_Ital._ Giuda Scariota. _Fr._ Judas Iscariote.
The very name of Judas Iscariot has become a by-word; his person and
character an eternal type of impiety, treachery, and ingratitude. We
shudder at the associations called up by his memory; his crime, without
a name, so distances all possible human turpitude, that he cannot even
be held forth as a terror to evil doers; we set him aside as one cut
off; we never think of him but in reference to the sole and unequalled
crime recorded of him. Not so our ancestors; one should have lived in
the middle ages, to conceive the profound, the ever-present, horror
with which Judas Iscariot was then regarded. The devil himself did not
inspire the same passionate hatred and indignation. Being the devil,
what _could_ he be but devilish? His wickedness was according to his
infernal nature: but the crime of Judas remains the perpetual shame
and reproach of our humanity. The devil betrayed mankind, but Judas
betrayed his God.
* * * * *
The Gospels are silent as to the life of Judas before he became an
apostle, but our progenitors of the middle ages, who could not conceive
it possible that any being, however perverse, would rush at once into
such an abyss of guilt, have filled up the omissions of Scripture
after their own fancy. They picture Judas as a wretch foredoomed from
the beginning of the world, and prepared by a long course of vice and
crime for that crowning guilt which filled the measure full. According
to this legend, he was of the tribe of Reuben. Before his mother
brought him forth, she dreamed that the son who lay in her womb would
be accursed, that he would murder his father, commit incest with his
mother, and sell his God. Terrified at her dream, she took counsel
with her husband, and they agreed to avert the threatened calamity by
exposing the child. As in the story of Œdipus, from which, indeed,
this strange wild legend seems partly borrowed, the means taken to
avert the threatened curse caused its fulfilment. Judas, at his birth,
is enclosed in a chest, and flung into the sea; the sea casts him up,
and, being found on the shore, he is fostered by a certain king and
queen as their own son; they have, however, another son, whom Judas,
malignant from his birth, beats and oppresses, and at length kills in a
quarrel over a game at chess. He then flies to Judea, where he enters
the service of Pontius Pilate as page. In due time he commits the
other monstrous crimes to which he was predestined; and when he learns
from his mother the secret of his birth, he is filled with a sudden
contrition and terror; he hears of the prophet who has power on earth
to forgive sins; and seeking out Christ throws himself at his feet.
Our Saviour, not deceived, but seeing in him the destined betrayer,
and that all things may be accomplished, accepts him as his apostle:
he becomes the seneschal or steward of Christ, bears the purse, and
provides for the common wants. In this position, avarice, the only
vice to which he was not yet addicted, takes possession of his soul,
and makes the corruption complete. Through avarice, he grudges every
penny given to the poor, and when Mary Magdalene anoints the feet of
our Lord he is full of wrath at what he considers the waste of the
precious perfume: ‘Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred
pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the
poor, but because he was a thief.’ Through avarice, he yields to the
bribe offered by the Jews. Then follow the scenes of the betrayal of
Christ, and the late repentance and terrible suicide of the traitor,
as recorded in Scripture. But in the old Mystery of the ‘Passion of
Christ’ the repentance and fate of Judas are very dramatically worked
out, and with all possible circumstances of horror. When he beholds the
mild Saviour before the judgment-seat of Herod, he repents: Remorse,
who figures as a real personage, seizes on the fated wretch, and
torments him till in his agony he invokes Despair. Despair appears,
almost in the guise of the ‘accursed wight’ in Spenser, and, with like
arguments, urges him to make away with his life:—
And brings unto him swords, rope, poison, fire,
And all that might him to perdition draw,
And bids him choose what death he would desire.