The origin of the current Brotherhood of Jesus -Nazareno- is linked to two of the first known Brotherhoods in our city, that of the Blood of Christ and that of the Sweet and Holy Name of Jesus, whose antiquity can be traced back to the first decades of the fifteenth century. With that mark of antiquity they appear mentioned in the Description and Relation of the Town of Cieza that, by mandate of Felipe II, wrote the Bachelor Alonso Marín y Mena in the year 1579: "On the twenty-fifth day of the month of March, year of the birth of our redeemer Jesus Christ, one thousand five hundred and seventy-nine, the bachelor Alonso Marín y Mena, aged forty, and Joan García, the elder, aged eighty, and Martín Ruiz de Soler, the elder, aged seventy-one, residents and natives of said town... At the forty chapters they said: there are three Brotherhoods, one of the said Apostle Saint Bartholomew, another of the Blood of Christ, and another of the Sweet and Most Holy Name of Jesus".

On the one hand, and as revealed by the local journalist at the end of the s. XIX and beginning of the XX Ramón María Capdevila, the Brotherhood of the Blood of Christ made in 1655 "an Image with the Cross on its back for the Holy Week processions" and received a license from the Bishop to build an altar in the parish church.

But in 1692, the Brotherhood of Jesus -Nazareno- (and with it that of Our Lady of Loneliness) requested its establishment establishing its own constitutions to "be able to solemnize the holy week of each of the processions that are held with these holy Ynsinias on Thursdays and Friday" (it will even take over the Holy Sepulcher when the Brotherhood of the Blood disappears). Both Brotherhoods, Nazareno and Loneliness, will remain, on the other hand, closely linked to each other since then in their cults; in fact, during the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, they jointly organized the Ninth of Pains, then the Ninth of Jesus and Pains, equally paying for the altar for the same, which began at the end of the 19th century and ended in 1908 after its gilding by Pedro Valch.

With that and other invocations the Brotherhood will appear named from that moment: 'Brotherhood of Our Father Jesus', 'Brotherhood of Our Lord Father Jesus' or 'Brotherhood of Our Father Jesus Nazareno', and popularly 'Brotherhood of Jesus'; thus, for example, in 1722 the testament granted by Mr. Luis Daroca Marín: "and likewise the Brotherhood of Our Father Jesus assists me and accompanies my body in accordance with its obligation and with the consideration of having been his Big Brother".

On the other hand, when the Brotherhood of Jesus was constituted, it is very probable that it took over the purposes of the Brotherhood of the Sweet and Most Holy Name of Jesus; in fact, still at the beginning of the 20th century, the Brotherhood of Jesus Nazareno organized and financed the Function of the Sweet and Holy Name of Jesus, of which there is evidence of its celebration as early as 1671 and which appears in the relation of a Chapter Act of 1693: "This town has as custom and devotion to attend different festivals and general processions by decrees and boots so that at all times it is recorded that those that are agreed upon were the Sweet Name of Jesus,...".

The Brotherhood of Jesus -Nazareno- would therefore happen to be, among all those currently existing and that have maintained their continuity over time, the oldest passion-making Brotherhood in Cieza; This seems to be corroborated, on the other hand, by a letter dated November 12, 1858 and preserved in the Parish of Our Lady of the Assumption of Cieza in which the Bishop of Cartagena, Mr. Mariano Barrios Fernández, dictates regulations for compliance in the Processional Parades: "...each Brotherhood is placed with its respective effigy or Step in the place and place that corresponds to it, not subject to its greater or lesser antiquity, but to whichever is natural to it, keeping the historical order that each Step represents in the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ... However, and as an evident sign of what is acceptable to the right of antiquity, we agree that the Elder Brother who for a time was of the Brotherhood of Our Father Jesus, occupies in the indicated Processions the place that corresponds to the antiquity of the Brotherhood whom it represents with what keeps all rights safe" (curiously a photograph of Saint Mary Magdalene opening the Procession on the morning of Good Friday at the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th century shows us in the foreground, leading the Procession, Mr. Antonio Aguado Moxó, Big Brother of the Brotherhood of Jesus).

The Brotherhood had a marked penitential character: it was customary for the Brothers to attend the Procession with their tunic, cross and rope, with bare feet, anonymously, without speaking to each other, and carrying wax torches (some reminiscence of that penitential character is still in force today: its Third of Nazarenes parade with wooden crosses in the Procession of Penitent Good Friday in the morning and until a few years ago it was not uncommon for many of them to do so barefoot). The habit of asking for alms during the Procession and at the doors of the churches during the visit to the Monuments provided the Brotherhood with substantial income to which must be added the many others derived from testamentary orders. Part of them were destined to cover the expenses derived from the burials of the Brotherhoods; thus Mr. Mariano Ruiz-Funes in his 1916 work Customary law and popular economy of the province of Murcia recounted that: "In Cieza there is a custom of announcing the burials of the brothers of the Brotherhood of Our Father Jesus. A boy walks down the street, silent, ringing a bell. The people who know the act, ask him the name of the deceased, and he says it".

Between the end of the 18th century and the mid of the 19th century, the rise of the Brotherhood was such that, in addition to its owner, it acquired or grouped around it The Lord of the Column (later completed with the Images of two "Sayones"), The Prayer in the Garden, Risen Jesus and, as previously stated, The Holy Sepulcher (whose pallium was renewed by the Brotherhood in 1851), of which it pays for its successive repairs and restorations as reflected in the Accounts Book of the Brotherhood (1850-1963), and its the parade is headed by a script that was renewed several times (1902 and 1923) before its disappearance and a large horn on wheels, also integrating a group of bugles into the procession. It is also probable that on the same dates the Brotherhood of the Convocation of Jesus, the popular 'Armaos' (today Roman Third of the Holy Sepulcher), whose activity during Easter it focuses essentially on the representation of the Arrest, an Act that it itself organizes and pays for; and it is even possible that the Jesus Nazareno - Arrested - ceased to participate in it after the implementation of the Arrest, which was celebrated a day before, to do so again definitively after the Civil War; this seems to emerge from some chronicles of Holy Week at the end of the 19th century in which this Paso does not appear in the list of those who paraded in the General Procession.

In the second half of the 19th century, when Mr. Antonio Aguado Marín was the older brother, who would later be succeeded by his son, Mr. Antonio Aguado Moxó (who appears as such in the Constitution Act of the Procession Board in 1915), the Brotherhood of Jesús Nazareno has a large number of Brotherhood members who pay tarja, which allows it to hire music bands from other towns for the Processions (this is the case of the Band of Abarán in 1855) and even has its own office. But despite its importance and prominence, the Civil War caused its disarticulation and at the end of it the Brotherhoods of The Prayer in the Garden and of Risen Jesus would emerge, as its affiliates in the first moments, but completely independent in a short time.

After its reorganization in the early years of the 1940, the Brotherhood substituted the traditional tailed tunics with trimmings and esparto cinches for the current ones.

Two of the sculptures of the Image of Jesus Nazareno have succeeded in time. The graphic testimonies of the first, destroyed in the burning of Saints in 1936, speak of an Image of undeniable affiliation to the Andalusian school, whose authorship several scholars have tried to attribute to the School of the Sevillian image maker Juan Martínez Montañés (1568-1648), specifically Juan Sánchez Cordobés, according to the studies of Professor Sánchez Moreno. The Image was a sculptural piece of great merit and its singularity stood out above the rest, drawing the attention of both the residents of the town and those who came close to it, in the case of Mr. Manuel González Simancas, author of the Monumental Catalog of Spain, who visited Cieza in 1893, or who under the initials E.B. he signed a newspaper article in which he stated: "The effigy of Jesus is the best sculpture of these Processions". The veneration that the people professed him must also have been very important, since in the 19th century the printing and sale of his prints was very frequent, and his participation in prayers.

The second, the current one, was commissioned by Mr. Mariano Martínez Montiel from the Valencian Ignacio Pinazo, who finished it for Holy Week in 1942. It is an Image dressed in a rich purple velvet tunic that belonged to the previous Image and which, disappeared during the civil war, it was recovered by chance years later in El Palmar (Murcia). In the Procession of the Penitent, Good Friday morning, the Image parades crowned with thorns (with a crown carved in silver from the last century) and with a cross on her shoulder (restored in 2005 by Bonifacio Pérez Ballesteros), which adapts to her articulated arms and hands made in 1946 by the ciezano image maker Manuel Juan Carrillo Marco, and which replaces the cross with which he paraded since the last century, unique for having one arm shorter than the other. The Image was always preserved in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption, its chapel being located in the place it occupies today between the years 1680 and 1710, during the remodeling and expansion works of that one.

The throne on which the Image of Jesus Nazareno processions, a substitute for another made in 1861 by Antonio Torres and gilded three years later, is a work of art in carved and gilded wood. Beneath it, in its inner part, is the following inscription: "This Throne for the Image of Our Father Jesus of this parish was paid for by the ladies Ms. Piedad and Ms. Amalia Angostos Peña, waitresses of said Image. It was built in Murcia by the master carver Mr. Pedro García Migal year of 1899 and was gilded in Cieza by the neighbor of the same Mr. Ignacio Amoraga Latorre native of Murcia in the year 1900". The throne was restored and gilded again in 1999 by the artist from Cieza, Bonifacio Pérez Ballesteros, who also carved a set of rod tips for it in 2004.

The Brotherhood also owns of Saint Mary Salome made in 1953 by the sculptor Octavio Vicent and whom he initially tried to make into the owner of a filial Brotherhood of the same name, without this initiative coming to fruition. It is a dressed Image that parades on Good Friday night in the Procession of the Holy Burial, carrying in its hands the crown of thorns and the nails of Christ, and in the Procession of the Risen Christ, Easter Sunday, without the attributes of the Passion. The throne on which it processes is the work of Manuel Juan Carrillo Marco, who was commissioned in 1954, being completely finished and parading for the first time two years later; like that, it was restored and gilded again in 2001 in the workshops of Bonifacio Pérez Ballesteros, who carved in wood and gilded a set of rod tips for it in 2007, and also restored the Image of Saint Mary Salome a year later.

In 1996 the Brotherhood, under the mandate of Mr. Francisco López Yuste, acquired a purple velvet banner embroidered in gold and precious stones in Murcia and two lanterns for the Third of Nazarenes carved in silver in Seville.

Under the presidency of its current president, Mr. Antonio Camacho Vázquez, the Brotherhood added a medallion to its clothing in 2006. And three years later, he incorporated into the General Procession, and replacing its Head, The Coronation of Thorns, a sculptural group formed by the Image of the Lord -carved in wood - and that of a Roman soldier -dressed - made by the distinguished Córdoba sculptor Francisco Romero Zafra who parades on a throne carved in wood with silver details, the creation of which began that same year in the Córdoba workshops of the Higuera González Brothers. Likewise, sisters of the Brotherhood made a velvet dress and a brocade cloak in 2010 for the Image of Santa María Salomé. And in 2022, the new costumes of the Brotherhood were made, the work of José Rubio in the Murcia Workshops.

Photographs by Manuel Carpio.

© Archive of the Board of Passionate Brotherhoods of Cieza