Death of Pilate Death of Pilate (Mors Pilati). A noncanonical, early medieval Latin text that claims to contain an account of the suicide of Pilate (a fact Eusebius also attests; see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 2.7; 1.9). The Death of Pilate is part of the Pilate Cycle—along with the Narrative by Joseph of Arimathea and the Avenging of the Savior—which is a collection of texts that continues the Pilate narrative begun in the Acts of Pilate. The Death of Pilate was never widely authoritative in the early church period, nor could it have been based on its late date.

The Death of Pilate also relates the legend of Veronica, the name it gives to the hemorrhaging woman of the Gospels (Matt 9:20; Mark 5:25; Luke 8:43). Here, as in the Avenging of the Savior, the legend includes the healing of emperor Tiberius with Veronica’s veil, which had supposedly received the image of Christ’s face when she used it to wipe his sweat.

The Death of Pilate demonstrates the Western church’s severe judgment of Pilate, in contrast with Eastern legends of his repentance and conversion, and the Coptic and Ethiopic Christian church’s resulting recognition of him as a saint and a martyr (observed, with his wife Procula, on June 25).

The Death of Pilate is a much later addition to a larger body of literature that attempts to fill in the gaps left by the canonical Gospels; its contents are useful for the study of medieval Christianity, but not to study the historical circumstances of the early church.

(For information on the process of canonization, see this article: Canon, New Testament.)

Carrie Sinclair Wolcott