add site
services
publishers
database
health videos
toolbar
stats
live show
health store
more stuff
JOIN/LOGIN
| advertise add site services publishers database health videos
| | about toolbar stats live show health store more stuff JOIN/LOGIN |
Massacre of the Innocents docart.com | Innocent Heart Murmurs of Childhood - Health Library texaschildrenspediatrics.... | REFLECTIONS ON THE COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL MASSACRE drronaldlevant.com | THE WACO, TEXAS MASSACRE benbest.com |
For the painting by Peter Paul Rubens, see Massacre of the Innocents (Rubens).  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 2:16-18. 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:
The infants, known in the Church as the Holy Innocents, have been claimed as the first Christian martyrs. Traditional accounts number them at more than ten thousand, though more conservative estimates put their number in the low dozens (see below). 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 apocryphal Gospel of James 22.[2] Most recent biographers of Herod therefore do not regard the massacre as an actual historical event,[3] but rather, like the other nativity stories, as creative hagiography.[4]
[edit] Nativity story in the Gospel of MatthewMany modern scholars theorize that the gospel of Matthew was written c 80 - 85 by an anonymous Christian appealing to a Jewish audience.[5] The author's goal was to portray Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, and a greater Moses.[5] The first two chapters of Matthew comprise a birth and infancy narrative that has no parallel elsewhere in the New Testament, diverges from the corresponding accounts in Luke, and seems to be a secondary composition not originally integral to the gospel.[6] In Matthew's account, astrologers from the east follow a star to Judea in search of the newborn king of the Jews.[5] They are directed to Bethlehem, and Herod asks them to let him know who this king is when they find him. They find Jesus and honor him, but an angel tells them not to alert Herod, and they return home by another way. 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):
_001.jpg) 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.[8] "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!"[9] 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."[10] 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).[11]. The story was patterned on the Exodus story of the killing of the Hebrew firstborn by Pharaoh and the birth of Moses.[5][12] [edit] Later accounts 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:
The first non-Christian reference to the massacre is recorded four centuries later by Macrobius (c. 395-423), who writes in his Saturnalia:
Macrobius' statement shows that the tradition of the massacre of the innocents had become firmly established in the culture at large, for the fact that Christianity is not mentioned in any of his writings, despite the predominance it was asserting in every aspect of contemporary Roman life, coupled with his vigorous interest in pagan rituals, leaves scholars in no doubt as to his pagan religion. The story 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.[14] Taking the narrative literally, and judging from the estimated population of Bethlehem, the Catholic Encyclopedia (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.[15] [edit] In the arts 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.[16] 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).  The 1590 version by Cornelis van Haarlem also seems to reflect the violence of the Dutch Revolt. Guido Reni's early (1611) Massacre of the Innocents, in an unusual vertical format, is at Bologna.[17] The 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.[18] Another, his grand Massacre of the Innocents is now at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The French painter Nicolas Poussin painted The Massacre of the Innocents (1634) at the height of the Thirty Years' War. The incident is the point of departure for an entire literary epic, called the Human Age, a trilogy (actually an incomplete tetrology) of novels by the Modernist painter and author Wyndham Lewis, founder of the movement dubbed Vorticism by Ezra Pound. The first title in the cycle is The Childermass, after the traditional name for the Feast of the Holy Innocents (see the next section of this article), which was first published in 1928. The epic, meant to correspond to the Divine Comedy by Dante, describes the adventures of two Englishmen, named Pullman and Sattersthwaite, who are killed in World War I and whose afterlives begin in a bizarre camp outside the Magnetic City, where they are destined to eventually go; as a story about waiting after death, it seems to correspond to the afterlife locality called Limbo, perhaps specifically the Limbo of Infants. Presumably, the title refers to these dual protagonists as innocents killed in war. From the point of view of High Modernism, The Childermass itself is the more interesting book in the cycle, being the most visionary, inspired by the painterly author's imagination; the imagery consistently anticipates much later Science Fiction and cinematic special effects. Since the Childermas in question is evidently that of the two martyred soldiers, and since they are the protagonists of all three completed novels, it may be argued that the entire epic corresponds to the Feast of the Holy Innocents. In the novel The Fall (La Chute) by Albert Camus, the 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). The Massacre is the opening plot used in the 2006 movie The Nativity Story. The composer Christopher Fulkerson has written a chamber concerto inspired by the Lewis novel. [edit] Feast daysThe commemoration of the massacre of these "Holy Innocents"—considered by some Christians as the first martyrs for Christ[19]—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). April 1 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), the Church of England and the Lutheran Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the feast on 29 December. In Spain and Ibero-America (except Brazil, which was a Portuguese colony), 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.[20] [edit] Notes
[edit] References
[edit] External links
| |||||||||
| ↑ top of page ↑ | about thumbshots |
