Via Dolorosa
The idea of ‘giving away’ a piece of Christian devotion was something that took a lot of discussion and soul searching. Here was something very specifically Christian; normally, there are small plaques around a church to commemorate each station, with prayers said at each one.
We asked ourselves some questions. What if we replace these plaques with video monitors, and at each one show a multimedia presentation representing that station? What if we invite artists of other faiths to work on the content of each? In short, what if we give it away?
The Via Dolorosa project is the answer to theses questions. Planning began in Summer 2003, with a pilot project of two stations completed in January 2004. In October 2004 we were awarded Arts Council England funding to complete the project, which was shown for the first time in March 2005 at its home church of St Mary’s in Slough.
What is the Via Dolorosa?
Early Christians would sometimes visit Jerusalem as pilgrims, to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and reflect upon his life and death. One of the journeys they would make followed the walk that Jesus took to the place where he was killed by crucifixion.
The path that Jesus had walked became known as the Via Dolorosa – the way of pain, or of sorrow. Pilgrims would stop at various places along the route to pray and to contemplate what happened there, and would mark the stages of the journey for others to follow.
By the fourteenth century, series of ‘stations’ were to be found at monasteries and churches to enable these devotions without the need to travel to Jerusalem. The traditional fourteen stations first appeared in the sixteenth century, and were standardised by the eighteenth century. The last, fifteenth station is a more recent addition that is included in some traditions.
