The Stations of the Cross is a series of fourteen episodes from the Passion of Christ in connection with which a special Roman Catholic devotion as well as an artistic tradition developed over the centuries. The object of the devotion is to follow the Way of the Cross (the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem) and stop, meditate, and pray at each of the Stations; to symbolically experience Christ's suffering and death.
 
    While artistic representations of individual episodes from the Passion of Christ go back to the Early Christian period, the iconography of the fourteen Stations as a distinct series developed only in the late Middle Ages.  It provides a means to relate to, and on a symbolic level, experience Christ's suffering and death. The journey starts at the place of Christ's judgment by Pilate and follows the way he bore the cross up Mount Calvary, to the place of the Crucifixion and Burial.

    Although Jerusalem attracted pilgrims from the early centuries of Christianity, the modern devotion of the Stations (or Way) of the Cross did not develop until the Middle Ages. It was the Franciscans - the official Guardians of the Holy Places - who eventually established the route and its stops, or Stations. Starting in the early sixteenth century, numerous replicas of the Holy Places, and specifically of the Stations of the Cross, were set up in churches throughout Europe, and devotions associated with the Stations developed far away from their original location. They afforded those who could not travel to Jerusalem to experience the places of Christ's Passion, especially during Holy Week.    

    The popularity of the Stations increased significantly after 1686 when Pope Innocent XI granted the Franciscans the right to erect them in all their churches. In 1731 Clement XII extended this right to all churches and by the eighteenth century the Stations of the Cross were a common sight in Roman Catholic churches everywhere.

    In the early days the specific incidents labeled as Stations, as well as their number, varied widely. Medieval manuals for pilgrims, which contained prayers for use at each of the stops along the Way of the Cross, mention as few as twelve or as many as thirty-six. By the sixteenth century the devotion had matured and the number of episodes settled, and in the 1720s it was at length codified in the writings of the Franciscan S. Leonardo of Porto Maurizio. He defined the fourteen Stations of the Cross and they follow here, illustrated by the work of Eric Gill.