Word: crucifixion
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Capodilista had already noted the great care Giotto devoted to even the finest details, such as the fair hair covering Christ's torso in the Crucifixion, the camels' whiskers in the Adoration of the Magi, the weaving of the tablecloth in the Marriage at Cana. "These details could not be seen from the ground without binoculars," she says, "but somehow you can guess they are there. Such touches are among the joys of working on Giotto, but they are also a reason to fear making a mistake." Giotto's storyboard of man's redemption is a profound religious drama...
...disappointment for those expecting to see the Holy Shroud, believed by some to be the sheet that was wrapped around the body of Christ after the crucifixion: only a reproduction is regularly available for viewing at the Capella della Santissima Sindone. More satisfying is the Egyptian Museum, which has the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside Cairo...
Rome reserved crucifixion primarily for capital crimes and discontinued the practice in the 4th century. Historians learned considerably more about its specifics in 1968, when the remains of a man crucified in his mid 30s were discovered north of Jerusalem with a 7-in. iron nail still embedded in the heel. The state of the bones indicated that the condemned man's arms were outstretched and that his feet had been placed sideways, with the nail driven first through a small block of wood and then through both heels into the cross. Later the wood block would prevent the feet...
...away--date back more than 1,800 years. Tellingly, early rulers who might have been tempted to "adjust" the site's location did not do so. Says Dan Bahat, for many years Jerusalem's district archaeologist: "There's nothing to prove that this is not the site of the Crucifixion." If this sounds weak to a believer, coming from an archaeologist, it carries significant weight...
...authors of the Gospels, by then feuding with the Jews, calcified those critiques as slanders. Constantine's use of Christianity to unify his far-flung empire effectively declared open season on all nonbelievers. Church fathers (by now influential Romans themselves) assigned the villain's role in the Crucifixion to the Jews rather than to Rome. As Europe was unified under the Cross, the Jews, preserved yet ghettoized per Augustine's instructions, became the Continent's captive "other," slaughtered as a warm-up for Muslims in the First Crusade and as scapegoats during the Black Death. Whereas church historians--and philosopher...