[a. L. calvāria skull, used to translate Aram. gogulþō or gogolþā ‘the skull’ (Heb. gulgōleþ skull, poll), in Gr. transliteration γολγοθά, the name of the mount of the Crucifixion, near Jerusalem.]
1. The proper name of the place where Christ was crucified. (Rendered in OE. Headpan-stow.) Also used generically.
c. 1000. Ags. Gosp., Luke xxiii. 33. Hiʓ comon on þa stowe þe is ʓenemned caluarie þæt is heafod-pannan stow. Ibid., Matt. xxvii. 31. Golgotha, þæt ys, heafod-pannan stow.
1382. Wyclif, Luke xxiii. 33. And aftir that thei camen in to a place, which is clepid of Caluarie [1388 Caluerie]. Ibid., Matt. xxvii. 33. Clepid Golgatha, that is, the place of Caluarie.
1878. Geo. Eliot, Coll. Breakf. P., 293. A Calvary where Reason mocks at Love.
1878. N. Amer. Rev., 342. A new Calvary and a new Pentecost in reserve for these coheritors of the doom.
2. [F. calvaire] in R. C. Ch. a. A life-size representation of the Crucifixion, on a raised ground in the open air; b. A series of representations, in a church or chapel, of the scenes of the Passion.
1727–51. Chambers, Cycl., Calvary, a term used in catholic countries for a kind of chapel of devotion, raised on a hillock near a city…. Such is the Calvary of St. Valerian, near Paris; which is accompanied with several little chapels, in each whereof is represented in sculpture one of the mysteries of the passion.
1815. Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Demol. Monast. Port Royal, III. 206. She also took her for three weeks to the calvary of the Luxembourg.
1846. R. Hart, Eccl. Records (ed. 2), 223. Of the Golgotha, or Calvary, which represented on a large scale the circumstances of the Passion, with images of S. Mary and S. John, our Saviour on the Cross, and sometimes the two thieves, grouped in the open air, we have no English example.
1884. Mary Gay Humphreys, in Harper’s Mag., Nov., 852/1. By the side of the high-road … is one of those calvaries so associated with the landscape of Catholic countries.
3. Calvary clover, a name for Medicago echinus; Calvary cross, cross Calvary, in Her., a cross mounted on a pyramid of three grises or steps.
1882. Garden, 2 Sept., 220/2. Calvary Clover … makes a very pretty basket plant.
1678. in Phillips, App., A Cross Calveri.
1730–6. Bailey, Calvary (in Heraldry) as a cross calvary, is set on steps to represent the Cross on which our Saviour suffered.
1826. Kirby & Sp., Entomol. (1828), III. xxxiv. 483. The front is nearly the shape of a Calvary cross.
1863. D. Wilson, Preh. Ann. Scot., II. 458. Engraved with floriated or Calvary Cross.
