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Massacre of the Innocents
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The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of mass infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great, that appears in the Gospel of Matthew . The author, traditionally believed to be Matthew the Evangelist, reports that King Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. Like much of Matthew's gospel, the incident is introduced as the fulfillment of passages in the Old Testament read as prophecies:
Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children.
The incident is not mentioned by the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus, nor in the other gospels, nor in the early Biblical apocrypha, its first appearance in any source other than Matthew being the 2nd century Protoevangelium of James 22.
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The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of mass infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great, that appears in the Gospel of Matthew . The author, traditionally believed to be Matthew the Evangelist, reports that King Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. Like much of Matthew's gospel, the incident is introduced as the fulfillment of passages in the Old Testament read as prophecies:
Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children.
The incident is not mentioned by the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus, nor in the other gospels, nor in the early Biblical apocrypha, its first appearance in any source other than Matthew being the 2nd century Protoevangelium of James 22. Most recent biographers of Herod therefore do not regard the massacre as an actual historical event, but rather, like the other nativity stories, as creative hagiography.
Matthew 2:16-18
The Massacre of the Innocents is at Matthew 2:16-18, although the preceding verses form the context (the "they" in the opening verse refers to the Magi):
When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up, he said, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: Out of Egypt I called my son. When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."
History
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The story is not mentioned by the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus, nor in the other gospels, nor in the early apocrypha, its first non-Matthean appearance being in the Protoevangelium of James of c.150 AD, which excludes the Flight into Egypt and switches the attention of the story to the infant John the Baptist:
"And when Herod knew that he had been mocked by the Magi, in a rage he sent murderers, saying to them: Slay the children from two years old and under. And Mary, having heard that the children were being killed, was afraid, and took the infant and swaddled Him, and put Him into an ox-stall. And Elizabeth, having heard that they were searching for John, took him and went up into the hill-country, and kept looking where to conceal him. And there was no place of concealment. And Elizabeth, groaning with a loud voice, says: O mountain of God, receive mother and child. And immediately the mountain was cleft, and received her. And a light shone about them, for an angel of the Lord was with them, watching over them."
The first non-Christian reference to the massacre is recorded by Macrobius (c. 395-436), who writes the following in his Saturnalia: "Cum audisset inter pueros quos in Syria Herodes rex Iudaeorum intra bimatum iussit interfici filium quoque eius occisum, ait: Melius est Herodis porcum esse quam filium," which is translated as:
"When he [emperor Augustus] heard that among the boys in Syria under two years old whom Herod, king of the Jews, had ordered to kill, his own son was also killed, he said: it is better to be Herod's pig, than his son." (It should be noted that Judea was, in the time of Jesus, part of the Roman province of Syria, and that Herod, as a Jew, would not have kept pigs to eat.)
Macrobius lived four centuries after Herod and the reliability of this account is questionable. Most recent biographers of Herod therefore deny that the massacre ever occurred, believing rather that this and other nativity stories are creative hagiography rather than history.
The story may have its origins in Herod's murder of his own sons, an act which made a deep impression at the time and was recorded by Josephus as well as in the 1st century Jewish apocryphal work, the Assumption of Moses, where it is cast as a prophecy: An insolent king will succeed [the Hasmonean priests]… he will slay all the young. "Here Herod really did kill all the Jewish children who sought to replace him, as Matthew 2:17 would have it, but these were rather his own children with Maccabean blood!" Josephus records several other examples of Herod’s willingness to commit such acts to protect his power, noting that he "never stopped avenging and punishing every day those who had chosen to be of the party of his enemies." Matthew's purpose is theological: he presents Jesus as the Messiah, and the Massacre of the Innocents as the fulfillment of Hosea and Jeremiah, although in order to do so he takes both out of context (Hosea is referring to the exodus, and Jeremiah to the Babylonian exile).. Raymond Brown suggests it is patterned on the Exodus story of the killing of the Hebrew firstborn by Pharaoh and the birth of Moses. Paul L. Maier has pointed out also the problem Matthew's story creates for people: "believers are used to Jesus dying for people, not people dying for Jesus ... when the 'people' are babies, it becomes easier to doubt Matthew than wrestle with theodicy".
Nevertheless, the story has assumed an important place in later Christian tradition, the Byzantine liturgy having 14,000 Holy Innocents and an early Syrian list of saints stating that there were 64,000. Coptic sources raise the number to 144,000 and place the event on 29 December. The Catholic Encyclopedia in 1910 more soberly suggested that these numbers were inflated, and that probably only between six and twenty children were killed in the town, with a dozen or so more in the surrounding areas.
In art
Medieval liturgical drama recounted Biblical events, including Herod's slaughter of the innocents. The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, performed in Coventry, England, included a haunting song about the episode, now known as the Coventry Carol. The Ordo Rachelis tradition of four plays includes the Flight into Egypt, Herod's succession by Archelaus, the return from Egypt, as well as the Massacre all centred on Rachel weeping in fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy. These events were likewise in one of the Medieval N-Town Plays.
The theme of the "Massacre of the Innocents" has provided artists of many nationalities with opportunities to compose complicated depictions of massed bodies in violent action. It was an alternative to the Flight into Egypt in cycles of the Life of the Virgin. It decreased in popularity in Gothic art, but revived in the larger works of the Renaissance, when artists took inspiration for their "Massacres" from Roman reliefs of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs to the extent that they showed the figures heroically nude. The horrific subject matter of the Massacre of the Innocents also provided a comparison of ancient brutalities with early modern ones during the period of religious wars that followed the Reformation - Breugel's versions show the soldiers carrying banners with the Habsburg double-headed eagle (often used at the time for Ancient Roman soldiers).
' Massacre of the Innocents]]
Three artists of three distinct European ethnicities show an early 17th century fascination with the topic as Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other. First, Italian painter Guido Reni's early (1611) Massacre of the Innocents, in an unusual vertical format, is at Bologna. Second, Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens painted the theme more than once. One version, now in Munich, was engraved and reproduced as a painting as far away as colonial Peru. Another, his grand Massacre of the Innocents is now at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Third and finally, from 1632 through 1634, French painter Nicolas Poussin painted The Massacre of the Innocents at the height of the Thirty Years' War.
In the famous novel The Fall by Albert Camus, this incident is argued by the main character to be the reason why Jesus chose to let himself be crucified—as he escaped the punishment intended for him while many others died, he felt responsible and died in guilt. A similar interpretation is given in José Saramago's controversial The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, but there attributed to Joseph, Jesus' father, rather than to Jesus himself. As depicted by Saramago, Joseph knew of Herod's intention to massacre the children of Bethlehem, but failed to warn the townspeople and chose only to save his own child. Guilt-ridden ever after, Joseph finally expiates his sin by letting himself be crucified (an event not narrated in the New Testament).
Feast days
The commemoration of the massacre of these "Holy Innocents"—considered by some Christians as the first martyrs for Christ—first appears as a feast of the western church in the Leonine Sacramentary, dating from about 485. The date of Holy Innocents' Day, also called Childermas or Children's Mass, varies. 27 December is the date for West Syrians (Syriac Orthodox Church, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, and Maronite Church) and East Syrians (Chaldeans and Syro-Malabar Catholic Church). 28 December is the date in the Roman Catholic Church (before 1961, violet vestments were worn, unless 28 December fell on a Sunday, instead of red, the normal colour for celebrating martyrs and would be 29 December), the Church of England and the Lutheran Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the feast on 29 December.
In Spain and Ibero-America, December 28 is a day for pranks, equivalent to April Fool's Day in many countries. Pranks are known as inocentadas and their victims are called inocentes, or alternatively, the pranksters are the "inocentes" and the victims should not be angry at them, since they could not have committed any sin. Various Catholic countries had a tradition (no longer widely observed) of role reversal between children and their adult educators, including boy bishops, perhaps a Christianized version of the Roman annual feast of the Saturnalia (when even slaves played 'masters' for a day). In some cultures it is said to be an unlucky day, when no new project should be started.
In addition, there was a medieval custom of refraining where possible from work on the day of the week on which the feast of "Innocents Day" had fallen for the whole of the following year until the next Innocents Day. This was presumably mainly observed by the better-off. Philippe de Commynes, the minister of King Louis XI of France tells in his memoirs how the king observed this custom, and describes the trepidation he felt when he had to inform the king of an emergency on the day.
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