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Pilate orders Jesus to be scourged, in the hope that the sight of his noble bearing amid unmerited cruelties may soften the hearts of the people. Nowhere does the noble figure of Mayr appear to better advantage than in this scene, where, after a brutal chastisement, scarcely lessened in the presentation on the stage, the Roman soldiers place a cattail flag in his hand and salute him as a king.
The scene lasts so long that one feels a strange sense of surprise when Christus Mayr appears alive again. Twenty minutes is the time actually taken for the representation. "It is hard," said our landlady, the good Frau Wiedermann, "to be on the cross so long, even if one is not actually nailed to it. It is hard for the thieves, too," she said, "as well as for Josef Mayr."
He has never been away from his native town except once, when he went as a workman to Vienna, and once when, in 1870, the play was interrupted by the war with France, and Mayr himself was taken into the army. Out of respect to his art, he was never sent to the front, but kept in the garrison at Munich.
As it is, we forget the artist altogether. For it is easy to see that Josef Mayr forgets himself, and wishes only to give a faithful picture of the events in the Gospel story." As the Master enters the temple, he finds that its courts are filled with a noisy throng of money-changers, peddlers, and dealers in animals for sacrifice. He is filled with wrath and indignation.
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