The only man who helped Christ

Only Simon of Cyrene helped Jesus Christ to carry the cross, by order of the Roman guard, on the way to Golgotha. Little else is known about the last man who was in contact with Jesus and who has been widely reproduced by art, from the Sistine Chapel in Rome or the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona to Titian or Tiepolo. Three of the four evangelists (Matthew, Mark and Luke) refer to him. They disagree on where he came from. Marcos and Lucas assure that he “returned from the field”, while Mateo omits that reference.

Because? The professor of Greek Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid Antonio Piñero believes that “just in case, Mateo removes the reference that he came from the countryside”, since the moment in which Jesus is on his way to the crucifixion is very close to the hour at which the Passover festival began, at which it was forbidden to work. That is why Piñero speculates that Mateo only writes that he passed by: “Each gospel is a new edition of the previous gospel,” he adds.

So much so that the fourth evangelist, John, goes a little further and suppresses any reference to the so-called Cyrineus: “The gospel of John is an amendment to the whole,” according to Piñero. That sacred text eliminates everything superfluous and focuses on the most spiritual Jesus. And there is no place for Simon. The Gospels are written decades after Jesus died and through indirect sources or oral tradition.

There is some more detail about Simon of Cyrene in Mark’s text, since he identifies him as the “father of Alexander and Rufus”. In the opinion of the rector of the Ateneu Universitari Sant Pacià, Armand Puig, the fact of detailing precisely who Simon was within the community of Jerusalem is proof of the credibility of the Gospels: the reference to the names of the children “is a very interesting, precisely because it is unnecessary”.

Alejandro and Rufo, continues Puig, “are two people who have no importance in the facts. They are only cited to identify the character. In his opinion, the one who writes the text (Mark) what he wants is to call the “attention that this Simon is the father of two that you know”. And thus make clear the real existence of Simon and, by extension, that of Jesus.

The last detail is given by Lucas when he assures that they forced him to carry the cross “so that he would carry it behind Jesus”. In some films, such as King of Kings (1961), or in modern representations of the Passion of Christ, such as the Drama of the Cross of Alcorisa (Teruel), the Cyrenean walks behind Jesus as the evangelist quotes in his writing . In others, however, such as The Passion of the Christ (2004) or in visual representations such as Titian’s paintings, Simon helps carry the cross, but it is still on Jesus’ shoulders.

In reality, it is not clear that Jesus will carry a cross; Possibly – as Piñero and Puig defend – he only brought a piece of wood. The cross that has been reproduced the most in iconography is the one in the shape of a Tau. It consists of two wooden crossbars: the stipes and the patibulum. The stipes is the vertical one, which was probably attached to the execution area, and the patibulum is the horizontal one, which is believed to be the one that Jesus would carry.

The last relevant detail in the Gospels is that the person who carried the cross (or the patibulum) was a native of Cyrene, an ancient Greek colony in the north of present-day Libya. What was it like in the first century? “Cyrene is a huge city. Obviously we cannot talk about the size of Athens or Alexandria, because they are two megalopolises, but surely it is a city of considerable dimensions, such as Thebes or Corinth. The ruins reveal some incredible buildings. And the fact that Herodotus already explains its history in the fifth century makes it well known. The city even participates in the Olympics”, answers the professor of Ancient History at the Autonomous University of Barcelona Borja Antela.

The fact that it is an African city has given rise to different interpretations, such as that of the film The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), where the African-American actor Sidney Potier played the role of Cyrene.

Was the last man who helped Christ black? Faced with this possibility, Antela responds with another question: “Is Jesus black or dark-skinned? He is an enigma. Well, the same with Simon of Cyrene. If he’s a Greek citizen, he’s probably white; that is to say, that he is part of a large community of the white population of Cyrene. We know of other historical figures close in time, such as Berenice II, who is one of the queens of Ptolemaic Egypt who comes from Cyrene, and we have no news or evidence to think that she is black. Armand Puig adds that “it is not inescapable that he could be black.”

But the Cyrenean is not only important for helping Christ, but he becomes a key figure centuries later with the appearance of the Gnostics. Gnosticism is a philosophical and religious doctrine of the first centuries of the Church that mixed Christian beliefs with other Judaic and Eastern beliefs. It was divided into various sects that interpreted religion in their own way and questioned concepts or ideas as basic as the death of Jesus himself.

In the opinion of one of those small groups –which appears a century and a half after the Passion of Christ–, given the divine nature of Jesus, he cannot die. Who then is the one who died on Calvary? At this point they resort to the figure of the only man who helps them carry the cross, Simon of Cyrene, and they maintain that it was he who perished on Golgotha.

Armand Puig points out that this “is a gnostic version of the facts. That is, they are looking for someone who could have replaced Jesus because for them it is inconceivable that God could die. Therefore, if God cannot die, that means that it is someone else. The question is who was out there who could be used as a substitute, and then this symbol (Simon) appears and they charge him with the dead, never better said. But this is an overinterpretation. It is clear that he has no chance historically speaking.

Piñero adds that “this idea goes to an apocryphal gospel of Barnabas and then goes to the Koran. And so most Muslims think that the one who died on the cross was not Jesus, the second last major prophet, but Simon of Cyrene.”

In his opinion, the evolution of the figure of Simon is interesting: “First, some Christians get annoyed by the Cyrenean until they delete it from one of the Gospels, then the Gnostics eliminate it completely, and finally the Islamic ones use it to say that the Christian religion is full of myths”.

What is surprising is how the figure of the Cyrenean, who is the person who is closest to Jesus in his last moments of life, does not end up being sanctified. Only the Orthodox Church celebrates his holiness on December 1.

Puig points out some hypothesis: “Simon of Cyrene is not a character who has had a hagiographic process, that is, a process of exaltation in the primitive Church. Simon of Cyrene was an African Jew. Therefore, perhaps his action, which we now appreciate very much, at that time received a more distant assessment. Anyway, it’s a good question. Why don’t we talk about Saint Simon of Cyrene?

Even so, he is a character present in art and religion. “Of course,” adds Puig, “because the fact that he does not appear on the list of saints does not mean that he has not received special attention, since he did something that many of us would like to have done. What Christian would not have wanted to help carry the cross of Jesus. Naturally, everyone would have wanted it.”