Templar Edification

In our fourth woodcut from La Grande Bible de Tours, Gustave Doré illustrates John 19:18-19— There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the  middle. Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of  Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Pilate doesn’t care if you’re a god. But the common folk must have no king but Caesar. Jesus is arrested for blasphemy, yet the Romans have no dog within this fight. They care little for matters of Jewish Law. Religion, for them, is a complicated thing, yet so long as people pay their taxes and allow the trade to flow, Rome will let them worship as they like. This proves doubly true for Judea, as the Romans respect little so much as antiquity, and the Torah certainly boasts an impressive pedigree. Where others must offer their pinch of incense to Caesar, Judeans shall be allowed to sacrifice for the Emperor rather than to the Emperor. It’s a handy little loophole. But if there’s one thing ...

The third in our series of biblical woodcuts by Gustave Doré illustrates Matthew 27: 33-34— And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they  offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. Jerusalem in Jesus’ day had spilled beyond its borders, with settlements cropping up outside the fortified city wall. Golgotha—Calvary, in Latin, both names referring to “skull”—began as a limestone quarry on the west edge of the city. The Romans used a high outcropping or hill here as a site of public execution, with crucified victims on full display for those entering, leaving, or simply passing along the road. We don’t know how Golgotha earned its name. Legends abound. Some say that criminals were beheaded there, or that the hill looked rather like a skull, or even that it had been the burial site of Adam once upon a time. The Romans certainly didn’t care. They bored post-holes in the top to hold their crosses, crucif...