Bluegrass Messengers

The Mediæval Legend of Judas Iscariot

The Mediæval Legend of Judas Iscariot
by Paull Franklin Baum
PMLA, Vol. 31, No. 3 (1916), pp. 481-632

XXII.- THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

The legendary Life of Judas the Betrayer, based, it is usually said, on the Greek myth of AEdipus, is found in almost every language and country of mediaeval Europe. It was written down in Latin as early as the twelfth century. By the end of the thirteenth century it was turned into the vernacular in lands as far apart as Wales, Catalonia, and Bohemia. At the close of the Middle Ages it had become the possession of the folk, and since that period-to some extent even during the fifteenth century it
has spread northward and eastward into Scandinavia, Finland, Russia, and Bulgaria. It was related in Greek, probably in the Middle Ages, although the manuscripts are of a much later date. It was still told orally in Galicia at the end of the last century. As a regular part of the ecclesiastical literature of the West it received canonization, so to say, late in the thirteenth century, in the great legendary of Jacopo da Voragine; but, on the other hand, it is a remarkable fact that in the Middle Ages, so far as I have been able to learn, none of the reputable church writers (with the exception of Jacopo) recognized or even mentioned it. And furthermore, mediaeval sculptors and carvers of wood and ivory, who gave themselves with so much zeal to the plastic representation of legendary matter, completely eschewed or overlooked the 'early life' of Judas. Not indeed that either the church writers or artists sought to avoid contact with such a wicked character; on the contrary, they devoted considerable space to him, rejecting only his apocryphal career.[1] However this  omission may be explained, the fact must be recognized as of some interest.

Judas (the usual story runs) was the son of Jewish parents living at Jerusalem: his father's name was Reuben, his mother's
Cyborea. One night Cyborea dreamed that she was about to conceive, and that her child was destined to become the destruction of the whole Jewish race. In great anxiety she related her dream to Reuben, who advised her to pay no attention to such matters-they came from the evil spirit. In due time, however, a son was born; the memory of the dream returned, and in fear lest possibly it might come true, the infant, Judas, was set adrift on the sea in a small chest. Wind and wave brought him to the island of Scariot-whence
his name. Here the Queen of the island, who had no children and
was eager for a young prince to succeed to the throne, discovered
the babe, which was very handsome, and, sending word throughout
the land that she was with child, had Judas secretly nursed until
she could proclaim him as her own. Thus Judas was brought up in
royal fashion, as heir to the kingdom. But it came about before
very long that the Queen had a son by the King. The two children
grew up together, but after a time the wickedness that was in Judas's
nature began to come to the surface, and he frequently beat and
otherwise abused his putative brother. In spite of the Queen's remonstrances
he continued to maltreat the true prince, until finally
in a fit of anger the Queen made known to him his irregular origin.

In wrath at learning this Judas seized the first opportunity to kill
his brother, then for fear of the consequences took ship and fled to
Jerusalem. There his courtly manners and evil instincts secured him
a place in Pilate's retinue. One day Pilate, looking into his neighbor's
garden, was seized with an irresistible desire for some fruit
which he saw there; and Judas agreed to procure it for him. Now,
although Judas was ignorant of the fact, the garden and the fruit
were the possession of his own father, Reuben. Before he succeeded
in gathering this fruit Reuben appeared; an altercation followed,
which developed into a fight; and finally Reuben was slain. Since
there were no witnesses to the murder, Reuben was reported to have
died suddenly, and Judas, with Pilate's connivance, took in marriage
the widowed Cyborea, together with her house and property. The
bride was extremely unhappy and sighed frequently. Being asked
one day by her husband the cause of her grief, she related enough
treated; but that is more natural, since the painters devoted themselves
less to legendary than to purely Biblical scenes.
482
THE MIEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
of her story to enable Judas to recognize his double crime of parricide
and incest. Both were afflicted with great remorse, but on
Cyborea's suggestion Judas resolved to go to Jesus and seek pardon
and forgiveness. He soon became a favorite disciple, and was made
steward of the Twelve. But again his evil nature asserted itself,
and he betrayed his Master to the Jews for thirty pieces of silver:
thereafter he again suffered remorse and, having returned the money,
hanged himself.
The raison d'etre of this tale is generally agreed to be a
pious intention of blackening the name of Judas; but
sometimes it appears to be a wish to show that no matter
how great the sin, true repentance brings full pardon.
These two intentions vary in prominence in the different
versions, but the latter, which would seem to be ancillary,
gained weight and emphasis probably through the influence
of such legends as those of Gregory, Albanus, and
Julian, which came into vogue at about the same time as
that of Judas. The man who first told or wrote down the
life of Judas, and those who repeated it after him, lacked
a command of narrative sufficient to make their meaning
perfectly clear: and beneath the surface, whether the
writers themselves were conscious of it or not, there may
have been, as some think, an uncomprehended notion of
the ineluctabile fatum. But if any part of the original
intention of the Judas legend was to inculcate the moral
of divine forgiveness, as was clearly the case with the
other legends just mentioned, it may be thought to
bespeak very little intelligence in the minds of its authors
that they overlooked the true nature of his sins, and did
not recognize the difference between crimes that are predestined
by Fate, or are ignorantly committed, and those
which are undertaken with malice prepense.2 So it has
2 Notwithstanding the constantly repeated view, discussed at some
length by Littre apropos of the Old French Gregoire (Histoire de la
langue francaise, Paris, 1863, vol. II, ? viii), and elaborated with much
483
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
been objected that to point a moral and manifest by
examples God's infinite mercy for the penitent other more
satisfactory tales could have been found, where the sins
were actual, not unintentional; but the truth is rather that
the Middle Ages were not too particular about finical consistency.
If the story were a good one and the moral a
good one, why, what more could be desired? From the
early Fathers and homilists down, there was ample precedent
for finding instructive illustrations where they did
not exist, as well as for appending morals that did not fit
with extreme accuracy. And although this is not by any
means an extenuation, it is sufficient explanation to
obviate the stricture of Littre, Graf, and others, that the
mediaeval story-tellers missed fire in relating these legends
for pious purposes. There is little doubt that mediaeval
readers and hearers caught the point as it was intended
for them, and . . . basta.
LATIN VERSIONS
Previous to Professor E. K. Rand's Mediceval Lives of
Judas Iscariot 3 no earlier version of the legendary life of
learning by Graf (Miti, leggende e superstizioni del medio evo, Turin,
1892, i, pp. 273-310), I am unable to see in these legends, particularly
in that of Judas, genuine evidence of a mediaeval belief in fatalism.
The purpose of the Judas, as has been said, was to make as repugnant
as possible one who had participated in the death of Christ;
and to accomplish this there may have been a clumsy adaptation of
events from the story of (Edipus and other myths- (but this is as
yet a 'case not proven') -so that what appearance there is of
fatalism may be the result of an insufficient amalgamation of CEdipodean
traits; but the fundamental conception of the Judas legend
is still the wickedness of Judas, a sort of Pauline belief in original
damnation and inherent sinfulness, which is utterly distinct from
the Greek idea of Destiny.
3Anniversary Papers by Colleagues and Pupils of George Lyman
Kittredge, Boston, 1913, pp. 305-16.
484
THE MEDIIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Judas was known than that in the chapter on Mlathias in
Jacopo da Voragine's Legenda Aurea,4 composed probably
between 1270 and 1275. Professor Rand's article brought
to light three new versions, two of which he printed entire,
and an older manuscript than any hitherto known of the
version used by Jacopo. My own researches have revealed
many more manuscripts of the known versions, and thus
more abundant evidence of the popularity of the legend,
but no versions that can be actually termed new. Altogether
I have been able to find forty-two Latin texts of the
legend (including those previously known). In the following
list I have arranged them approximately in chronological
order according to the dates of the manuscripts
in which they appear.5
s. xii Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, lat. 14489, fol.
109v. Cf. Rand, p. 313. Ap.
xii-xiii Rome, Vatican, Palatinus 619, fol. 18. Cf. Rand,
p. 305. Lv.
xiii Cambridge, St. John's College 214, fol. 159. Cf.
James, Descriptive Caitalogue, etc., p. 243, and see
below, p. 497. Lc.
Reims 1275, fol. 2. Life of Pilate precedes, but
has nothing in common with the usual life of
Pilate, as in the Legenda Aurea. Cf. Catalogue
General des Manuscrits de Bibliotheques Publiques.
Departements. xxxix. Reims. Hr.
Munich, Lat. 21259, fol. 231v. Cf. Catalogue of
Schmeller, etc., II, iii, p. 303; and Rand, pp. 306,
307. "The script," says Professor Rand, who has
4 Jacobi a Voragine Legenda Aurea . . . rec. Dr. Th. Graesse, ed.
tertia, Vratisl. . . . 1890, Cap. XLV, pp. 183-8. Nearly half of the
chapter on Mathias is devoted to Judas.
5Of these, Ap, LI, Lv, Hr, Rm, Ra were discussed by Professor
Rand; Pi, Lg, Lk, Mw, Pz, Px have been mentioned in other previous
studies of the Judas legend. The remaining thirty are here brought
together for the first time.
485
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
examined the MS., "if not still in the twelfth
century, should be dated, I am convinced, very
early in the thirteenth." Rm.
Munich, Lat. 23490, fol. 20. Cf. the catalogue
of Halm-Meyer, II, iv (1881). Printed by Mone,
Anzeiger, vii (1838), col. 532. See below, pp.
510ff. Pi.
British Museum, Additional 15404, fol. 19. Formerly
belonged to the Cistercian Abbey of St.
Mary of Camberon, in Hainault. Life of Pilate
follows, which, as in Hr, is not the usual life. Hb.
Paris, Arsenal 387, fol. 70v. Cf. Catalogue, I, p.
249; and Rand, p. 306. Ra.
Oxford, Bodleian, Laud. Misc. 633, fol. 97v. Portions
of the Judas are practically illegible. Rb.
Legenda Aurea, ch. XLV. LI.
Oxford, Bodleian 90, ? 5. See below, p. 499. Lj.
Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College 225, fol.
176v. Crude summary of the legend based on
some MS. of Type R, with Cymbrea for Cyborea,
and a strange disregard of syntax throughout.
Ends imperfectly at the point where Pilate is
overcome with desire for Reuben's fruit. Rg.
s. xiii late British Museum, Royal 9 A XIV, fol. 255. Doubtless
a copy of Ll, although it omits the account
of the betrayal and the moralizing on Judas's
death. Preceded by a life of Pilate. Lk.
British Museum, Harley 2851, fol. 43. Ward
(Catalogue of Romances, ii, p. 401) dates the
manuscript ca. 1300; but he is hardly right in describing
as " small quarto " a page which is about
three by four inches. Lh.
British Museum, Royal 8 E XVII, fol. 126. Professor
Rand, following the old catalogue dated
it s. xv; the new official catalogue correctly assigns
it to the late thirteenth century. Lg.
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, lat. 11867, fol.
179. Formerly St. Germain-des-Prds 376, a miscellaneous
collection, including Cicero's De Amicitia,
drinking songs, hymns to the Virgin, etc. Rg.
486
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
s. xiii-xiv Oxford, Bodleian, Douce 210, fol. 46b. Cf. Catalogue
of the Printed Books and Manuscripts
bequeathed by Francis Douce to the Bodleian
Library, Oxford, 1840, p. 35; and Paul Meyer in
Bulletin de la SociWet des Anciens Textes Francais,
1880, pp. 75-6. Ld.
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 323, fol. 3v.
Apparently a copy of Lv. Lf.
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, nouv. acq. fr. 4413,
fol. 19. Cf. Leopold Delisle, Inventaire alphabetique,
aI (1891), p. 480. Lives of Pilate and
Judas in Latin, preceded and followed by works
in French. Rn.
xiv early British Museum, Royal 12 E I, fol. 165 b, continued
on fol. 154. Abridged from Legenda
Aurea. Cf. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances, m,
p. 540. Lr.
xiv Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, lat. 4895 A, fol.
120v. Follows the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo.
Slightly glossed in the margins. Ro.
Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, iv, cap. vi.
Rolls ed. iv, pp. 350 ff. Free condensation probably
from LI. Lm.
Douai 847, fol. 182v. Cf. the old quarto Catalogue
des Manuscrits des Bibliotheques des Departements,
t. VI, p. 593. Hd.
Cambridge, University Library Ff II 20. Extract
from Legenda Aurea. Cf. Catalogue of the
Manuscripts preserved in the Library of the University
of Cambridge, ii, p. 344. Ln.
Cambridge, University Library Oo vII 48, fol.
30b. Copy of either Lv or Ll. Lo.
British Museum, Additional 18347, fol. 128 b.
Originally from St. Georgenberg (Tyrol). Copy
of Ll. Cf. Herbert, Catalogue, IlI, p. 603. La.
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 66, fol. 232b.
Beautifully executed manuscript; copied from
Rg, but contains the whole vita. Re.
xiv late Oxford, Bodleian 458, fol. 184v. Copy of Lj. Ls.
9
487
488 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
s. xiv-xv Bamberg 209 Q. V. 35, fol. 211. Probably from
LI. Lt.
xv Lille 138, fol. 20v. Written by Henry Descamps
in 1481. Rl.
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 275, fol.
239. Copy of LI, but followed by a kind of summary:
"Judas scarioth fratrem suum putatiuum
et patrem occidet, matrem propriam desponsauit
populum prodidit et Christi munera [?] furabatur,
unde pro dolore laquea [sic] se suspendit et
crepuit in medio diffusis viceribus [sic]." Lp.
Bamberg 107 Q. IV. 36, fol. 257. Probably from
LI. Lu.
Munich, Lat. 237, fol. 67. Copy of Pi. Cf. Catalogue
of Halm-Laubmann, I, i, (1868). Py.
Munich, Lat. 12262, fol. 206. See below, p. 513. Mw.
Engelberg 258, fol. 60. Greatly abbreviated,
probably from LI. Le.
Maihing iI, Lat. 1, fol. 94. Dated 1475. Mentioned
by Schepss in Mone's Anzeiger xxvii
(1880), col. 114. Pz.
Leipzig 834, fol. 246. Probably from LI. Lz.
Wolfenbittel 212 (=Helmstadt 185), fol. 215.
Mentioned by Leyser, Historia Poetarum et Poematum
Medii Aevi, 1721, p. 1225. (D'Ancona,
La leggenda di Vergogna e la leggenda di Giuda,
Bologna, 1869. Introd. p. 94, n. 1, gives the page
as 2125; and this error, probably a misprint, was
copied by Creizenach, Judas Ischariot in Legende
und Sage des Mittelalters, PBB II, 2, p. 193, and
by Heinrich, p. 93). Printed in 1906 by Alfred
Heinrich as an appendix to his edition of Rothe's
Passion (Germanistische Abhandlungen, 26.
Heft). PC.
Wolfenbuttel 3292, fol. 207, 'De ortu et origine
Jude proditoris.' Cf. 0. von Heinemann, Handschriften
der Herzoglichen Bibliothek zu Wolfenbittel,
Abth. 2, vol. iv, p. 329. Lx.
Wolfenbiittel 1199 (=Helmstadt 1092), fol. 1.
See below, p. 514. Mh.
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 489
Uncertain Vienna, Lat. 1180 (Rec. 3167a), fol. 196. Variadate.
tion of Type R. I have been unable to see this
manuscript; for my knowledge of it I am indebted
to Professor von Dobschiitz. Rj.
Manuscript copy lent me by Professor von Dobschiitz.
Abbreviated redaction of Type R, but
contains several variant readings which correspond
to none of the known texts. Such variants
may be the result of the scribe's efforts to condense;
or may point to a text of Type R which
has not come down to us. After carefully examining
the text I believe the former alternative the
more probable. Re.'
This list does not include, of course, the texts of the
Judas legend where it is actually a part of the Legenda
Aurea, but only complete separate versions; nor is it by
any means exhaustive.
These versions may be divided into five groups, as I
have indicated by the letters chosen to designate the manuscripts,
viz.:
Type A. The earliest known Latin form of the legend,
found in only one manuscript, Ap.
Type R. A more developed version, found in Rm, Ra,
Bb, etc.
Type L. The Legenda Aurea version, comprising Lv,
Lc, Lj, etc.
'To this list may be added: MS. 2035. BB. xii 12, zr. 1383 of the
Library of the University of Cracow, Varii versus Latini: str. 166.
' explicit Judas Scarioht, da gracias'; and in the same library Ms.
2610 Bbb i 58, zr. 1704, Adscriptiones minoris momenti, among which
is a 'Historia de origine Judae Iscariot.' In the unpublished Mare
Magnum of Francesco Marucelli (d. 1703) there is an article 'De
Juda Proditore,' which probably contains the legend. Cf. Guido
Biagi, Indice del Mare Magnum, Roma, 1885, p. 3. In the Acta SS.,
May 3, preface to 'De Sancto Ursio' (p. 426), the 'historia apocrypha
" of Judas is mentioned as appearing in the Legenda Aurea,
and a brief summary is given, with the note: "Hinc hominum
noscitur inclinatio ad similes narratiunculas proclivis."
490 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
Type H. An elaborated humanistic version, found in
Hr, Hb, Hd.
Type P. Poetical versions-Pi, Py, Pz, Px.
Type M. Miscellaneous-Mw, Mh.
Since Type R and Type L give essentially the same
material in different forms, it will be convenient to designate
them collectively as Type RL.
TYPE A. The version Ap stands practically alone,
and in many respects is the most remarkable of all. I
reproduce here Professor Rand's text.
Nihil occultum quod non reveletur et opertum quod non sciatur.1
Qui a malo progreditur et in malo perseverat, non corona sed meriti
pena donatur. De Iuda proditore nobis vita innectitur, qui malus
in ortu, peior in vita, pessimus exstitit in fine. Pater eius itaque
quantum apud homines cluebat, diviciis affluens et honorabilis omnibus
vicinis suis habebatur. Hic nocte quadam visionem vidit se
filium habere qui mortem ei intentaret; iam enim uxor eius pregnans
erat. De quo praestigium hoc futurum erat. Ngto autem
infante pater in eo omen tale consideravit et expavit, tibias illius
transfixit atque inter frutecta longius ab urbe Iherusalem collocavit.
Cuius vagitum et voces ploratus quidam pastorum intelligentes a
loco dimoverunt eum et in Scarioth deferentes a quadam muliere
alere fecerunt. Qui nutritus et in robur virile deductus regi iunctus
est Herodi atque inter servos eius mixtus cum omni probitate regi
ceterisque militibus serviebat. Et tamen, ut moris est servorum, que
habere poterat prodige distribuebat et quam plurima sibi furtive
vendicabat. Accidit autem quodam tempore ut Herodes sollempne
convivium cum primoribus apud Ierosolimam haberet et inter multa
ferculorum genera nascentia pomorum rex quereret. Cuius voluntatem
Iudas festinavit implere et ad virgultum sui patris descendens,
quem tamen suum patrem ignorabat, vi evellebat et eradicabat
arborum fructus. Vir vero cuius haec erant animo motus et amaritudine
plenus erexit se adversus hominem perversum, sed Iudas invalescens
illum percussit et occidit. Commovetur adversus eum
tota civitas et insurgentes in eum morti tradere disposuerunt. Iudas
7 Cf. " Nihil enim est opertum, quod non revelabitur: et occultum
quod non scietur" (Matt. 10, 26). The same idea occurs also in
Mark and Luke.
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 491
autem ad presidium Herodis fugiens mortis periculum evasit. Herodes
et ipse turbatus egit quemadmodum ille ab amicis interfecti
pacem obtineret, ne re unius mali in aliud maius periculum declinaret.
Accepto igitur consilio Herodes uxorem interfecti lude copulavit,
ipso et omnibus ignorantibus quod mater eiusdem esset. Die vero
quadam accidit ut ludas coram matre et uxore nudus appareret et
videns illa stigmata plagarum in tibiis, suspicata est filium suum
esse, quem olim inter frutecta proiectum dimiserat. Unde querit
ab eo, quis pater eius exstiterat, vel que mater eius, qui parentes,
et unde vel ex qua provintia ortus vel a quibus fuerit nutritus. Ille
se nescire profitetur sed hoc tantum a sua nutrice audisse quia inter
frutecta illo in loco iactus fuisset et a pastoribus reppertus in
Scarioth delatus ibique nutritus sit. Et cum ad robur virile pervenisset
Herodis se inter servientes se miscuisse et suo servicio multis
placuisse. His auditis illa corruit et proclamans se miseram dicebat,
"Infelix mei visio mariti que a filio completa est et insuper
in me malignitatis et peccati redundat insania. Dies meae pereat
nativitatis et caligo tenebrarum irruat in eum." Iudas autem
tantam a se factam intelligens nequiciam doluit et pro tanto scelere
penitens a matre recessit. At tune temporis Iesus illis habitabat in
locis, qui predicando et subveniendo multis corpora sanabat et mentes
a diversis peccatis revocabat; gravatos peccatis ad se venientes suscipiebat
et more pastoris oves ore lupino raptas ab eorum incursu
abstraebat. Cuius virtutem atque pietatem Iudas agnoscens ad'eum
se contulit et ut sui misereretur rogavit. Assensit Iesus voluntati
ipsius, secum quoque ac inter suos discipulos eum esse passus est.
Cui etiam que habebat committebat ut sibi ceterisque provideret
necessaria. Ille vero sacculos habebat et que poterat furabatur. Et
cuius intentionis ipse Iudas esset, in fine apparuit, quia magistrum
precio vendidit et Iudeis tradidit. Qui tandem se ipsum suspendit
et miserabili morte vitam finivit. Tu autem Domine miserere nostri.
Qui perseveraverit usque in finem in bonum, hic salvus erit.
This is, as Professor Rand remarks, "certainly the
finest of all the versions, with a pathos direct and touching,
not far removed from tragedy." It is no mere scandalmonger's
tale, and no ignorant, ultra-pious effort to make
the figure of Judas as repulsive as possible. The author
shows a quiet dignity, a sort of Christ-like forgiveness of
the wretch who was " malus in ortu, peior in vita, pessimus
in fine." His Latin is simple, naif, but expressive;
his arrangement of the incidents, his subordination of the
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
merely narrative element, and his emphasis, in the manner
of the best sermons, on the reflective and philosophical,
bespeak a refinement entirely lacking in the writer of the
Legenda Aurea version. "The Judas of this little story
awakens our compassion and the recognition of our common
frailty."
The simplicity of this narrative is an indication of its
early date. The lack of names for the parents of Judas,
and the absence of the incident of the foster-brother and
the concomitant fratricide, point to a somewhat undeveloped
stage of the story as compared with the later versions.
It is not only the earliest Latin form of the legend, but
appears to be also not far removed from the earliest of all
versions.
TYPE R. Type R is represented by eleven manuscripts.
None of these is demonstrably earlier than the thirteenth
century; hence it is impossible to say at once whether this
redaction in its original form antedates the original form
of Type L or not.8 Professor Rand argues for an early
date for Rm; and describes it as "written in a beautiful
clear script of the very end of the twelfth or beginning of
the thirteenth century." This manuscript had already
been mentioned by Schepss; 9 Ra, of the thirteenth century,
is a discovery of Professor Rand's; the remaining
nine manuscripts (Rb, Rg, Rq, Rn, Ro, Rc, R1, Rj, Re)
have, I believe, never been considered in any discussion of
the Judas legend. Rm, Ro, Ra, Rb, Rn, Rq, RI, offer practically
the same text. By comparing all the variants I
have endeavored to reconstruct the archetype of Type R,
as follows:
"Professor Rand inclines to the opinion that Type L and Type R
have a common earlier parent, and are not derived one from the
other. This is quite possible.
'Mone's Anzeiger, xxvi (1880), col. 114. Schepss calls it s. xiiixiv.
492
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 493
Fuit in diebus Herodis regis Pilato preside uir in Iudea Ruben
nomine ex tribu Ruben qui noctis in tempestate legalibus uxoris
sue Ciboree alligabatur amplexibus.10 Ciborea uero dum membra
sompni foueret quiete sompnium uidit, quo expergefacta pectore ollicito
retrahens suspiria uelut presagiis futurorum malorum pleno
flebiliter ingemuit. Cui Ruben uehementer inquit et ultra quam eloqui
fas est: admiror que tanta causa tristicie sic tua uiscera moueri compulerit.
Ciborea intulit: cum carnali copula ligati legi deseruiremus
maritali prolem certo tempore pariendam que totius magno constabit
Iudaici populi gentibus concepisse per sompnium uidi; aut enim
spiritus et utinam falsus subrepens intimauit, aut mens per ear
gentem nostram ut solet in multo tempore presagia futurorum malorum
dispergenda mihi declarauit. Ruben pre maximo admiracionis
terrore correptus; nephariam, inquit, rem nec relatu dignam
profaris, spiritu ceu puto phitonico raperis. Ciborea uero iuramento
confirmans sic per futurum fore ait. Mensium igitur curricula
diem partus cum periculo uite instantis, abhinc diligenter considera.
Hic enim infantulus de quo confirmantur scelera, ne gens nostra
alligetur dicioni peregrinationis, si dies uite ex integro ad tempus
natalis sui perduxero morte morietur. Tempora fluxerunt, orbe nouo
cornua lunaria refulserunt. Instante itaque die partui deputato generatur
filius. Ruben uero multimodis et inexplicabilibus inuoluitur
curis. Nepharium enim ducit filium occidi, scelerosum totius gentis
destructorem enutriri. Tandem seponitur pietas, preponderat impietas.
Cistella uimine contexitur, in qua maris fluctibus iniectus ad insulam
Scarioth propellitur: a qua Iudas Scariothis cognominatur.
Tune regina huius comitata pedissequis fortuitu ad litus maris processit
spatiari uiditque infantulum procellosis maris fluctibus fluctuari.
Pedisseque autem accurrunt et uultum pueri diligenter intuentes
regieque pulchritudini conparantes domine deferunt et de longin,
quis partibus in illas perfluxisse asserunt. Regina itaque liniamenta
corporis pueri preconsiderans et diligentius oculorum intuitu prenotans
ait: o si solatiis tante sobolis subleuarer, ne regni mei successore
priuarer. Pedisseque infantulum nutriri suggerunt ut uidua
sterili permanente habeatur heres. Regina obsequitur hancque regiam
peperisse prolem terram promulgatur in omnem. Plebs letatur,
primates congratulantur. Denique breui post tempore impletur
regine uterus, certisque diebus generatur eis filius legitimus. Colludentibus
hiis itaque in annis infancie Iudas puerum regium ad
fletum non pertimescit prouocare. Regina autem sciens eum ad se
10 Cf. " Fuit in diebus Herodis regis Iudaeae sacerdos quidam nomine
Zacharias de vice Abia, et uxor illius de filiabus Aaron, et nomen
eius Elisabeth." Luc., I, 5-6.
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
non pertinere tantum in suum dedignatur audire. Tandem res panditur,
Iudas puer inuenticius esse conperitur. Hic ergo erubescit et
puerum fratrem suum creditum latenter occidit. Ob hoc ergo timens
capitalem sententiam cum tributariis Ierusalem usque aufugit, seque
curie Pilati tunc presidi applicuit. Deinde uero quoniam res similes
sibi sunt habiles, quia nequam et moribus suis congruere inuenitur,
universis rebus Pilati preficitur. Nulla sine suo iussu, nutu,
consensuque fiunt, quoniam in dicione sua omnia porrecta sunt.
Stans autem die quadam Pilatus ad palacium introspexit quoddam
pomerium, uiditque fructus quorum tanto captus est desiderio ut
pene exhalaret spiritum. Accersito itaque Iuda ait: si esu horum
fructuum frustratus fuero me ut cuncta natura sinu terre remittens
receptabit placido, quoniam capit omnia tellus que genuit &c.l Iudas
igitur pomerio insiliit, mala carpit, Ruben superuenit, contendunt,
iurgia superaddunt. Ruben tandem lapide quo ceruix collo connectitur
a Iuda percussus occidit. Iam die se inclinante nocteque instante
Ruben mortuus reperitur; subitanea morte preuentus creditur esse.
Tune Pilatus Iude recolligens merita omnem Ruben substantiam et
uxorem ei contradidit in beneficia. Ciborea ut dolores tot et tantos
recolligit ingemuit, Iude causam suspirii querenti ait: infantulum
marinis fluctibus inmersi, uirum meum morte preuentum inueni, nunc
autem, quo super omnia moueor, quia uiro contra uoluntatem meam
socior. Iudas autem hec omnia sibi euenisse probauit, filiumque suum
esse, matrem quoque in uxorem duxisse coniecit. Penitentia ergo
ductus Ciborea suadente saluatoris domini nostri Iesu Christi, per
quem fit remissio peccatorum, ut suorum ueniam mereretur delictorum,
fit discipulus. Habebat autem tune semper loculos ubi sibi
reseruabat furtiua pauperibus in elemosinas distribuenda. Hic
autem a domino diligebatur pre ceteris donec consilium iniit cum
Iudeis et eum triginta uendidit argenteis. Videns autem quia innocentem
condampnauerat proiecto in templo sanguinis precio laqueo
se suspendit et medius crepuit.
After comparing all the variant readings I have prepared
the following stemma for the seven manuscripts of
this version: 12
" Lucan, Pharsalia, 7, 818-19. "Caelo . . . urnam " was quoted by
Augustine, De Civ. Dei i, 12 (M. S. L. 41, 27). Cf. Isidorus xvi,
26, 4.
" The existence of x' and x" and the positions of m and o may be held
quite certain. Of xtt one cannot be so positive. The positions of a,
q, 1 may be considered as fairly established (if xtt' be removed they
494
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
x
m , a/
\
4~XI b
0
From a consideration of the interrelationship of the
manuscripts two points of interest result. First: x" and
x"' show a large number of glosses, whence it seems right
to infer that in the early days of these two texts the little
story of Judas was deemed worthy of what we should now
term an 'edition'; certain versions of the legend were
treated to a sort of textual criticism as the Middle Ages
understood it. Moreover, b was a special recension; and
n, as is shown both by the unusually large number of
glosses, and by its apparent collation of x' and x" (and
perhaps x"'), as well as by its completion of the Lucan
quotation, would seem to represent an effort to provide
descend directly from x") ; b is probably in its right place; and
there appears to be sufficient ground for the position of n.-Inasmuch
as it would occupy too much space to print all the variants and the
arguments from which I have deduced the stemma, I must ask the
reader to accept my conclusions on faith. On this point, however,
and on any other for which the evidence may seem insufficient, all
the material may be found in my dissertation in the Harvard University
Library.
495
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
a 'complete critical text based on all the known manuscripts.'
The second interesting result is to push further back the
date of the archetype of Type R. That is, m, our earliest
manuscript of Type R, is not only not the original, it is a
copy of a copy. Inasmuch as m was undoubtedly written
sometime ca. 1200, the evidence of at least two earlier
texts of this version warrants our placing the original
manuscript of the Type definitely in the twelfth century,
and with some show of probability not the very end of the
century. This evidence enables us to say also, with tolerable
certainty, that Type R antedates the Type adopted
by Jacopo da Voragine, since we have no ground for dating
the latter earlier than sometime after the beginning of the
thirteenth century.
TYPE L. The manuscripts of Type L may be roughly
divided into early and late texts. As has been said, LI had
generally been considered the earliest, and the prototype.
Professor Rand, however, discovered in Lv " an immediate
precursor of the account in the Golden Legend," the
source which Jacopo da Voragine incorporated in his
work almost without change. This manuscript is in the
Vatican, Palatinus 619, dated s. xii-xiii in the catalogue
of Stevenson-de Rossi. The writing of the Judas legend
is " clearly before the date of Jacopo (1230-1298)." 13 The
chief differences between Lv and Ll, besides unimportant
variations in word order and spelling (ergo generally in
Lv for igitur in Ll, and similar details of scribal origin)
are that Lv represents Judas as from the tribe of Judah,
whereas LI has " de tribu Dan," that Jacopo " cautiously
adds" licet apocrypha after "quadam historia" at the
beginning, and at the end of the legend proper comments:
" Rand, p. 305.
496
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 497
"hucusque in prfedicta historia apocrypha legitur, qume
utrum reeitanda sit lectoris arbitrio relinquatur, licet sit
potius relinquenda quam asserenda." This bit of naif
scepticism has been universally attributed to Jacopo da
Voragine, who was, in fact, by no means so gullible and
credulous as many have asserted. Nevertheless, while
licet apocrypha is with him a not unusual safeguarding
formula, and while he must have brought to bear a good
deal of critical discrimination in preparing such a compendious
legendary from such infinitely scattered and multifarious
materials as he had to work with, still he was not
given, I think, to expressing his doubt in this manner.
The originality of this scepticism on the part of Jacopo
is laid open to doubt by Lc. This manuscript, originally
of Bury St. Edmunds, is now at Cambridge, St. John's
College 214; it is described by James 14 as " Cent. xii late,
very finely [i. e., beautifully] written "; it contains the
Etymologice of Isidorus, some curious maps, and (unfinished)
capitula of the Sententice of Isidorus; and last, " in
another hand (xiii)," De ortu poncii pilati and De ortu
Jude scarioht. The script of these lives of Pilate and
Judas is certainly not of the twelfth century, but it seems
to me to be not very much later. Dr. James is unwilling
to agree to call the writing " very early cent. xiii," and estimates
the lapse of about a generation between the writing
of these lives of Pilate and Judas and that of the
remainder of the manuscript.15 Now the dating of any
manuscript from the writing alone is fraught with many
1Descriptive Catalogue, etc., p. 243.
a In a private communication. It is proper to add, however, that
Dr. James has again examined this portion of the MS. and pronounced
his "deliberate opinion" that the life of Judas here " may
quite possibly be after 1260; and not impossibly but less likely after
1280."
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
uncertainties; and it is, I confess, quite impossible to
demonstrate absolutely that this Cambridge version antedates
the Legenda Aurea. Nevertheless, the script of this
De ortu Jude scarioht seems to me to belong to the first
half of the thirteenth century, and certainly is earlier
than the composition of the Legenda Aurea; and so, along
with Lv, Lc represents the source of Jacopo. But Lc
(like Lg and Ld) reads: "legitur enim in quadam historia
licet apocrypha"; and (like Lg) contains the hucusque
passage with which Jacopo apologizes for admitting
the legend into his collection: "hucusque in apocripha
historia sic legitur: utrum recitanda sit ..." etc.,
exactly as in LZ.16
16 The whole question of Jacopo's treatment of his sources remains
still to be investigated. The above generalization is, I believe, sound.
When he can, Jacopo evidently cites a well known name to vouch for
the life or legend-Hieronymus, Anastasius, Augustinus, Gregoriusoften
expressing uncertainty as to the attribution. It is, furthermore,
perhaps significant that in introducing the life of Pilate (Cap.
LIII) he writes: "de poena autem et origine Pylati in quadam historia
licet apocrypha "; which is also his in'troduction to the legend
of Judas. And later: " Hucusque in praedicta historia apocrypha
leguntur. Quae utrum recitanda sint, lectoris judicio relinquatur.
Nota tamen, quod in hystoria scholastica legitur. . .. Potuit esse,
si tamen illa hystoria continet veritatem, quia. . . . Eusebius autem
et Beda in suis chronicis non dicunt. .. ." Here he not only repeats
essentially his apology for the Judas legend, but magnifies the
uncertainty by means of additional conflicting sources. It must be
noted, moreover, that those two passages are the only examples of
his elaborately warning the too credulous reader. On other occasions,
save for the qualifying phrases indicated above, tales quite
as indigestible as those of Pilate and Judas are served warm to the
reader with no hesitation. One cannot help imagining that these two
legends Jacopo took from some collection or other which he had
special grounds for suspecting. Other lives equally marvellous he
had from more respectable sources, and consequently he took them
to a certain extent on holy faith; against an unqualified belief in
the lives of these two maledicti, Judas and Pilate, he felt in conscience
bound to warn the gentle reader.
498
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Another early manuscript of this group is Lj, dated the
"second half of the thirteenth century." The scribe
omitted the licet apocrypha at the beginning and the hucusque
passage at the end of the legendary material, but preserved
carefully the moralizing on Judas's death. Possibly,
in the mind of this scribe at least, the story had
received complete credence. Curiously, in Lj the 'spiritus
phitonicus' became 'spiritus propheticus,' probably
because the scribe was unfamiliar with the somewhat
unusual word.'7
The text of Type L is readily accessible in Graesse's
edition of the Legenda Aurea, and therefore I need not
But, on the other hand, if, as appears extremely probable, the
hucusque passage is found in a text which antedates the composition
or compilation of the Legenda Aurea, then this apologetic warning
is not Jacopo's own, but is transferred bodily from his source.
And since almost the same words follow the legend of Pilate as that
of Judas it would seem that the two legends kept company before
the last quarter of the thirteenth century, precisely as we find them
together throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages-and indeed
as we find them in the early thirteenth-century MS. at ,St. John's College,
Cambridge. If, however, the second statement of Dr. James
is correct (see p. 497, n. 15) this hypothesis falls to the ground.
But it is by no means demonstrable, nor even likely, that the Legenda
Aurea was compiled as early of 1260; and even if Jacopo had
made some preliminary collections by that date, it is not natural to
suppose they would include Judas and Pilate. Moreover, while it
is both possible and probable that the Legenda Aurea was finished
by 1280, it is on the other hand possible but not probable that a
copy of it would have reached England immediately after its completion,
and that a scribe of Bury St. Edmunds would have made an
extract of only the lives of Judas and Pilate. The earliest MSS. of
the Legenda Aurea now in England date from the very end of the
thirteenth century. It appears to me far more probable prima facie
that this version of the life of Judas (and that of Pilate) was known
rather earlier than 1260 or 1280, and that the monk of Bury St.
Edmunds had a copy of it and Jacopo da Voragine had another copy.
"' On this word cf. Rein. Kihler, Jahrb. f. rom. u. engl. Lit. xI
(1870), p. 317, n. 3 (=Klein. Schriften, i, p. 196, n. 1).
499
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
reprint it here. After collating Graesse's text with the
early manuscripts of the Judas legend where it is not a
portion of the Legenda Aurea, I find it impossible to infer
anything certain with regard to the relationship of the
various texts. Lc and Lv are doubtless the earliest; and
it is probably safer to say that both are copies of an earlier
text, now unknown, than that they are copies one of the
other. LI probably derives from an early text of Lc, or
from the assumed parent of he and Lv, or from a sister
text to Lc and Lv; but the presence of the hucusque passage
in LI and in one of its known forerunners would
render it reasonably safe to infer that LI is more closely
related to the antecedent text which contains that test sentence
(i. e., to Lc) than to the one which does not contain
it. Still the evidence is far from conclusive, and in
many important variants Lv is closer to LI and Lc than
any of the other early texts. As to the other manuscripts
of thi;s group which are roughly contemporary with Li or
only a little posterior, I incline to think that Lj, Lh, Ed,
and Lk are more or less free copies of LI (Lj being especially
free), and that Lg and Lf derive rather from Lv than
from Ll.
In view of the enormous and apparently immediate popularity
of the Legenda Aurea, most of the manuscripts of
the Judas legend which resemble the version adopted by
Jacopo and which postdate his work are a priori likely to
be copies from the great legendary; but this a priori probability
should not blind us to the fact that a separate version
of the story, Type T1, giving essentially the same matter
in different language, not only existed by the side of
the Legenda Aurea version, but actually, as it seems from
the number of manuscripts in which it is found, rivalled it
in frequency of repetition. And it must be remembered in
such an estimate of popularity that one manuscript of the
500
TIIE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Type R version greatly more than outweighs one manuscript
of the Type L version, simply because the latter had
the added advantage of the popularity of the whole Legenda
Aurea behind it, whereas the Type R version had
to go on its own merits. That the legend should exist in
these two so similar forms in such a large number of manuscripts
is important evidence of the hold it took on the
mediaeval mind.
TYPE H. Type H is the longest and most elaborate
version of the Judas legend. It is represented by three
manuscripts two of which (Hr and Hb) are of the thirteenth
century, and one (Hd) of the fourteenth. All
three were written in the north-east of France. Hr was
published in extenso by Professor Rand, who knew only
the one manuscript.18 Since the manuscript (Hr), says
Professor Rand, "contains, besides exempla moralia,
?Esopic fables and Sibylline prophecies, a very extensive
collection of the poems of Hildebert, Marbod, and Bernard
Sylvester, we may possibly look for the source of this
paganized story in the circle of these humanists of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries." 19
I give the version here entire, because by collating Hb
with Hr (as printed by Professor Rand) it has been possible
to improve the readings of a few difficult passages.
I am unable at present to give the variants of Hd except
for the first two paragraphs; the general character of the
text will appear, however, from this partial collation.
Pater Iude Scarioht de tribu Dan duxit uxorem generis sui
secundum legis preceptum. Qui ingressus ad earn impregnavit
ear. Ipsa autem nocte vidit mulier presagium malorum in
sompno, videlicet presagium malorum suorum. Videbat ignem
1 Jude symonis scariothis talis ortus, talis uite prouectus, talis
fuit exitus. Pater eius de tribu dan. .. b.-2 legis om. b.-3 pres
Rand, pp. 308-12. 1 Rand, p. 315.
5,01
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
5 de utero suo egredientem qui paulatim crescens primo maritum
suum corripuit eumque penitus consumens donec in favillam
deficeret post paululum domum eius in qua iacebat conflagrabat.
Qua consumpta prodigiosum monstrum in eosdem ortus hoc est
in utero suo, mater agnovit. Ignis vero non totum se recondebat
10 sed interiecto longi temporis spacio inde iterum quasi moderacius
se subducebat et subito in altum excrescens primo Iudeam et
Galileam deinde omnem circa regionem afflabat et penitus concremabat;
ad ultimum urbem regiam David Iherusalem et arcem
Syon una cum sancto et venerabili templo corripiebat et omnia
15 in cinerem et favillam redigens concremabat. Ita mulier in
medio visu subito exterrita evigilavit et ingenti clamore et
gemitu horrorem visionis sue testata maritum excitavit; querenti
quid esset, quid haberet, quid clamaret, quid fleret, visa
sua exposuit. Ille prodigioso sompno attonitus diluculo sur-
20 rexit et cum uxore in Iherusalem abiit (erat enim in vico
Scarioth qui est ante Iherusalem ad aquilonarem urbis plagam
unus de sacerdotibus Domini magni vir meriti) venitque ad
eum cum uxore sua seorsumque abducens prodigialem illius
visionem ei indicavit. Qua ille audita visione permotus inge-
25 muit diuque stupens et quasi mutus tandem in hanc prophecie
vocem ora resolvit.
" Ha! mulier misera, filius quem concepisti magni doloris
causa erit tibi, patri autem prius, deinde omni Iudeorum genti
et regioni et sancte urbi et templo sempiternus interitus. Sed
30 placate Deum precibus penitentia votis et muneribus ut avertat
Dominus iram sue indignationis a vobis."
Hec dixit et tristes ac metu magno consternatos eos dimisit.
sagium . . . suorum] sompnium presag. mal. suorum b; sompno
presag. mal. suorum d.-6 consumens] consumpsit d.-7 domum]
domum quoque b.-8 prodigiosum] prodigioso b.-9 mater . .
vero] om. b. Non] nec tamen b. Se recondebat] terrendum dabat r.
Se] sese b.-10 sed] nec b. Inde iterum om d.-13 urbem regiam]
reg. urb. b. David Iher. om. b. Arcem] archem b.-15 redigens
concremabat] concremans redigebat b, d.-17 maritum] maritum
suum b.-18 quid haberet] quod hab. r. Quid fleret om. d.-20 in
om. d.-21 Scarioth] Scarioht r. Urbis] urbem d.-22 unus] unum
b. vir] Rand; uiri r; uirum b. Venitque] conuenit b. Ad eum
cum] cumque b.-23 -que om. b. Abducens om. d.-24 visione om. b.
-25 mutus] mutus herens b.-27 Ha] ahc b. Mulier misera] misera
misera mulier b. Filius] filium r.-28 autem] autem suo b. Prius]
post d.-30 penitentia] penitencia r et sic frequenter. Votis om. d.-31
Dom.... a vobis] a vobis deus ir. s. indig. b; a vobis ir. indig. s. d.-
502
THE MEDI1EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Evoluto autem tempore quo conceperat mulier peperit puerum
satis quidem scitum sed in suam et multorum perniciem natum.
35 Vnde anxii pro visione et sui vatis divinatione decreverunt eum
statim necare et parricidas se sui sanguinis esse. Sed non est
possibilitatis humane convertere consilium ordinationis divine.
Ille de quo postea passivus pro salute mundi dixit Filius Dei,
"Melius illi erat si natus non fuisset homo ille," cum natus
40 statim debuit occidi, reservatus est in perdicionem sui, in traditionem
Domini Ihesu Christi, in nutrimentum ignis eterni, in
memoriam patrum suorum, et in recordacionem peccati misere
matris sue. Pugnaverunt diu affectus pietatis et timor patrie;
et voluit diu pater pius esse. Noluit ipse prius nocens esse
45 interficiendo eum quem nondum noverat aliquid quod morte
puniri deberet commisisse. Porro autem pie sollicitabatur pro
salute patrie mallens unum innocentem adhuc et filium suum
suis maioribus interire quam per illum succedenti tempore
tocius patrie ruinam videre. Vicit tandem amor patrie utros-
50 que parentes clausumque in cistella lignea puerum superata pietate
proiecerunt in mare. Inhorruisse ferunt pelagus mox ut
sensit prodigiale onus, totiusque fluctibus frementes torsisse
vertices et futurum sui conditoris venditorem tortis impulisse
fluctibus ut et futurum latronem dissecaret et collideret suis
55 molibus et occultaret profundis gurgitibus priusquam venditor
audax horrendum seclis omnibus perpetraret facinus. Miser
Iuda et infelicissime, quo tuo vel tuorum parentum crimine
contigit tibi tot tantisque malis natum esse? Cur misera illa
mater tua cum te concepit non statim abortivit? Cur autem
60 natus? Cur exceptus genibus? Cur lactatus uberibus? Cur
natus non statim es paternis et maternis manibus necatus?
Esset certe modo tibi melius; parricidale autem crimen fuisset
32 hec om. b. Hec dixit om. d.-33 quo] quod b.-34 quidem om. b.
-35 pro visione] p(ro) visionem r; propter visionem Rand. Divi.
natione] divinationem r.-36 parricidas] p (er) ricidas r; parricide
b.-38 passivus om. b.-40 statim debuit] deb. stat. b. Est om. b.
-41 Ihesu om. b. In (ante nutrim.) om. r, b.-42 peccati] precati
r; pcti b.-43 pietatis] pietasque b. Timor] timor (?) r; amor Rand.
-44 et voluit] noluit r.-45 nondum] nudu 5.-47 mallens] malu
b.-48 succedenti] accedenti b.-49 tocius] pocius r.-50 parentes]
paventes r.-52 onus] honus r. -que om. r.-54 ut et] Rand; et ut
r; et om. b. Futurum] auarum b.-55 molibus] motibus b.-57
tuorum parentum] par. tuorum b. Crimine contigit] contigitur
crimine b.-58 Tibi om. b.-59 concepit] cepit r.-60 cur... necatus
om. r.-62 modo tibi] tibi modo b. Parricidale autem] parricida/
10
503
504 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
tuis miseris parentibus tuo crimine venialius. Cur autem vel
in mare proiectus non statim es mersus et a tanto abysso suf-
65 focatus? Esset tibi vel mare vel aliquis beluinus venter sepulchrum
nec postea celo terreque perosus tam infelici morte perisses
inter utrumque. Sed cum mori poteras adhuc sine crimine,
pepercit tibi inter fluctus nescio quis deus, quamvis ether,
venti et pelagus ut perires totis pugnabat viribus. Incertum
70 est, inquam, quis deus hoc discrimine te eripuit; et elementa
dum te laborant obruere, visa sunt pocius obsequium tibi prestitisse.
Actus enim tot fluctibus fertur unius diei et noctis
spacio, ab Ioppe civitate Galilee transvectus per tot maria
usque ad horam Illirici maris usque Bitradum et ad introitum
75 pervenit, ad hanc famosam alitricem Iude traditoris. Vbi mane
piscator quidam egressus sagenam suam in mare misit, quam
vacuam quidem piscibus sed oneratam cistella Iude ad littus
adduxit. Quam acceptam mox ad uxorem suam attulit dicensque
magnum thesaurum invenisse qui inopiam sublevaret gratu-
80 labundus ostendit. Sed effracta cistella et detecta spes expectati
thesauri nulla fuit. Nihil enim in cistella aliud invenerunt
nisi puerum vaginentem et membranam parvulam hec verba
continentem: Hic infantulus est Iudas de vico Scarioth qui est
ante Iherusalem.
85 Mulier, mota visceribus humanitatis, "Maiorem," inquit ad
maritum, " expectato nostro dii nobis dederunt thesaurum, hunc
tam elegantis forme puerum, quem quia non habemus proprium
hunc adoptivum habebimus in filium." Hec dixit, et marito
facile in id ipsum consenciente puerum de cistella exposuit, et
90 nesciens quam magnum malum aleret in perdicionem sui et
multorum eum nutrivit. Qui postquam adolevit Grecorum
rit autem r; parricidari; tantum Rand.-63 venialius] venalius r.
-64 tanto] tanta b.-65 aliquis] aquis b.-69 et pelagus] pelagusque
b.-71 tibi om. r.-73 ab Ioppe civitate] ad Ioppem civitatem
b. Galilee] galylee b.-74 usque Bitradum et ad introitum pervenit]
qua byt?cum civitatem cepit aluit b.-75 ad hanc] Rand;
adhuc r, b.-mane] mare r.-76 egressus] ingressus r.-77 oneratam]
honeratam r. Cistella] cistellam r.-78 dicensque] quod b.-79
thesaurum] tessaurum r. Invenisse] invenisset b. Inopiam] eos
inopia r.-80 cistella et detecta] et det. cis. b. Expectati] expectata
b.-81 Nihil] nichil b.-82 verba om. r.-83 Scarioth] scarioht
r.-S5 ad mar. exp. nos.] exp. nos. ad mar. b.-86 dii] di(i)s?
r. thesaurum] tesaurum r.-87 tam om. r. Quem] qui b.-88
Adoptivum] adotivum r. In filium] proprium r. Hec om. b. Et om.
r.--90 magnum om. b.-91 Grecorum om. b.-92 erat om. b.-94
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 505
disciplinis et studiis se exercitando cito perfecit. Erat acer
corpore et ingenio animi. Factum est autem ut consuetudinaria
institutione decreto principum Bithordi quinquennalis
95 agon in honore Iovis Olimpiadi celebraretur, ubi cum urbibus,
vicis, castellis, oppidis agrisque studium ostendende virtutis
et cupido laudis et spes palme multos alliceret. Iudasque affuit
inter alios et super ceteros agonistas clarissimus victor
emicuit. Quod aliqui invidentes et indigne ferentes cum cap-
100 tivus et advena indigenis et nobilibus civibus se comparare
auderet, cum gravi opprobrio ei obiciunt eumque de agonali
ludo non sine iniuria expellunt. Ille gravi ira permotus ad
matrem, quem adhuc credebat suam, furibundus venit, exertoque
in ear nimis ferociter gladio, quis ipse aut unde aut
105 cuius filius esset aut quomodo illuc venisset aut cur tanto
tempore matrem eius se mentita fuisset, ear fateri coegit. Illa
unde aut quando illus venisset aut quomodo a marito suo piscatore
inventus, quomodo ab illa nutritus quod adoptivus filius
esset ei indicavit. Ceterum quis aut cuius filius esset, quomodo
110 etiam illuc venisset se nescire respondit, simul et cartulam cum
illo in cistella inventam ei protulit. "Et si tantus amor est,"
ait, "tibi te ipsum cognoscendi, scis patriam nomenque tuum.?
Inquire gentem et genus tuum et quomodo veneris huc." Ille
his auditis attonitus iram tunc quidem compressit, tempus vero
115 opportunum nactus Bitrodum quasi Andropolim iturus reliquit.
Inde navim conscendens in Syriam proficiscentem paucis post
diebus in Ioppen portu expositus ad urbem Iherusalem pervenit.
Erat eo tempore in Iherusalem Poncius Pylatus procurator
rerum publicarum a Romanis in Iudeam missus. Ei
Bithordi] bithor r; bithroci b.-95 Olimpiadi] Olipiadi r; Olipiadis
Rand. ubi cum] et ubique de Rand.-96 castel.] et castel. b.
Ostendende] ostend (er) e r.-97 -que] quoque b. Affuit inter alios] inter
alios affuit b.-98 et] et inter et b.-99 cum] Rand; cui(?) r;
cur b.-101 opprobrio ei obviciunt] probro ei obiciunt b; opp.
ebiciu(n)t ei r; opp. conviciantur ei Rand.-103 Exertoque] exc(ri?)
toque r; exsertoque Rand.-105 Cur] cui(?) r. Tanto om. b.-106
Mentita] mentitam r.-108 Quod] q (ui) r; quod Rand.-113 et genus]
genusque b.-114 his] hiis r. Quidem compressit] comp. quidem b.-
115 Bitrodum] bithrotum b.-116 conscendens . . . proficiscentem]
syriam proficiscens conscende(re)n b. In] Rand; eu(m) r; om. b-
118 eo tempore in Iher.] Iher. eo tempore b.-119 Iudeam] Iudea r.-
0 Cf. Virgil, Aen. ii, 10, " Sed si tantus amor casus cognoscere nostros,"
etc., and note also the dactylic rhythm at the end of the
sentence. Rand, p. 310, n. 10.
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
120 Iudas officiosissime deserviendo adhesit, nihil de gente et cognatione
sua fortunisque suis cuiquam locutus pro officio suo brevi
tam presidi quam clientibus eius fuit carus. Accidit autem
quadam die ut Pylatus deambularet per solarium domus in qua
manebat. Aspiciens vicum Scarioth vidit in orto unius pau-
125 peris dactilos in palma pendere et desideravit ex eis comedere.
Vocansque unum ex astantibus misit et de fructu sibi afferre
iussit. Ille abiit, sed prohibente domino pomerii carpere suos
fructus, inanis ad presidem rediit. Ille ita commotus, " Et
quis," ait, "adhuc ibit pro nobis? " " Ego," Iudas et abiit.
130 Erat autem ortus ille Symonis qui erat pater Iude. Irruens
Iudas cum furore palmam excussit, deinde quos excusserat
fructus collegit. Et conversus contumax turbatis oculis in
patrem suum (nesciebat autem quod pater suus esset),
" Cur
non" inquit, "o decrepite senex et me repellis? Cur non
135 et mihi contradictis?" "Et rogasse quam rapuisse equius
fuerat," senex respondit, "et depone quod meum est. Depone,
inquam, quod meum est," ingeminavit et quod collegerat de
palla illi excussit. Iudas ut leo frendens nil id tale promeritum
senem patrem suum fuste percussit diminutoque eius
140 cerebro morientem et suam ulcionem deo clamantem dimisit et
recollectos fructus paterno sanguine respersus presidi attulit.
Audita morte innocentis fit de tota urbe concursus, oritur gravis
sedicio et furentis populi confusa vociferacio illis clamantibus,
"Homicida exhibeatur," aliis autem succinentibus eciam,
145 "Et preses cum sua domo ignibus subiciatur." Preses cogitans
esse optimum ad evitandam tali tempore seditionem, viros
sapientes et discretos mittit ad populum, quam sedicionem temere
inceptam illis mediantibus facile compescuit. Accitaque
muliere cuius erat maritus occisus, consilio seniorum et per-
124 aspiciens] aspiciensque b. Scarioth] scarioht. r.-126 fructul
fructu illo b.-127 ille] ille servus r. Carpere] capere r.-129 adhuc]
adhuc semel b. Pro om. b. Iudas] Iudas ait b.-130 irruens]
irruensque b.-131 quos] quod r.-132 contumax] minax b.
Turbatis oculis om. b.-133 quod] qui (?) r; quia Rand. Cur]
cui( ?) r. Cur non . . . repellis] cur . .. non repellis r.-134 o om. b.
-136 fuerat] fuit b.-138 palla] pallio b.-140 suam] in suam b.
Deo] deum b.-141 sanguine] sanguitie (?) r. Respersus] respersit
b.-144 exhibiatur] exibiatur r. Autem om. b.-145 sua] suis b.
-145-148 Preces . . . compescuiti proces ratuus optimum in tali
tempore sedicionem conponendam esse sapientes et discretos uiros ad
populum mittit; habitaque per eos contione ad turbam temere ceptam
seditionem facile compescuit b.-148 Accitaque] acceptaque b.-149
506
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 507
150 suasu amicorum suorum factum est ut ludas earn in uxorem
duceret rediretque per hoc in eius gratiam cuius maritum nullis
premissis inimiciciis sed ira precipitante occiderat. Ne
quod ergo nephas intactum, ne quod scelus illi esset inausum,
fit impius parricida matris maritus; et ut omnino veritas
155 attestaretur sompnio, in suos ortus monstrum revolvitur. Sed
nichil tam occultum quod non reveletur neque absconditum quod
non sciatur.21 Parum temporis fiuxerat et una nocte mulier
illa misera inter amplexus mariti sed filii recordata eius quam
aliquando viderat visionis suspirare graviter cepit et modo
160 ad memoriam revocando filium parvulum in mare mersus modo
autem maritum ab eo quem habebat interfectum cepit abhorrere
tales nupcias. Cepit detestari sua tempora in que nimirum
infeliciter vivendo pervenerat. Iudas tacito auscultans uxorem
et eandem suam matrem cepit diligenter ab ea scrutari et
165 querere textum huius tragedie. At vero postquam omnia audivit
seque et ex visione matris et ex litteris secum in cistella
inventis recognovit detestatus patris parricidium, obscenum
matris adulterium, "Et que crudelis fortuna me miserum persequitur?"
dixit, " Et quis erit modus mei sceleris? Si par-
170 ricida patris, si adulter futurus eram matris, nonne melius
fuerat adhuc latuisse sub undis? Nonne melius fuerat opprobria
nobilis Grecie pertulisse quam tam infami crimine me
ipsum perdidisse?" Sic ait et amens exsiliit stratis exertoque
gladio, " Hic certe," dixit, " iugulus piabit et adulterium matris
175 et mortem patris et crimen non iam filii sed parricide," et
verso in suis visceribus mucrone incumbere voluit. Sed misera
mater eadem obscena uxor librantis dextre ictum sustinuit.
Correpta itaque temeraria ira filii mariti et amentia ut tandem
persuasu om. r.-150 factum est] efficit b.-152 precipitante] preoccupata
b.-153 quod (ante ergo)] q(ui) r; quid Rand. quod (ante
scelus) ] quam r; quid Rand.-154 impius] ipsius r.-155 monstrum]
Rand; monstro r, b.-157 et] quam r.-159 aliquando
visionis] aliquam visionem b.-161 interfectum] interfectorem r.
Abhorrere] aborrere b.-163 tacito] tacitus b.-165 tragedie] t(ra)-
gredie b. Vero om. b.-166 in cistella inventis] inv. in cistella b.-167
obscenum om. b.-169 mei] miseri r.-170 melius] tucius b.-171
opprobria] obprobria b.-173 amens] mox b.-174 dixit] inquit
b.-175 parricide] parricide et adultrius mariti b.-177 eadem]
eademque b.-178 correpta] correcta r. Itaque] atque b. amentia]
n Cf. "Nihil autem opertum est quod non reveletur; neque absconditum
quod non sciatur." Lk. 12, 2. (Cf. also Mt. 10, 26; Mk. 4,
22; Lk. 8, 17).
PAJLTL FRANKLIN BAUM
ille in hominem rediit, consulit et persuadet ut ambo communi-
180 ter eant ad sacerdotum illum cui ipsa aliquando visionem
suam retulerat, quique ex magna parte quod iam evenerat divinaverat.
Eunt igitur ambo et fusis genibus omnia que sibi evenerant
seriatim indicant. Quid faciant quomodo hec crimina
expient orant cum lacrimis ut sibi consulat. Ille attonitus
185 rerum novitate et sui vaticinii veritate nullum super hac re
consilium in se esse dixit. Tamen consulit ut Iesum magni
iam nominis et meriti virum adeant et ut ei suarum miserarum
tragedias narrent, eius super tantis malis et peccatis consilium
et auxilium postulent, eius pietati et misericordie se commen-
190 dent. Erat enim iam illo tempore Dominus Iesus miraculorum
potentia clarus, tamque doctrina et predicatione divina quam
signorum mirabilium attestatione credebatur a fidelibus plus
quam homo inter homines esse. Illum Iudas cum matre uxoreque
adiit affususque pedibus eius criminis sui omnem his-
195 toriam ei detexit, veri etiam penitentis habitum, luctum et
lacrimas pretendit. Dominus autem Iesus intuitus hominem
et quod noverat ab initio qui essent credentes, sciens quam
longe esset a regno Dei, tamen ne desperatione salutis cogeretur
amplius periclitari, "Potes," inquit, "adhuc salvus fieri si
200 digne penitueris, sed et hec et cetera peccata deinceps vitaveris
nec etiam ad maiora te inclinaveris, et ut omnis occasio peccandi
ulterius tibi tollatur, reiectis omnibus impedimentis et
secularibus negociis sequere me meque imitando in veritate
vitam eternam habere poteris."
Hb is conflate. The artistically effective if somewhat
pious ending of Ilr (and Hi,d) did not, it seems, satisfy
the scribe of Hb. Being of those who wish to hear explicitly
the end of the story, he borrowed, practically word
for word, the simple closing sentences of the Type R version:
"Saluatoris igitur nostri Ihesu Christi per quem
.... medius crepuit." This fact is of no special signifiamencia
b.-179 consulit] consuluit b.-181 ex magna parte quod]
quod ex magna parte b. Divinaverat] eis div. b.-182 Ambo et] et
ambo b. Fusis genibus] affusi genibus illius b. Evenerant] pervenerant
b.-185 hac re] habere r.-187 et (ante ut) om. b.-188 tragedias]
tragredias b. Eius om. r.-191 -que] quam r.-193 uxoreque]
eadem uxore b.-194 historiam] hystoriam b.-197 quod] quia b.
Initio]inicio r.-198 salutis om. r.-199 salvus] salvum r.-200 sed
et] et si b.-202 reiectis] relictis b.
508
THE MEDILEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
cance except as showing that the two versions (Type R
and Type H) existed side by side, not only, that is, at
the same time but in the same place; so that one was used
to supplement the other.
The variants of Hr and Hb throw some light on the
history of this version. The very different readings of
the sentence beginning " qua consumpta " (1. 8) prove that
the version had already had a considerable career when our
manuscripts were written. The text of the original was
probably: "Qua consumpta prodigiosum monstrum in
eosdem ortus, hoc est in utero suo, mater agnovit; ignis
uero non totum se recondebat, sed interiecto longi temporis
spacio inde iterum quasi moderacius se subducebat";
that is, "after it [the house] was consumed, the mother
perceived the monstrum [had reentered] in that place,
namely, her womb; and yet the fire had not altogether
withdrawn, but after some time again retired, with rather
less violence." This is not perfectly smooth, but one does
not expect Tullian perfection of a thirteenth-century monk.
The writing of the original, or of the copy (or copies)
which the scribes of Hr, Hb, and Hd may have used, was
perhaps none too careful and distinct. For "se recondebat"
r miswrote "terrendum dabat," which is meaningless;
and b, omitting the three words "mater agnovit;
ignis," wrote "nec tamen " for "uero non." Both misreadings
were easy to make; but in both cases the result
was not satisfactory.22 Somewhat simpler is the passage
"usque ad horam Illirici maris . . ." (1. 74). If r preserves
the reading of the original (and there is no reason
a2 It is possible that the original read: " prod. mon. in eosd. ortus,
hoc est in ut. suo, nec tamen totum se recond. .. ." that is, "the
monstrum returned to that place, her womb, and yet not entirely;
but after some time withdrew thence with rather less violence." In
this case "mater agnovit; ignis " was an attempt on the part of r
to emend a difficult text; and he did not wholly succeed.
509
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
to suspect otherwise), and if b was a copy of the original,
it is extremely difficult to see how b could have gone so far
astray. It is possible, to be sure, that the original had
something illegible, which r emended successfully, and
which b did not; but one would rather postulate between
b and the original an intermediate text in which the passage
was somewhat corrupt.
At all events, it is clear that b is not a copy of r, nor r
a copy of b; that the manuscripts of Type H had a somewhat
complicated history; and that this complexity points
to the existence of more and earlier manuscripts than have
so far been found.
TYPE P. There are two poetical, or metrical, versions
of the legend, each found in two manuscripts. The oldest
of the four versions, Pi, in a Munich codex of the thirteenth
century, was published by Mone in 1838. Py contains
the same poem.23 The point of interest in this connexion
is that the life of Judas was celebrated in verse as
early as the thirteenth century. Du MIeril believed that
Pi was composed directly from the Legenda Aurea, and
Creizenach states simply that Du Meril has proved this.
While no earlier text than LI was known this might well
have been considered as self-evident from a comparison
"A. D'Ancona, La leggenda di Vergogna e la leggenda di Giuda,
Bologna, 1869, Introd., p. 93, confused Pi and Py. Cf. also Du Meril,
Poesies populaires latines du moyen-dge, Paris, 1847, pp. 326 ff.,
where the poem is reprinted. Creizenach, Judas Ischarioth in Legende
und Sage des Mittelal,ters (Beitr. z. Gesch. d. deutschen
Sprache u. Lit., II, 2 (1875), pp. 177-207), p. 193, said of this poem:
"in vielen handschriften erhalten, woriiber cf. Du M6ril 1. c. p. 325"
-which is hardly true. Constans (La lhgende d'(Edipe, Paris, 1881)
copied, as regularly, from D'Ancona and Du Meril. Professor Rand,
overlooking the thirteenth-century manuscript, said of Pz (which
postdates even Py) "finally the story was told in verse" (p. 316,
and n. 4).
510
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 511
of the poem with LI; but in the light of later evidence it
is not so certain. Whether Pi derived from LI, however,
or from an earlier manuscript of Type L is of no importance.
It appears fairly clear that the author of Pi
had some early manuscript of Type R under his eyes, and
probably even of Type H. Compare, for example, vv.
15-19:
Res ea finitur solito, postremo venitur
ad sompnum laete, foverunt membra quiete
pausant. interea videt in sompnis Cyborea
acriter ardentem faculam de se venientem,
quae surgens omni flammas immiteret orbi.
V. 16 suggests the "dum membra sompni fouerat quiete
sompnium uidit" of Type R. But the idea of the last
two verses surely appears to be taken from the opening of
Type H-there is, at any rate, no parallel to it in Type
L or Type R. Again, "praevalet inpietas pietati" (v.
67) is closer to " seponitur pietas, preponderat impietas"
of Type R than to anything in Type L. Compare, finally,
Tandem vimineae puer inmissus Cyboreae
apte viscellae fluctus datur inde procellae,
with " Cistella uimine contexitur," etc., of Type R. Viscella
agrees with Type L, which has fiscella, while Type
R has cistella, but the two words could be easily confused
in manuscript if not very carefully written; but, on the
other hand, vimina and procella seem to be borrowed from
Type R. Verbal correspondences with the Type L version
are frequent throughout, and the story is essentially
the same. The similarity to Type H in vv. 18-19 may well
be coincidence; yet it is probable that in setting to work
the poet would gather together what materials he could
find; and, since the Type H version is early enough to
have been accessible to him, he might naturally have
adopted such an embellishment of his narrative, at the
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
same time rejecting the rest as inharmonious with the
traditional, 'accepted' life of Judas. However that may
be, the case for the familiarity of the author of Pi with
some manuscript of Type R seems to me pretty strong.
The other poetical version is found in two manuscripts
of the fifteenth century, Pz and Px. The poet was a man
of some individuality, and his proem is worth quoting:
Cunctorum veterum placuere poemata multum,
Nunc nova scribentem plebs irridet quasi stultum,
Divicie modulis musarum prevaluere,
Nemo placet populis, nisi quisquis habundat in ere.
Unde satis vereor, iam cum nova metra propino,
Invidus irrisor me mordeat ore canino.
Una tamen vires scripture res mihi prestat,
Quod sanctos eciam reproborum lingua molestat:
Jeronimus pater egregius triplex ydeoma
Noverat et nobis doctrine misit aroma;
Non timuit livor huic obvius ire magistro,
Latratu lacerans illius scripta sinistro.
Talibus exemplis firmatus, carbasa ventis
Exponam. Faveat mihi virtus omnipotentis!
Rem referam gestam, que non est cognita multis.
Obsecro vos, socii, carmen qui discere vultis,
Quod, si pars operis vobis non vera videtur,
Non mea sed primi culpa scriptoris habetur.
Non ego materiam nugaci pectore fingo,
Sed mihi narratam puerili carmine pingo.
Thus after a brave beginning the poet proceeds with his
tale in a language which some centuries later would be
termed 'poetic diction,' adding a large gnomic element,
and drawing freely for images from earlier literature. In
other words, a modern poet (of the fifteenth century)
taking his matter from modern times will challenge the
ancients in their own language-an Ovid (say) brought
down to date. At line 148 Judas is made one of Jesus's
disciples, but the poet goes on for more than a hundred
lines, alternating Biblical and purely 'poetical' materials.
512
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
In one line at least, however, he caught the true afflatus;
of Judas in the Garden of Gethsemane he says:
Basia blanda ferens habitum pretendit amici.
The poet's debt to the Legenda Aurea is put beyond
question by his paraphrase in the same heavy, mannered
fashion of the moral reflections on the death of Judas that
close Jacopo's version. Now this heroic endeavor to hoist
the legend of Judas into the realm of poetry is a pretty
sad failure. The poet had a great deal against him and
very little on his side. But it is intensely interesting to
see on the one hand how the legend made a considerable
appeal to a man of poetic aspirations, and on the other
that down to the very end of the mediaeval period, when
Latin as a literary language had made almost its last
stand, the feeling still maintained itself that a revival of
the old tongue as a medium for the highest expression of
the new life was possible and desirable. This version is
perhaps from the point of view of pure literature the
apogee reached by the legend of Judas.
TYPE M (Miscellaneous). For various reasons the following
manuscripts cannot be included in any of the above
categories.
Mw contains a prose rendering of the legend which,
while it is essentially the same story as Type RL, offers
certain unimportant divergencies, and is textually quite
different. It begins " In ciuitate Iherusalem erat uir
nomine ruben." The baby was set adrift " in visellum"
lined "eum bithimia," and accompanied with "pannos
syndomitas" and a card (linea) bearing his name. The
story continues as in Type RL: Judas maltreats his brother
" usque ad effusionem sanguinis " (he ran the brother
through with a sword one day), and upon his origin be-
513
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
coming known, the principes not wishing to kill him
sent him off to Pilate. He killed his father; the cognati
entered a complaint; Pilate forced the woman to marry
her husband's slayer; finally, in the same fashion as in
Type RL, the incest was revealed and Judas sought
Christ's mercy. Following the legend, however, which occupies
three columns, are four columns of Biblical matter,
a very much larger proportion than in any of the
redactions hitherto mentioned. Perhaps the apocryphal
part was meant to lure the reader on to something more
devout and substantial, although there is apparently no
explicit moral; or possibly this was intended as a complete
comprehensive account of all that was known in
connexion with Judas.24
Another fifteenth-century version, Mh, doubtless follows
the usual tradition. It begins: " Legitur de ortu Iude
filii symeonis scariothis qui tradiderat Christum pro
xxx' argenteos. Quod mater eius sompnium haberat de
eo. . . p 25
A peculiar and doubtless wilful perversion of the legend
appears in a Jesus College, Cambridge, manuscript (no.
46 Q. D. 4, fol. 136) in fifteenth-century writing.26 After
the story of the Cross follows a short account of Judas's
treachery, and then the usual story of Judas and the
Cock.27 As soon as Judas has returned the pieces of
silver he departs and hangs himself. " Sicut pater suus,"
24 For my knowledge of this Ms. I am indebted to notes kindly lent
me by Professor Rand.
25 For my knowledge of this version I am indebted to a note from
Professor von Dobschiitz.
a James, Descriptive Catalogue etc., 1895, pp. 75 f.
"This story appears first in thd Acta Pilati, rec. B; see Tischendorf,
Evangelia Apocrypha, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1876, p. 290. It is still
current in various parts of Europe.
514
THE MEDILEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
continues the scribe of MS. 46, "antequam ipsum procreauit
diuinauit. Erat enim pater eius astrologus qui
eadem nocte in qua genitus fuerat ludas respexit planetas
et uidit et ita intimauit uxori sue quod siquis eadem hora
noctis generaret filium quod ille filius patrem proprium
oceideret et dominum suum detraheret et se ultimo laqueo
suspenderet. Quod factum est sicut prophetauit. Nam
statim pater predicti infelicis Iude accessit ad uxorem
suam nec se potuit abstinere et filium iniquitatis procreauit.
Qui patrem proprium submersit dominum fefellit
laqueo se suspendit et sic patet eius origo et eius ffinis."
SUMMARY. We may now briefly review and summarize
the material thus far presented. We have at least one
version of the legend, Type A, which is undoubtedly of
the twelfth century. If, as we commonly suppose, the
original purpose of the legend was to render as black and
repulsive as possible the man who had been the immediate
cause of the death of Jesus, then we must take for granted
the passage of some time between the first appearance of
the story and the composition of Type A. The twelfthcentury
author of this version could hardly have been the
originator of the legend, for it is neither natural nor probable
that one would invent such a horrible 'life ' for Judas
and then treat him with the longsuffering patience manifest
in this narrative-" qui perseveraverit usque in finem
in bonum, hic salvus erit." We must, therefore, certainly
push back the date of the origin of the legend to a period
somewhat before the end of the twelfth century.
The existence of two closely parallel versions in the thirteenth
century is significant. The greatest popularity
seems to have been towards the close of the thirteenth and
the opening of the fourteenth century; and one might
surmise that the incorporation of the legend in Jacopo da
515
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
Voragine's collection gave it at that time a fresh impetus,
and that more copies were made to meet a larger demand.
Moreover, three distinct versions of the legend existed
side by side; and four or more different forms of the story
are distinguishable. Of Type A only one text has survived.
The Type RL version lasted from somewhere in the twelfth
century until well into the fifteenth. For Type H we
have two thirteenth-century and one fourteenth-century
texts. The first type stands in most regards quite alone;
the second and third are intimately related; the fourth is
a special rendering, in certain ways related to the first.
It is unnecessary to point out the verbal agreements
between Type EP and Type L: they are so frequent that
a relationship between the two versions is undeniable.
Whichever is the earlier, the other must have copied from
it;-or perhaps, as Professor Rand thinks, both derived
from the same antecedent version. From the slight evidence
which we can piece together it is impossible to draw
any demonstrable conclusion, but I incline to the opinion
that Type L is a development from Type R. The origin
of the latter can safely be put in the twelfth century, that
of the former we have no means of dating before the early
thirteenth century; and while such an argument is not
conclusive, it is the best available now. In view of the
so-called canonization of Type L in the Legenda Aurea,
it might be expected to throw Type R quite into shadow;
but Type R was thought worthy of reproduction two whole
centuries after the compilation of the Legenda Aurea, and
in point of popularity was a formidable rival of Type L
throughout the thirteenth century. A reason for this
might be the priority of Type R: the story of Judas was
well known before its inclusion in the Legenda Aurea and
known in another earlier form than that chosen by Jacopo,
and the popularity of this earlier form persisted. The
516
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
complicated history of the manuscripts of Type R lends
some support to this suggestion. And this earlier popularity
of Type R slightly strengthens the hypothesis of its
being the source of Type L; for some good clerk, observing
the faults of the old version-and they are obvious enough
-may have undertaken to revise and improve it. Like
the majority of revisers, he brought with him as many
imperfections as he took away. The rather formal opening:
" in diebus Herodis regis Pylato preside" gave way,
on this hypothesis, to the simple "fuit quidam vir." The
relation of Ciborea's dream and of Reuben's multimodae
curae (with its " touch of an Ovidian suasoria ") were condensed
by the new editor. The Type R version omitted
to inform the reader at once that the garden into which
Judas went for the apples belonged to his father. This
rather unskilful omission was remedied by the author
of Type L; and then, in order to avoid any possible doubt,
he added that father and son did not recognize each other.
Ciborea's lament he expanded, and elaborated the revelation
of the sacrilege. In removing Pilate's dragged-in
philosophical observation (borrowed from Lucan) when he
could not overcome his passion for his neighbor's apples,
the author of Type L effected a genuine improvement.
The pedissequae, who figure rather prominently in Type
R, were reduced to a prefix in precepit. But the crowning
achievement of the redactor was the introduction of the
moralizing on Judas's death. This, splendidly medieval
in spirit, he perhaps borrowed, or rather developed, from
a passage of Candidus (ca. 822) in his De passione Domince,
13 28): "JEt abiens, inquit, laqueo se suspendit.
Non enim dignus erat ut vel ccelum tangeret moriens, vel
terrai; sed inter utraque periit, qui utrorumque Domi-
"8 M. S. L. 106, 84.
517
PAUTLL FRANKLIN BAUM
num ad mortem tradidit." Or he is perhaps more likely
to have adapted it from a similar passage in the Historia
Scholastica of Petrus Comestor.29
But whether Type L was originally a 'revision' of
Type R, or both came from a single earlier version, it is
clear that the greater the complication of details the more
time was necessary to bring about such a state, and inasmuch
as we find one version before the end of the twelfth
century, and two flourishing side by side (three, counting
Type H) by the end of the thirteenth century, and obviously
earlier than these a simpler, rather different version,
we are justified in believing that the legend of Judas
existed in Latin at least as early as some time in the second
half of the twelfth century.
The importance of Type H as evidence not so much of
the date as of the development of the legend is considerable.
The main difference between this version and the
legend as it appears in Type RL Professor Rand believes
9" Et suspensus crepuit medius. 'Et diffusa sunt viscera ejus'
sed non per os ejus, ut sic parceretur ori, quo Salvatorem osculatus
fuerat. Non enim tam viliter debuit inquinari, quod tam gloriosum
scilicet os Christi, contigerat. Dignum enim erat, ut viscera quae
proditionem conceperant rupta caderent, guttur quoque quo vox
proditionis exierat laqueo arctaretur. Saepe enim modum poenae exprimit
modus culpae. Unde absciditur homini caput corporis, quia
ipse sibi abscidit caput mentis, id est rationem, sicut et Judas mortuus
est in aere, tanquam aeris potestatibus sociandus. Congruum
enim erat, ut separaretur ab angelorum et hominum regione, qui
offensus fuerat utrisque." In Actus Apost., cap. ix. (M. S. L. 198,
1650). Type L says: ".. . viscera ejus. In hoc autem delatum est
ori, ne per os effunderetur, non enim dignus erat, ut os tam viliter
inquinaretur, quod tam gloriosum os scilicet Christi contigerat. Dignum
enim erat ut viscera quse proditionem conceperant rupta caderent
et guttur, a quo vox proditoris exierat, laqueo artaretur. In
aere etiam interiit, ut qui angelos in celo et homines in terra offenderat,
ab angelorum et hominum regione separaretur et in aere cum
daemonibus sociaretur."
518
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
to be obviously that " while preserving the general outlines
of the story " Type H replaces Biblical with classical or
"pagan material." This difference is fundamental, but
it does not seem to me the main difference. "In two particulars,"
says Professor Rand farther on, Type A and
Type H are related, " first by the quotation of Nihil occultum
quod non reveletur and, second, by the motive attributed
to the ruler for marrying Judas to the wife of
the man he had killed. . . . These important coincidences
between P [i. e., Ap or Type A] and R [i. e., Type H]
make it probable that the latter version is based on early
material rather than on L." A comparative analysis of
Type A and Type H would reveal, I think, that only by
the greatest effort of imagination could they have been derived
directly from Type L; whereas the two 'coincidences'
plus other obvious parallelisms between Type A
and Type H make it quite plain that Type H is a greatly
amplified version of Type A. Type A relates: the father
saw in a vision that his son would murder him; the son,
soon after birth, was exposed in a wood, brought to Scarioth,
and when grown put in the service of Herod; in
compliance with the desire of his master, Judas went to
fetch fruit from a neighbor's garden, and slew his father;
Herod, to quiet the enraged populace, married Judas to
the slain man's widow; mother and son recognized each
other by the scar of a wound inflicted when the child was
exposed, and sought and obtained Christ's forgiveness.
The author of the Type H version, being a good classicist,
expanded this story with material taken from the sources
that he knew best. The father's vision he made into the
mother's dream, and took his idea for this and the burning
fire-brand probably from the legend of Hectuba.?0
0o For example, from Ovid, Her. 5.
11
519
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
Again, the exposure in a wood and the wounding of the
child's tibias he rejected, substituting the setting adrift in
a chest either from the general store of mythological incidents,
or perhaps directly from the legend of Gregory,
which was already current in an elaborate form in French
verse in the second half of the twelfth century.31 Being
a Frenchman, he may well have been acquainted with the
country about Buthrotum, from the Crusades, and possibly
had heard of the district on Corfu called Skariawhence
his expression: " haec famosa alitrix Iudae traditoris."
32 The rescue by fishermen, the nourishing by poor
parents, the tablets bearing the child's name, and even
perhaps the idea of a quarrel with his companions, the
author might easily have adapted from the legend of
Gregory. The agonistic games, given the idea of a quarrel
as the motive for his returning to Jerusalem, would come
naturally from Virgil, since AEneas had already instituted
them at Buthrotum. After this point the story follows
Type A with elaboration but with no change of incident
until the recognition. Type H is further related to the
Gregory legend by the expressed moral: "potes adhuc
salvus fieri si digne penitueris."
If this hypothetical outline of the development of Type
H out of Type A be sound, we should have also a fair
sketch of the origin of certain elements of Type RL. This
outline tacitly assumes that Type H antedates Type RL,
but I am unwilling to deny that Type H may have very
conceivably taken some of its characteristics and details
from Type RL. At all events, grant that a thorough-going
classicist had at hand Type A for a basis and some text
See below, pp. 595 ff.
' The tradition associating Judas with Corfi can be traced back
to the twelfth century. Cf. my note on Roland 3220, 3220a in Ro-
-nanic Review, vnr (1916). pp. 211-20.
520
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
of Type RL for details, and Type H is easily accounted
for. Such a scheme of development is admittedly too simple
to be certain;. I offer it merely as a tentative suggestion,-
and indeed more than that, in view of the paucity
of accessible data, is scarcely possible.
We have seen that the legend enjoyed two metrical
redactions, one almost at the beginning of its popularity,
the other at the close of the Middle Ages. The opening
lines of the former, Pi, are of some interest.
Dicta vetusta patrum iam deseruere teatrum
Et nova succedunt, quae prisca poemata laedunt.
Ergo novis quaedam placet ut nova versibus edam
Quae discant multi novitatis stemmate culti,
Et me, si quis amet, legat et per compita clamet.
The fifth verse was taken by D'Ancona to mean that the
author was making an effort to introduce the legend into
the literature of the people. From this single verse he
generalizes thus: the legend of Judas did not penetrate
into the " coscienza popolare" although it is found "in
monumenti di letteratura popolare, o per dir meglio, destinata
al popolo." 33 It would hardly appear, however,
that a tale intended for popular consumption or for the
edification of the masses would be put into Latin verse at
any period during the thirteenth century. " Et me si quis
amet legat et per compita clamet" is something like what
in these days we call self-advertising; it is, in fact, simply
a borrowing from Ovid.34 There is no evidence here that
the legend of Judas was popular among the folk.
3 Introd., p. 92. In a note he explains: " Questo intento di render
popolare la leggenda trovasi anche sul bel principio della Leggenda
latina in versi," and quotes the first five lines. The anche is misleading.
Constans, copying from D'Ancona, repeats this, but notes
(pp. 97-98) that Du Meril recognizes that the legend does not belong
to popular literature, properly so called.
34 Professor Rand drew my attention to this Ovidianism; cf.
521
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
GREEK VERSIONS
In the Archiv fiir slavische Philologie xx (1898), pp.
605-19, V. Istrin published a short article on Die griechische
Version der Judas-legende, at the end of which he
printed two Greek texts of the legend. One of these was
taken from a manuscript (no. 132) in the Dionysius Monastery
on Mt. Athos. In the Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts
on Mt. Athos (Cambridge, 1895) by Spyr. P.
Lampros, i, p. 341, this manuscript is no. 3666, of the
seventeenth century; the legend of Judas, 7repi Tov 7rapavo-
,uov 'lo6va, is ? 38. Istrin gave no indication of the date
of the manuscript. The other Greek text Istrin took from
a brochure published at Athens in 1889 by a Mt. Athos
monk. No date is given to this text, but it is certainly as
late as that represented in Dionysius 132, and probably
somewhat later. There are, moreover, two other manuscripts
at Mt. Athos containing the life of Judas: 3794
(Dionysius 260) ? 27, of the seventeenth century; and
4616, ? 4, of the sixteenth or seventeenth century.1
Whether these represent different redactions from those
printed by Istrin I cannot say-from the titles one would
infer that they were all four distinct. For convenience I
shall refer to them by the first four letters of the Greek
alphabet: A, 3666, Dionysius 132, published by Istrin;
B, 3os? Kcal KaEcovp/rytara, reprinted by Istrin; r, 3794;
A, 4616. At present I can discuss only A and B.
In most regards A represents the simpler and probably
Nequitiam vinosa tuam convivia narrant,
Narrant in multas conpita secta vias. Amor. 3, 1, 17-18.
and
Mouerat ingenium totam cantata per urbem
Nomine non uero dicta Corinna mihi. Trist. 4, 10, 59-60.
Lampros, I, p. 387; ii, p. 157.
522
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
the earlier of these two redactions. B contains an introduction
and conclusion which do not properly belong to
the legend; it is somewhat longer than A, and shows slight
expansions here and there; it is assigned to a definite
author, Dionysius the Areopagite; and it is provided with
a definite moral, lacking in A: OT, ia ri) v aXrj'Oeav ro
X7reraata.evov calcov veov icaov S ira Inasmuch
as the texts themselves are easily accessible in the Archiv
I shall simply outline the version given by A and indicate
the differences in B.
A certain wise man-rIs rwv Qo-oO v; in B Dionysius the Areopagite
-says that Judas came from the land of Iskara, and was of Jewish
race; B omits this last particular. His father's name was Robel;
no name is given for his mother. Robel's wife had a frightful dream
one night, that she should bear a child that should become the destruction-
B, XaXaor/6s-of the Jews. Her husband reproached her
for putting any faith in dreams. But when the child was born she
set it adrift on the sea in a basket, without her husband's knowledge-
in B both parents expose the child, in a KLo4TIOV (later fipi),
on the sea of Galilee, KaObTr57 r6rdXact T Mwiov els rbv 7oraoLv
Ne?Xop. Opposite Iskara-B, Iskaria-was an island, to which the
child drifted; and there he was cared for by shepherds and named
Judas because he came from the Jews-B omits the source of his
name. When he was grown they took him to Iskara-B, the city of
Iskaria-to be reared. Here he was adopted by his own father and
mother, although they did not suspect it was their own son. Another
son was born to them soon after, and the two children grew up
together. But Judas, being of an evil nature, often struck-B, continually
maltreated-his brother-because, as B explains, he was
avaricious and eager for his share of the patrimony-; so that his
mother-B, his parents-upbraided him. One day when they were
going to a certain-B, distant-place, Judas slew his brother with
a stone, striking him on the temple-B, 'pacev TLn i) aluAo,6pos a'rov
,vxg &0re0?et--and then fled to Jerusalem;-in B the flight is motivated
(Judas fearing the consequence of his crime) and the
parents' sorrow is described. At Jerusalem he became Herod's steward
(odtolaars- B, JrtL/eX-rhs). Some time after that, owing to a
disturbance at Iskara, Robel and his wife moved to Jerusalem and
took a fine house with a garden near Herod's palace;-i-B elaborates
a picture of the garden. On account of the lapse of time father and
son did not recognize each other;-B omits this statement. One day
523
PAUJLL FRANKLIN BAUM
Judas stood beside Herod looking over into Robel's garden and offered
to fetch his master some of the fruit from the tiees. As he was
stealing the fruit he was met by his father, who demanded an explanation-
in B Judas said he came from the king-but seeing no one
near he killed his father with a stone, just as he had killed his
brother, and carried the fruit to Herod. Afterwards-B, zerT
irapAXovoav 5 6\Xlyov KaypoD-Herod called Judas and desired him to
marry the widow and inherit her possessions. To the widow herself
Herod sent word apologetically-in B gave command-and said: it
is my royal wish that you should take a second husband or forfeit
your wealth to the king. When she heard this she was persuadedin
B instantly obeyed-to marry Judas in order to retain her property.
Judas and his wife lived together some time, and she bore him
several sons. One day, however, she withdrew from his company
and pondering on the past wept bitterly. On being questioned by
Judas she repeated her sad experiences, and he perceived finally that
she was his own mother-the scene of recognition is somewhat briefer
in B. When she learned that she had married her son she gave way
to vehement expressions of grief; and Judas, as soon as he saw what
evils his avarice had wrought, turned in repentance to Jesus, who
was then in Jerusalem, was made a disciple and steward; but stole
monies and sent them to his wife and children: -the whole conclusion,
in A somewhat confused, is more fully and carefully expressed
in B; B adds also briefly the betrayal and death of Christ.
This story of the life of Judas, though so different
from the Latin versions in many details, is nevertheless
patently of the same piece. In point of completeness, that
is, in comparative development of the legend, it must
occupy an intermediate place between the earliest Latin
version, Type A, and the usual mediaeval version, Type
RL, approaching much nearer the latter. The differences
are obvious. In the Greek Judas's mother has no name; in
Latin Type RL she has the name Ciborea. The native
land of Judas is Iskara, Iskaria, but the island is without
a name; whereas in the Latin Iskara has been transferred
to the island. The whole incident of the rescue and
upbringing is different in detail; the Greek appears to be a
transitional stage between the simple account in Type A
and the developed situation in Type RL; or rather, per-
524
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
haps, one should say, from the simple account of Type A
the Latin developed in one direction and the Greek in
another. Judas is rescued in the Greek version not by a
queen but by shepherds; he is adopted by his own father,
not by a stranger, and thus in killing his own brother he
is guilty of a much blacker crime. The description of the
fratricide (especially in B) is reminiscent of the murder
of Abel in a much more definite way than in the Latin.
The ruler is Herod in Latin Type A and in the Greek,
but is Pilate in the later Latin versions. The figure of
Herod in the Greek points, I think, to an earlier form of
the legend: as ruler of Judsea Herod would be the more
natural personage to choose, especially as long as the name
had no connotative value. Later, in the West, when
Pilate had become a hated figure, it would be more likely
to place side by side those two 'wicked birds' who had
brought about the death of Jesus. The Greek versions,
besides making Judas guilty of slaying his blood brother,
add further to his wickedness by having him propose to
Herod the theft of his neighbor's fruit. In both Latin
and Greek versions the sudden marriage of the widow is ill
managed, but the Greek B gains a certain kind of verisimilitude
by offering her the alternative of marrying or
losing her property. In both of the Greek versions, but
especially in B, the grief of the mother-wife on becoming
aware of her crime is much more fully described than *n
the Latin Type RL.
All these differences seem to indicate that the Greek
versions are in some way or other redactions of a Western
original. Although we have no absolute evidence that
they are older than the sixteenth century, still we may
assume with considerable confidence that they go back to a
much earlier time; for it would be unreasonable to suppose,
if they are as late as the sixteenth century, that they
525
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
would be so different from the Western Latin and vernacular
versions which by the end of the thirteenth century had
attained their full development. Such a supposition
would carry with it the assumption of a totally independent
origin; and that is both unlikely and unnecessary.
VERNACULAR VERSIONS
We do not find the legend of Judas in the vernacular
until the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth
century. But from this time onward it appears in
varying forms, scattered across the whole of Europe, in
almost every language. In general it may be said that
throughout the West the vernacular versions are taken
more or less directly from the Legenda Aurea; but on
account of the essential similarity between Type L and its
frequently copied companion, Type R, it is never quite
possible to determine which of these was the source. On
the other hand, while there are W'estern versions which
certainly do not derive from Type RL, or indeed from any
known Latin source, the Russian and Bulgarian versions
appear to be simply copies from the Legenda Aurea. At
present no precise scheme of the derivation and sources of
the vernacular versions can be worked out; and it is doubtful
if such a stemma will ever be possible.
ENGLISH. The earliest English version of the legend is
found in the South-English legendary, compiled in the last
quarter of the thirteenth century. Our oldest manuscript,
Laud. Misc. 108 (ca. 1285-95) represents an incomplete
form of the collection and does not include Judas; but Ms.
Harleian 2277, of the beginning of the fourteenth century,
whose contents may be considered as representing the norm
of the collection, has the lives of Judas and Pilate at the
526
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
end.' Mss. Egerton 1993, Ashmole 43, Lambeth 223, and
Vernon, which contain this same legendary with various
omissions and additions, all four leave out the legend of
Judas. But on the other hand Mss. Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge, 145 (fol. 214), of the early fourteenth
century; Kings College, Cambridge, 13 (?59), of the
fourteenth century; Trinity College, Oxford, 57 (fol.
22b), of the end of the fourteenth century; Laud. Misc.
463 (fol. 35b), of the end of the fourteenth century;
Trinity College, Cambridge, 605 [R. 3. 25] (fol. 270b),
of the beginning of the fifteenth century; Tanner, Oxford,
17 (fol. 80), of the beginning of the fifteenth century:--
all these contain the Judas legend, some at the very end of
the collection, others after the Passio.2 The variations in
the texts and in the arrangement of the legends in these
several manuscripts are considerable. The text of Harleian
2277, the oldest complete version of the legendary, is
very corrupt, and shows that even as early as the beginning
of the fourteenth century the collection had had something
of a history. It is quite certain that this Mirrour
of Saints' Lives 3was compiled at about the same time as
1 Harleian 2277 was edited in full in the Transactions of the Philological
Society, 1858. Part II: Early English Poems and Lives of
Saints (with those of the Wicked Birds Pilate and Judas) copied
and edited . . . by Frederick J. Furnivall, Berlin, 1862. Judas is
on pp. 107-11.
2 British Museum Addit. 10301 contains the same collection as Harleian
2277, except that the end of the MS. is wanting, and therefore
the Judas. According to Horstmann, MS. Philips 8253 (at Cheltenham)
is a later copy of Harleian 2277. I am indebted for many of
the above statements to Horstmann's introduction to his Altenglische
Legenden, Paderborn, 1875, and Altenglische Legenden, Neue
Folge, Heilbronn, 1881. A concise statement of. the results of his
investigations of the relationship of the various MSS. of the English
legendary is to be found in his introduction (pp. vii-xi) to the Early
South-English Legendary, London, 1887 (E. E. T. S.).
A title suggested by Horstmann.
527
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
the Legenda A urea and independently of it; and this fact
serves to show (as Horstmann remarked) that before the
end of the thirteenth century the number of saints' lives
and legends had become so great that the establishment of
some kind of canon was felt to be necessary. Such a labor
was undertaken simultaneously in England and in Italy.
Jacopo da Voragine probably made some preliminary collections
before he published (so to say) his finished work,
and we know that the English legendary did not spring
full-formed from the mind of any single monk; it was
more or less of a gradual growth. There is nothing to
prove, of course, that the Legenda Aurea did not later
exercise a certain influence on the English collection, but
similarities between it and the English collection as it
stood at the end of the century are to be considered the
result of a use of common sources rather than of interdependence.
The legend of Judas did not belong (as has been said)
to the first English collection. When it was added later,
but still probably in the thirteenth century, it was naturally
placed at the end, not merely as an appendage, but
also because Judas Iscariot was decidedly outside the pale
of honored saints. Afterwards it was seen that, like the
story of the destruction of Jerusalem, the legend of Judas
would have a kind of dramatic value if placed immediately
after the Passion of Christ,-just as the French
made it a part of the 'vengeance' of our Lord.
In the several manuscripts enumerated above 4 as containing
the legend of Judas the version is the same except
4 With these is probably to be placed codex 7669.50 of the Oxford
folio catalogue of manuscripts (1697): 'Vitae Sanctorum & Maledictorum
Judae & Pilati, metris Anglicis vetustioribus,' from the library
of Robert Burscough, A. M. This manuscript I have been unable
to trace.
528
THE MEDIIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
for scribal variations, and for somewhat different dialectic
colorings. Unless otherwise indicated, however, the quotations
will be from Furnivall's text (Harl. 2277). In all
the manuscripts, moreover, the life of Pilate either follows
or precedes the life of Judas, and contains a reference
to the Judas legend:
Iudas was per his steward: forte he his fader aslou3
And forte he wedde his owe moder.5
Harleian 2277 has the colophon: hic finiuntur gesta Maledictorum
lude et Pilati.
The story is told in verse, and contains 146 seven-stress
lines, beginning:
Iudas was a liper brid; pat ihesu solde to Rode
Sum-what me maie of him telle: ac lute of enie gode
For me ne schal no whar: of him wite bote ho so wole lie
Ruben was his fader icliped: his moder Thiborie.
Thiborie was a shrew, and one night she dreamed she had
borne a child which was a curse before the whole world.
She told her husband that if she found she had conceived
she should believe the dream a true premonition. When
her time came she explained the situation to her friends,
but they knew not what to do, for all were loth either to
murder the child or to bring it up. Finally they placed it
in a barayl, cast it upon the sea, and it came to the isle of
Cariot (whence Judas received his name). There, a child
manlich and fair, it was picked up by the queen and made
heir to the realm. But
Iudas bigan sone
To do lipere and qued ouer al: as him was to done
Children Pat he cor to: he wolde smyte and bete
And breke here armes and here heued: and god Pat lete
To pe kinges sone he hadde enuie.
'Furnivall, p. 114.
529
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
At length the queen told him he was a foundling: he bided
his time, secretly slew his supposed brother, fled to Jerusalem,
and there became a steward of Pilate-
For ech Ping loue] his iliche: so sail pe boc iwys.
One day Pilate and his steward went out to play; vnder an
orchard Pilate saw some fine apples and bade Judas climb
over for them. It was his father's orchard, but Judas did
not know it. Reuben at once appeared and was " annoyed "
to find a stranger in his garden; from words they fell to
blows so pat hi neme aciper oper bi pe top. Judas downed
his father and smote him with a stone bihynde in pe pate.
Having returned with the apples and pears. [sic!] he
related his adventure to Pilate, who the following day
went to Reuben's house and gave both the house and the
wife to Judas, for he [Pilate] was maister & lustise.
From the complaints uttered by Thiborie Judas became
aware of his crime, and at her instance joined himself to
the company of Jesus. But a schrewe he was al his lyf:
he stole from the purse to recover his loss resulting from
the waste of Magdalen's ointment, and then sold his
Master for thirty pence. As a thief he deserved hanging,
and since no one would do it for him he was obliged to
hang himself.
His wombe to-berste amidde atuo: ]o he schulde deye
His gvttes fulle to grounde: menie men hit iseye
per wende out a li]er gost: atte moul hit nemi3te
For he custe er oure louerd: pervil mid vnri3te
Nou swete louerd pat purf Iudas: isold wer to pe treo
Schuld ous fram pe lipere stede: per we weneP pat he beo:
Amen.
In incidents the English poem agrees closely with the
Latin Type RL,-the mother's consulting with her friends
with regard to what should be done with the infant is
about the only variation. But in certain points the Eng-
530
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
lish poem is briefer than Type RL. Both the English and
Type RL are further connected by the birds-of-a-feather
idea of the union of Pilate and Judas, and especially Type
L by the hint of the moralizing on Judas's death. Whether
the English poet used Type R or Type L it is impossible
(and unimportant) to determine; and, of course, he may
have known them both. But from its close adherence to the
Latin Type RL, from its association in the manuscripts
with the life of Pilate, and from its inclusion in a collection
of legends which was contemporary with and independent
of the Legenda Aurea (although we have no manuscript of
this collection before ca. 1300 which contains the legend
of Judas), we may be fairly certain that the English poem
was based not on some early copy of the Legenda Aurea,
but on an independent manuscript which contained the
life of Judas, either Type R or Type L, and the life of
Pilate side by side.6
In the collection of Saints' Lives in the Scottish dialect
attributed to John Barbour and believed to have been
written probably a little before the year 1400, the legend
of Judas is found prefixed to the life of Mathias.7 Barbour's
Legendary was unquestionably based in the main
on the Legenda Aurea; and in the legend of Judas the
translator followed his original as closely as the four-stress
English couplet can follow Latin prose.
A passing mention of the early life of Judas occurs in
John Mirk's Festial of English sermons,8 composed,
6 Such a MS., for example, as St. John's College, Cambridge, 214
(Lc) ; see above, p. 497.
7 Barbour's des schottischen Nationaldichters Legendensammlung,
ed. C. Horstmann, Heilbronn, 1881, I, pp. 107 ff., Horstmann's general
introduction to Barbour's legendary is in his Altengl. Legenden, N. F.
pp. lxxxix-cix.
8 Ed. Theodore Erbe (E. E. T. S., Extra Series xcvI), London, 1905,
Part I, p. 79. The Liber Festivalis was one of the most popular
531
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
largely from the Legenda Aurea, about 1400. In the
chapter ' De Festo S. Mathie ' we read simply that Judas,
before becoming a disciple, had " slayne his owne fadyr,
and bylayn his owne modyr." Whether the brevity of this
reference indicates that Mirk took for granted a certain
familiarity with the legend of Judas on the part of his
readers, or that for one reason or another he preferred condensation
to detail, it would be hard to say. Of the source
there can be no question: it was the Legenda Aurea.
The legend appears again in English verse in a poem
entitled Suspendio Jude, a later addition to the Towneley
Mysteries.9 After the manner of the Passion of Arnould
Greban 10 Judas relates his life and sorrows in a strophic
monologue probably introduced into the performance of
the play just before his suicide."l It begins:
Alas, alas, & walaway!
Waryd & cursyd I have beyn ay;
I slew my father, & syn by-lay
My moder der;
And falsly aftur, I can betray
My awn mayster.
My fathers name was ruben, right;
Sibaria my moder hight;
Als he her knew apon a nyght
All fleshle
early printed books; by the end of the fifteenth century it had supplanted
in popularity the South-English Legendary discussed above.
See also Horstmann, Altengl. Leg., N. F., pp. cixff.
9Publication of the Surtees Society, 1836, pp. 328 if. Edited also
by G. England and A. W. Pollard for E. E. T. S., London, 1897, pp.
393 ff. " This poem is added," says a footnote in the edition of the
Surtees Society, " in a more modern hand, apparently about the commencement
of the sixteenth century." The poem is ptobably somewhat
older. Only a fragment of it is preserved.
10 See below, p. 642.
11 Creizenach (op. cit., p. 194) suggests that perhaps this poem was
a bankelsdngerballade.
532
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
In her sleyp she se a sight,
A great ferle.
The poem appears to follow the usual tradition of Type
RL, but it ends abruptly at the point where the Queen of
Scariott bears a child of her own after having adopted
Judas.
Apart from this monologue appended to the Towneley
mystery the legend of Judas is not found in any of the
early English plays.
FRENCH. I know of but one French version of the
legend earlier than the fifteenth century-the rather pretentious
poem of 676 lines, published by D'Ancona in
1869 from a manuscript in the Turin library which bears
the date of June 1309.12 This version is not, I believe, a
translation from the Legenda Aurea, as some scholars,
unacquainted with the other Latin versions, have assumed,
but rather from Type R: as the following parallels will
show.
His elaborate invocation finished, the poet begins the
story-
Au tans que Herodes fu en vie
Et qu'il resnoit la signourrie
De le terre de Gallilee,
Et de Pylate tint Judee
Et Iherusalem autressi,
De le lingnie uns hor issi
De Judas, qui Rubem ot non.
En Judee manoit cis horn.
Une femme ot, ce dist l'istoire,
Qui fu apelee Chiboire.
D'Ancona, Introd., p. 9, and pp. 75-100. For textual emendations
see G. Paris in Revue Critique, iv (1869), art. 123, pp. 414-15,
and A. Mussafia in Litterarisches Centralblatt, no. 28 (1869). D'Ancona's
work is reviewed by R. Kohler in Jahrb. f. roman. u. engl. Lit.
XI (1870), pp. 313-24 ( = Klein. Schriften, Berlin 1900, I, pp. 190 ff.).
533
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
Compare with this the opening of Type R: " Fuit in diebus
Herodis " etc. When Ciborea awakes from her frightful
dream Ruben says, in Type R: " Admiror, inquit, que
tanta tristicie causa sic tua uiscera moueri compulerit."
In Type L there is no corresponding speech; but the Old
French poet has Reuben cry:
"C'as tu, dist il, ma douce amie?
Trop m'esmervel, m'amie ciere:
Pour coi tu fais si mate ciere?
C'as tu au tresalir eit?
Pour coi pleures? qui t'a meit?
Je m'en esmervel pour m'ame."
With " cornua lunaria refulserunt " of Type R, an expression
quite lacking in Type L, compare:
Ja aloient aparissant
Les .II. cornetes du croissant.
In Type R Reuben is exceedingly grieved at the birth of
the child and takes on himself the burden of disposing of
it, whereas in Type L the parentes face the problem
together. Again the Old French poem follows Type R:
Ruben en fu tous esmaris
Quant voit le valeton venu,
Ne set qui li est avenu.
Or ne set il que faire en doie,
II ne set nule bonne voie;
Pense que c'est contre nature
De maumetre s'engenreiire:
S'il l'ocist trop iert desloiaus,
Et si 1' nourist mout fera maus:
Ensi porroit bien avenir:
Dont ne se set conment maintenir.
The pedisseque of Type R, unmentioned in Type L, are
the chambrieres. And finally, the death of Judas is
related simply, as in Type R, without any allegorical
adornment. Further parallels could easily be pointed out,
534
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
but these are sufficient to indicate the close relationship of
the French poem and Type R.13
On the other hand, the story of Mary Magdalen and
the 'waste' of the ointment, from John 12, 3-8. is here
for the first time, so far as I am aware, incorporated as an
incident in the complete life of Judas. The material is
purely and simply Biblical, and so open to all comers, but
it is mentioned, though only by implication, in the Type
L version and entirely omitted from the Type R version;
so that it is fair to assume that although the poet was
working chiefly with Type R, still he was acquainted with
Type L; the more so since he made use of the Type L
version's effort to explain away the apparent inconsistency
of the 300 and 30 denarii.
The legend is found in a fifteenth-century manuscript
at Lille (454, fol. 45), condensed from the Legenda Aurea
into the space of less than one small quarto page.
Cosquin mentions a life of Judas in a manuscript executed
in 1478 for William of Terny, provost of Lille, now
belonging to Prince Czartoriski of Cracow. I have been
unable to see it; but from the description given by Cosquin
it follows the usual tradition.14
A fifteenth-century manuscript at the Bibliotheque
Nationale (anc. fonds 181) of La vengeance de la mort de
Jesus-Christ contains, together with an account of the
expedition of Vespasian and Titus and the legend of
18 It is possible that the Old French poet had a copy of Rn: for
"utinam falsus subrepens intimauit" of the Type R version Rn has
the variant "utinam falsus subrepens ymaginauit" and the poem
has:
U j'ai mauvaise entention
U fausse ymagination
U mes esperis fu ravis. (69-71)
14 Emanuel Cosquin, in Revue des questions historiques, Apr. 1,
1908, p. 389.
12
535
536 PAUTLL FRANKLIN BAUM
Pilate, a prose life of Judas (beginning fol. 177) which is
worth quoting in full.15
Cy nous dit de la naissance de Iudas, de sa vie, de ses aventures dont
il fut, et de sa maulditte fin. ... Et pour cest matiere declairer
plus au long lentrenne par aucunes escriptures que Iudas disciple a
nostre seigneur, lequel par sa mauuaise connoitise consentj a la mort
de Ihesu crist son seigneur et maistre, fut natif de la cite de Iherusalem,
et fut filz de ung riche Juif nomme Rubem, qui eut a femme
une noble matrosne nommee Ciboree. Et il aduint par temps conuenable
que Rubem eust de sa femme ung fils nomme depuis Iudas.
Et ainsi que Cyboree estoit enchamte de ce Iudas il aduint que une
nuit elle songa que son filz seroit une tres mauuaise personne tout
son temps, et que auant quil morust il seroit cause de la destruction
de la loy et du poeuple des Iuifs entierement. Incontinent que dame
Cyboree fut esueilliee pensant a ce que dit est elle fut toute espouentee
et cut moult grant paour pour le merueilleuz songe quelle ainsi
auoit songie. Et en moult grant esbahissement le racompta a Rubem
son mari si tost quil fut esueillie. Lequel nen tint pas grant compte
et ne si arresta point. Ainchois respondi a sa femme quelle ny pensast
plus, car ce nestoit fors illusion daucun mauuais esperit, si nen
oza la dame pour lors plus parler. Laquele au chief de temps conuenable
enfanta ung moult beau fils. Et quant elle fut bien reuenue
de son enfantement il luy a la souuenir de ce merueilleux songe dont
de rechief elle parla a Ruben son mary, et par plusieurs fois. Et
tant fist par remoustrances deuers luy que tous deux furent en doulente
d ee uer et de lenfouir secretement en leur iardin. Toutefois
ilz en eurent orreur et pitie aucunement pour tant que lenfant innocent
leur sembla moult bel, et aussi nature y contredisoit fort. Maiz
ilz penserent longue que de eel enfant ilz pourroient faire. Et en la
fin par accord et dun consentement ilz charpenterent secretement une
laye de bois et de conuenable grandeur, et bien poyee et estoupee. Ilz
couchierent lenfant dedens bien et nettement enueloupe, et puis ilz
porterent et misrent icelle laye en la mer, en le recommandant a
dieu; et eulz attendant a lui uil dispo disposast a son noble plaisur
de leur enfant sen retournement a maison.
Comment Iudas enfant arriua en lisle de Scarioth et comment il
y fut le bienuenu et doulcement esleue.
Quant Iudas fut comme dit est habandonne de pere et de mere
ainsi comme dieu le voult il aduint que icelle laye arriua pres
"5The writing and the illuminations of this MS. are unusually
beautiful. See the enthusiastic praise of Paulin Paris, Les Manuscrits
francois de la Bibliotheque du Roi, Paris, 1838, n, p. 84.
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 537
de terre en ung ysle de mere nomme Scarioth, et a celle propre
heure que la dame de celle contree sesbatoit au serain sur la riue
de la mer. Et incontinent que icelle laye fut veue de assez loing
flotant sur leaue la dame voult sauoir que ce pouoit estre. Et
par ung botequin lenuoia querir et regarder dedens. Et quant
elle sceut que cestoit ung si bel enfant masle moult en fut ioieuse
et bien lui fut aduis que dieu de sa grace luy auoit enuoye
pour tant que desia longuement estoit mariee. Et si nauoit encoires
nulz enfans. Adont elle fist prendre lenfant quelle baisa moult
de fois et tres secretement le fist porter en son manoir et commanda
a ses gens que a personne nulz nen parlast tant chier quilz
amoient leur vie. Et quant elle fut venue a son hostel tantost
fist lenfant aisier et mettre a point. Et ce fait le print et moustra
a son seigneur et mary en racomptant a la verite ce quelle en
sauoit, dont il fut moult ioieulx. Et pour mieulz contenter son
poeuple elle se tint tres coiement et solitaire en son manoir ung
temps comme selle portast enfant. Et en aprez la voix couru generalement
par toute celle terre entre ses hommes quelle auoit. Jeu
de celluy enfant: de quoy tous et toutes eurent tres grant ioie. Ce
fait elle donna a cel enfant a nom Iudas; et neut oncques depuis
aultre. Toutefuoies elle le fist moult doulcement esleuer et nourrir
comme son propre enfant et de fait cuidoit tout ce poeuple que Iudas
fust filz de leur seigneur et de leur dame; pourquoy ilz le honnouroient
comme en tel cas appartient. Maiz gaires ne demoura apres
ces choses quant la dame se retrouua enchainte, et eut ung moult
beau filz de son seigneur-dont ils furent tous ioieulz. Et lors que
ils sceurent Iudas et lui aler et parler ilz furent longuement nourriz
et esleuez ensemble comme se ilz feussent deux freres germains.
Comment Iudas sceut que pas nestoit filz a la dame de Scariot. Et
comment il murtry le propre filz de la noble dame.
Quant les deux ieunes enfans parlerent et alerent tous deux estoient
beaulz et bien venans et fort se prindrent a croistre. Ilz sesbatoient
par coustume ensemble, mais Iudas qui estoit aisne et de
mauuaise nature et inclination tousiours faisoit grief et iniure a son
compaignon qui estoit de sa nature courtois et debonnaire. Et de fait
souuent la faisoit cryer et plourer. De quoy la noble dame estoit
a la fois mal contente. Et pour amender Iudas et oster ses iniquitez
elle souuent le corriga par remoustrer et aultrement per menaces et
batures. Mais pour chastoy ne pour remoustrer iamaiz ne cessoit
de greuer et fouler son compaignon. Et la noble dame pensant a
la grant courtoise dont elle vsoit enuers Iudas et comment venu lui
estoit dauenture moult grant dueil en auoit. Finablement la dame
voiant ung iour comment Iudas fouloit son seul enfant se courrouca
moult fort a lui, ne plus ne lui voult celer son estat. Et par grant
538 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
courrouz le appella trouue et lui dist: Certes tu nes pas mon
enfant, ne tu ne mes rien, car lors que tu nauoies encours deux
mois de age mes gens et moy veismes a ung serain une laye de
bois flottant sur la mer, si enuoiay sauoir que ce pouoit estre; et
tu fus trouue dedens. Et lors par pitie mon seigneur et mon mary
et moy te auons jusques a present fait nourrir et esleuer comme si
tu estoies nostre propre filz. Et ie treuue iournellement que tu ne
nous fais fors corrouz et deplaisir. Quant Iudas ait entendu ce que
dit est, moult grant despit en ot et vergougne, si sen retrouua tout
honteuz et pensif. Adont comme remply de mauuaise voulent et de
villain courage se pensa que briefment il feroit grant deplaisir a tous
ceulz qui tant doulcement lauoient esleue et nourry. Et aduisa une
nuit entre autres que temps et heure prospice estoit pour accomplir
son tres dempne vouloir; et de fait approcha le ieunecel 6 son compaignon
qui se dormoit et de son couteau taillepain lui coupa la geule.
Ce fait il party secretement de la maison du seigneur comme aduise
se son fait, et se mist toute nuit au chemin par deuers la mer.
Comment ludas fut a Pylate. Et comment il tua son propre pere
nomme Ruben.
Quant Judas fut venu au port de mer dicelle terre il estoit ia
heure de none. Si trouua illec ung groz bateau chargie de gens et
marchandises qui vouloient estre en Iherusalem; si entra sur mer
auecl les autres et vint en brief terme en Iherusalem; et fut par
telle aduenture preserue de mort. Car quant il fut a ce matin grant
iour et la dame de lisle de Scariot vey que leure accostumee passoit
que son filz et Iudas ne se leuoient et venoient en sale, elle enuoia en
leur chambre ung seruiteur pour les faire leuer, si trouua la tres
piteuse aduenture du ieunencel l qui auoit le garge coppee, et de
Iudas ne scauoit nouuelle; si se print au crier tout hault tant que
la dame et les meismes y accoururent, qui de ce meschief demenerent
grant dueil. Et demandans apres qui ne se trouuoit point fut quis
et demande par toute la terre. Car sil fust adont trouue de sa vie
nestoit riens. Mais il nagoit tant quil pouoit vers Iherusalem, ou
en brief terme il arriua. Et assez tost par son engien il trouua les
manieres destre lun des seruiteurs de Pylate, qui pour lors estoit
preuost de Iherusalem de par lempereur de Rome et le senat. Et
ainsi comme naturellement chanc creature aime son semblable Pilate
print Iudas grandement en son amour pour tant que Iudas assez le
ressembloit de meurs et conditions. Et lors que Pilate le eut ainsi
prins en sa grace il le ordonna tout gouuerneur de son hostel et de
sa famille. Entre ces chose aduint ung iour que Pylate dune fenestre
de sa chambre regardoit sur ung iardin qui seoit dempres sa
6l Ms. iennencel. 17 Ms. aueuc. 's Ms. iennencel.
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 539
maison, si percheu (?) en ce iardin ung pommier chargie de moult
belles pommes, dont il ot tres grant desir et voulente den mengier;
et fist appeller Iudas, auquel il demanda comment il pourroit auoir
de icelles pommes. Adont Iudas qui grant desir auoit de complaire
a son maistre lui respondj que il len feroit auoir; si descendj en bas
et incontinent ala monter par dessus le mur du iardin et entra
dedens. Or estoit ce iardin tenant et appartenant a la maison de
Rubem pere de Iudas qui le demouroit. Mais comme dit est devant,
Iudas ne scauoit dont il estoit ne qui estoit son pere ne sa mere,
dont il estoit moult desplaisant. Si aduint que a icelle heure que
ludas estoit ou iardin son pere et que il cueilloit des pommes
Ruben qui en fut aduerty entra de sa maison en son iardin, si trouua
Iudas qui cueilloit son fruit oultre son gre et larchineusement sans
congie, dont il fut mal content et en reprinst et dist villonie a
Iudas et Iudas a luy; et tellement respondj a Ruben que par
leurs paroles ilz vindrent a la dure meslee. Car ilz se entreferirent
de poings bien longuement et monta leur hutin en si grant
mal talent et yre que Iudas qui estoit moult fort et ieune et son
pere ia tout anchien, que de son coustel il tua Ruben son pere.
Ce fait, prist des pommes et puis se party tout quoiement du iardin
ainsi comme il y estoit entre et porta les pommes a Pylate
et en les lui baillant dist comment le maistre du gardin lui estoit
venu courir sus et en soy deffendant lauoit abatu par terre, puis
sen estoit reuenu et que de ce fait nulz rien ne scauoit. Quant
les nouuelles coururent aual la cite de Iherusalem que Rubem si
auoit estre trouue mort en son iardin, incontinent Pilate mist sus
et imposa au dit Rubem que lui meismes sestoit desespere et occis.
Car pour lors nulz fors lui et Pilate 19 ne sauoit quy ce murdre auoit
commis, dont ilz estoient bien contens.
Comment Iudas sceut que il auoit sa mere a femme et que il auoit
occis son propre pere et qui il estoit. Et de sa repentance.
Quant Pilate eut ainsi a Rubem impose sa mort il apprehenda
toute sa ceuance per confiscation. Et comme a lui confisquee il la
donna Iudas. Et puis fist tant par deuls Cyboree, la femme de
Rubem, quelle prent Iudas a mary. Et par ainsi doncques Iudas
occist son pere et eut sa mere a femme, qui fut une chose trop horrible
et esmerueillable.-Or aduint une nuyt ainsi comme Cyboree
souspiroit forment elle estant en son lit Iudas la ouy souspirer et
dont lui demanda quil lui faissoit et pouruoy elle souspiroit. Et
elle lui respondj moult forment plourant et dist: Certes ie me retreuue
auiourdhuy la plus maleureuse et la plus fortunee de toutes
femmes du monde. Et pourquoy, dist Iudas. Certes, mon ami, dist
1' Judas?
540 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
elle, pour taut car ia pieca ie fus consentant que ung beau filz que
iauoie fust noye, et le pere mon mary si accorda. Car nous le portasmes
a la mer en une laye de bois, et la le boutasmes sur leaue, ou
il demoura a lauenture de dieu. Et ce feismes nous pour le mieulz
et pour cause dun trop merueilleuz songe que ie songay de mon
enfant lors que ien fus enchainte. Et en apres long temps durant
lequel ie ne euz oncques puis
2 plaisir iay trouue mon mary murdry
en mon iardin, et si nay peu sauoir qui ce dangier ma fait. Dautrepart
Pilate ma voulu marier a son plaisir; et si nen auoie point de
voulente, mais ie luy ay accorde pour demourer en mes biens lesquelz
il auoit confisquez par la mort de mon mary, quil disoit soy estre
desespere et oneques my pensa. Quant Iudas eust ouy et entendu
sa propre mere ainsi parler, laquelle il auoit cogneue charnellement
par inaduertence comme sa propre femme, il entendj assez par la
deposition ia picca a lui faitte par la dame de lisle de Scariot
comme dit est: que il estoit lenfant meismes qui par la mere fut
miz en la laye de bois sur la mer. Et par consequent il sceut que
lui meismes auoit murdry son pere et prins sa mere a femme, dont
il sen trouua tout esmerueillie. Et en pensant a ces choses
il le prinst moult fort a repentir de ses pechies, et dist a sa mere
sans plus la infourmer de la besoigne: Ma bonne amie, ne vous
desconfortez point, car puisque vostre plaisir est tel iamaiz plus ne
quier de vous approchier, dont elle fut bien ioieuse. Et lors Iudas
en pensant a ces choses et pour trouuer pardon de ses pechies, qui
estoient moult grans. Et meismement par le conseil de sa propre
mere a qui depuis il se descouury, il se mist en la compaignie de
nostre seigneur Ihesucrist.
Comment Iudas se mist en la compagnie de nostre seigneur qui
leslut a disciple et le fist son procureur. Comment il le trahy, et
comment il se pendj.
Comme entendre pouez se mist Iudas en la compaignie des appostres
de Ihesucrist pour y faire sa penitance, et fut par nostre seigneur esleu
et retenu lun de ses douze appostres. Et tous iours fut surnomme Scariot,
ou, comme dit est, il demoura premierement. Et luy fist nostre seigneur
tant dhonneur que il le constituta son procureur; et portoit
Iudas la bourse ou len mettoit la peccune que len donnoit a nostre seigneur
pour son viure. Mais par la grant conuoitise dont il estoit plain
il larchineusement en retenoit tous iours apart quelque chose. Et
finablement par son grant auarice il trahi son maistre et le vendj
pour trente deniers dargent. Et quant il considera le grant mal quil
auoit fait il se repentj aucunement et rendj aux juifs les trente
deniers quil auoit recheuz de celle marchandise; et il voyant quilz
20 Plus?
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
les reffuserent se desfia de la misericorde et grace de nostre seigneur,
et comme tout desespere de iamaiz auoir tant les tenoit a grans et
enhormes, il prist ung tronchon de corde et se ala pendre a la branche
dun arbre en ung grant iardin non pas moult loing de Iherusalem,
et la fut trouue le maleureuz comme cy dessus est plus au long
declaire.
This version appears to be an expanded form of Type
RL; and although the ending resembles in brevity that of
Type R, the co-operation of both parents in setting the
infant adrift, the absence of the attendants on the Queen
of Scarioth when Judas is discovered on the waves, and
the allusion to the similarity of the character of Judas
and Pilate, point to Type L as the source. But if we consider
the time when the author of the Vengeince was at
work, we cannot doubt that he may have known both Type
R and Type L. It is unnecessary to point out the simplicity
of this rendering and its admirable realistic
touches. The author of this version, although not much of
a stylist, had certainly the knack of story-telling.
The legend of Judas was included in the Vie de Jesu
Christ first printed by Foucquet in 1485, but frequently
reprinted in various parts of France down to the eighteenth
century. This Vie de Jesu Christ is a fifteenthcentury
compilation, the first part of which is based on the
Meditationes Vitce Christi, and the second on the Gospel
of Nicodemus; and between these two is inserted the
legend of Judas. From the fragment printed by M. ]f.
Roy in his Le mystere de la Passion en France du XIVe
au XVIe siecle 21 it is clear that this version has textually
no relation to that just quoted in full. They are independent
elaborations of the Latin Type RL.
2Dijon et Paris [1903-4], pp. 284-5. On the Vie de Jesu Christ
cf. pp. 327 ff. and 347. The Judas is fol. lxii-lxvii of the 1485 edition.
541
PAULL FERANKLIN BAUM
The earliest appearance of the legend in medikeval
French drama is in the Semur Passion, which represents
a transitional stage between the early Sainte Genevieve
Passion and the later " grandes Passions." Here the
legend is mentioned in connexion with the familiar story
of Judas and the cock. On the second day, when Judas
returns to his mother with the thirty coins, she upbraids
him for his treachery, calling him " malvoix traictre, et
larron faulx ":
Lorsque tu ouz tu6 ton pere,
Tu m'esposas, quil suis ta mere.
De nostre outraigeuse vie ordre
Nous deut faire misericorde.22
In Greban's Mystere de la Passion, which was already
famous in 1452, the legend of Judas is also merely an
echo, confined to a sort of recitative soliloquy pronounced
by Judas as he comes to Jesus to seek forgiveness for
the past and to become a disciple. We learn merely that
he was saved by a dame de beau maintien, that he slew
the lady's son, and afterward killed his own father and
married his mother. This bare outline of the story offers
no hint of Greban's source, except that it must have been
some form of the prevailing type, that is, Type RL. It is
obvious from the casual way in which the legend is
treated that Greban must have taken for granted a certain
familiarity with it on the part of his audience-otherwise
the elaborate lyrical complainings of Judas would be
nearly meaningless.23
22Roy, p. 124, w. 6116 ff.
23 Ed. G. Paris et G. Raynaud, Paris, 1878, Second Day, p. 144, vv.
11021 ff. That Greban followed the Legenda Aurea version may be
inferred from the words of Desesperance, that Judas's evil soul could
not issue from his mouth " qui toucha a chose tant digne " (p. 288,
vv. 22018 ff.).
542
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
In the later mystere, that of Jehan Michel, which
belongs probably to the last quarter of the fifteenth century,
24 the legend receives a large share of attention: the
whole story from the fratricide onwards is presented
vividly to the spectator. In scene 9 Judas quarrels with
the son of the King of Scarioth over a game of chess, kills
him, and flees. He becomes Pilate's major-domo (scene
10). Reuben and Cyborea (scene 14) in their garden
lament their long lost son, when Pilate enters and orders
Judas to rob the apple-tree. Judas quarrels with the old
man and kills him; whereupon Cyborea cries to Pilate:
0 Juge, Juge, Juge, Juge,
Je requiers vengeance, vengeance.
Pilate, however, proposes to her that she marry Judas,
pointing out the financial advantages of the match, and
finally she consents. In scene 16 Cyborea, profoundly
distressed, asks Judas about his previous life, and divines
the truth. On her counsel he confesses to Jesus (scene 19)
and becomes a disciple.25 This elaboration of the legend
seems to be based not directly on the Legenda Aurea, but
on some later, more circumstantial reworking of the material,
as is especially noticeable in the matter of the sudden
marriage. In the early versions it was related merely
2 We have an edition of it dating probably between 1486 and 1490.
For the relation of the 1507 edition to the work of both Greban
and Michel see Petit de Julleville, Mysteres, II, pp. 398 and 439. I follow
the analysis from the cyclic edition of 1507 in the Histoire
gendrale du the&tre frangais by the Freres Parfaict, reprinted by de
Douhet in Migne's Dictionnaire des mysteres, col. 663 ff.
z At Sotteville-lez-Rouen there was a famous jeu de paume where
in 1530 a society of amateurs gave several plays called "jeux de
Sotteville." Among these plays was a vie de Judas, probably from
the Passion. Cf. Gosselin, Recherches sur les origines et l'histoire
du thddtre l Rouen, Rouen, 1868, p. 37. (Petit de Julleville, Mystres,
ir, p. 117).
543
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
that Pilate had the widow marry Judas, while here she
makes a natural plea for justice in behalf of her murdered
husband, and even more naturally refuses for some time
to marry the villain. M. Roy (p. 285) suggests that the
Vie de Jesu Christ may have been Jean Michel's source.
A reflection of the legend appears in the Debat de
l'omme et de la femme by Guillaume Alexis, dated about
1460.
Cayn tua Abel son frere;
Judas aussi Ruben, son pere.
In the English version of Guillaume's Debat this passage
runs:
For Caym kylled Abell, his gentyl brother,
And Judas Ruben, his father, dyd slay.2
GERMAN. In mediseval German literature I have found
four versions of the legend. The first is in a fourteenthcentury
poem, Das alte Passional.27 That the poet used
a Latin source is evident from several remnants of Latin
inflectional endings in his verse, as well as from his own
statement. In the Judas portion, which contains 551
verses, the author follows often word for word the Legenda
Aurea, with here and there an elaboration or expansion of
his source, and some additional conversation to enliven
the narrative. A departure, however, from the Latin is
the statement, before Pilate's desire for the apples is mentioned,
that Reuben was still living in Jerusalem " riche
genuc" and believed his own son had perished in the
water. The reader is thereby deprived of a slight surprise,
but the story does not suffer. When Pilate longs for some
of the " epfelle" the poet tells us it would have been bad
Ed. Piaget et Picot, Paris, 1896, I, p. 142, vv. 167-8; p. 153, vv.
165-6.
2T Mone, Anzeiger, vi, col. 143-56. Later ed. by K. A. Hahn, Frankfurt,
1857.
544
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
enough if he had sent a messenger to ask for them; but,
what was worse, Judas not only entered the garden and
took the apples, but also injured the tree. When he
returns with the stolen goods, Pilate, utterly depraved,
tells him:
Daz ist gut,
habe darvmbe guten mut
sit is ot niman ensach.
When Ciborea comes to Pilate for justice he feigns ignorance
and orders her to marry Judas. Here the bluntness
of the narrative is very striking. Cyborea obeys Pilate's
mandate, but grieves afterwards, as in the Latin. After
Judas is made a disciple, the poem continues for 150 lines,
or nearly a fourth of the whole, with Biblical material,
including the incident of Mary Magdalen and the loss of
the oil, and ends with the moralizing on Judas's death.
A very interesting document in the vernacular history
of the legend is the fragment of Johannes Rothe's Passion
preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript at Dresden.28
This fragment comprises three chapters, the life of Judas,
the story of the thirty coins, and the legend of Pilate.
That is, we have here another fifteenth-century extract
which unites the lives of Judas and Pilate, and incidentally,
to make the account of Judas a little more complete,
includes the legend of the thirty pieces of silver
which passed through his hands.29 Rothe died in
1434; his Passion must then belong at the latest to the
early fifteenth century.
28 Ed. Alfred Heinrich, Germanistische Abhandlungen, 26. Heft,
Breslau, 1906.
29Cf. Du Meril, Poesies populaires, pp. 321-4; L. De Feis, Studi
religiosi, n, pp. 412-30, 506-21; G. F. Hill, Archeologia, LIX (1905),
p. 9; Budge, Book of the Bee, pp. 95-96; R. Duval, Litt6rature
syriaque, 1900, pp. 116-7.
545
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
Wenig lute habin daz vornomin,
Wo dan der vorretir sy komin,
Judas Scariod genant.
In eyme buche ich beschrebin vant,
Daz eyn man zcu Jherusalem sesse . . .
This book was the Legenda Aurea, or an extract from it;
and Rothe's translation is neither very free nor slavishly
literal. Here and there the bare narrative of the Latin is
slightly expanded, but only in the interest of vividness or
from the exigencies of metrical translation, seldom by the
introduction of new matter. The most considerable variant
is the discovery of the floating chest by a fisherman;
after which at the queen's suggestion the baby is cared for
by the fisherman's wife until such time as the queen can
pass it off as her own. The fisherman and his wife may
well have been borrowed from the legend of Gregory.30
The close, however, is treated somewhat freely; the narrative
breaks off where Judas is accepted by Christ and
made his " scheffenere "; and is followed by a long comparison
of the life and character of Judas with the life
and character of Moses.
The legend of Judas was recorded again by Rothe in his
Thiiringische Chronic, completed in 1421.31 Here,
although certain variants are noticeable, the source is
unmistakably betrayed by a complete rehearsal of the
reflections on Judas's death which follow the legend in
Jacopo's version. In general the narrative is somewhat
briefer. The statement in the Latin that Judas was
named from the island of Scariot, omitted from the Passion,
is preserved in the Chronik. The fisherman and his
30 See below, pp. 595 ff.
3 Ed. R. v. Liliencron, Thiiringische Geschichtsquellen, m, Jena,
1859. Cf. Aug. Witzschel, Die erste Bearbeitung der diiringschen
Chronik Rothe's, Germania, xvII (1872), pp. 129-69; and Heinrich,
pp. 3, 92 ff.
546
THE MIEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
wife, who were introduced into the Passion, do not appear
in the Chronik, but the chest is discovered by the "furstynne"
of the land as in the Latin. The Chronik says
that Judas's supposed brother was just one year younger
than he. The comparison of Moses and Judas gives place
to the Legenda Aurea ending.
The fourth German version of the legend is in the
adaptation of the Legenda Aurea called Der Seelen
Trost.32 Here the story is related with great smoothness
and simplicity. The incident of Mary Magdalen is introduced
(as in the Passional and the Old French poem),
and also the stealing of "den zeinden pennink" (redecima).
The end is brief: Judas suffered remorse for the
betrayal, returned the money, "und viel in einen mistroist
und geink ewech und erheink sich selver. Also
geink it eme umb sinre mistait willen, dat hei kreich einen
boissen doit und boese ende." Thus the moralizing of the
Legenda Aurea and its group has fallen away; and the
tale merely shows that a man reaps the harvest of his ill
deeds.
ITALIAN. It seems clear that the legend was not so well
known in the Italian vernacular as it was in the French
and German. The only reference to it I have found is
the text printed by D'Ancona, which is simply a literal
translation from the Legenda Aurea.33
32 Pfeiffer, Beitrdge zur Kenntniss der Kolnischen Mundart im 15.
Jahrhundert, no. 93, 'Van Judas und van sinen alderen,' in Frommann's
Die deutschen Mundarten, II (1855), pp. 291-3. The Seelen
Trost is found in a Low German MS. of the year 1407; it was printed
in 1474. Cf. also Mone's Anzeiger xIII (1866), col. 307; and ZfdPh,
vi, p. 424.
33 D'Ancona, op. cit., pp. 63-73. His text (reprinted in D'Ancona-Bacci,
Manuale della Letteratura Italiana, I, pp. 567-70) is from Codex Riccardiano
1254, car. 78, collated with the Venetian Legendary of 1477
547
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
DUTCH. The three Middle Netherlandish forms of the
legend of Judas were published by C. G. N. de Vooys in
1901.34 The first, from a Combourg manuscript, is a
translation of some form of the Latin Type R.35 The
second is the legend as it appears in the Passionael.36 It
follows the Latin Type L, and was probably translated
directly from the Legenda Aurea.37 The same version
(a separate extract from the Passionael) is found in a
seventeenth-century manuscript at Wenen. The third
MIiddle Netherlandish form of the legend (from a Hague
MS., Kon. Bibl. X 71) is borrowed from Der Sielen Troest,
but as to the story agrees in the main with the Passionael,
inasmuch as both go back ultimately to the Legenda
Aurea.38 An interesting variant is that Judas is rescued
not by the queen of the island but by the king. A similar
variant appears in some of the nineteenth-century English
versions of the legend; but this may be, as De Vooys
remarks, a mere coincidence.39
and Cod. Pal. E. 5. 1. 31. Cf., however, the Italian post-mediaeval
versions below.
34 De middelnederlandse Legenden over Pilatus, Veronica en Judas,
in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal- en Letterkunde, xx (1901),
pp. 125-65.
85 De Vooys perceived this from Du M6ril's brief note on the 'other'
Latin text (Poesies pop. lat., p. 326, n. 1).
aAbout 20 Mss. of the Passionael are preserved, the earliest of
which dates from 1400; it was printed in 1478 with the title Passionael
winterende somerstuc.
3 "Het Passionael geeft een getrouwe vertaling van de Aurea
Legenda." De Vooys, p. 160.
88" Die tekst uit het Haagse handschrift X 71, onleend aan Der
Sielen Troest. In hoofdzaak wordt hier het Passionael gevolgd."
De Vooys, p. 160. The editor has collated the Sielen Troest with the
Hague MS.
39 That such a variant should occur, however, is the more remarkable
since the early printed edition of the Sielen Troest follows the
usual tradition.
548
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
WELSH VERSIONS. The legend was translated from the
Latin into Welsh as early as the end of the thirteenth
century. In part II of Peniarth MS. 3 ( = Hengwrt 408),
written ca. 1300, a fragment of an Ystorya Judas is preserved,
beginning: " Gwr gSnt aoed yngkaerusselem aelwit
Ruben Ereill ae galwei symeon o lin Judas ac o lin ysachar
herwyd ereill . a ciborea oed henw ywreic..." 40 Complete
versions which begin very similarly to this and are
apparently copies of the same translation, though with
some verbal differences, are found in Peniarth 7 ( = Hengwrt
3), of the fourteenth century: Ystoria Judas ysgarioth,
col. 237; 41 and in Peniarth 14 (= Hengwrt 25 and
13), in a hand of the second quarter of the fourteenth
century: Ystoria Judas yw hon, p. 161.42
What appears to be a different translation, but of about
the same date as Peniarth 14, is found in Peniarth 5:
Llyma mal y treithyr Historia Judas, fol. xi, which
begins: (E)F a darlleGyt ynebun ystoria bot gur ygkaerussalem
a ruben oed y eno . ac a eluyt heuyt olin iren o luyd
iudas neu o lin ysachar heruyd ereill . a gureic aoed idau
oed y heno cyborea. a nosGeith guedy bot kyt yda6 ae Greic
kyscu aoruc hy abreuduyt a6elei. . ..43
That these translations were made from some copy of
Type L is clear; but whether the Peniarth 3 fragment was
translated from the Legenda Aurea, or from some early
40Historical Manuscripts Commission. Report on Manuscripts in
the Welsh Language, vol. I, Part II, Peniarth, p. 304.
Op. cit., p. 319.
42 Op. cit., p. 333.
3 Op. cit., p. 308. This version is printed in Selections from the
Hengwrt MSS. Preserved in the Peniarth Library, vol. II, ed. by Robert
Williams, with translations (continued by G. Hartwell Jones),
London, 1892; text pp. 271 ff., translation pp. 624 ff. A note, p.
751, says "The Historia Judas follows Royal 8 E xvii " (i. e., my Lg).
549
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
separate text, as we conjectured the English version in the
Mirrour of Saints' Lives to be,44 it is impossible to say.45
IRISH. In the Leabhar Breac, which exists in a fourteenth-
century manuscript, we find implications of the
Judas legend, although the story is not told explicitly.
In a passage ' Of Judas and his Mother' beginning on p.
222 of the facsimile edition we read that after Judas
related to his mother how he had sold his Master she cried:
"W'oe to her that is in my wretched and contemptible
existence, because that I have borne an incestuous and
flagitious offspring such as thyself .. ." Then follows
the story of Judas and the cock. ". . . So when incestuous
sinful Judas saw the boiled cock rise out of the cauldron,
thereby he recognized that Christ would rise from
the dead."46
SCANDINAVIANT. he legend is found in Swedish in
two versions. The older occurs in the Fornsvensk Legendarium,
a thirteenth-century translation of the Legenda
Aurea.47 The later version is in the Sjilens Trast,48
See above, p. 528.
45 Later Welsh versions of the legend appear in Llanstephan MS. 24
(= Shirburn C. 24), of the late sixteenth century, Historia Judas,
fol. 93 (op. cit. ii, ii, p. 454); Llanstephan 117, Llyma ystoria Svddas
vyradwr, p. 195, dated "xx awst 1548" (op. cit. II, ii, p. 575); Peniarth
118 (= Hengwrt 518), of the last quarter of the sixteenth century,
pp. 625-91 of which contain extracts, etc. (apparently designed
for a Dictionary) including the story of Judas (op. cit., I, ii, p. 723);
Cardiff MS. 11 (= Ph. 2161), of the late sixteenth century, a fragment
of the end of Ystori Svddas, vol. ii, p. 111 (op. cit., Ix, i, p. 143).
4 I owe this reference to the kindness of Professor von Dobschiitz.
4 The earliest MS. that we have, the Codex Burneanus, is dated
1350. The Fornsvensk Legendarium was edited by George Stephens,
Stockholm, 1847. The legend of Judas is in the chapter on St. Mathias,
I, p. 243. The same version occurs also in an Upsala MS., C 528,
550
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
which was translated ca. 1430 from the Selen Troyst in
the dialect of Lower Saxony. Compare, for example, the
Cologne dialect Seelen Trost's rendering of the birds-of-afeather
idea: " want der ein was so wail ein schalk als der
ander, dar umb quamen si wail zosamen" with the Swedish
version: " ffor thy then ene war swa arghir skalk som
then andre, oc thy komo the wel badhe til saman," and the
closeness of the translations in the different languages is
at once apparent. But the Swedish adds the following
moral:
My dear children, let your actions as well as your name be Christian.
There is many a wicked man who does worse than Judas did;
Judas sinned against his parents unconsciously, many Christian men
sin against their parents both wittingly and willingly. Judas sold
his Master for thirty pence; many a Christian sells Him for a farthing
or for an evil deed. But the torments of these men will be far
greater than those of Judas.
Here it is of interest to observe that the unpremeditated
nature of Judas's sins is expressly pointed out. This is, I
believe, the only place in a mediaeval document where such
a perception is recorded; for the other versions, both Latin
and vernacular, rest practically their whole point on the
inherent wickedness of Judas. ' Judas was a monster, for
lo! he committed these horrible sins,' they argue; and so
they judge him, without inquiring into the nature of his
horrible sins. Apart from this there is nothing in the
Swedish versions of special consequence; they indicate
merely the spread of the Judas legend via the Legenda
Aurea and its concomitant, the Seelen Trost.
dated 1420-50. Cf. Robert Geete, Fornsvensk Bibliografi, Stockholm,
1903, no. 200.
4 Ed. by G. E. Klemming, Stockholm, 1871-73, 'Aff iwdas skarioth,'
pp. 86-90. A Danish translation, Siala Troost, is mentioned by
Klemming, p. vii.
13
551
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
CATALAN. Mila y Fontanals, in his article on Catalanische
Dichter,49 says that to the period of the great Ramon
Lull (1235-1315) we must attribute a Biblia rimada y en
romans and other small works in verse, including a De
Judes Escarioth e de la sua vida, together with the lives of
Pilate and Veronica. These are united with a Saltiri in
prose " lo qual trasladat f6 de lati en romans per frare
Romeu Burguera " (1228-1315). The association, then,
of this life of Judas with the lives of Pilate and Veronica,
together with a work professedly translated from the
Latin, would seem to indicate that we have here a life of
Judas taken possibly from an early copy of the Legenda
Aurea, or in any event from one of the thirteenth-century
Latin versions of the legend. If the former alternative is
true, the Catalan poems cannot be construed merely as a
token of the popularity of the Legenda Aurea, inasmuch
as the Catalan poet obviously chose what interested him
from Jacopo's great collection, and found it worth while
to turn his Latin prose source into vernacular verse. This
speaks something for the range of attention that the legend
drew.
PROVENSAL. The vernacular versions of the Judas
legend that we have thus far considered illustrate its popularity
and its development of the Latin sources, but we
come now to a version which-in spite of the comparatively
late date of our text-appears to represent an earlier
stage in the history of the legend than any that have been
discussed, whether Latin or vernacular. This version is
from the so-called Gascon Passion in the well-known Didot
manuscript,50 written in the middle of the fourteenth cen-
49 Ebert's Jahrbuch fur roman. und engl. Lit., v (1864), p. 137, n. 2.
The existence of this version was noted by Creizenach.
5o Now BibliothZque Nationale, nouv. acq. fr. 4232. For a detailed
552
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 553
tury. The Passion is still unpublished, but I give here in
full that portion which contains the legend of Judas (fol.
29v (formerly cvi) -33 (formerly cx)).
Quan Iudas vic l'enguent vesar sobre Ihu Crist le
vec si de pes he dit devant tos aquestas paraulas.
Baros certas fort suy irat,
e fort me tenc per asoutat,
e per cert vos dic fort me es greu,
car aysi perdi so del mieu.
Vos entendet be mo sermo,
mas non entendet la razo
ne per soy ta fort viat,
ni per soy ta mal paguat.
Hieus ho diray, si nos es greus,
e qual guiza perdi so del mieu.
Be crey que avet auzit dir
que mos maestre fe partir
de ma molher per lo pecat,
que y era grans, per veritat.
Lo pecat vos diray qu' era
ans que segua en fust ni en peyra.
Vers es can Ihesu Crist nat,
lo rey Erodes fo yrat,
e ac ne gran comfuzio,
can saub que lo senhor del mon
era en tera davalat,
e que di vergis era nat,
e fe tos los enfans degolar
description of the MS. cf. Paul Meyer, Appendix to Introduction of
his edition of Daurel et Beton, pp. lxix-cxx. Further cf. Chabaneau
in Revue des langues romanes, xxvII (1885), pp. 8-23, where a portion
of the MS. is printed (Judas omitted), and pp. 53-65, a study
of the language of the printed extracts; and xxxi (1888), pp. 343-5.
A fragment of this Passion in the Catalan dialect was discovered some
years ago at Palma; in this fragment only a portion of the speech
which contains our legend is preserved. Cf. Revue des langues romanes,
xvII (1880), p. 303, and Constans, (Edipe, pp. 101-2. Constans
(p. 100) was the first to draw attention to the legend of Judas
in the Gascon Passion. For a brief summary of the Passion see
Petit de Julleville, Mysttres, n, p. 351.
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
que de .ii. ans poc atrobar.
E mon payre, cant ho auzi
mot gran dolor n'a entre si,
ma dona mayre ishament
hac dolor e gran mariment.
Agron enter els aytayl acort
aytan be me tenian per mort,
que'm giteso per l'aygua aval,
ab gran dol e ab gran trebalh.
Per ho metoron me en .i. vaysel de veyre
et heu en devengn en .i. regisme.
Mas enans de sisque
ma mayre en laygua 'm gites
mi fe .i. ceyal en l'asquina,
am fer caut que mi paria.
E quant lone tems agn rodat
per l'aygua fu atrobat,
et .i. bon home que 'm trobec
al rey de la tera 'm portec,
e lo rey fe 'm be noyrir
et hieu pensey: deu folegir.
Aytant pensey heu de folia
que gran mal me volia.
Puys a cap de tems s'esdevenc
que mon payre en la tera venc,
e tant que desavenc se ab mi,
e aqui mezieys iheu l'ausizi,
e aytant tot com l'agui mort
mi tengn per dezastuc fort,
e comense tost a fugir
e en esta tera a venir.
E quan fu aysi vengut
an per hom no fu conogut.
Ma mayre azautec se de mi
e heu d'ela atresi,
de tal guiza nos azautem
que aqui meteys nos ajustem.
E quan aguem esems estat
lone tems en ferma amistat,
nos aguem .ii. enfans agut
que encara no'us fom conogut.
E une vet can fom colocat,
ela'm toquec tost los costat
e conc(?) me aquel seyal
554
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 555
qu' era 'm fe am fer caut,
e tantost ela s'esperdec
e mot fort greu s'epaventec,
e dit mi d'on era vengut
ni en cal tera era nascutz.
E dissi li: "iheu fu atrobat
" en riba d'aygua miey neguat,
"e fuy mot be costozit,
"en la tera ben noyrit,
"tro que per ma folor n' eysi,
"per .i. bel homr que ihesu auzi."
E quant ela ho entendec,
ades greument ne sospirec
e dit: "Amic, tu es mo filh,
"fort te dic qu'em en gran perilh,
" sapias que cel que as ausit
"era ton payre he ton amic,
" asat me semlas desastruc,
"car ab ta mayre as yagut,
"e ton payre que aias mort,
"fort deus aver gran desconort,
"car home ab ta gran pecat
"no crey pogues ecer trobat."
E iheu conogui la eror,
responzi li ab gran dolor:
"dona, be conosc lo pecat
"e quant ague soy desastrat,
" que no say qual cosel mi prengna,
" ni en cal via iheu mi tengna.
"Hieu say .i. bon coselh que penrem
" al sant maestre no'n anem,
"si no que nos em tos perdut
"Aquet acort ensems parlen,
" al sant maestre no'n anem,
"e contem lo la veritat."
E el conoc nos en pecat
e dit: "baros si m'en crezet
"bos autres bonalx beyret
" que's partiret aysi amdos,
"e tu, Judas, seguiras nos,
"e tu seras mos mayorals,
".i. d'els mes apostos seras,
" e als autres ministraras,
556 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
"e tot quant dieus nos donara
" per tu aministrat sera,
"e tu cromparas de ta ma
"tot quant mes nos se despendra.
"A tal molher die atretal
"que sia bona e leyal,
"e sia bona ensanida,
"per que pusca aver vida apres,
"e tu no ayas cura d' ela
"pus que de neguna feda
"ni ela no laya de tu.
"E crezet m'en ben cascun,
car si mon mandament crezet,
"ses dupte bona ho beyret."
Et iheu auzi lo mandament,
sequi lo volonteyrament,
per lo pecat qu'eu y sabia
volonteyramen m'en partiria,
per ho responi '1 soptemen:
"Senher, iheu soy en pensament
"de .ii. enfans, senher, que ay
"qui 'Is noyrira ni co 'Is entertendray?"
E el respon me be e breument:
" Hieu t'o diray mot be e gent,
"ab lor mayre se noyriran,
"et iheu dar los ay que manyaram,
"de tot quan dieu nos dara
"la reyre depne lor sera,
"que haquel te don suvamt dieus
"per so que vuan los filhs teus."
Ara auzet, per veritat,
auzilz com mi avi dat
lo reyre denne mi a tot.
A gran pecat e a gran tort
d' aguest enguent que a fayt vesar,
puys nos asay ayam a manyar,
el me tolc be .xxx. diners
que agra hom be si '1 vendes,
car certas .ccc. diners valia,
que res mens non falhia,
et aras vey que es perdut,
no valgra may que fos vendut
e que fos a paubres donat
e no agra tant mescabat.
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
.xxx. diners n'ay heu perdut,
be mal dia m'es avengut,
mas be vos dic que nos perdray,
que ans los recrubaray,
o iheu faray una tal res
que tos veseret mors ho pres
qu'eu no m'en poyria estar
que no los an be demandar.
In hardly a single detail does this Provengal life of
Judas accord with the familiar Latin life; but in general
outline-exposure, parricide, incest, repentance-they
agree. In the mention of Herod (although as an entirely
different figure) and in the absence of the fratricide, this
version is nearer to the Latin Type A than to any other,
but still no sufficient agreements subsist to warrant our
assuming any derivative relationship between the two.
Only this much we can say with assurance: as Type A is
structurally the simplest and probably the earliest of the
Latin versions, so the Provengal is the simplest and probably
also the earliest of the vernacular versions. One would
hardly be willing to suppose that by the middle of the
fourteenth century only such echoes of the traditional life
of Judas had reached Provence as would be pieced together
to make this story in the Gascon Passion; 51 nor that the
Gascon author, acquainted with Jacopo's rendering and
possibly with others', played fast and loose with tradition
and remade the early history of Judas to suit his own pleasure.
Let us assume for the moment that our legend was
actually an adaptation of the myth of CEdipus; could it
then have been that the notion of making Judas a second
(Edipus occurred to two men independently, and each
That is, for example, word was passed on simply that the early
life of Judas resembled that of (Edipus. This is rendered very unlikely,
however, by the fact that the legend was told in Catalan from
the Latin half a century earlier.
557
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
worked out the idea after his own manner; that in total
ignorance of the Latin versions some Gascon priest or
monk brought forth the story we have in the Provencal
Passion, whether before or after the origin of the Latin
versions, yet independently ? Or is the Provencal version
a belated descendant of the earliest version of all, stranded,
as it were, in the South of France and left behind by the
later development ? This last hypothesis appears to be, on
the whole, the most reasonable and the most probable.
With regard to the later Provencal documents, it is
worth noting, though perhaps not of great importance, that
in the fifteenth-century mystere of Le repas chez Simon
the legend has no place.52
A late Provengal version, which is obviously merely an
awkward condensation of the usual legend, is reported in
the Bulletin du Bibliophile in a Notice sur un livre roman,
imprime a Toulouse au milieu du XVIe siecle.53 This
book is a paraphrase of the popular fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury
Vie de Jesu-Christ. "La premiere partie de ce
livre singulier," says the author of the Notice, " se termine
par la vie de Judas Iscariote. Nous devons tenir compte
au traducteur patois de l'effort de laconisme qu'il a fait en
renfermant dans trente-deux vers la vie tout entiere du
traitre, vie qui, dans la traduction frangoise, n'occupe pas
moins de huit pages in-40."
Lo fals Judas foc dauant sa nayssunsa
Preuist souuent per falsa vision
Don sos parens per euitar greuansa
Lo meten en Mar fugen deception
Et peys arriuec sens dubitation
" Cf. A. Jeanroy et H. Teulie, Myst6res Provengausc du Quinzieme
Siecle, Toulouse, 1893.
3 Bulletin, L (1850), pp. 779 ff. Although the Provencal document
postdates the year 1500 it is clearly a left-over of the Middle Ages,
and so properly belongs here.
558
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 559
En Scarioth ung Isla tal nommada
Don la regina ne fec reception
Et lo noyric en loc dauer linada.
Apres auenguec la regina enfantec
Ung bel enfant de soun propi marit
Loquel Judas vilanament tuec
Done cascun dels foc grandament marrit
Et quant venguec que el laguec ferit
Lo maluat Judas fugit de la mayso
Ben sabia quel rey lo aguera aucit,
Car aquo era be dreyt et mais raso.
Lo fals Judas tuec son propi payre,
Per sa folia et maluada arrogansa,
Et peys apres el espousec sa mayre,
Que foc un cas de granda violensa
De que Pylat ne fec le concordansa.
Per satisfa al murtre quauia fayt
Mas el ho fec tot per inaduertensa
De que peys apres conoguec son mal fayt.
Judas conoguec son cas et son offensa
De que el foc marrit et desplasent
Jamays naguec en el bon esperansa
Lo Diable era en son gouuernament
Mas lo dos Jesus volguec estre content
De lo perdonar son borsier lanec far
Mas a la fin lo trasit durament
Et en se penian sanec desesperar.54
BOHEMIAN. The legend of Judas was known in Bohemia
by the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth
century.55 From the Old Czechian Imperial Chronicle,
however, which is based on the Legenda Aurea, the
legend is omitted, much in the same manner as from the
4A rather garbled text of this poem was printed by G. Brunet in
an additional note (col. 722) to the article on Judas in de Douhet's
Dictionnaire des L6gendes du Christianisme (Migne) 1855.
"ICf. Julius Feifalik, Studien zur Geschichte der altb6hmischen
Literatur; vii, 'tber die Bruchstiicke einer altcechischen Kaiserchronik
und tiber die Bentitzung der Legenda aurea in der altcechischen
Dichtung,' in Wiener Sitzungsberichte, Phil.-hist. Classe,
Xxxvii (1861), pp. 56 ff. I am indebted to this article for most of
my knowledge of the Bohemian version.
560 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
Legenda Aurea Abbreviata. It is hinted at in a rimed
commentary of the Ten Commandments, apropos of the
Fourth:
Tletf mrzie viemu liudu,
ti budf bydliti s Jfdfi:
to jst jetto tepi otce,
neotpusdejI ni matce."
But of greater importance is the fragment of a version
which in spite of many parallels with Type RL seems to be
derived from a different source.57 The fragment begins
with Judas's flight to Jerusalem after killing his supposed
brother, and follows the story through to the end-his
friendship with Pilate, the quarrel in the garden, parricide,
incest, and final scene of recognition by means of Cyborea's
complainings. With regard to the variations Feifalik says:
At the very beginning of the fragment we find an elaboration which
is due to the Czechian poet: Pilate, with Judas and a large retinue,
is walking abroad, and catches sight of the enticing fruit in Reuben's
garden, while in the other versions he perceives the fruit from a
room in his palace. Judas runs his father through with a sword
instead of striking him down with a stone. He hears Cyborea often
groan in her sleep; and one night when she does this he asks her the
reason-whereas usually the scene takes place by day. And there
are other variations of the same sort. The poet makes use of a good
deal of circumstantial detail, and treats his material quite in the
manner of Court Poetry; and therefore I am inclined to look upon
his work as an imitation of some still unknown German poem, which
he handles, to be sure, with considerable freedom. He shows that he
was a man of some training and education. His verse and rhyme are
pure and artistic. He is especially fond of interrupting the course
of his story with occasional moral reflections. He displays a warm
patriotism at the beginning, where, after relating the murder of the
prince by Judas, he introduces a touching elegy on the violent death
of the last of the Premyslids in Bohemia, Wenzel III, at Olmiitz,
?Vybor, n, p. 237, 19-22; Feifalik, n. 28.
O,F irst printed in 6as. C(eskm. us., 1829, m, pp. 58-63; then Vibor,
I, pp. 169-74. Cf. Nebeskk, Gas. cesk. mus., 1847, l, pp. 11-22.
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
August 4, 1306. The poem was composed presumably soon after the
death of Wenzel."
It seems fair to assume that the poet, writing on such an
occasion, would not make use of a legend entirely unknown
to his readers or hearers; and we are therefore justified in
believing that the legend had reached Bohemia as early as
the end of the thirteenth century. Nothing further is certain.
It is of course possible, as Feifalik suggests, that the
poet had a German original, but none has been found; and
it is also possible-a bit more likely, perhaps-that he may
have heard in some indistinct way the general outline of
the Judas story and then expanded it, filling in details
according to his own fancy. Probable it is, at any rate,
that his remote source was from the West of Europe, since
his nomenclature and details are all nearer the thirteenthcentury
Latin versions than the earliest Latin or the Greek
versions. That both the Latin redactors and the Bohemian
poet drew from a common earlier account is hardly to
be supposed. Not only is the poem too late, but the divergencies
are scarcely of such a nature as to warrant that
hypothesis. I am inclined to attribute these differences
to the poet's invention, or still more probably, to the vagaries
of uncertain transmission.
RUSSIAN AND BULGARIAN. So far as can be ascertained,
all the Slavic texts (except the Bohemian) in which the
legend of Judas appears are very late; but, on the other
hand, those texts represent quite clearly material which
is much earlier in origin, and the six versions of the legend
which are known are more or less direct translations from
the Legenda Aurea. Doubtless the legend is more widespread
in eastern Europe than we have now means of de-
"8Feifalik, p. 87. Cf. V?bor, I, p. 169, 16 ff.
561
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
monstrating; popular versions are said to exist to-day in
Galicia, and probably in other portions of Russia, but researches
have not been made or recorded. The popularity
of the Legenda A urea moved eastward slowly, and with it
the legend of Judas; but in eastern Europe it has remained
later, as one would expect.
The versions thus far discovered are: 59 (1) a version
reported by Kostomarov first in CoBpeMeHHHK1I,8 60, vol.
III, and then in HcTopHxecKaHx' MOHoorpaaix?bC, n6. 1863,
i, pp. 349 ff.; (2) a text discovered by Ivan Franko in
Galicia in eighteenth-century writing and published by
Dragomanov in his article CaaBssHcKItM nptnpaBKCHH a
EAIIOBaTa HCTOPHr(SC 60pHHKEI 3a HanoAHH yMOTBOpeHI4
KH. VI); (3) in a manuscript (no. 1598, fol. 132-6) of the
Pogodin collection in the Imperial Public Library; (4) MS.
1936 of the Pogodin collection, an abbreviated form of no.
1598; (5) a version published by Bezsonov (KaJKicH
nepexoHie, 4th ed., Part II); (6) a legend, like Pogodin
1598, attributed to Hieronymus, from the Solovki Library
(240, fol. 238-40, seventeenth century) found in the Passion
of Our Lord and in the Great Mirror, and published,
from the Mirror by Profiriev, AnoKpwriu .
cKa3aHis o HOBo3aBLTHa. jIHax'b i Co06TisXb, CTp. 231-5.
These various texts represent substantially the same version,
that of the Legenda Aurea, with certain divergencies
in detail which are of minor consequence. Grabovski believed
that the Franko text represented the original Slavic
redaction and was at the same time a translation from a
Byzantine text; but since Istrin published the Greek texts
9 Cf. Istrin, op. cit., Diederichs, Russische Verwandte der Legende
von Gregor auf dem Stein und der Sage von Judas Ischariot in Russische
Revue, xvnr (1880), pp. 119 ff., and Solovev, TK aereHAaxr o6$
Iy,At Ipe;aTeat, XapLKosB, 1895, p. 177. No. (3) is printed by Solovev,
pp. 187-90.
562
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
this opinion has been proved wrong, inasmuch as in the
latter the mother of Judas is not named, and IIHBOpiS
could only have come from the Latin. The fact that in
some versions Hlieronymus is given as the author must be
ascribed to the general tendency to attribute such legends
to well-known names; or to a scribal error, since Hieronymus
is mentioned in the first lines of the Legenda Aurea
version; or perhaps to a combination of these two causes.
That in the Franko and Pogodin texts "O HeMmeieH im eTca
,a 6y,erm ,2aHam3b MHS Ha pocnyTiH OTK oero IKOeHa HMarB
HanoAHTHcsaaH THXprb"60i s added after the descent of
Judas from Dan is given, that is, the figure of Judas-
Antichrist is introduced, would point to a later date for
these texts; this addition being of the nature of an interpolated
commentary or gloss (perhaps in the text from
which the Franko and Pogodin copies were made). Istrin
suggests that it may have been from " OTpoBeHie MeeoAia
IIaTapccaro." It is of some interest, further, that in the
Passion and in the legends published by Bezsonov and by
Porfiriev (the Solovki text) the moralizing that closes the
Legenda Aurea version occurs, while the Franko and Pogodin
texts end with the end of the legend. The Solovki and
Bezsonov texts close with a final benediction: " But all of
us who read and hear this horrible tale of the life and deeds
of such an evil being may Christ our God preserve, and
6 Istrin, p. 607. The same passage in a slightly different form
occurs in the Kostomarov text, which Diederichs translates: 'Nicht
umsonst wird geschrieben in dem Buche Genesis: es soll sein Dan
eine Schlange am Scheidewege. Dies bedeutet, dass aus dem Stamme
Dan zu seiner Zeit der Antichrist geboren wird.' "Die letzten
Worte," adds Diederichs, " enthalten die seit der Schrift des Hippolytus
iiber den Antichrist angenommene Deutung der Worte Jacobs
in dem Segen, den er vor seinem Tode u. a. auch dem Dan ertheilte,
hier machen sie ibrigens, unvermittelt mit dem Zusammenhang, den
Eindruck, als waren sie eine gegen das vorhergehende gerichtete
Randbemerkung, die sich in den Text eingedrangt hat" (p. 122).
563
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
make us worthy of Thy heavenly kingdom with Thy
Father and the Holy Ghost for ever."
CONCLUSION. It is rather striking that the three earliest
vernacular versions, which may be dated at the end of the
thirteenth century, are the Bohemian, the Welsh, and the
Catalan, almost at the very extremes of the legend's territory.
That the first English, French, and German versions
should be in verse is not remarkable; though it is interesting
to see that the four English poems represent different
dialects. Nor is it surprising that we find the story in such
legendaries as the Passional, the Seelen Trost, or the Italian
and Old Swedish collections. But on the other hand
certain absences are remarkable. There is no evidence
that the legend found a place in any of the cycles of English
mysteries, except the Towneley, where it was a kind of
appendix or optional insert, not a part of the play; it never
occurs in the mediaeval German drama, although in certain
plays the Biblical role of Judas was considerably
developed. In Greban's Passion it appears only en passant
in a single speech;. there is no suggestion of it in the final
scene of Judas's despair and suicide, where it might have
been used to great artistic effect. Only in the great work
of Jehan Michel does it receive any dramatic attention or
appear to be a part of the performance; here at the close
of the Middle Ages only do we meet with an unmistakable
indication of its popularity. Its appearance in some of
the great legendaries implies little; but when we discover
separate redactions of it, in verse, as in England and
France, or in prose, as in France and Russia, for example;
or find it used apparently as a part of the materials on
which a poet can draw for emotional effect; then we cannot
be wrong in maintaining that the legend had become
truly and indisputably popular in both senses of the term.
564
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
POST-MEDI2VAL VERSIONS
"La legende de Judas," says the Comte de Douhet, " est
un des precieux monuments populaires que nous a legues le
moyen age." ' A late version of it is printed in the Bibliotheque
Bleue, and it still is found " dans les boites des colporteurs
pour defrayer les assemblees de nos campagnards
dans les longues soirees d'hiver." Douhet prints it under
the title: Vie de Judas Iscarioth, qui vendit Notre-
Seigneur. This version follows the Latin Type RL, but
with considerable expansions, chiefly in the manner of the
late fifteenth-century French prose version. The most
interesting elaboration is after the parricide. Boree
(Ciborea) comes into the garden, discovers her dead husband
and his slayer, and goes directly to Pilate to lodge a
complaint. But Pilate pays very little attention to her.
He has Judas called, and hears his confession; but Judas
avers that Reuben began the quarrel. Finally Pilate says
to Boree: "Come here. There is no use weeping, for the
thing is done and cannot be mended. But I will do something
for you-provide you with a husband. Marry my
servant here, a good and honorable man, Judas." "I
would not do it for all the world," responds Boree. "If
you will not," says Pilate, " then be gone, for I am busy."
Boree departs; and Judas and Pilate take counsel together
on the financial advantages of the marriage. Boree is
recalled. After Pilate has pronounced a short eulogy on
Judas, she says: " Sir, your will be done." 2
D'Ancona mentions a poetic version, in a rather turgid
Dictionnaire des legendes du Christianisme, Migne, 1855, col. 714.
2 J. Collin de Plancy, Legendes du Nouveau Testament, Paris, 1863,
pp. 232ff., repeats the usual legend, without indicating his source,
but introduces after Judas's flight from Scariot the biting incident
told in the Evangelium Infantice Arabicum, cap. xxxv.
565
566 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
style, printed at Lucca in 1807, entitled: Nascita, vita, e
morte disperata di Giuda Iscariotte, poeticamente descritta
dal signor Nibegno Roclami romano. The first stanza
runs:
Non pitl d' armi d' Eroi, d' amor, di sdegni,
Non pit d'imprese egregie e generose,
Non pit d'illustri e memorandi ingegni,
Musa, non pill cantar gesta gloriose;
Ma del re degli iniqui, infami e indegni
Descrivi i sensi e l'opre obbrobriose;
Questi fu l'empio Giuda, il piil nefando
Di tutti i traditori, il pitl esecrando.8
Sig. D. Bergamaschi in his Giuda Iscariota, nella leggenda,
nelle tradizioni e nella Bibbia,4 a rather hasty and
very incomplete work, recounts a version of the legend
without indicating its date or source. The version appears,
however, to be late, as though taken perhaps from an Italian
chap-book.
The infant Judas was set adrift in a cestella on the River Jordan,
and after being carried down to the Mediterranean finally reached the
island of Candia. Here a king saw and rescued him; and, since his
clothing showed him to be a Jew, called him Judas. The king had
a son who was one year older than Judas. The latent wickedness of
the foundling soon broke out; he stole money and articles of value,
until finally he was observed by the king's son and his thefts revealed.
The king had him flogged, and then disclosed to him his irregular
origin. Judas thereupon killed his putative brother, fled to Egypt
and then to Jerusalem, and entered the service of a gran signore.
3 D'Ancona, Introd., p. 97, and n. 2.
4La Scuola Cattolica, Anno 37, Serie IV, vol. xv (1909), pp. 292 ff.
-Ms. It. V. 38 of the year 1560 (Catalogi dei Codici Marciani Italiani,
II, Modena, 1911) contains a collection of Vite di molti Heresiarchi,
beginning with that of Judas: "gelano per l'horrere gl' inchiostri al
nome abhoribile di Giuda," This is probably the usual legend; I
have been unable to see it. What is probably another version is
mentioned in Inventari dei Manoscritti delle Biblioteche d'Italia,
xvi, p. 184, no. 126: "Segni Cativi di Giuda Scariotto," Stanza di
endecasillabi in ottava rima. Sec. xvii.
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
One day his master asked him to fetch some apples from a certain
orchard, and in doing this Judas met, quarreled with, and slew his
father. The widow of the murdered man prosecuted Judas, and the
judgment against him read that he must either lose his life or marry
the widow. He chose the latter alternative. " Fu chiamato Iscariota,
cioe asino, et visse a lungo con sua madre." At length his
mother recognized him as her son by " due dita del piede attacate ":
he repented his sin, became a disciple of Jesus, betrayed Him, suffered
remorse, and hanged himself.
This version seems clearly to be based directly on no
mediaeval form of the legend that we have yet found. The
island is Candia, the rescuing personage a king, the son is
older, etc. No names are offered, but there is a new explanation
of the cognomen 'Iscariot.' A modern motif is the
widow's legal prosecution, while the method of recognition
suggests the story of CEdipus. It looks as if the legend had
been handed down orally, not by the written word. The
outline remained, but the geography underwent a change,
and the incident of the brother received a greater emphasis,
with concomitant variations.
Turning from this evidently popular version, we find
the legend in Spain dressed in the robes of formal drama
by Antonio Zamora, who flourished about 1730.5 On the
whole the play is a dull performance, divided into three
"jornadas," and enlivened somewhat with music. The
essential features of the legend are preserved. The first
act opens with " Musica, y salen Ciborea con el lienzo en
los ojos. Teuca, Saray, Abra, y Rubin, todos a lo Judio."
When the others are gone Ciborea reveals to her husband
the prophetic dream concerning Judas. Reuben is sent for
by Pilate. Then Judas and a band of youths enter and in
a long speech he is informed that he is not the real brother
of the prince; whereupon, in a fit of anger, he kills the
Comedias de Don Antonio de Zamora, Gentil-hombre, Madrid,
1744, i, pp. 277-327.
14
567
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
prince. During the following scene, between Pilate and
Reuben, Judas re-enters and applies to Pilate for a position.
Pilate calls him familiarly a " joven gallardo";
the conversation turns upon Christ, and in a speech of
nearly 300 lines Judas narrates the preaching of John and
the birth of Jesus. Pilate is much pleased by this discourse,
and engages him forthwith. The second act begins
with a lively scene in which " Salen Judas, Barrabas,
Teutila, y Lebron con una escala." They hoist their ladder
against the wall, Judas delivers a lyrical address to the
garden behind, and disappears just as the barking of a dog
warns Reuben of the intruder. Reuben comes forward " a
medio vestir," Judas returns with some fruit in a handkerchief;
they quarrel, and Reuben is killed. Pilate then
marries Judas and Ciborea; the crime of incest is revealed,
and penitence undertaken. At the opening of Act
III Judas is a favorite apostle, "no mucho menos que
Juan." But to reimburse his loss after Magdalen's extravagance
he sells Christ to the Jews. All his friends
turn against him. Finally we hear his mother, whom he
calls "causa de mios infortunios," exhort him to renewed
repentance. But he refuses consolation, and withdraws to
hang himself.
Here, as in the mystere of Greban, there is a certain
pathos and dignity in Judas's final despair and suicide.
The great finale of the play is almost impressive. By a
felicitous suggestion of the author we are made to feel that
the earthquake and darkness which attend the death of
Christ accompany also the suicide of Judas. But these
more than CEdipodean crimes of Judas occupy two-thirds
of a comedy that is truly " too full of horrors to be amusing
"; and by a kind of poetic justice Zamora's drama has
won for itself an undisturbed oblivion in which to bury its
faults. Whether the legend was known in Spain among
568
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
the folk we do not know. Zamora's source was doubtless
literary.
A man truly of the Middle Ages but a late comer was
Abraham a Sancta Clara (1644-1709). Besides separate
sermons, he published upwards of twenty works, some of
which were reissued after his death. His most popular
work seems to have been his Judas, which is entitled:
JUDAS, der Ertz-Schelm, fur ehrliche Leuth, oder: Eigentlicher
Entwurff und Lebens-Beschreibung dess Iscariotischen Bosswicht.
Worinnen underschiedliche Discurs, sittliche Lehrs-Puncten, Gedicht
und Geschicht, auch sehr reicher Vorrath Biblischer Concepten. Welche
nit allein einem Prediger auff der Cantzel sehr dienlich fallen, der
jetzigen verkehrten, beth6rrten, versehrten Welt die Warheit under
die Nasen zu reiben: sondern es kan auch dessen ein Privat- und
einsamber Leser zur erspriesslichen Zeit-Vertreibung und gewiinschten
Seelen-Hayl gebrauchen.
This magnum opus appeared in four quarto volumes,
issued separately at Salzburg, the first in 1686, the second
in 1689, the third in 1692, the fourth in 1695.6 Abraham
does not, to be sure, stick very close to his text, which is
the life of Judas. At the end of the third volume Judas
is put to death, but the fourth goes on well enough without
him. As the title indicates, the story is much overlaid
with sermonizing and moral discoursing, in about the proportion
of one part Judas to, say, twenty of Abraham.
His chief source was, according to his own statement,
Jacopo da Voragine; but for his commentations he cited
abundantly most of the scholars of the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance, the early Fathers, the Acta Sanctorum,
6 Each volume was reprinted several times, the first, e. g., Salzburg
and Lucern, 1686, Bonn 1687, Zug 1687, Salzburg 1688, 1689, 1691,
etc. The complete work was printed in Salzburg 1695-6 and 1709;
Niirnberg 1718; abbreviated Vienna 1729, Niirnberg 1752; Celle
1831; an 'adapted' version Vienna 1833; and in the Works Vienna
1826-34, Passau 1835-46, Lindau 1850. Cf. the Auswahl edited by
F. Bobertag in Ktirschner's Deutsche National-Litteratur, p. iv.
569
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
and various Annals and Chronicles How many of these
citations were from an immediate knowledge of the original
one cannot quite say, but a large number of them were
doubtless made second-hand; and when a learned name
was not conveniently available Abraham drew on his imagination.
For the early life of Judas Abraham followed
the Legenda Aurea very closely; and in no point do his
alterations betray acquaintance with any other source.
His divergencies are such as one would expect from the
author. Thus he declares that the married life of Judas's
parents was unhappy, and makes this his point of departure
for a long discourse (above forty pages) on conjugal
infelicity. He intercalates a whole chapter on " Ob Judas
der Ertz-Schelm einen roten Barth habe gehabt, und was
Leibs-Gestalt er gewesen seye." He admits unimportant
variations into the account of what passed between Judas
and Pilate after the murder of Reuben. The legend itself,
however, is only a portion of Abraham's Judas. The
Biblical part of the story is considerably elaborated and
enlivened by the importation of uncanonical details, in
addition to the Abrahamitic moralizings. For example,
Abraham remarks, keenly enough, that the mere fact none
of the apostles suspected Judas of theft shows what a sly
thief he was. After the actual betrayal, adds Abraham,
Judas could not speak the name of Jesus, since he was
utterly in Satan's power. On the other hand, Abraham
made one rather notable departure from his source: the
reflections on Judas's death as contained in Type L he
eschewed altogether, and set in their place the early Eastern
legend of the decay of Judas's body and the unendurable
stench therefrom.7
7 For the story of Judas's elephantiasis cf. (Ecumenius on Acts 1
(M. S. G. 118, 57-), and Boisaonade, Anecdota Grcec, II, pp. 464-5.
570
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Each incident of the apocryphal life of Judas serves as
a text for the author's moral observations and discourses,
" Gedicht und Geschicht "; and while accordingly Abraham's
work is an important item in the post-mediaeval history
of the legend, it cannot be considered as quite independent
testimony of the legend's popularity in Germany at
the close of the seventeenth century. For the sort of preaching
that Abraham represents, nothing is more useful than
a palpable point of departure for inveighing against sinners,
to paint in the brightest colors their evil ways and
consequent damnation; and for this purpose no figure is
better adapted than Judas. Abraham, as a man of wide
reading, of mediaeval temperament, and unscrupulous
credulity, naturally made use of the Judas legend.
Thereby the legend received a kind of artificial popularity
and extension; but in the success of the book as a
whole the honors must be divided between Abraham and
Judas, in just what proportion no one can say.
Either the mediaeval legend of Judas enjoyed a greater
posthumous popularity in England than elsewhere, or
fortune has been more generous in preserving us English
specimens of its later development. At any rate,
lives of Judas, based on the legend, were printed in Great
Britain down to the year of Grace 1828, in five separate
versions, some of which went through several editions.
This is a record of which the legend-and England!-
may well be proud.
The earliest of these versions that I have found is the
Life, Character, and Death of Judas, whose third edition
appeared in 1724. The burst of popularity is distinctly
an eighteenth-century matter; excepting the addition to
the Towneley mystery, which dates very early in the sixteenth
century, the legend appears to have suffered a two
571
572 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUJM
hundred years' eclipse, but when the light came again it
came with splendour.
'The Life, Character and Death of Judas Iscariot,
that Traytor who betray'd our Blessed Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. Giving a Full and True Account Of the
whole Course Of that False Disciple's Actions from his
Birth, to his accursed and untimely Death. The third
Edition. Licensed and Enter'd according to Act of Parliament.
London. Printed by A. Smith in Pye-Corner,
1724.' This work is unusually long, but so far as I can
learn no complete copy of it exists. It begins:
" Judas Iscariot was descended from one Simon a Tanner, living
near Joppa, a noted Sea-port Town in Palestine, now in possession of
the barbarous and inhumane Turks. Before his good and pious
Mother, for he came of Virtuous Parents, brought him into the World,
being one Night very restless, she at last fell to sleep, and dream'd
that the Child she then went with, would prove to her great Grief
and Sorrow, both a Thief and a Murderer: So awaking very much
affrighted, she grew thereupon very melancholly; and being greatly
disturb'd in Mind, she was studying and contriving Night and Day
what way she might prevent the Odium and Scandal which seemed
to fall upon her family by the Production of this Birth." At last
she was "through God's great Mercy, safely deliver'd of a lovely Boy,"
but "he had a strange sort of Mark upon his left side; for under his
Breast, as several Authors writes, was a Cross, a Gallows, Money and
2 Daggers." These signs were (naturally enough) the "wonder and
admiration of all who beheld them: but to the mother they were a
source of great anxiety. When the child was eight days old he was
circumcised and given the name of Judas: and on this occasion a
great celebration was instituted, with "a vast Number of Spectators"
and a four days' "Entertainment." After this the mother
became more and more anxious and finally resolved to consult a magician.
The seance is given in considerable detail. During the course
of it the whole life of Judas was forecast. The mother fell in a
swoon. Then she and the magician began plans to be rid of the child.
With the aid of " one Rota a cunning Artist in such Affairs" they
constructed "by stealth" and according to " the Form of the Watry
Mansions " a "bark," "dr rather Box as some may call it." Everything
was managed with the greatest secrecy, and without the knowledge
of the boy's father. Elaborate pains were taken to conceal the
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 573
plan and its execution, and that everything might work smoothly a
dead baby was procured from a kinswoman of the mother.-After the
plan is described at great length, its working is retold. A whole
page is devoted to the maternal lamentations when finally the child
is set adrift with " Judas" on a bit of parchment "ty'd round his
Neck," and we are not spared the father's grief as well-" But now
let's see what is become of young Judas indeed." The "Bark or
Boat" was " driving along the Coast called Iscariot, where there was
a mighty Rock, on which Theophilus, the king of that great Country,
used to recreate himself." From his rock the king caught sight of
the bark and ordered it brought ashore. He perceived that it was a
" very fine child," called him Judas Iscariot, and "took all the tender
Care imaginable of him." On "coming to Mans Estate, Judas
was made one of the Kings Council, besides having other great Dignities
and Offices bestowed upon him." But "in process of Time"
he quarrelled with the king's son and killed him. He then escaped
in the guise of a servant; came to Joppa, which was his birthplace;
found a place in a Gentleman's House, and did very well there.
One day his Mistress, who was with child, being "out to take the
air," saw some fruit that she liked and gave Judas money with which
to buy it. Judas, however, kept the money and tried to steal the
fruit, and in the combat that ensued killed-his father. A year or
two afterwards he returned in disguise, "and being a very handsome
young Man, his own Mother, not knowing him to be her Son, fell in
Love with him, and in a very short time married him." After they
had lived together some time his mother discovered the birthmarks.
By her "persuasion" he went to Jesus, and became an apostle.-
The Last Supper and the meeting and kiss in the Garden of Olives
are then briefly told. (The remainder of the book is lacking.)
Closely related to this and in all likelihood based upon
it are: 'The lost and Undone Son of Perdition; or the
Life and Death of Judas Iscariot. London. Printed for
Andrew Hambleton, 1784,' comprising 16 duodecimo
pages, and 'The Lost and undone Son of Perdition; or
the Life and Character of Judas Sirnamed Iscariot; But
known to us by the Name of Judas the Traytor, who betrayed
Christ our Lord and Saviour.... [here 12
verses in heroic couplets] Faithfully collected from several
ancient Authors of undoubted credit. London.
Printed and sold by L. How, in Petticoat-Lane near
574 PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
White-Chapel.' Though varying in details the story in
both is essentially the same as in the Life, Character and
Death.
Dependent in part upon the L. How Lost and undone
Son is 'The lost and undone Son of Perdition; or the
Birth, Life, and Character of Judas Iscariot, Faithfully
collected from several ancient Authors of undoubted
credit. By J. Thompson, Boston. New England: Printed
in the Year M, DCC, LXV.' 8 The first few sentences
of this are identical with those of the Lost and
undone Son printed by How, but the author, Thompson,
soon begins to abbreviate and gradually works away from
his original.
When Theophilus from his mountain discerned the chest floating
on the sea, he and his nobles cast lots to see who should have the
treasure. Judas afterwards killed the king's son solely in order that
he might himself inherit the throne; then he fled "to Theba, seventy
six leagues Westward, a City in Idumae, where he continued for the
space of four Years and upwards." He returned to Joppa, changed
his name, lived for some time in a nobleman's family, until at length
his mother, being a widow, saw him and fell in love with him. Five
years they lived together before his mother recognized her son (by his
birth mark). In disgust she turned him off and bade him repent of
his many sins. Thereafter he wandered from place to place nearly
starved and in great despair. "One day he laid down under the
Shade of a Sycamore Tree, in a desert Place, there thinking to end
his miserable Life," but he fell asleep, and was directed by a Voice
to go down to the River Jordan. Here he met the same old magician
whom his mother had consulted at his birth. The magician drew
from him his story and suggested his mending his fortune by seeking
"an extraordinary Person now on Earth, and not a great way off,
he was born in Bethlehem-Judae, his name is Jesus ... Judas
heard all and apprehended something, but comprehended nothing."
Hearing of the miracles of Jesus, he was especially attracted by that
of the Loaves and Fishes. He remained about a week with the
magician, then set out toward Samaria and found Jesus at Jacob's
8The Boston Public Library has also a copy of a later edition,
Boston, 1771.
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Well. Jesus knew him to be the son of perdition but accepted him
"that the Scripture might be fulfilled-[To which we refer our
Reader for the Remainder of Judas's Life]." Thompson makes no
mention of a source; his alterations of the usual tale, which are considerable,
we may assume to be his own.
Very similar to Hambleton's 1784 version of the Lost
and Undone Son are two chap-books printed, one at
Wotton-Underedge, 1790, the other at London. These
make a special point of the fatalism in the life of Judas-
In Judas here we plainly see,
'Tis vain to strive 'gainst Fate,
For its Decrees shall surely be
Fulfilled soon or late.
Close, again, to Hambleton's versions is 'The Life and
Death of Judas Iscariot, or the Lost and undone Son of
Perdition. Glasgow. Printed for the Book-sellers.'
The British Museum has two copies of this work dated
1828; the Harvard Library copy is undated.9 In this
Glasgow edition, and in the London edition not printed by
How, King Theophilus is printed as King Pheophilus.
There are certain small omissions and interpolations, and
doggerel is introduced; but in many places the wording is
identical. Now and then an effort is made to correct and
improve the style.
It is rather difficult to explain the alterations which the
mediaeval legend has here undergone except as a conscious
endeavor for greater verisimilitude, a desire to make a
'better story of it.' Such an explanation, however,
leaves a good deal to be desired, leaves, in truth, a good
deal unexplained. One thing to be noted is the change
from the queen rescuer to the king; this already appeared
9Reprinted by Cheap in The Chapmans' Library: The Scottish
Chap Literature of the Last Century Classified. Glasgow, 1877,
vol. II.
575
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
in the Dutch version and was remarked by de Vooys.
Doubtless if we had the chain of evidence complete-for
it is not to be thought that the legend was entirely lost
during its centuries of eclipse-from say 1500 to 1700
many other changes could be accounted for in the gradual
shiftings of emphasis and substitution of details which
would be the natural result of irregular, oral transmission.
The story of Judas enjoyed the further distinction of
ballad form. In the Roxburghe Ballads, we find The
Dream of Judas' Mother Fulfilled, Together with his sinful
Life and deserved destruction, in eighteen stanzas, to
the tune of " Christ is my Love." 10
Who that antique story reads,
and ancient tales of old:
a notable strange tragedy
to you I will unfold;
of that Judas Iscariot
who did our Savior sell,
and did betray him with a kiss,
to haste himself to hell.
In certain details this ballad is a closer return to the
mediaeval legend than any of the modern English versions,
and shows even an earlier simplicity than many of
the Latin versions. The manner of the exposure distinctly
suggests Moses; the picture on the other hand of Pilate
riding through his land " on his sport and his play " suggests
the Bohemian version.
A more pretentious if not more popular rendering than
any of the preceding is 'The Unhappy Birth, wicked
Life, and miserable Death of that vile Traytor and Apostle,
Judas Iscariot, who for Thirty-Pieces of Silver betray'd
his Lord and Master JESUS CHRIST. Shewing:
10 Folio Edition, II, ii, p. 737. The estimated date in the British
Museum catalogue is: ? London, 1730.
576
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
[here the story is outlined under VI topics.] To which
is added, a Short RELATION of the Sufferings of our
BLESSED REDEEMER. Also the Life and Miserable Death
of Pontius Pilate, who condemn'd the Lord of Life to
Death. Being collected from the Writings of Josephus
Sozomenus, and other Ecclesiastical Historians. Durham.
Printed and Sold by Isaac Lane.' This is without date,
but probably is about 1750. Another edition, likewise in
twelves, was printed at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. ? 1760.
On the verso of the title page is a " To the Reader" of
four six-line stanzas, in which the story is epitomized,
signed "T. G." Two later editions, in eights, lacking
this signature were printed at Birmingham, one in 1793,
the other in ? 1815. The " History " is divided into six
chapters. The story is told with much circumstantial detail
and with a considerable attempt at color and picturesqueness."
The most elaborate form that the legend of Judas enjoyed
during its chap-book period is the version in heroic
couplets by Thomas Gent. This was printed at York in
1772, but claims on the title page to have been " Originally
written in London at the age of 18." Inasmuch as
Gent was born in 1693, and there is no reason to question
the accuracy of his statement, his 'Judas Iscariot' must
have been composed in 1711. Thomas Gent was a
printer of chap-books in London and York, a man of interesting
character and rather notable literary activity, and
for a man of his position his learning was remarkably
extensive if not very profound.l2 His life of Judas is
It is probably this version which was referred to by Adin Williams,
F. R. H. iS. as 'The Birth, Life, and Death of Judas and the
Life and Miserable Death of Pilate' in Notes and Queries, 6th Series,
mn, p. 388.
"1Cf. Yorkshire Chap-books, ed. by C. A. Federer, London, 1889,
pp. 10-23.
577
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
entitled: 'Divine Justice and Mercy Displayed. Set
forth in the unhappy Birth, wicked Life, and miserable
End of that deceitful Apostle, JUDAS ISCARIOT; Who for
thirty Pieces of Silver, betrayed and sold his Lord and
Master JESUS CHRIST. Shewing, [here the story is outlined
in six divisions]. With Meditations on the Life and
Death of our B. Saviour.' The whole poem is divided
into six chapters, which do not, however, exactly coincide
with the six divisions on the title page. The first lines
of" Chap. I " will illustrate the author's style and manner.
THAT, by the Means of JUDAS, CHRIST was slain,
The Sacred WRITINGS tell us very plain;
But no where shews his ill fore-boding Birth,
Who prov'd the saddest Wretch upon the Earth!
My present Task, far as TRADITION'S Truth,
Shall be improving LINES, begun in YOUTH;
From various Authors; who the Mind engage,
By Heaven inspir'd, and known from Age to Age.
Coelestial SENSE is best, right understood;
But, next, undoubted TESTIMONY'S good;
From whence bright Knowledge, like fair Rivers flow;
Or Dews, from HIGH, refreshing ALL below.
So 'twas of old, the SACRIFICE divine;
The EUCHARIST, in Holy Bread and Wine,
Was fair display'd, as what the CHURCH should deck,
By Sanction's Pow'r, thro' King MELCHIZEDEK.
An INSTITUTION, lastingly remember'd,
CHRIST'S nat'ral BODY on the Cross so render'd;
Held, by the LEARNEDc, onstantly to prove.
Appeasing Anger, and obtaining LOVE!
But Judas' Name, that bears the sad Transgression,
Derived is from Praise, and true Confession.
PERSONS, so-styl'd, gave Rise to IISTORY:
From whom I'll mention which of them was He.
Judas's mother was named Berenice, his father Simon;
the monarch who "on fam'd Iscariot's coast" saw the
infant Judas floating by, "And, wond'ring at the Navigator,
gaz'd! " was named Valerius; and the story pro-
578
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
ceeds as in the Unhappy Birth but with a considerable
admixture of classical allusion and neo-classic poetical
adornment.
The similarities between this work of Gent and the
Unhappy Birth are striking. Of the latter no edition is
known to me earlier than about 1750, whereas Gent professes
to be revamping a poem he had composed as early
as 1711. Verbal parallels are comparatively infrequent,
and on the whole are such as would be likely in any two
versions of the same story. But the most remarkable
point is the appearance of Gent's To the Reader (omitting
the last stanza, which would probably be one of the later
'improvements') in two editions of the Unhappy Birth,
one at Durham, the other at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but
signed only " T. G.", and of the same To the Reader in
two later editions without even the initials. Admitting
that demonstration is quite impossible, I incline to the
opinion that the Unhappy Birth was taken, at least in
part, from Gent's early unpublished poem, and taken perhaps
without the author's consent.
Another version, which rests upon a somewhat different
tradition, is entitled:
A Full and True Account of the Birth, Life, and Death, of JUDAS
ISCARIOT; who was the Son of Simon, and of the Tribe and Lineage
of Benjamin. Shewing how his Mother was foretold by a dream that
she would bear a Son that would betray the Saviour of the World;
how his Father thought to prevent it, by putting him in a small Boat,
and committing him to the Seas; how he was found by some Fishermen
that belonged to the Island of Iscariot, how a Prince brought
him up, and made him his Son's Companion; how he treacherously
drowned the Prince's Son, and for fear of discovery fled to the Land
of Canaan, where he killed his own Father, and married his Mother;
afterwards betrayed our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ;
last of all, how he hanged himself, and his Bowels gushed out. Glascow.
Printed and Sold by J. & J. Robertson. M,DCC,LXXVI.
Here the rescue by fishermen suggests Gregory again On
579
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
the whole the narrative is smooth and at times vivid. The
final paragraph offers a fresh variation of the old theme,
viz.: "It is known when a malefactor commits high
treason against the king, that ten executioners rips open
his belly, and takes out his heart, and holds it in his
hand, in view of all the spectators, crying, There behold
the heart of a traitor: And for Judas who was a traitor
to the King of kings, it was no wonder that the seam of his
belly did burst asunder: that all who passed by might
behold his treacherous heart."
At length, in the nineteenth century, the legend reappears
in Wales. The little pamphlet of sixteen duodecimo
pages is entitled: " Hanes bywyd a marwolaeth Judas
Iscariot. Cyfieithiad o'r Saes'neg. Allan o'r 12fed argraffiad.
Trefriw," [ ? 1825]. The title page is undated,
but contains, written in ink, the name of Ed. Robert, with
the date October 10, 1826. If we are to believe this translator
the legend had a greater vogue in England than we
had supposed, for he is here translating from the twelfth
edition. No English version that we know had such a
success. Or perhaps this is a species of Welsh advertisement.
At any rate the translation is evidently of the
Life, Character and Death, which enjoyed a third edition
in 1724, and was imitated by the Lost and undone Son of
Perdition, which itself ran through several editions in England,
Scotland, and America. If the Life, Character and
Death had reached a third edition in 1724 it may well
have gone onwards to a twelfth a hundred years later.
Which would make it easily the best-seller and most popular
of all the legend's modern renderings. In the Welsh
the father's name is not " one Simon, a tanner," but simply
Simon Barcer-the trade became the surname. To the
English version the translation adds one supplementary
detail: the " bark or rather box " in which Judas was set
580
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
adrift was lined with oilcloth-and the translator was
careful to insert the English word in parenthesis into his
text.13
Coeval with the Renaissance of the Judas legend in
England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries we find a similar revival in the Scandinavian
countries. Rasmus Nyerup 14 mentions a Danish chapbook
containing a Historie om Judas with the following
title: 'En kort og mserkelig Historie om den slemme og
forgiftige Forrseder Judas, hans Afkom Fidsel og Levnet
og hvad Synder han haver bedrevet i denne Verden fra
hans Opvsext indtil han blev Christi Apostel.' Nyerup
merely gives in a few words the story of fratricide, parricide,
and incest, " ligesom Oedip "; and adds: " At denne
Legende, som man ogsaa finder hos det 14de Seculi Skribent
Matthseus Westmonast (edit. Francof. 1601, pag. 47-
48), i det 17de Aarhundrede bar vseret oversat paa Dansk.
sees deraf, at den omtales i Peder Syvs danske Boglade.
Han giver den det Skiudsmaal, og det med Fdje, at den
indeholder mange Urimeligheder." There is another
Danish chap-book, presumably the same version, with the
The Catalogue (1898) of the Cardiff Free Libraries mentions
three other 'editions': Shrewsbury, ca. 1750, Merthyr, 1812, Aberdare,
1879.-In Notes and Queries, 2nd Series, vii, p. 455 another
English version is mentioned 'The Arch Knave, or the History of
Judas from the Cradle to the Gallows. Compiled and translated
from the High Dutch of S. Clare and the Spanish of Don H. de
Mendoza. London: printed by J. Morphew.' Pp. 56. n. d. This
"describes how Judas, when a boy, robbed hen roosts, and laid poison
for his schoolmaster, &c." There is no Judas legend in Mendoza.
-In An Awakening Call to Great Britain a Judas Iscariot is advertized
among the Penny Books printed and sold by Wm. Dicey in
Bow Church-Yard.
14 Almindelig Morskabslcesning i Danmark og Norge igjennen Aarhundreder.
Kj0benhavn, 1816, pp. 178-9.
581
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
following title: 'En ret maerkvaerdig Historie om den
onde Forraxder Judas, hvori hans Herkomst, F0dsel, hele
Levnet, samt meget grove Synder allerede fra Barndommen,
af, indtil han blev Christi Discipel, paa det omstsendeligste
beskrives. Kj0benhavn. [N. D.] Tilkjsbs i
store Helliggejststrsede No. 150 og. 51.' Like The Un,
happy Birth in English it is divided into chapters, but
beyond its telling substantially the same story there is no
apparent relation between them. What its source was I
am unable to say. In outline it follows the usual version
of the legend represented by the Latin Type RL, and
would seem to be a general expansion of the mediaeval legend;
but there is no indication that it was made immediately
from a Latin text, possibly via Westmonast,
mentioned by Nyerup.
Backstrom says: " Den svenska folkboken ir tvifelsutan
en ofversattning fran den danska." 15 The Swedish recorded
editions of the legend are far more numerous than
the Danish. Backstrom gives eleven titles, dating from
1740 to 1836, a whole century.16 Three of these I have
seen; and in spite of varying titles they are identical in
text. Backstrim prints a slightly different text, without
indicating which he has chosen; if the Swedish versions
are translated from the Danish-which is altogether possible-
the Backstr6m text would represent merely a different
translation of the same original, provided both
translations were quite literal. Moreover, these two translations,
if we may call them so, agree in such a general
way with the Danish version second-mentioned that one
would be tempted to assume at once, especially in view of
15 venska Folkb6cker, II, p. 198, Stockholm, 1848.
"A German translation by K. Tamms from an 1833 edition appeared
in Germania, VI (1844), pp. 144 ff.
582
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Backstro-m's statement, that our Swedish texts are translated
from the Danish; but this cannot be exactly the case,
as a single example will show. In commenting finally on
the utter sinfulness of Judas and Christ's apparently
wasted effort to recover him by making him treasurer of
the Apostles the Swedish version of Backstrom says: " Det
var med honom, som om man ville taga ett och s6ka tva
det hvitt med myckt skurande; ju mera man det skurar,
ju svartare blifver det. Sa ock Judas: ju mera Herren
Jesus lirde " etc. (in the three versions I have seen: " Det
war med honom lika som man wille taga et Kohl, och twa
det hwitt med mycket skurande och twattande: ju mera
man det skurar, ju swartare blifwer det; sa war det ock
med Judas. Ju mera herren Jesus larde," etc.; compare
with this the close of the Cologne Seelen Trost, 1. c., p.
293); whereas our Danish text reads simply: " Judas var
og blev et Afikum. Jo mere Christus loerde" etc. Obviously
our two Swedish versions (unless indeed they depend one
on the other, which is highly improbable because they are
so similar) cannot well be derived from the Danish version
just described. The alternative possibility, then, is that
other Danish versions existed, one of which contained expressly
the trope of washing the coal, and this Danish version
was based perhaps mediately or immediately on the
Seelen Trost.
In both the Swedish and Danish text books the name of
Judas's mother is Liboria instead of Ciborea; this error
may rest on a misprint, as Tamms suggested, or on the
misreading of a manuscript. When the queen finds the
child in the floating chest still alive- "ty den drunknar
icke, som hainga skall "-she cries: "Ack, om jag hade
ett sadant piltebarn, af mig fodt! ", which suggests the
Latin Type RL. Judas's humble birth and his evil nature
115
583
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
from the very beginning are here emphasized, so that the
murder of his foster brother is somewhat foreshadowed or
psychologically motivated. It is not expressly said as in
the Latin versions that Pilate and Judas were mutually
attracted because of their common wickedness, but simply
that they got on well together " ty Pilatus och han voro
skalmar och mordare bada tva," as in the Seelen Trost.
The scene of Reuben and Judas in the garden is elaborated
with some detail, the father being pictured as a gentle old
man; the wife's grief and her appeal to Pilate for justice
are given at some length; and the latter's proposal to provide
her with a "good" husband is carefully worked up;
but beyond the points already mentioned there is nothing
to indicate the source of these versions,-unless the closing
reflection on the world's ingratitude--" och sa plagar ock
verlden annu i dag lona bevista vilgerningar "-be taken
as further evidence of their relation with the Seelen Trost.
Now it is of course by no means impossible, it is even
entirely probable, that the mediaeval Danish or Swedish
translation of the German Seelen Trost was the source
used by the writer or writers of these chap-books, but the
evidence which can be gathered does not seem to warrant
more than a suggestion.
A Finnish version of the legend is printed in Folksagor
for Gamla och Unga. Orebro, 1842. I, pp. 238-51.
(Backstrom).
The briefest summary of the foregoing material will
suffice. While in a general way intermediate texts to
bridge the time between the Middle Ages and the eighteenth-
century revival of the legend in England and Sweden
may easily be postulated, the most natural hypothesis,
in view of the lack of real evidence to the contrary, is that
in England at least the transmission of the legend was oral.
The variations of the English from the mediaeval versions
584
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
certainly appear to support such a hypothesis. But it is
not impossible that Thomas Gent or some educated printer
found the mediaeval story in an old book (Caxton's
Golden Legende, for example) and seeing that it would
make good copy-since interest in Judas is perennialworked
it up for a chap-book. It is to be noted that the
contemporaneousness of the English and Scandinavian revivals
is purely fortuitous; there is not the slightest evidence
that points towards borrowing on either side or
mutual influence of any sort. The German and Spanish
versions are each a kind of literary product and cannot
count as evidence of the popularity of the legend. In
France its inclusion in the Bibliotheque Bleue is pretty
definite indication that it reached the folk; in England
and Sweden there can be no doubt; in western Russia the
evidence is even stronger, for late in the last century versions
were taken down from oral delivery.17
ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE LEGEND
Although the investigation of the origins and sources
of mediaeval legends en masse has not gone far enough to
warrant a general synthesis at present, still it is possible
to say definitely that the Christian legend is not an isolated
phenomenon of a few centuries of western Europe;
that the same characteristics and the same motifs which
appear repeatedly within its boundaries appear also outside
its boundaries. Without committing ourselves on the
disputed problem of communicated derivation as against
the theory of innate ideas to account for the existence of
the same tale among the people of far separated lands, we
may certainly concede as a fact the so-called migration of
motifs. Some tales and motifs have moved from place to
place; that we can prove.
1' Cf. Istrin, op. cit.
585
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
To explain now the origin of the legend of Judas there
are two broad possibilities. The first is the reappearance
in various countries of the same motifs, whether innate or
transmitted; the second is the derivation from a similar
legend or story which has taken definite literary form.
In the case of a complex of motifs like the legend of Judas,
the question of innate ideas can hardly be important.
The crux of our present problem is, on the one hand, to
show that such motifs existed among the people, no matter
how they came to be there; and on the other, to establish
a sufficiently clear possibility of literary transmission. In
other words, did the Judas legend spring up among the
folk from a union of popular motifs, or was it an adaptation
of the story of GEdipus as handed down by means
of written documents?
Before attacking the problem in detail we may first
review briefly the opinions of those scholars who have
already investigated either the legend of Judas in particular
or the general subject of medieval tales of incest. The
majority follow Greith in believing that the classical
story of CEdipus is the root and that the mediseval stories
of parricide and incest were its branches. Comparetti 2
and D'Ancona,3 while they deny any historical relation
between the legend of Pope Gregory and the story of
CEdipus, hold definitely that the legend of Judas is a
direct adaptation of the CEdipus myth. Lippold is doubtful
as to the Gregory legend, but implies plainly enough
the relation of CEdipus to Judas: " es ist natiirlich nicht
gesagt, dass die Oedipussage nur in dieser Form iiberliefert
sei, vgl. die Geschichte vom Judas in Legenda Aurea." 4
Spicilegium Vaticanum, Frauenfeld, 1838, p. 154.
2Edipo e la mitologia comparata, Pisa, 1867, pp. 87, 89.
Op. cit. Introd., pp. 8, 86, 89.
4 Ueber die Quelle des Gregorius Hartmanns von Aue, Leipzig, 1869,
p. 54, note.
586
THE MEDLEVAL LEGEND OF JIDAS ISCARIOT
Creizenach is positive of the CEdipodean derivation.5 Constans
6 follows D'Ancona. Grabovski thinks that the details
of the (Edipus story were transferred to the life of
Judas.7 Hermann Paul says it can hardly be doubted
that the Judas legend is drawn from the story of (Edipus;
and even submits a stemma for the relationship of all the
principal mediaeval incest tales.8 Saintyves
9
speaks of
the story of CEdipus as being applied literally to Judas,
and quotes the brilliant remark of Delehaye: "L'histoire
d'CEdipe a ete beaucoup lue au Moyen Age sous forme de
vie de saint." 10
Other scholars, taking a less definite position, are inclined
to see in the Judas legend an indirect influence of
the myth of CEdipus. Du Meril, for example, regards it
as at least showing a remnant of the pagan belief in fate."1
Diederichs thinks that although the mediaeval incest cycle
does not preserve all the characteristics of the CEdipus
story, still there is such similarity and agreement that
some kind of inner relationship must be taken for granted;
that these legends are not continuations and transformations
(Fort- und Umbildungen) of the original, but are in
some fashion Christian adaptations of the pagan material.
12 Cosquin says that the legend of Judas contains the
general idea, though not the tragic quality of the old
Greek fable; and makes a subtle distinction between the
dream of Judas's mother, which predicted public evils, and
Op. cit., pp. 201-2. Op. cit., p. 95.
Podanid o zwiqzkacch mirdzy naiblizszym rodzeistwem. Wisla,
1892, vI, str. 66 (Quoted by Solovev, p. 159).
'Altdeutsche Textbibliothek. Gregorius von Hartman von Aue.
2nd ed., Halle, 1900, pp. vii-viii.
9 Les Saints Successeurs des Dieux, Paris, 1907, p. 269.
o Les legendes hagiographiques, Bruxelles, 1905, pp. 71-2.
1Podsies populaires latines du moyen dge, Paris, 1847, pp. 324-5.
"Op. cit., p. 119.
587
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
the oracle of Laius, which foretold misfortunes for a single
family.13
But a large number of scholars are still more uncertain.
Cholevius does not commit himself. The memory
of CEdipus alone would not have given rise to the incest
stories; they are partly the result of an unclean imagiination
taking delight in repulsive situations. After
repeating the legend of Judas he exclaims: " Hier sind
Anklange an Moses, an Naboth's Weinberg, an Bathseba
und warum nicht auch an Oedipus?"
14 Gaston
Paris, in his review of D'Ancona,l5 hesitated between the
theory of CEdipodean derivation and the possibility of a
Syriac or Judeo-Christian source. Afterwards, in his
Litterature franCaise au moyen age, he refers to the
legend of Judas as "imitee de celle d'CEdipe." 16 Seelisch
denominates it a " volkstiimliche legende," but says
that it "ist wenig ins volk gedrungen, und bleibt eine
legende litteraire." 17 Graf is interested in demonstrating
the mediaeval belief in fatalism, and refuses to discuss
the relation of the CEdipus to the incest cycle.18 Solovev,
who has collected with great learning and industry materials
of almost every variety pertaining to Judas, does not
dwell at any length on the origin of the legend of parricide
and incest. He connects it with the incest cycle and says:
"Several peoples might preserve in their memory the
cases of a son's horrible crime, the unconscious defilement
Le lait de la mere, etc., Revue des questions historiques, Apr. 1,
1908, pp. 390-1.
14 Geschichte der deutschen Poesie nach ihren antiken Elementen,
Leipzig, 1854, I, pp. 167-9.
"Revue Critique, iv (1869), art. 123, pp. 412-5.
16 4th ed., Paris, 1909, p. 223.
7 Die Gregoriuslegende, in Zeitschrift fiir deutsche Phioloogie, XIX
(1886), pp. 419, 421.
" Op. cit., I, pp. 273 ff.
588
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
of a mother's bed; and several peoples might make this
the subject of a tale, legend, or song." 19 Istrin merely
points out the similarities to the story of CEdipus, of
Moses, and of Paris.20 Dragomanov indicates the analogy
of the stories of Perseus and Telephus, as well as
CEdipus.21 Professor Rand believes that the Judas legend
was " based in the main on the story of CEdipus or on one
of the similar tales of an unfortunate who kills his father
and marries his mother." 22
There are a few, however, who plainly deny the CEdipodean
origin. Piper, considering the connexion with
CEdipus too remote, lays stress on the mental atmosphere
of the twelfth century. " Heiraten in verbotenen Graden,
Inceste aller Art, verwickelte Verwandtschaftsverhaltnisse
beschaftigten geistliche und weltliche Gerichtsbarkeit,
wahrend andererseits strenge Bussiibungen sich neben
dem iippigsten Genussleben finden." 23 Piquet has studied
chiefly the legend of Gregory.24 Rank, a disciple of Professor
Freud, inclines to the theory of innate ideas, which
he calls "
Psychoanalyse." His views are parallel in part
to those of Solovev, but he advances them with more confidence
and elaboration.25
9 Op. cit., pp. 151-2. I did not become acquainted with this work
until after I had collected most of my material; I have, therefore,
drawn on his chapter on 'Judas and CEdipus' only for information
with regard to Russian versions of the legend, and for a few references
to the work of Slavic scholars.
20 Op. cit., p. 611.
' CaBSIHCKHTntp tnpaBKcIn a EAHIOBaTaH CTOPsI; C60opHHn 3a Ha-
POAHHyM OTBOpeHHnK, H. VI. Quoted by Solovev, p. 158.
22L. c., p. 315.
3 Die Legenden und die Deutschordensdichtung ('Die geistliche
Dichtung des IMittelalters,' IIter Teil. Ktirschners Nationalliteratur,
in, 2), p. 4.
24 itude sur Hartmann d'Aue, Paris, 1898, p. 255.
5 Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage, Leipzig und Wien, 1912,
p. 337.
589
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
POPULAR ORIGIN. What are the essential features of
the story of Judas? The mother's dream of a son predestined
to a wicked career; the exposure of the new-born
child on the sea; his rescue and murder of his father; and
the unconscious incest with his mother. The incident of
the (putative) brother whom he kills does not belong to
the oldest tradition. Out of these four elements-or five,
if the mother's dream and the predestined son be taken
separately-the whole legend, with its later increments
and variations, would easily and naturally have developed.
But each of these four, or five, elements is a common possession
of nearly all races; each has parallels not only in
the West but also in the East. More than this: there are
similar legends of the son predestined to parricide and
incest for which there can hardly be question of any but
a popular origin.
First, the individual motifs, in so far as they are to be
found existing separately. The idea of a son predestined
to an evil career is known to be extremely early; it is
found in the story of the Predestined Prince, which was
written down in Egypt in the twentieth, or perhaps even
in the eighteenth, dynasty, and is in all probability older
than that.26 A similar tale, that of Atys, son of Crcesus,
is related by Herodotus.27 In the earlier form of the myth
of CEdipus the unborn child was destined to kill his
father, marry his (step)mother, and bring woes upon his
house, because Laius had carried off Chrysippe, the son
of Pelops. This tale was developed, on the one hand, by
the Greek tragic writers, and has had an almost uninterrupted
literary history; but on the other hand, it remained
a possession of the folk, entirely escaped Christian infiu-
6 Graf, Miti, etc., I, p. 281.
590
271I, 34 ff.
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
ence, and was still told in the last century by the unlettered
in southeastern Europe.28
Revelation from the supernatural world to mortals by
dreams is a commonplace in all lands and religions. The
grandfather of Cyrus dreamed that his daughter should
bring forth a grape vine; 29 the mother of the tyrant Dionysius
that she should give birth to a satyr;.30 Queen
Hecuba that she should bear a burning fire-brand. The
birth of Jesus was foretold to Mary by an angel. The
birth, name, and holiness of St. Coemgenus of Glendalough
were revealed to his mother by an angel in a dream.31
In the twelfth-century poem attributed to Ildebert of Lavardin,
a married couple had a son who was predestined to
kill his father.32 In a word, the motif of the pregnant
mother's revelatory dream, and that of the son predestined
to misfortunes, occur at an early period, among various
races, and continue to be productive into the Middle Ages
and even later.
In close relation to this motif, if not inseparable from
it, is the exposure of the unfortunate child, either on land
or on the sea. Paris was exposed on a mountain; (Edipus,
in the early tradition, on the sea, and according to later
tradition, in a forest; Semirimis, in the Syrian legend, on
land; and Cyrus, in the Persian legend, on land. Pelias
and his twin brother Neleus were exposed by their mother
28 Cf. Bernhardt Schmidt, Griech. Marchen, Sagen und Volkslieder,
Leipzig, 1877, p. 143; and Laistner, Das Ratsel der Sphinx, ii, p. 373.
The Bulgarian folksong of Urisnica (A. Strausz, Bulg. Volksdichtungen,
Wien and Leipzig, 1895, p. 218) is a reworking of the CEdipodean
material perhaps from literary sources.
29 Herodotus, I, 95.
30Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia, I, vii, 7.
Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, Oxford, 1910, I, p. 234.
3 Cf. Graf, Miti, I, pp. 296 and 309, n. 37.
591
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
Tyro and nurtured by herdsmen. In the Mahabharata
Karna was set adrift in a boat, and so also were King
Sargon in the Assyro-Babylonian legend,33 Romulus and
Remus, Perseus and Danae. In the legend of Henry III,
which is told in the Pantheon of Godfrey, the Gesta
Romanoru,m, and the Legenda Aurea, but is certainly of
Byzantine origin,34 the young child was exposed in a
forest by the Emperor Conrad and rescued. In the Javanese
legend of Raden Pakou, the son of the princess of
Balambangan was set adrift in a casket and carried to
Gersik.35 In these legends generally the purpose of the
exposure is to put the child to death in an indirect manner,
or on the part of its parents to avoid the responsibility of
bringing up a porte-malheur. Moses, on the contrary,
was exposed in the papyrus ark in order that his life
might be saved. M. Israel Levi 36 is of the opinion that
the Javanese legends of the floating chest are derivates
from the Jewish story of Moses; that this story, reviewed
and augmented by Jewish tradition, penetrated from Jewish
into Musulman folk-lore. M. Levi insists on the point,
however, that the story does not derive from the passage
in Exodus, but belongs to ancient Jewish tradition.37 He
proceeds to show that each of the essential characteristics
of the legend (namely, the hero charged at birth with
33 De la .Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 3rd ed., Tiibingen,
1905, I, p. 348.
34Cf. S. Grudzinski in Ztsch. f. romwn. Philol., xxxvI (1912), pp.
546 ff.
Cosquin (op. cit.) gives other Javanese and Indian legends related
to this. Additional material in J. Hertel, Ztsch. d. Vereins f.
Volkskunde, xix (1909), pp. 83 f.
'SRevue des ltudes Juives, LIX (1910), pp. 1-13.
3" Que si les traits essentiels du theme, et qui ne derivent pas du
texte de l'Exode, se retrouvent chez les Juifs vivant dans un milieu
juif, il faudra bien en conclure que ce theme etait entre ou etait
ne dans le folk-lore juif" (p. 4).
592
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
being the cause of public disaster, his exposure on the sea,
the mysterious light that goes with him, and the miracle
of the mother's milk) has its parallels in Josephus, the
Midrash, and Jewish tradition. A similar story of the
birth of Abraham, in Tabari, i, 137,38 " corrobore la
parente du theme juif avec le theme commun."
Tales of unintentional parricide and even incest have
in the life of primitive peoples, where a social order different
from our own is developed, and polygamy or polyandry
obtain, an actual as well as legendary basis. As
late as the sixteenth century, Luther, in his Table Talk,
recalls a case of unconscious incest between a mother and
her son at Erfurt, which came to his notice. Averted parricide
furnishes the climax of the story of Sohrab and
Rustum. Perseus unwittingly slew his grandfather.
Brut involuntarily killed both his father and mother. St.
Julian the Hospitaller put his father and mother to death,
believing they were his wife and her lover.
The incest motif is extremely frequent in all lands and
ages. The manifold variations and reworkings that it
received are evidence of its profound interest and popular
favor. A mere glance at the nearly !700 large octavo pages
of Rank's Das Inzest-Motif in Dichtung und Sage reveals
the currency and range of the material. It is a part of
the mythology of the East, of the North, of the West.
Incest among the gods, Indian, Egyptian, Hellenic, is by
no means uncommon; indeed, at some periods it was
not reckoned a crime. Siegfried was the son of Siegmund
and Sieglinde. Kinyras begat Adonis on his sister
Smyrna. Saturn married Ops, his sister. Hera was the
sister of Zeus.39 In the Old Testament Ammon, son of
38 Cf. G. Weil, Biblische Legenden, Frankfurt a. M., 1845, p. 68.
39 Cf. Seelisch, pp. 388-9. It would easily be possible to multiply
593
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
David, forced his sister Tamar to lie with him. The two
daughters of Lot each bore him a son. King Antiochus,
in the widely diffused story, lived in illicit relations with
his daughter.40 In mediaeval Europe incest stories were
unusually frequent and familiar, at first under Christian
influence, when stress was laid especially on the utter sinfulness
of man, atonement through extreme penance, and
divine mercy; and later for their own sake, out of sheer
pleasure in compounding obscene relations and salacious
ingenuity in devising piquant situations. It was interwoven
in the vite of several holy saints, and one of the
greatest of the successors of St. Peter was, according to
examples of these various motifs in the general field of folk-lore.
The illustrations that I give are meant to be merely suggestive, not
by any means exhaustive. For example, Otto, Einfluss des Roman de
Thebes, Gitt., 1909, p. 17, points out the motif of the exposure of
the child in Lohengrin, in the lais of Marie de France, in Galerant, in
Richars li Bliaus, in Jourdain de Blavies, in Parise la Duchesse, and
in Berte (where, as in CEdipus, the servants are ordered to kill the
queen in a forest, but feel compassion and spare her life). Other
illustrations of the exposure and incest motifs may be found in
Karl Schmeing, Flucht- und Werbungssagen in der Legende, Miinster
i. Westf., 1911. An impressive view of the frequency of all these
motifs in early mythology may be gained from the 'Tafel' in von
Hahn's Sagwissenschaftliche Studien, Jena, 1876. Practically the
whole of Judas's story can be related by means of the 'formulas' to
which Hahn has reduced a large mass of myth and Heldensage:
"4. Warnende Zeichen an einen Ascendenten. 5. Daher Hauptheld
ausgesetzt. 7. Erzogen bei kinderlosem Ehepaar. 8. Uebermuth des
Zoglings. 9. Dienstbarkeit in der Fremde. 13. Ausserordentliche
Todesart. 14. Verleumdung wegen Blutschande und fruher Tod.
[The early death is of course impossible for Judas.] 16. Ermordung
des jiingeren Bruders." (Tafel, p. 340.)-In the Irish saints' lives,
where we find a remarkable intermingling and crossing of popular
and ecclesiastic traditions, incest is no uncommon thing; see, for
example, Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, i, p. cxxxv, n. 2.
40 This is the story of Shakspere's Pericles. It is found in Latin
Mss. as early as the ninth or tenth century, and is supposed to be
much earlier.
594
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
the legend, not only the son of brother and sister, but also
the husband of his mother.
The relationship of all the mediaeval incest tales and
legends-Seelisch collected nearly fifty-is exceedingly
involved and doubtless too complex ever to be reduced to a
satisfactory scheme. To discuss, or even to name, all of
them would be out of place here, but inasmuch as many
of them are interesting and important parallels to the
legend of Judas, I shall undertake to give a brief survey
of the earlier materials. Questions of date, it must be
borne in mind, are extremely delicate and difficult. A
legend which by manuscript evidence we can date no
earlier than, say, the fifteenth century, may perfectly well
have been current in the twelfth; while, per contra, there
may be indisputable evidence of the existence of a tale in
the twelfth century which did not become current until
the fifteenth. This is especially the case with the Eastern
European legends of incest, none of which can be positively
dated much before the seventeenth century, but
which we may unhesitatingly refer to a considerably
earlier period.
The best known of these incest tales is that of St. Gregory.
The oldest form of this legend is represented by a
German Volksbuch, in which Gregory is not made pope,
but bishop.41 It is related in Latin prose in the Gesta
Romanorum (chapter 81), from which it was translated
into French, German, Polish, and Russian; and in Old
French verse of the second half of the twelfth century,42
' Simrock, Deutsche Volksbiicher, 12, 108. (Seelisch)
This is probably the safest date. It is that of M. Roques (which
I have from a private communication), who is preparing a new edition
of the Old French poem. LittrY, Histoire de la langue frangaise,
vol. n, argues from the language for an earlier date, some time in
the eleventh century. For the more recent discussions see the work
of F. Piquet, already cited.
595
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUIM
from which it was translated into German by Hartmann
von Aue at the end of the twelfth century, and from the
German twice into Latin verse, besides a prose version in
the Heiligenleben and a Swedish translation in 1524 by
Johannes Matthias.43 Since the legend may have had an
influence on the legend of Judas, I shall summarize it here,
from the Old French poem.
A count of Aquitania, dying, entrusts to his son the care of his
daughter; but the devil inspires in the brother a carnal passion.
When their fault becomes visible the brother sets out in penance for
Jerusalem, and the sister, having conceived a hatred for her child,
sets it adrift on the sea with tablets which relate the manner of
its birth. Then, on hearing of her brother's death, she returns to her
castle as Countess of Aquitania, where her hand is sought by many
suitors. Still repenting her former sins she refuses all offers;
but one powerful duke manifests his passion by declaring war. Meanwhile
the young child is finally picked up and cared for by fishermen;
but his superior blood shows itself when he overcomes a fisherman's
son in a quarrel. His foster mother, becoming angry, proclaims him
a miserable foundling; and in humiliation he resolves to become a
knight. Setting forth with the tablets that reveal his incestuous
birth, he arrives in Aquitania, vanquishes the ardent duke, and marries
his mother. But through his frequent melancholy visits to the
tablets which he has kept secret, the whole situation becomes patent,
and recommending his mother to pious deeds he departs in mendicant's
dress, comes to the coast, and is conducted to an isolated rock
in the sea, where he allows himself to be fettered and the key to be
thrown into the water. Seventeen years pass. A vacancy occurs
on the papal throne, and an angel names the penitent Gregory. Messengers
are sent out, and Gregory is found on his rock; the key is
miraculously recovered; and all Rome falls down before the new
pope. At length, the Countess of Aquitania, ignorant of all this, goes
to Rome to confess her sins; from her story the Pope recognizes his
mother; and she ends her days in a nunnery.
The origin of this legend has not been definitely determined.
The opinion of scholars is about equally divided
for and against the theory of an CEdipodean source; but I
" For the various versions and translations see Seelisch, and Paul's
edition of Hartmann's Gregorius.
596
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 597
am inclined to the belief of Seelisch, who says: " Ein geschichtlicher
zusammenhang beider sagen [CEdipus and
Gregory] ist vielmehr bloss eine miglichkeit, die noch
nicht einmal die wahrscheinlichkeit fiir sich hat, eine
moglichkeit, die bis jetzt noch unbewiesen, vielleicht
iiberhaupt unbeweisbar ist.' 44
Another legend of this group, of a more obviously popular
character, is that of St. Andreas, which in the form in
which we know it probably sprang up in the south of Russia,
and from there spread northward and westward.45
A merchant learns from two doves that his wife will bear him a
son who will kill his father, marry his mother, and violate three
hundred nuns. As soon as the child is born they baptize it Andreas,
cut open the body, and set it adrift. Thirty miles from there Andreas
is picked up and taken to the abbess of a nunnery, where he
grows up to be a well educated boy of fifteen. Then the devil takes
possession of him so that he dishonors three hundred of the nuns.
Driven from there, he comes to the town of Crete, becomes his father's
servant with the special duty of watching the vineyard, and at night,
mistaking his father for a thief, kills him. Soon afterward he marries
his mother. She recognizes him by the scars on his body, and
sends him to a priest. But the priest refuses to absblve him, and
is killed by Andreas; and after slaying two more priests Andreas
seeks the Bishop of Crete, who forgives him, but for penance has
him chained at the bottom of a cellar and has a padlock inserted
in his mother's nose and the key thrown into the sea. When the
cellar becomes filled with earth Andreas will be completely forgiven.
Thirty years later the mother's key is miraculously recovered, and
Andreas is found seated on the top of his cellar, now filled in, busily
writing his Canon of Repentance.
Antonovitch and Dragomanov suppose this legend to be
derived from the legend of Gregory. Diederichs holds a
contrary view, but points out certain rather marked resemblances
to the Judas legend. Both Judas and Andreas
are of humble birth. Both were predestined to kill their
I Op. cit., p. 387.
8 Cf. Diederichs, pp. 131 ff., where the variants are discussed.
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
father and marry their mother. Both before the parricide
have deeply sinned, Judas in slaying his supposed
brother, Andreas in violating the three hundred nuns. In
both legends the revelation of the incest is brought about
by the mutual confessions of mother and son. Both Judas
and Andreas are sent by their mother to a confessor to
obtain pardon. These parallels, it seems to me, striking
as they are, should be regarded as accidental rather than
as fundamental; they belong to the materials on which
both legends drew. But nevertheless, inasmuch as the
legend of Judas and that of Andreas must have been
known at some period to the same people, for both are
found roughly in the same place at the same time, there is
no reason to deny the possibility of contamination; and
while we know that the legend of Judas acquired in southeastern
Europe no new characteristics which can be paralleled
in the legend of Andreas, it might have been the
latter that was influenced.46
The most horrible, but also, it seems to me, the most
moving of all the incest group is the legend of St. Albanus.
This is found in several Latin manuscripts from the thirteenth
century onwards,47 and without names in a twelfthcentury
poem (of which only a fragment is preserved) in
a Rhenish dialect,48 and in the Gesta Romanorum.49
An Emperor in the North has a child by his daughter. To prevent
scandal they have it carried, with gold and precious ornaments, outside
the realm, into Hungary. There, brought up by the King, the
youth wins great fame for his beauty and wisdom, and marries the
daughter of the northern Emperor. The King, on his death bed,
6 For a probable origin of the Andreas legend see Seelisch, p. 417.
47 Kohler, Germania, xiv, pp. 300 ff. It was first mentioned by
Greith, who saw it in a Vatican MS.
'Lachmann, Kleinere Schriften, Berlin, 1876, I, pp. 521, 523 ff.
4 Oesterley, no. 244, pp. 641 ff.; Oesterley, however, does not refer
it to Albanus.
598
THE MEDIiEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
reveals the origin of his foster-son, and by the jewels the mother
recognizes her son. She confesses all; for penance the father,
daughter, and son are directed to wander seven years in sackcloth.
In the seventh year they are returning joyfully, but lose their way
in a desert; the father is again seized with passion for his daughter,
and the son, discovering this repeated incest, kills them both, and
ends his life in severe penance.
In the twelfth-century version the child is found and
taken to the King of Hungary, who has his wife pretend
it is her own, since they are childless. Here the adoption
of the foundling by the queen who represents it as her
own child strongly suggests the adoption of Judas by the
Queen of Scariot.
Besides these tales of incest there is the Bulgarian
legend of Paul of Csesarea, who is the son of brother and
sister, becomes king of a foreign land, and marries his
mother; 50 the Italian legend of Vergogna, who is the son
of father and daughter, is brought up in Egypt, returns
and marries his mother, who like Gregory's has many
suitors; 51 and several more tales in verse and prose, on
the whole of a rather more literary than popular character.
Many of them, for example the Dit de Buef with its
variants and derivates, enjoyed great favor as moral exempla,
while many others were widely read and admired
for the sake of their story. Oddly enough, a small circle
of incest tales grouped itself around the Virgin Mary,-
such diverse stories as the ballad of Brown Robyn,52 the
De amore inamorato (C. D. M. R.) 53 and a wild companionpiece
to the Dit de Beuf told by Vincent de Beauvais.54
C0f. Diederichs, p. 124, n. 7. Kohler published (Germania, xv,
pp. 288 ff.), a translation which Diederichs says is "nicht ganz
korrekt."
61D'Ancona, pp. 1-60, and Introd., passim.
2 Child, no. 57.
3Gesta Rom., 13 (Oesterley, p. 291); Speculum Hist., VII, 93.
4 Spec. Hist., vII, 94.
16
599
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
The Dutch roman d'aventure of Seghelijn of Jerusalem,
which has distinct Byzantine affiliations, contains the motifs
of the predestined son and incest with the mother. In
the East of Europe there are several notable folk songs on
the incest theme, including the well-known story of Simon
the Foundling, the less-known Nomir and Grozdana,55 a
Finish tale,56 and others.57 The revolting Tale of an
Incestuous Daughter (all of whose sins were conscious)
which was localized in England, the bishopric of Wyan,
is also an old Icelandic legend.58 The Gregory legend has
a parallel in the Caucasus,59 and in Coptic.60
A striking parallel to the legend of Judas, from an entirely
different source, is the Jewish tale of Joshua bin
Noun.61
The father of Joshua, living at Jerusalem, prays God to grant
him a son. His prayer is answered, but instead of rejoicing he commences
to weep and fast day and night. His wife insists that he
reveal to her the cause of his affliction, and finally he says that a
vision from On High has announced that his son was destined one
day to kill his father. The wife, believing in the revelation and
wishing to avert the disaster, places the child soon after it is born
in a chest and sets it adrift on the river. God sends a great fish,
which swallows the chest, and one day, when the king of Egypt is
65 St. Novakovid, Archiv. f. Slav. Philol., xi (1888), pp. 321 ff.
Graesse, Marchenwelt, 1868, p. 208.
57 The unconscious incest of brother and sister is the subject of
a number of ballads. Cf. Child, No. 50, The Bonny Hind. Professor
Child compares the Scandinavian ballad of Margaret (preserved in
Faroe and in Icelandic) and the story of Kullervo in the Kalewala
(rune 35).
Hugo Gering, Islendzk A3ventyri, Halle, 1882-4, n, pp. 105-8.
9
Aug. v. LSwis, Ztsch. d. Vereins f. Volkskunde, xx (1910),
pp. 45 ff.
?Kohler, Germania, xxxvI (1891), p. 198.
6 N. Slouschz, Les Hebreo-pkeniciens. Introduction 4 I'histoire
des origines de la colonisation h6braique dans les pays mediterraneens.
Paris, 1909, pp. 168-9. Israel Levi, Le lait de la mere et
le coffre flottant, in Revue des ltudes Juives, LIX (1910), pp. 1-13.
600
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
giving a grand feast, this fish is brought on the table. To the
amazement of the lords a weeping child is discovered within the
fish. A nurse is brought, and the child, growing up at the court,
is later made the king's Sandator (chief executioner). Now it
happens that the holy man, Joshua's father, has committed a crime
against the king of Egypt, who orders his executioner to put the man
to death. This is done, and according to the law of the land, the
wife, children, and property of the victim fall to the hangman.
Nevertheless, when the Sandator approaches his mother, the milk
flows from her breasts and fills the bed. Joshua believes his mother
is a sorceress, and is about to kill her, when the poor woman reveals
to him his origin and the father's dream. The son penitently withdraws.
Thereafter the people call him Son of a Fish.
This legend, says M. Slouschz, is taken from the Midrash
Taam 62 and is confirmed by the 'Book of Tales' of
the Rabbi Nissim, the Gaon of Cairouan (tenth century).
M. Levi (p. 12) corrects this statement, and says that the
legend is reported by Nathan Spira, of German origin,
Rabbi of Grodno (d. 1577); who said that he found it in
a Midrash, but did not specify in which one. (M.
Slouschz christened it Midrash Taam.) According to
Simon Chones, the editor of the Rab Pealim of Abraham
son of Elia Gaon of Wilna, this would be in the Hibbour
of Nissim Gaon; 63 but there is no sign of it in the Hibbour.
M. Slouschz simply failed to verify the assertion of
Chones. Therefore it appears that we have no direct
authority for dating the legend of Joshua bin Noun earlier
than the sixteenth century; but it is certainly older. On
account of the inconsistency of supposing that the father
of the Biblical Joshua, born in Egypt, was living in Jerusalem
M. Levi believes that the author was clumsily adapting
a known legend to some other Joshua. The opinion
of M. Slouschz is somewhat different. "Cette histoire,"
62 Cf. Revue des Midrashim de r. Abraham, Varsovie, 1894, p. 23.
" Levi, Rev. des Studes Juives, XLIII, p. 283, refers the Hibbour to
the eleventh century.
601
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
he says, (p. 169), "confirmee par des donnees anteislamiques,
64 ne denote guere l'intention d'embellir le role
de Josue. Nous y verrions volontiers une version rabbinique
d'un conte samaritain d'origine mythique. C'est
toujours l'histoire de Jesus ou d'Adonis qui circule dans
le folk-lore populaire." There is nothing to warrant the
assumption that this legend is related to that of Judas.
But since the intention of the legend of Judas was to
blacken his name, there would be no reason (if the Christian
legend were an adaptation of the Jewish) for averting
the incest; and, moreover, the sudden marriage of
Judas and his mother, in the usual legend, would be somewhat
explained by the " custom of the land " in the rabbinical
tale, by which wife, children, and property of a condemned
man are given to the executioner. But in the
absence of any adequate ground for supposing that the two
legends are related, we must look upon the story of Joshua
bin Noun merely as further evidence of the popularity of
such tales. M. L6vi, however, is willing to go further.
"La parente etroite des deux legendes [Joshua and
Judas] est frappante; l'une et l'autre remontent a un type
qui avait, mieux qu'aucun autre, conserve le trait primitif
et sui generis du lait de la mere, jaillissant a propos pour
empecher un inceste. Mais c'est la version hebraYque qui
est restee le plus pres de ce type."
This hasty review of medieval incest stories, though far
from exhaustive, is full enough to indicate the immense
popularity of the material in the Middle Ages. Many of
these tales are not demonstrably early enough to be important
as direct evidence in a discussion of the origin of the
Judas legend; but they do serve to show irrefutably that
tales of incest were in high favor during the Middle Ages.
"' We have seen that he is wrong in this regard.
602
THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
On the other hand, so long as their popular origin remains
unestablished, they cannot be adduced as proof of the popular
origin of the Judas legend. Nevertheless, it is justifiable
to argue that since some of these stories very probably
sprang up among the people, the unlettered folk, and
were composed on motifs which are known to be the property
of the people in general, therefore the material out
of which they were made was in the possession of the
people. Or even if not one of them had its ultimate origin
among the people, still some of them (witness the German
Volksbuch of Bishop Gregory) penetrated early into the
popular mind and became by so much the property of the
people. Or, finally, even if all of these tales and legends
of incest were of non-popular origin, still the materials
which they contain are materials which have been familiar
to the folk since days immemorial: Therefore, since the
motifs and materials of these incest stories were the property
of the people, the people could have constructed the
legend of Judas, or, if we admit the popular origin of the
legend of Gregory (and it is probable to a high degree),
since the people were familiar enough with the material
to devise one legend, it is highly probable that they were
familiar enough with it to devise others. To put the case
specifically: If the Middle Ages could produce the legend
of Bishop (Pope) Gregory without literary sources, they
could also produce the legend of Judas without literary
sources.
A matter which must not be neglected in the investigation
of the origins of the incest legends of western Europe
is the historical background against which they may have
sprung up. Greith was the first to draw atention to the
heresis incestuogorum which arose toward the end of the
eleventh century, and which may well have been the cause
of an awakened interest in the subject of incest.
603
PAULL FEANKLIN BAUM
For legal purposes the Justinian law reckoned degrees
of relationship by generations. The Canonical law
counted as it is customary for us now to count. In the
year 1065 legal experts at Florence posed the question,
apparently a theoretical one, whether Holy Church would
sanction the marriage of near relatives on the basis of the
Justinian method of computation. The faculty at Ravenna,
misconstruing a passage in St. Gregory, affirmed
that Holy Church would so sanction; and a mighty argument
followed, in which a great deal of strong language
was used on both sides. Our chief sources of information
concerning this controversy are a pamphlet-letter by
Petrus Damiani65 and the Annals of Baronius, who
quotes largely from Petrus.66 Apostolic authority was
called in; and two Lateran councils were of no avail,
"for," says Petrus, "by the devil's art the minds of the
incestuous were so case-hardened (conglutinati) that no
fear of eternal damnation could turn them from their
crime." Finally all persons held guilty of incest were
excommunicated; but even this had no satisfactory effect.
"Whoever," says Petrus again, "has married a noble,
beautiful, or rich woman, especially if she has children,
prefers to renounce God rather than his marriage; and on
the contrary, he whose wife is a burden to him makes out
a false genealogy, citing the dead as witnesses, and has the
marriage annulled on account of relationship." 67 Henry
IV of Germany issued a general edict annulling the mar-
' Petri Damiani humilis monachi de parentelae gradibus. In
his complete works, ed. of 1642, in, 8, 77-83 (Seelisch). Cf. Greith,
pp. 158-9.
"'Annales Ecclesiastici auctore Caesare Baronio. Vol. xvi, sub
anno 1065.
"Quoted by Fleury, Histoire eccltsiastique, Paris, 1713, vol. xm,
book Ixi, chap. 14.
604
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
riage of all who were too closely related.68 Illegal marriages
increased, and even extended into the Church. A
certain Episcopus Asparensis, Pius by name, persisted in
his crime, and was killed in his bed by a thunder-bolt from
heaven-" O divinse animadversionis pavenda severitas! "
The upshot of this heresy and controversy must have
been that for the moment incest became a matter of great
general interest. In the course of discussion and investigation,
iseveral unsuspected cases might have come to
light69 Baronius, who had the manuscript of Petrus's
GomorrcRus addressed to Leo IX, says that the work
revealed examples of incest and moral uncleanness that
would all too often have offended the modesty of the
reader. At such a time, if the imagination flagged in its
effort to find horrible crimes for Gregory and Judas, incest
would surely have suggested itself. When, therefore, such
a story once got under way it was sure to have immense
popularity and 'present day appeal.' Lippold objects that
to damn or condone the union of persons variously related
has nothing to do with the legend of Gregory. Perhaps
not, directly; but in those days incest was in the air, so
to say; and a matter of religious controversy among the
learned might easily commend itself to the folk as a point
of departure for a pious tale.70 Toward the end of the
6 Constantini vita Adalberonis, In, 15-17. Mon. Ger., Iv, pp. 663-4
(Seelisch).
"Earlier in the century there had been several incestuous marriages
in high circles: Henry III and Agnes of Poictou, Konrad II
and Gisela, Otto v. Hammerstein and Irmingard (" martyrs of true
love"). Cf. Giesebrecht, Gesch. der deut. Kaiserzeit, 4th ed.,
Braunschweig, 1875, II, pp. 366, 162, 168, etc.
' A note may be added here on the incest-chronicling epitaphs
which have been collected by D'Ancona and Seelisch. From Hamburg
comes the following lapidary epigram:
Wunder ilber Wunder,
Hier liegen dran (dre?) dorunder,
605
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
eleventh century any one who wished to heap coals of ignominy
on the name and character of Judas Iscariot would
have had at least one suggestion ready at hand.
Enough has been said, I believe, to make it clear that
in the early Middle Ages the legend of Judas could have
Vater, Sohn unde Moder,
Sastor, Dochtor unde Broder,
Mann un Wyff,-
Denn Seelen ii van liff.
From Alincourt, near St. Quentin (and the same is reported from
Clermont):
Ci git le fils, ci git la mere,
Ci git la fille avec le Pere,
Ci git la sceur, ci git le Frere,
Ci git la Femme, et le Mari
Et n'y a que trois corps icy.
From the Bourbonnais (sixteenth century):
Cy.-gist la fille, cy-gist le pere
Cy-gist la soeur, cy-gist le frere
Cy-gist la femme, et le mary,
Et si n'y a que deux corps icy.
On the tomb of the Count of :icouis and his daughter by his
mother, Cecilia (seventeenth century):
Ci git l'enfant, ci git le pere,
Ci git la sceur, ci git le frere,
Ci git la femme et le mari,
I1 ne sont que deux corps ici.
And on the tomb of Vergogna (according to the legend): "Qui
giacciono due corpi morti, madre e figliuolo, e fratello e sirochia, e
moglie e marito, nati di gran baronaggio dello reame di Faragona, e
son in paradiso."
Finally:
Hier liegt begrabender
Bruder mit seiner Schwester,
das Weib mit seinem Mann,
der Vater mit seinem Kind.
With the foregoing may be compared:
He's father, son, and husband mild,
606
THE MEDIMEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 607
sprung up and taken simple shape among the people. It
remains now to suggest a theoretical early history for the
legend on the basis of this possibility.
Judas Iscariot betrayed to death our Blessed Lord and
Saviour. No act could have been more villainous. The
man who could do that would be guilty of the most horrible
crimes. But we know nothing of the early deeds of
this Judas. He was a thief. He sold Jesus Christ to the
Jews. He even took his own life. He may even have committed
incest, that crime which Holy Church has just condemned
so violently and punished with excommunication.
If incest, probably parricide, too, equally horrible and
wicked; for the mediaeval mind, which invented gargoyles,
knew no limits of horribleness to which it could not
go.-And so perhaps (or if not so, then in some analogous
fashion) the legend of Judas may have been born.
If Judas married his own mother, he must have done so
unconsciously: not that conscious incest would have been
too much for the stomach of the time, but that it would
have been too unlikely to make a good story. And first
of all the story had to be a good one. It would be necessary
by some means to separate him from his parents;
and to manage this Herod's slaughter of the innocents
might have been recalled as a reason for his departure (as
in the Gascon Passion); or, more in accord with familiar
I mother, wife, and yet his child,
How they may be, and yet in two,
As you will live, resolve it you.
-Shakspere, Pericles, I, i, 68-72.
These epitaphs represent, for the most part, actual cases of incest.
They show that even since the Middle Ages the crime has not become
extinct. In earlier times it must have been, like murder and plunder,
a comparatively familiar, not infrequent, though none the less
heinous crime. Not until recent times has the State considered
incest a penal offense.
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUTM
folk-lore motifs, his father or mother would have an
ominous dream and would set him adrift on the water, as
Moses's mother did her son. Thus we have the outline of
the legend sufficiently formed.
After this outline had taken shape, the gradual accretion
of name and incidents is a matter in which both lay
and ecclesiastic would take part. That portion of the
development of the legend for which we have documentary
evidence, and which we can follow with some feeling that
we are really close to the facts, took place after the legend
had come into the hands of clerks or monks, after it had
penetrated into the Scriptoria of the monasteries and taken
a humble station among the vite sanctorum to be read in
the church service; and under such conditions, however the
legend may have maintained itself among the people,
affecting and affected by the new forms it assumed through
clerical influence, we cannot expect to follow the work of
the people as distinct from that of the monks, or even to
separate the two at all.
In the section on the Latin versions we saw that there
is reason to believe the legend existed in writing as early as
the second half of the twelfth century. That the earliest
written versions which have come down to us are in Latin
is, of course, no argument against the theory of popular
origin; for as a part of the religious literature it would
inevitably have been put into Latin when written down at
all. Even the twelfth-century Old French poem of the
legend of St. Gregory presupposes an earlier Latin form;
and the version of the Judas legend contained in the Gascon
Passion of the fourteenth century, which probably
represents an earlier form of the legend than any which
is preserved in Latin, had, in all likelihood, although it
may conceivably have been based on oral tradition, a Latin
document for its immediate source Among the folk,
608
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
whose memory for stories is excellent, writing was still
unknown and unnecessary.
The point I have been trying to make thus far is that
the legend of Judas could have originated among the
people and existed among them in some comparatively
simple form before it was taken up by the clergy and
received a place among Christian legends of the Church.
At the end of the thirteenth century its origin was felt to
be questionable, if not suspicious. Jacopo da Voragine,
and very probably his source, would not vouch for it, and
felt it necessary to warn the reader. And Jacopo's doubt
could not have arisen from the improbability of the story
-other legends far more incredible were in full and
regular standing-but there must have been, rather, some
question of its legitimate birth.71 No reputable church
writer, except Jacopo, gives it his sanction by repeating it
or alluding to it.
Beyond proving the possibility of a popular origin one
cannot go; for the exact historical fact it is impossible to
recover. But to prove a possibility is not to prove an
actuality: and here, as it seems to me, the matter must
remain, in suspenso.
DERIVATION FROM THE (EDIPUS STORY. Both (Edipus
and Judas were predestined to an evil career. Both were
exposed to death as soon as born, in order to avert the
predicted evil. Both were rescued, the one by a king, the
other (according to developed versions of the legend) by a
queen. Both grew up at court. Both, after learning of
their irregular origin, made a journey back to their birthplace,
CEdipus to Thebes and Judas to Jerusalem. Both
1 Many other legends were of popular or semi-popular origin, no
doubt, and were fully accepted by the church. The fact, nevertheless,
remains that the legend of Judas was always a little outside the pale.
609
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
unwittingly killed their father and married their mother.
Both repented.-Thus, without too violent an effort of
imagination, we can recognize in the legend of Judas the
blurred outlines of the Greek myth. If we attempt to
carry out the comparison in greater detail, important differences
will appear, but only such differences, it seems to
me, as might be the result of adapting the story of a Greek
hero with pagan background to the life of an anti-hero with
a Christian background.
There can be no doubt that the story of (Edipus was
known in the Middle Ages. Perhaps the most likely
channel by which it came down from antiquity is the Thebaid
of Statius, or rather-since the Thebaid recounts the
earlier life of CEdipus only incidentally, in scattered
fragments-some lost Latin prose redaction of Statius,72
in which the whole story of Laius and the oracle, the
sphinx, parricide, and incest was conveniently summarized.
But we have also a complete though brief outline of
the story in the work of the Mythographus Secundus, who
wrote some time between the seventh and tenth centuries.7
Moreover, although the story is not found in any commentary
on Virgil, or scholion on Statius, we know that
some such scholiastic note must have existed from the
following annotation to Thebaid I, 61: " responderat oraculum
Laio quod a filio suo posset occidi. Unde natum
CEdipum iussit proici transfixis cruribus. Harum omnium
seriem fabularum CEdipodis in argumento digessimus." 74
2 Such a redaction would be analogous to the prose compilations
in which the Middle Ages knew the story of Troy, or to one of the
Universal Histories that gratuitously adopted the name of Orosius.
T Scriptores Rerum Mythicarum Latini Tres, ed. G. H. Bode, 1834.
Cf. Mythographus II, Fab. 230, pp. 150-51. On the date of Mythographus
n see Ferd. Keseling, De Mythographi Vaticani Secundi
Fontibus, Halle a. S., 1908, p. 146.
4 Keseling, p. 62.
610
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
We must note, however, that neither in the version of the
CEdipus story by Mythographus II nor in the scholion on
Thebaid i, 61 is there any similarity of language or special
feature of the story to suggest that the author of Type A
or of any of the Latin versions had either of those early
documents before him or in memory.
As later evidence of the (Edipodean material we have
in the twelfth century the Lament of (Edipus,7 a moving
composition by some unknown poeta scholasticus, and the
Roman de Thebes; T and in the fourteenth century the
ioman d'Edipus.77 The trouvere of the Roman de
5 Published by Ozanam, Les ecoles et v'instruction publique en
Italie aux temps barbares, Oeuvres, Paris, 1855-9, II, pp. 377 ff.; and
from a thirteenth-century MS. by Du Meril (1854); later by Morell,
M. Schmidt, and Diimmler. It begins:
Diri patris infausta pignora,
ante ortus damnati tempora,
quia vestra sic iacent corpora,
mea dolent introrsus pectora.
Fessus luctu, confectus senio,
gressu tumens labante venio;
quam sinistro sim natus genio
nullo capi potest ingenio.
There are twenty-one stanzas, some of them on two rimes (a, a, b,
b), and some, as the above, on one rime.
,6 Constans, La lggende d'tEdipe, Paris, 1881; Constans, ed. Roman
de Thebes (Soc. des anc. textes franc.), Paris, 1890, two vols. (vol.
I, the text, vol II, the introduction). " Nous pouvons donc admettre,"
says Constans (iI, p. cxviii), "jusqu'a preuve du contraire, que
notre poeme a dte compose vers 1150, plutot avant qu'apros."
77 This composition, which Comparetti stigmatized as the work of
a basso letterato, is only a portion of the fourteenth-century prose
redaction of the Roman de Thebes, made when the romances were
read preferably in prose compilations. It doubtless existed separately
before it was incorporated in the pseudo-Orosian Universal
Histories. In the fifteenth century the Roman d'Edipus was printed
from MS. fr. 301 of the Bibliothbque Nationale (late fourteenth or
early fifteenth century) and again by Silvestre in his collection
611
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
Thebes prefixed to his poem a prologue of more than 500
verses,78 not in Statius, narrating the story of (Edipus
with considerable fulness.
Laius goes to consult 'his god' and learns that he will beget a
son who shall murder his father. As soon as the child is born Laius
orders three servants to expose it in a forest. Polibus, hunting, rescues
the child and names him Edipus. At fifteen he is made knight
and surpasses all his comrades; but the jealous courtiers hint at
his unusual origin, and he determines to inquire of the oracle of
Apollo. The oracle directs him to Thebes; and on the road, meeting
a crowd celebrating festival games, he mixes in the general mel6e
that arises from the quarrel of two contestants and ignorantly slays
his father. The Thebans sorrowfully remove their king to the temple;
and Jocasta declares that since she lost her son fifteen years
before she has never ceased to mourn for him. Edipus continues
on his way, meets the Sphinx (Spin), solves her riddle, and puts her
to death. He is then led in triumph before the queen, who falls in
love with him, although he has confessed under pledge of secrecy
that it was he who slew Laius. Jocasta, secretly rejoicing when the
people ask Edipus to be their king, conceals her emotions for the
sake of appearances, and consents to marry Edipus only when her
barons insist. After twenty years, during which they have four
handsome children, the queen discovers the scars on Edipus's feet;
and he, being pressed, relates his early life. The executioners are
summoned, and confess the truth. Edipus in grief tears out his eyes
and withdraws into voluntary imprisonment.-Here Statius begins.
Such is the story of CEdipus as the twelfth century
relates it-" une simple matiere a roman." The essential
traits of the Greek narrative are preserved, but the Greek
spirit is gone. Most notable is the manner in which the
parricide is smoothed over and in the revelation after
twenty years quite forgotten. The profound meaning with
(1858). The story of CEdipus occupies the first four folios of this
MS. From the fourteenth-century prose version of the Roman de
Thebes Lydgate probably wrote in 1421-2 his Story of Thebes. This
Old French prose redaction is found in more MS. than the poem,
and probably enjoyed a greater vogue. On the Roman d'Edipus cf.
Constans, Edipe, pp. 338 ff.
,8 In one version this prologue contains more than 900 verses.
612
THE MEDI.EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
which the Greek tragic writers invested the story is lost,
but although the outline is somewhat distorted and the
coloring completely faded, it is still the story of CEdipus;
and one must not confuse the myth itself with its interpretation
by AEschylus and Sophocles.
The Roman de Thebes was probably composed by 1150.
The Latin prose versions of the story of Thebes which it
presupposes must have been written earlier. And since
we have no direct evidence to indicate that the Judas
legend was in existence earlier than 1150,-in fact, we
have only inferential grounds for thinking it was so early,
-there can be no reasonable objection, on the score of
dates, to the hypothesis that the immediate source, by adoption,
of the Judas legend was the prologue to the Roman
de Thebes. But such an hypothesis is not necessary, for
we have other evidence, besides the Roman de Thebes, to
show that the story of CEdipus was known in the twelfth
century.
Some early references to materials from the Theban
cycle are given by Constans; 79 and although most of the
allusions are too late to be of value for the present purpose,
those from the Provengal poets are early enough to be
pertinent. The Cabra juglar of Guiraut de Cabreira (ca.
1170 ?), the Gordo, ieus fas of Bertran de Paris du Rouvergne
(middle of the thirteenth century), and the Fadet
joglar of Guiraut de Calanso (also of the mid-thirteenth
century) contain references not only to Theban matter
but also specifically to the story of (Edipus. It is, of
course, absurd to deny that these allusions may be reminiscences
of the Roman de Thebes, as Constans supposes;
but there is always the possibility that these poets were
in possession of some separate version of the (Edipus tale
"(Edipe, pp. 349 ff.
613
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
(as apart from the whole story of Thebes) which was current
at the time of the composition of the Roman de
Thebes, or even before.80 Certain it is, at any rate, that
whatever materials and sources the trouvere of the Roman
de Tlhebes may have used, they were not his sole property.
As I have said, they must have existed before 1150, and
how much earlier no one can tell. Such things do not
spring out of the ground, they do not come into being
suddenly. Their existence at a certain date necessarily
implies not only their existence at an earlier date, but
also and equally a not inconsiderable antecedent history.
We may therefore reasonably infer, even without the evidence
of Mythographus Secundus, that the story of CEdipus
was known in western Europe in the first half of the
twelfth century, and probably in the eleventh.81
The theory of an CEdipodean source for the legend of
Judas carries with it an important corollary. It cannot
be shown with the slightest degree of probability that the
CEdipus myth was familiar to the folk in the early Middle
Ages. With the tragic dramatists of the Periclean age
the myth passed into the category of written literature,
80 Cf. W. Keller, Das Sirventes " Fadet joglar" des Guiraut von
Calanso, Romanische Forschungen, xxII (1906), pp. 99-238, esp. pp.
129 and 218-19. I am indebted to this article and to R. Zenker's
Weiteres zur Mabinogionfrage (Ztsch. f. fran. Sprache u. Litt., XLI
(1913), p. 147) for this suggestion of an independent version of the
CEdipus story.
" In view of the facts that one of the simplest surviving versions
of the Judas legend is from Provence; that the earliest mediaeval
allusions we possess to the CEdipodean material are by Provencal
poets; and that the Roman de Thebes was composed probably by a
southern poet of the langue d'oil; one may be tempted to suggest
that the legend of Judas, if based on the story of (Edipus, originated
in the South of France. Such a mere hypothesis, however, without
more support than it has, can not, of course, be deemed of real significance.
614
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
and since then it has remained, among all the nations that
inherited Greek civilization, in the same category. In
parts of south-eastern Europe the people have preserved a
tradition of (Edipus and the sphinx, but much worn and
modified; and the alterations which the story has undergone
in these popular versions make it impossible that the
Judas legend could have taken its origin from them.82 In
western Europe literary tradition alone has preserved the
story. When, therefore, we argue that the life of Judas
is derived from the myth of (Edipus, we absolutely exclude
the theory of a popular origin for the legend, and commit
ourselves to the theory of a clerical or ecclesiastical origin.
There is no difficulty, however, in the theory that the
life of Judas was invented by some early monk on the basis
of the (Edipus story. In this connexion Solovev has a suggestive
paragraph (p. 181) in which he refers to Origen's
discussion of prophecy and its bearing on the event. Origen
compares the Psalmist's prediction of the crime of
Judas 83 with the prophecy of the oracle of Laius.84 This
comparison, comments Solovev, gives a certain support to
the hypothesis of an Eastern origin of the legend,85 and
permits us to carry it back to the first centuries (ib
nepBbIMb BicaMh) of the Christian era. Another consideration,
he continues, favoring the adaptation to Judas
of the (Edipodean crimes might be the appearance of the
sect of Canaites-Judaites; or, in other words, the legend
2 For these versions see Hahn, Griechische und Albanesische Mdrchen,
II, pp. 114, 310; Graesse, Mirchenwelt, p. 208; Sakellarios, T&
Kv7rpLaKc, III, p. 147 (translated by Comparetti in Appendix to D'Ancona,
p. 115).
83Ps. cix.
"'Origen Contra Celsum, II, 20 (M. S. G., 11, 836-7).
"This was the theory of Grabovski (and also of Gaston Paris).
It became utterly untenable after Istrin published the Greek versions
of the legend.
17
615
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
may indicate a protest against the heretical apologies for
Judas. But on examining this "comparison " (conocTa-
BaeHie) of Origen's in its context, we find it to be a mere
juxtaposition. Celsus, says Origen, thinks that the fulfilment
of a prophecy is the result of the prophecy; but we
will not agree that the prophet by foretelling a thing
causes it to happen; rather, the thing would take place
even if it had not been predicted. In applying this doctrine
Origen takes first an illustration from Scripture,
showing that Judas did not betray our Lord because it
was prophesied that he would; and then an illustration
from Greek literature, showing that the calamities did not
befall Laius because of the oracle, but because hs did n:t
refrain from begetting a son, (the oracle being merely a
warning). The two illustrations are slightly contrasted
by ,u'e and Se.
The sum total which we derive from the passage in
Origen is this. In making his point against Celsus, Origen,
knowing two literatures, draws on them both, and in
the same sentence mentions (Edipus and Judas. Some
monk, in the eleventh century, let us say, perusing Origen's
Contra Celszum (in a Latin translation, of course)
was struck by the combination; and what was in the original
only a literary allusion fructified after many generations
in the mind of a Western reader-that is, suggested
the equation: Judas CEdipus.
Furthermore, there is another passage in Origen where
Judas and incest are put side by side. In commenting on
Matthew 27, 3 ff. he has a long discussion of Judas's repentance
and the part played by Satanic power in Judas's
crime, in which he says: If it were necessary to give an
example of the Devil's influence in the deeds of men I
could refer to the man in I. Corinthians who had his
father's wife. This suggestion, too, is very slight; but in
616
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
the absence of all direct evidence I need hardly offer an
apology for adducing it.
With regard to an CEdipodean origin of the legend of
Judas we now reach the following conclusions. This
theory, which has been held by several distinguished
scholars and had not been directly impugned until the
present inquiry, is perfectly tenable, provided the legend
is granted to be of a literary or ecclesiastical character.
Against the theory nothing important can be urged, except
on general a priori grounds; and there are many considerations
of unquestionable weight in its favor.
We can even see what may have suggested the adaptation
to Judas of the life and crimes of (Edipus. Starting
with the explicit idea, Judas-CEdipus, we should have,
assuming that the unusual story of CEdipus was known,
an initial attempt to graft the crimes of CEdipus upon the
name of Judas,-a comparatively simple matter to undertake,
inasmuch as the life of Judas prior to his apostolic
call is left blank by the Synoptists. . . . The first
problem in adaptation would be the oracle; which, being
totally non-Christian, would have to be replaced. In
other words, our imaginary adaptor would seek some
motivation for the exposure of the child. For this there
was nothing handier than Herod's slaughter of the innocents.
Since, further, the wound in CEdipus's feet would
no longer be available for the subsequent recognition, our
author takes the simplest and most obvious substitutebranding.
Instead of exposure in a forest, the more Biblical
expedient, drawn directly from the story of Moses,
of placing the infant in a small boat, would easily have
suggested itself. But unlike Moses the child Judas had to
travel a certain distance from home, in order to be
brought up by a foreign king. Then it was necessary to
get the child, when grown, back to its parents. The
617
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
Greeks, more subtle, motivated this journey, but our
mediaeval adaptor felt no such need: the father simply
came to the land where Judas was, and in a quarrel was
slain by his unknown son. To escape the penalty of his
crime, Judas fled, came to Judaea, married his mother,
and was recognized by her as her son. Here our author's
invention flagged; he merely superimposed the story of
(Edipus on Judas, without much effort to make it fit.
Finally, to fasten the imaginary life of Judas to the
known, there was nothing more obvious than repentance
on Judas's part and Jesus's forgiveness-did He not also
forgive the woman taken in adultery? comments our
author, to himself.
This story, it need hardly be pointed out, is nothing but
the Provengal version of the legend as it is preserved in
the fourteenth-century Passion. That is to say: the Provengal
version of the legend may readily be regarded as
the natural and simple result of an effort to adapt the
story of (Edipus to the figure of Judas. Whether this is
the earliest or 'original' adaptation, we have no means
of determining. And how it should have happened to be
preserved only in a fourteenth-century manuscript, one is
not prepared to explain. Still one cannot deny that such
might well be the case. Nor could one easily tell why this
very early (or earliest) form of the legend should have
been preserved only in the Gascon Passion.
From this version of the legend to the Latin Type A is a
comparatively long step. Whatever the intention, conscious
or unconscious, of the originator of this legend may
have been, by the time it reached the hands of the author
of Type A the emphasis had shifted. But here I suspect
we have to deal with the personality of an individual, a
personality which touched this one rendering and not the
whole legend. Type A begins: " There is nothing hidden
618
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 619
which shall not be revealed," and closes with a benediction,
and almost a plea for Judas: "And do Thou, 0 Lord,
have mercy upon us. He that endureth to the end, the
same shall be saved." 86 Here a new motivation for the
exposure has been found, not perhaps a better one, but one
more in consonance with the oracle. Judas's father had a
vision, just as Laius had the oracle's prophecy. Following
his vision the father, again like Laius, exposed his
new-born son in a forest, but for Phocis we have Scarioth
(from Judas's name in the New Testament) and there is
no mention of a king or prince as there is in the story of
(Edipus. This lack is balanced, however, by the reappearance
of Herod, not, however, as the cause of Judas being
exposed on the water but merely in his historical role of
governor of Judea, as the king whom Judas served. In
obedience to an order from his king Judas unwittingly
met and killed his father. There may have been a reminiscence
of Naboth's vineyard here (I. Kings 21); and the
symbolism of the apples is fairly obvious, though it may
have been unconscious. From this point the story continues
on its own account. The consequences of the murder
have to be considered. The friends of the murdered
man seek justice, and Herod, not entirely of his own initiative
(accepto concilio), adopts the expedient of marrying
plaintiff and defendant.87 So the redactor of Type A has
solved the complication which was too much for the
Provengal poet. Thenceforward, save for the added moral,
there is no variation from our ' original.'
Weyman remarks that this vita "scheint-nach der Formel tu
autem Dominae miserere nostri' . . . zur erbaulichen Lesung in
einer klosterlichen Kommunitat, vielleicht bei Tisch, verwendet worden
zu sein " (Wochensch. f. klass. Philol., 25. Mai, 1914, p. 580).
" Here it is important to note that Herod is " et ipse turbatus ";
he does not play the part of Judas's companion or coadjutor in sin.
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
In certain respects the story in Type A seems to be
almost entirely remade. There are three important alterations:
the substitution of the vision, the introduction of
the apples as a partial motivation of the parricide, and the
removal from Judas of any personal motives in marrying
his mother.
But, on the other hand, let us assume that the Latin
Type A, and not the Provengal version, represents the
earliest or original adaptation of the CEdipus story to
Judas. This assumption is as reasonable as the other
(that the Provencal version represents the original form of
the adaptation), because the simplest version is not necessarily
the earliest, although it is likely to be; but especially
because in many respects Type A is simpler than the Provengal
version. The latter we may regard merely as an
unaccountable offshoot, a perversion. On comparing Type
A directly with the story of (Edipus we find the similarities
so striking and the divergences, with one exception, so
slight and so natural that it is easy to look upon Type A as
the original attempt to graft the CEdipodeanc rimes on the
early life of Judas. According to Type A Judas is exposed
in a forest, like CEdipus. His tibias are pierced
when he is abandoned, like (Edipus's ankles. Like CEdipus
he is rescued by shepherds. Like CEdipus he is recognized
by his wife-mother from his scars. There is no
parallel in the CEdipus story for the figure of Herod, or
for his role in Type A. We must allow here for the originality
of the adaptor; but since the writer of Type A was
(as we have seen) no mere ignorant scribe, but a man of
some personality and understanding, such an allowance is
easy and natural.
It appears, therefore, that not only in theory but also
in practice it is possible to trace the descent of the Judas
620
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 621
legend from the myth of CEdipus. But I have also shown,
above, that the legend could have sprung up among the
people, without any influence of the CEdipus story or of
any literary sources. Which of these two possibilities
represents the actual historical fact?
Both possibilities are, it seems to me, equally probable,
so far as we can accumulate means for judging. By the
very nature of the case neither can be proved. The fact
that an CEdipodeanp rovenanceh as the appearance of being
more probable must not be admitted as an argument; for
it means only that the theory of an CEdipodeano rigin is
simpler to comprehend and easier to follow. It is perhaps
not quite so difficult for us to see how such an adaptation
could have taken place, as to understand how the idea of
Judas the incestuous parricide should have emerged and
taken shape among the folk. But this difficulty lies in us,
not in the matter itself. Popular psychology is in the
main somewhat incomprehensible; and when we go back
to the Middle Ages it is infinitely less intelligible. The
theory of popular origin is, however, none the less plausible
because it is more difficult to comprehend.88
Both theories, then, are equally possible. Both are
equally probable. There are as many and as weighty objections
to the one as to the other. Any decision in favor
of the one side or the other must be made, I believe, on
purely subjective grounds; for to one person one set of
arguments may make the stronger appeal, while to another
person the same arguments may be less impressive or less
satisfactory. The problem leaves us at a non constat.
-Tota res claudicat.
* On the other hand, the argument in favor of a popular origin is
more intricate, and may perhaps have received a false emphasis on
account of the greater amount of space devoted to it.
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LEGEND FROM TYPE A TO
TYPE RL. Bearing in mind always that the paucity of
our data renders any attempt to trace the development of
the legend extremely difficult, let us proceed with our hypothetical
history. From the gentle and dignified version
of the St. Victor manuscript (Type A) there probably
developed, on the one hand, the humanistic version which
had its home in Hainault (Type H), and, on the other
hand, that rendering of the story (Type RL)-earlier
perhaps than the humanistic version-which was destined,
in two distinct forms, to become far' 4eoXv the legend,
from one or the other form of which most of the mediaeval
versions, both Latin and vernacular, drew. And somewhere
between Type A and Type RL in development and
perhaps in time fall the Greek texts, although the manuscripts
that preserve them are even later than the mediaeval
period.
Neither of the two Greek versions is the original of the
other, but both contain elements bf an earlier redaction;
that is, there probably existed, anterior to both the Dionysius
text and the Iveron (i. e., to A and B), a Greek version
from which both of these are directly or indirectly descended.
89 This early, assumed text we may call X. If
we try roughly to conjecture the form and development of
the Greek original, X, from the Latin Type A, we may proceed
as follows.
The father's vision in Type A becomes in X the mother's
dream, which the father tends to make light of: an easy
change, with a firm basis in human nature. The later
9 So much, at least, we are justified now in saying. But it is
quite likely that the matter is still more complicated, and that there
were more Greek versions of the legend than the two which we
possess. The other Mss. on Mt. Athos (see above, p. 522) probably
contain different texts from those that we have.
622
THE MEDI2EVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Greek text, B, representing, it is likely, an original trait,
explains that the child was cast upon the sea Ka0w TO\
7rdXa T'OVM o(0vo7've i rTov orauov NeZXov. The Dionysius
text, A, employs the word Of,8i--in B it is /t,l3&rov,
though later 0i,3 --which is the Septuagint translation
of rn.n.90 Then an interesting change is made which can
only be explained as the Greek redactor's freedom in handling
his source: the child? which is rescued by shepherds,
is brought back and adopted by its own parents. This innovation
is not so surprising, however, as the introduction of
an entirely new incident, namely, the fratricide. It is possible
that some earlier Latin version, which has not survived,
also contained the incident of the fratricide, and
that therefore this is not an invention of Greek X. Certainly
there is nothing in the incident itself to suggest an
Eastern rather than a Western origin. At all events, the
Greek version, making Judas kill his own brother, not his
supposed brother (as in Type RL) is more horrible, and
calculated to impress us more thoroughly with his inherent
wickedness. The motive given for this crime is
avarice, which is in harmony with the Gospels. Indeed,
avarice may have been the starting point from which the
whole incident of the fratricide grew up; but the more
obvious source is a comparison of Judas and Cain. That
Judas kills his brother, in X, with a stone is significant,
and can hardly be anything but a reminiscence of Cain.
Judas thereafter flees to Jerusalem; and so it becomes
necessary, for the plot's sake, to have his parents move
thither also. The incident of the apples is merely expanded
from Type A; it is not changed at all. Quite new,
however, is the figure of Herod as Judas's accomplice
after the fact in the murder of his father. But this is
9 Exod., 2, 3.
623
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
only the working out of an already latent motif, that of
Herod the cruel, as, with the passage of time, the mediaeval
hatred of all who partook in the death of Christ increased.
In the earliest 91 version of the legend, the Provengal, in
which Judas married his mother for love, a certain mutuality
of feeling was implied, and this not so much divided
the opprobrium between mother and son as left the
whole marriage to Fate. At the next stage, in Type A,
the situation is somewhat changed but is not much stronger.
Here, at length, in the Greek version, we have not indeed
a fresh insult to Judas but a direct fling at Herod; or
possibly, inasmuch as the widow marries her husband's
murderer rather than lose her property, we have a glance
at the Jewish appreciation of the value of riches. The
remainder of the Greek version offers nothing new except
that the recognition of the mother and son is intended apparently
to be brought about in a more subtle fashion:
instead of the simple branding mark, we have the mother's
laments and the son's perception of his guilt.
To sum up, the legend has in the Greek versions undergone
five main changes. The father's vision has become
the mother's dream. The child is brought up unwittingly
by its own father and mother. Judas slays his own brother.
Herod has become Judas's accomplice in evil, and,
though ignorantly, has forced an incestuous marriage. The
recognition is psychological not physical. Great as these
alterations are, they are still susceptible of an explanation
which is not too strained; and considering the number of
hands through which the legend must have passed during
this growth, such changes are quite conceivable. In truth,
the incident of the fratricide is the only addition to Type
A; the rest can be properly included under the term development.
That is, earliest ex hypothesi.
624
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
The next step, from the Greek texts to the late twelfthor
early thirteenth-century Latin redactions, is much simpler.
It is not to be supposed, of course, that these Latin
redactions, represented by Type RL, derived either directly
or indirectly from the Greek version, but that the
Greek version exhibits a stage of the legend's development
which falls naturally and logically between Type A and
Type RL. If we might disregard the geographical position
of the Greek version the case would be much simpler:
for the evolution from Latin Type A to Greek X to Latin
Type RL is normal and easy to follow. But in view of the
clear impossibility of regarding Type RL as descended
from the Greek version or as in any way influenced by it,
we can only postulate a lost Latin version, closely similar
to the Greek version, which would bridge the interval between
Type A and Type RL; nor would such a postulation
be, in the nature of things, remote or inconsistent.92
The similarity of the Greek version to this assumed Latin
version might be purely fortuitous, but it is more likely
to be the result of borrowing, or of dependence of some
kind.
The creation of an Island of Scarioth on which Judas
passed, according to Type RL, his early life may be due
to the fact that on the island of Corfi there was a district
called Skaria which was for a long time believed to
be the birthplace of Judas. In Type RL, certainly, the
name Scarioth, which in Type A had been vaguely a place,
and in the Greek version was a sea-port town (Iskara,
Iskaria) opposite the island to which Judas drifted, had
become attached to the island. The next change that we
meet in Type RL is that Judas is rescued, not by shepr
It is quite in accord, for example, with Professor Rand's stemma
(p. 316); it would correspond to his y.
625
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
herds as in Type A and the Greek version-an apparently
CEdipodean trait which so far has persisted-but by the
queen of the island. This change probably took place in
the West, and is strikingly parallel to the legend which is
found, without names, in a twelfth-century German poem,
and which was later given to St. Albanus. Here the child
of the emperor and his daughter is adopted by the king
and queen of Hungary because they have no children of
their own, and in order to deceive his people the king
has his wife feign to be with child before he announces
the foundling as his heir. Being in Type RL only the
adopted son of the queen of Scarioth, Judas is not actually
guilty of fratricide when he slays the queen's own son;
and there is no implication of avarice as the motive of
this murder, as there is in the Greek version. The only
other change of importance in the development from the
Greek version to Type RL is in the transference of Herod's
role to Pilate. This is but natural. During the Middle
Ages Pilate enjoyed a disgraceful popularity, second-if
second-only to Judas; his legend was even more elaborate
than Judas's; whereas Herod early fell into the background
and became merely a comic figure in the mysteries.
In many details there are, of course, other variations between
the Greek version and the Latin Type RL, but although
interesting in themselves as reflecting the various
unknown personalities that left an impress on the legend,
and as indicating in some measure new points of interest
as time went on-for example, the comparative space given
to purely Biblical and legendary material, or the varying
emphasis on Judas's suicide-these do not affect the development
of the legend in its essentials. As it gradually
shifted from Latin to the different vernacular languages,
it took on various bits of local and temporal color which it
would be supererogatory to point out; it was dressed in
626
THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
the garb of poetry; it was used for apologetic purposes;
and in other ways suffered new modifications of detail,
new adjustments to meet new demands.
One matter remains to be considered: the proper names.
In the Provencal version only Judas, Jesus, and Herod
are named, and Herod is in Jerusalem. Type A adds one
name: Scarioth, but this was taken directly from the New
Testament, and used merely to designate the place where
Judas grew up. The Greek versions give the father's
name as PodekX, which is probably not of Greek origin.
This circumstance lends some support to our hypothesis
of an intermediate Latin version between Type A and the
Greek versions, in which the name Reuben would have
occurred. Reuben is a familiar Biblical name, and not
without its suggestiveness. It was chosen " perhaps with
the idea of prophesying grimly the action of the son." 93
Type H has Symon for the father's name, which is taken
from John 6, 71; and this appears as a variant name in
Type RL and a few other early versions. Not until the
legend had reached practically its full development, in
Type R of the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the
thirteenth centuries, and in Type L of the early thirteenth
century, do we find the name of Judas's mother,
Ciborea, a name suggested perhaps by Zipporah (Moses's
wife), which was spelled in various ways.94 At the
93Rand, p. 312. Cf. Gen. 35, 22 and 49, 4. Krauss, Das Leben
Jesu nach Jiidischen Quellen, p. 219, makes the same point.
94Professor Rand compares the name of one of the midwives,
Shiphrah, Gen. 1, 15 (he spells it Sephora and intimates that it is
the same name as Moses's wife's), and makes the rather subtle point
that since the name Ciborea "is connected with Moses' birth as
well as his marriage" it "thus suggests as nearly as anything Biblical
can, the mother-wife" (p. 312, n. 3). The connection is somewhat
tenuous. Gaston Paris was the first to suggest the relation
of Ciborea to Zipporah or Sepphorah. Krauss makes the same observation
(p. 219).
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PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
same time appear the first notices of Judas's race.
The Dionysius text says that he was EK Tri UvXi? TrWv
'IovSatcov, the Iveron text omits even this; the former
says that he came EI TSj Xcpas Tn3? Io-capa ; the latter
taro Tr)v X&pav 'Ia-cadpa. In certain manuscripts of Type
RL Judas is said to be from the tribe of Judah,
probably from the similarity of the two words; in other
manuscripts and in Type L generally Judas is of the tribe
of Dan, " in memory perhaps of Isidore's identification of
Dan with Antichrist."95 Olshausen 9 conjectured that
Judas was said to be from the tribe of Dan because of
Gen. 49, 17: "Dan shall be a serpent in the way, an
adder in the path "; and one of the Russian translations
of the Legenda Aurea version has actually incorporated
this passage from Genesis in the text. The Halle Realencyclopcedie
97 and Strauss,98 however, reject this conjecture.
Various legends have connected Judas with the tribe of
Dan,99 obviously on account of the evil reputation of Dan
and the Danaites, and we need not ascribe the reference
in the legend to any particular source.
Apropos of the Danaitic descent of Judas Krauss has
a suggestion of the origin of the legend which is worthy
of our notice, but which, without additional support, can
hardly be regarded as more than a hint. Judas was from
the tribe of Dan, and Antichrist was born "Danitica
matre." Moreover, Jesus had called Judas diabolus,100
5Rand, p. 312. Allegoriae quaedam scripturae sacrae, 42 (M. S.
L., 83, 107.)
96 Commentar zu den Evangelien, ir, p. 458.
II, pp. 26, 241.
9 Leben Jesu, 3rd ed., II, p. 406.
"Ephream Syriacus, I, 192 D, tells us that "coluber antichristus
Danitica matre nascetur." I am indebted to Krauss, pp. 215 ff. for
several of these references.
'10Jn. 6, 70.
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THE MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
and diabolus might easily have been taken in the sense
of Sathanas. Judas assumes the role of Antichrist; and
it is but natural and logical that he should be accredited
with incest.101
Let us recapitulate briefly the points made in this section.
The various motifs which appear in the Christian
legends of medieval Europe are those which are found
repeatedly in the folk-lore of earlier times in Greece and
in Asia. The legend of Judas is no exception to this
generalization, and all the incidents out of which it is
built up may be paralleled by examples from older popular
stories, not only individually but also in similar combinations.
Whence we conclude that this legend may have
been the work of popular imagination or memory, putting
together familiar details and motifs. At the same time,
we recognize the similarity of the legend of Judas with
the story of CEdipus, and find no reason why it may not
have been an appropriation and adaptation of the Greek
myth. Between these two possibilities of the origin of
the legend we cannot make a logical choice. But whatever
may have been the source of the legend, we can trace
with a certain degree of probability its gradual development
from the original idea to a somewhat complex though
rather crude tale. The probable date of its appearance
is late in the eleventh century, when incest was a familiar
theme; but the earliest manuscript evidence we have is
for some time in the second half of the twelfth century.
If the legend was of popular origin the former date is more
probable; but if it was derived from the story of (Edipus
there is nothing to warrant the assumption of an earlier
101K rauss, p. 219. On incest attributed to Antichrist cf. Krauss,
215 ff., and W. Bousset, Der Attichrist, Gottingen, 1895. (Translation
by A. H. Keane, London, 1896, p. 157 n.)
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date than the second half of the twelfth century, although
there is also nothing to be urged against an earlier date.
Certainly by the beginning of the thirteenth century the
legend had attained its full development, for all subsequent
redactions are merely varying reworkings of the same
material.
CONCLUSION
From the very beginning Judas has been more a figure
of legend than of history. Although the efforts of 'advanced'
critics to make him out an altogether legendary
character have proved abortive, still we have to agree that
not all of the Gospel details concerning him can be historically
accurate. Two actually contradictory accounts of
his death are recorded by his supposed contemporaries;
and during the second generation after his own a story of
his death was current, vouched for by one of the disciples
of St. John, which is now admitted by all to be purely
legendary. In the later centuries, from the Apostolic Age
to the mediaeval period, almost every Scriptural reference
to him was elaborated with mystical and imaginative commentary.
And then, in the Middle Ages, that trysting
place of stories from the North and the East and the
South, was born the particular legend which I have
studied in this article.
The earliest history of this legend is entirely lost. When
we first find it written down it is in Latin in France.
The earliest manuscript which contains the legend was
written in the twelfth century at St. Victor; what we may
regard as the earliest form of the legend is preserved only
in a fourteenth-century manuscript in the Gascon dialect.
But early thirteenth-century versions which imply its existence
in the twelfth are found in France, in England, in
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THE MEDIEVAL LEGEND OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Bavaria, and in Italy. We infer, therefore, that the
legend was known to the learned at the beginning of the
thirteenth century throughout western Europe (except
Spain). But how far this knowledge was shared by the
laity we have no means of ascertaining. The mere fact
that our earliest written record of the legend is in Latin
signifies nothing. Nor can we draw any pertinent conclusion
from the fact that the legend does not appear in the
vernacular languages until the end of the thirteenth or
beginning of the fourteenth century. But at this time we
find it as far East as Bohemia and as far West as Catalonia.
During the fourteenth century it moved northward
into Scotland and Ireland, and into Denmark and Scandinavia.
Afterwards, we cannot tell exactly when, it
passed into Finland, Great Russia, Little Russia, Galicia,
Poland, and Bulgaria. In Greek we have only very late
documents; but from the form of the legend in its Greek
versions we infer that it must have reached Byzantium
through the Latin at some time during the mediaeval
period, perhaps very early.
The most astonishing item in the history of the Judas
legend is its aftermath in the chap-book literature of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After about two
centuries of apparent eclipse it reappeared in France,
Italy, Spain, Germany, England, Wales, Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden. To what extent it is known to the folk
of Europe to-day we cannot judge. Istrin was of the opinion
that it is still more or less current in southeastern
Europe, although no evidence has been gathered or published.
But as civilization advances such legends tend to
die out; as what we call the 'modern interpretation of the
Bible' gains more adherents, the somewhat bigoted and
entirely unchristian hatred of Judas which this legend
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PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM
represents must decline. In fact, now among all the enlightened
peoples of the West that unpleasant tale of homicide,
parricide, theft, incest, treachery, and suicide which
passed for the life of Judas Iscariot has become only a
record of the semi-barbarity of our ancestors,-a kind of
gargoyle on the cathedral of the Middle Ages.102
PAULL FRANKLIN BAUM.

Footnotes:
1. Nowhere in mediaeval painting, moreover, is the legend of Judas

102 In the Sammelband von Materialien zur Beschreibung der L nder
*nd Volker des Kaukasus, vol. xxxII (Tiflis, 1903), there is a
Cossack legend of Judas which probably belongs here. Cf. Zeitschrift
des VVe reins filr Volkskunde, XIV (1904), p. 347. See also
3THorpalimnHEH3-6 1pHHnI, ll, p. 70; and R. Foulcht-Delbosc, Laql egende
de Judas Iscariote in Revue hispaniq ue, xxxvI (1916), pp. 135-149.
These references came to my attention after the above article was
already in print, and I have been unable to examine them.