The painters strive and toil to visualize
This lady of convictions deep and strong
And bards and poets try to verbalize
Her keen discernment between right and wrong.



Lo! - Pilate’s wife, spouse of the Governor,
Of the Judean Province ruled by Rome,
Who left Tiberias with him to share
For Passover their lush Judean home.

Luxurious home, perched by Antonia’s wall
The fortress, held by Roman soldiery
She wached from her abode the festival
And all occurrences that were to see.

From her high window Claudia could see
The goings-on upon the city's streets
And took good note of the activity
Of noisy crowds and frightened drawn-out bleats.

A hearing was supposed to soon take place
Wherein her husband would in judgment sit,
And from her window she could watch and trace
Proceedings and engage her keen-edged wit.

But oh a dream had come to her one night
With forebodings and owmens dark and dread
Ill spirits gathered, and she saw with fright
Their hideous dance around her husband's head

Dreams,-dreams, Calpurnia, Julius Cesar‘s wife,
Assassinated saw her spouse in dreams,
And breathing out his brave exalted life,
His blood kept gushing forth in purplish streams..

But Claudia recalled her own bad dream
And sent a messenger out speedily,*
To seek her husband, Pilate, to tell him
"Judge not this holy man, Sir, hear my plea"!

Whose eyes were sorrowful, but glints of light
Streamed from His swollen eye-lids to embrace
All humankind around the world so wide
Oh wondrous countenance, oh wondrous gaze!.

Save husbands from decisions wrong, - Save! Save!
From fatal verdict of the innocent,
Entreat them to be brave and not to cave
Before the shrieks of the Establishment!



And Pilate read her message, but the mob,
Shrieked ever louder out for death and doom,
Reminding him of Cesar, kings and job,
While Claudia Procla shuddered in her room.

Impassive stood the tribune to receive
His orders, egged on by the populace
To open prison gates and free a thief
The murderer and robber Barrabas.

Ah Claudia’s voice had not been strong enough
For soon she saw the captive on his way,
Through twisted streets with soldiers brute and rough
Called Via Dolorosa to this day.

On the next morning day Lady Claudia left,
To change her course of life for evermore,
And Pontius Pilate was of wife bereft,
And all the honors relished heretofore.

But Claudia set out with haste to find
The mother of the man from Galilee,
Who'd set aflame her heat, her soul and mind
And would be master of her destiny.





Yet scripture tells of Claudia again*
And sculptors chisel, and the artists paint,
And rhapsodists and poets grasp their pen
To honor Lady Claudia - The Saint!
Raised to the altars in the Christian East,
October Twenty-Sevens is her Feast.

*Matthew 27/19
**Timothy IV/21

Elizabeth Dandy