I didn't know that ¿Did you?

I love that pilgrim drinking fountain! Yes, press and receive water.
We know that Yeshua's home language was Aramaic and we also know that he spoke Hebrew. From his conversation with the centurion whose servant he healed and his conversation with Pilate we can assume that he also spoke Latin, except, where it is said that Yeshua came from was only a few miles from one of the Decapolis, Greek speaking cities, so it would be natural to assume that he also spoke Greek.
Also, in the eastern Roman world Romans spoke Greek as the Lingua Franca, not Latin, so he spoke to the centurion and Pilate in either Greek or Latin. Or possibly both. So I would assume that he spoke at least four languages.

Re: press for water to flow - yes a pedal on the fire-hydrant looking thing right next to the statue
Re:languages - my understanding is that Pilate and Jesus were conversing in Greek be it the "Language of Intelligence " of the time

Bert45 said:

The statue of the peregrino drinking from a gourd at the bottom of the hill you descend into San Justo de la Vega has the title "Sitio" (Tengo sed). The title puzzled me. 'Sitio' is Spanish for place, spot, room , space, site, location, and a few other English words. I knew that 'Tengo sed' means 'I am thirsty'. It seemed obvious that the peregrino was thirsty, as he was drinking from his gourd, but what did 'Site' or 'Place' have to do with it? I asked a Facebook group with Spanish members for an explanation. One soon came. 'Sitio' is one of the last seven 'words' of Jesus on the Cross, the fifth word to be precise, as it appears in the Vulgate. So it is Latin, and means 'I am thirsty'. I don't suppose that Jesus spoke Latin, but you know what the people who wrote the Vulgate meant. They are known as the Last Seven Words, even though most of them are more than one word in any language.

I have read that, when you press the button (or pedal?) to obtain water from the nearby water fountain, water flows from the gourd into the mouth of the peregrino. Can anybody confirm (or deny) that?

The statue is the work of "Sendo", the name used by Rosendo García Ramos, born 1948, died 2022.

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Thank you so much for posting this. Here is a visual with credit to the photographer. You can see the red pedal on the hydrant. Very cool! Looking forward to this.

The text is from John’s Gospel, ch 19, v. 28

English: After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.”

Spanish: Después de esto, sabiendo Jesús que ya todo estaba consumado, dijo, para que la Escritura se cumpliese: Tengo sed.

Latin: Postea sciens Jesus quia omnia consummata sunt, ut consummaretur Scriptura, dixit: Sitio.


New American Bible (Revised Edition.; Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), Jn 19:28.

Reina Valera Revisada (1960) (Miami: Sociedades Bı́blicas Unidas, 1998), Jn 19:28.

Biblia Sacra Juxta Vulgatam Clementinam. (Ed. electronica.; Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2005), Jn 19:28.

Bert45 said:

Does the red pedal activate the water flow in the statue, while another button/lever activates water flow for the human involved?

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David answered it in # 2 above: “I love that pilgrim drinking fountain! Yes, press and receive water.”

Bert45 said:

I struggled with French for four years and German for two. They both won, even though I got good grades in my GCEs. Yet hundreds of years ago, some people were fluent in half a dozen, or more, languages. It is said that Elizabeth I spoke nine languages; Isaac Newton wrote the Principia in Latin; Thomas Jefferson spoke English, French, Italian, and Latin, and could read Spanish and Greek; and Jesus spoke at least three and possibly four languages. Nowadays, it seems that very few native English-speakers can speak a second language. (Some don't even speak English proper, innit?)

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I would not feel badly about it were I you.

Literacy was fairly wide-spread amongst the nobility, but even so, being functional in several languages did not necessarily require literacy in all of them. Monarchs typically had scholars in residence who could transcribe what was spoken.

The thin slice of the world you cite here had, as a matter of course, to be continually engaged in the languages of those with whom they would interact for political purposes.

A personal illustration of modern demands (that still come not even close to the language demands on scholars and monarchs of the Renaissance forward):

At one time I was quite fluent in Quebecois French; now I lean more to the passively-bilingual side. If I work for a while in France (not that I have done recently), I become quickly accustomed to working in both the academic French of my discipline, and the every-day French of the commons. I remain quite able to read and translate from bio-medical texts from French and Spanish into English, and with a bit of effort I can do the same with Portuguese and Catalan. Why? Because my step-family is French-Canadian, because I lived for a time in La Belle Province, and completed my PhD in Quebec in the anthropology of medicine. Also: 2 years of Latin in school (too long ago for me to recall the rules, but sedimented in such a way that I can quickly grasp the mechanics of any Latinate language). I also had 7 years of "French Immersion" in school, where half my day was in French, and half in English. But I have not had to function *daily* in any language other than English since I was in Montreal 30 years ago... My step-sister still lives in Quebec, where her personal life is in French and her professional life is in English... so when we are together we speak Frenglish... with more English because there's generally greater tolerance for errors to be made in English than in French.

Because of this background, I can quickly become conversational in Spanish while I am in Spain, and I pick up new bits and pieces of grammar and other mechanics on every trip. Put me in region without a heavy Latinate mix, I would founder.

The point here is that *I* am not special, though I have a very good ear for spoken language. What is special is that I was put into early opportunities that few North Americans are: practical *and* academic language learning, used and reinforced with daily use.

I do not think there is strong evidence that polyglots really have more individual aptitude or achievement. I can think of two sort of obsessive friends who have some ability with very disparate languages and even so, they cannot *function* in more than two more closely related languages.

TL;DR: do not compare yourself to polyglots in situations that combine high demand with high opportunity. Most of us are, at best, more similar to the plebiscite of the rural Roman Empire, where demand for literacy was low, as was the opportunity to use more than one language on a quotidian basis. That's how regional variants developed...

Humans are generally quite capable of learning what they can use practically. Otherwise, we simply have to let some things go so that other demands can be met.

Bert45 said:

....Jesus spoke at least three and possibly four languages.

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Not to totally hijack the thread (technically it is a 2-themes-in-one) but I am struggling to figure out where does this come from? I spoke to my Pastor and ex Pastor and someone else I know who is well versed in things Biblical and this was met with a number of quizzical faces.

Jesus speaks Aramaic and we will give a nod to Greek but thats about it! Even if I went for a long stretch...OK...maybe, possibly, could be Latin (although WHY?!) What would that 4th language would be?
Where would he learn it - a son of carpenter, poor and pretty much un-educated people of 1st Century Judea? Persian? again WHY? Hebrew? I could be wrong but IMHo its practically the same

Anytime Jesus is quoted in any of 4 Gospels mostly it is Aramaic, with very few Hebrew words or phrases sprinkled here and there and even less to an extend Greek (and we still have to chalk a lot of things up to the language in which The Gospels were written and the translation itself)

Of course the joke between all of us became "English of course"

Well yes...I agree with your thinking but IMHO there are suppositions and prepositions. Again - personally - I am much more inclined to believe that the Centurion spoke Greek than Jesus spoke Latin (and I would not completely discount the possibility of that Centurion to speak either Hebrew or Aramaic - we know nothing about him and there were plenty of cases throughout the History that if "the Invaders" spent enough time in the land they occupied -- they learned the language)

as to the internet itself being "the source"....well....

CWBuff said:

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Sitio' is one of the last seven 'words' of Jesus on the Cross, the fifth word to be precise, as it appears in the Vulgate. So it is Latin, and means 'I am thirsty'.

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This is a nice story about a play with words between Latin and Spanish, because sitio in Latin and tengo sed in Spanish happens to be both what contemporary pilgrims say in Spanish when they are thirsty and what Jesus said on the cross in the Vulgate Bible and in the Spanish Bible (Reina version).

Such an allusion in the statue's title (sitio - tengo sed) works for Spanish but it does not work for German and English because people say ich habe Durst und ich bin durstig or I am thirsty while the phrase from Jesus' Seven Last Words is different and commonly known as Mich dürstet and I thirst (Luther and King James bibles).

Of course, art can be interpreted in many ways. But is sitio meant to be a quote from the Seven Sayings in the gospels?

Or is it just a phrase in Latin which was once the universal language of communication in medieval Europe and which still is, to some extent, the universal language of the Catholic Church? A language in which the Compostela - a contemporary certificate for Camino pilgrims - is issued although today very few of the recipients of this certificate will understand the Latin text? If so, then it does not matter in which language Jesus spoke or may have spoken.