And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull,
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Chromatius of Aquileia
AD 407
When they had come to Golgotha, the Gospel says, “They gave him vinegar mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he refused to drink.” This event was foretold by David when he wrote, “They gave me gall for food, and they gave me vinegar to slake my thirst.” Take note of the mystery revealed here. Long ago, Adam tasted the sweetness of the apple and obtained the bitterness of death for the whole human race. In contrast to this, the Lord tasted the bitterness of gall and obtained our restoration from death’s sting to the sweetness of life. He took on himself the bitterness of gall in order to extinguish in us the bitterness of death. He received acrid vinegar into himself but poured out for us the precious wine of his blood. He suffered evil and returned good. He accepted death and gave life. The location of his death is also not without significance, for it is reported that the body of Adam is buried in that very ground. Christ was crucified there where Adam was buried, that life might a...
And they came unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull. "Calvary" is the bare skull of a man; Golgotha means the same; so called from its roundness; from the root "gal" or "gabal," to roll about. Some suppose that S. Matthew wrote in Greek and himself explained the Hebrew; others that the explanation was given by the Greek translator of the original Hebrew.
But why was the place so called? Some say because Adam was there buried, and redeemed, too, by Christ on the same spot by the Blood of the Cross, and restored to the life of grace. See note on Eph. v14 , and the Fathers there quoted. For there was a tradition that Noah took the bones of Adam into the ark, and after the deluge gave the skull, and Juda with it, to Shem, his favourite son. Such respect did the ancients pay to their dead from believing in the immortality of the soul. "Christ," says S. Ambrose (in Luke xxiii.), "was crucified in Golgotha because it was fitting that the first-fruits of our life sh...
Golgotha, i.e. the place of Calvary, of heads and skulls: perhaps, says St. Jerome, from the skulls of persons executed, and buried there. Several ancient writers would have it so called, from Adam's skull, whom they guess to have been buried there. Some also say that a part of this mountain was called Moria, the place where Abraham was ready to have sacrificed his son Isaac. (Witham)
Isaac, carrying the wood on his shoulders for the sacrifice, was a figure of Jesus Christ carrying his cross. The mountain was situated to the north-west of Jerusalem.
