the town square, and as he stalked away from it he nearly jumped as a large bell rang out, a brief, repetitive cadence. It was some kind of signal, clearly enough, but did not seem like an alarm. Looking in the direction of the sound, he was surprised again to see a building marked with a large crucifix. Surely these barbarians did not do their crucifixions indoors? Even as a man accustomed to scenes of violence, he would not have relished being trapped inside a room with the gruesome spectacle and the accompanying sounds and smells. Drawn toward the white-painted structure despite himself, he ventured closer, and decided that could not be the case, as the building's white façade was entirely clean (blood always stood out on white, and slaves never managed to find and wash or paint over every single crimson splatter). It also had too small an entrance to drag a crucifix in, or let the sanguinary-minded crowds in to watch.

Peering inside, he found a mostly-empty room, lined with benches. Almost like a synagogis, where the more devout Judeans insisting on congregating every sabbath, except decorated strangely, and predominantly made of wood instead of more durable stone. He noted with unstoic pleasure that warm air was issuing from within, and wondered if in this cold clime they had architects skilled enough to run hot water pipes through the floor. Taking a few steps inside, he froze again. At the front, prominently displayed on the wall, was a crucifix. But this one had a man on it, and he had a sinking feeling that he knew who it was supposed to be. His eyes weren't what they used to be, but from this near distance he could see a sort of rendition of the thorn-crown one of the garrison's more cruelly inventive soldiers had placed on the Nazarene's head, in unsubtle mockery of his claimed kingship. It was not a good likeness of the man himself, granted, but only a good sculptor could bring that out, and the intent was unmistakable: it was a depiction of the Christus being crucified. Pilate could even see the little sign over his head, the one he himself had ordered.
I.N.R.I.
A shudder ran through him.

He stormed back outside into the cold, his mind raging in confusion. It was just one man. One man among so many that had been nailed to the wooden posts and died in agony. Gods, what was he supposed to have done? The crowd was about to riot. Couldn't the man see that? Why hadn't Herod figured out something? Why was it left up to him? Why did they insist on choosing the other Iesus, the one they called Barabbas, instead? Why did everyone else seem to think he had any other option? Why did none of the other decisions he'd made keep haunting him like this one?

Pontius Pilate rubbed his face with his hands, groaning for a moment, then mastered himself. He knew exactly why they'd chosen Barabbas. The Galilean had said it himself. His kingdom was not of this world. Rome, Judea, the political machinations of the Empire were not his concern. But they were Barabbas' concern. He'd led a riot over it, drawn blood. He'd done what the Judeans all wished they could do, all those who hated Rome and would have revolted in a heartbeat if the right leader presented himself. That's--he paused, a thought suddenly striking him. That's why they'd welcomed the Christus to Jerusalem like a hero and then turned on him so savagely. They thought he was coming to finish what Barabbas had started. Failing that, they had no use for him.

Pilate shrugged cynically. So be it. A man in leadership had to read the crowds and understand the needs of the time, or he deserved whatever failure he reaped. If the Nazarene had chosen to be their leader on that day, it would have taken more than the garrison in Jerusalem to stop them. The man himself had even said something like that. He was willingly dying rather than lead his own people to revolt and ultimate destruction by Rome. Pilate grasped at the straw of justification. Really, he had made the right choice then. If he'd refused to allow the crucifixion to take place, maybe the crowds would have convinced the Nazarene. Maybe he'd have had a full-scale insurrection on his hands. Maybe.

Maybe not, he admitted, thinking of the man's words and face. Maybe the man hadn't failed. Maybe in dying he'd accomplished something greater than he'd ever been able to achieve if he'd clung to life. After all, even in this distant place, they somehow knew of what had happened, and considered him a god of some kind. But Pilate hoped his own name would be forgotten in connection with the whole affair. He wanted nothing more to do with it. He trudged back through the light dusting of snow, back towards the alley he'd emerged from. He wanted to wake up from this dream, and face whatever troubles the ever-troubled city of Jerusalem would greet him with in the morning.

As he approached the alley, he noticed a man was standing suspiciously off to one side of the entrance. He was handing out to passersby some kind of membranei, a little folded pamphlet. As Pilate approached, the man blinked at his clothing and appearance, but offered him one with a smile. He said something in their garbled tongue, just two or three words, like a greeting, but Pilate could swear "Christus" was in the second half of it. Maybe he was just losing his nerve now.

Looking down at the tiny codex, however, his hand spasmed as he saw on the cover was a man, dressed in a white robe. His hands were outstretched, and clearly bore the stigmata of crucifixion nails. Across the top was written that name he now dared not speak, that of the Christus. The face stared into his. The eyes were different, yet the same. "You again! You everywhere!" he hissed, dropping the thing as if it had burned him. He fled down the alley, and collided with a light metal container which made a loud crashing noise as he fell over it.

They tumbled to the ground together, and as he flailed around in unseemly panic, he realized he was wrestling with bed sheets. A copper platter lay on the floor where he'd knocked it off the small bedside table in his somnolent struggle. The window was unfastened, and the cold midnight air was blowing in. He went to it and looked out at the old city, a few lonely torches guttering in the night breeze, trying to calm his breathing. Just a dream. His eyes wandered across the dark rooftops, drawn in the direction of that place they called The Skull.

"Quod scripsi, scripsi," he muttered, going back to bed.