JUDAS ISCARIOT — The kiss of Judas. Detail from the upper right wall of S. Apollinare Nuovo (6th century) — Ravenna.
They came to seize the Redeemer (Jn 18:3; Acts 1:16); they betrayed the Master with a kiss (Mt 26:49 and parallel texts); he too was prostrated by Jesus with the words: “It is I” (Jn 18:5), and after his condemnation he hanged himself (Mt 27:3-5; Acts 1:18).
In the lists of the Apostles Judas is always named last, with the infamous note “the traitor” (Mt 10:4; Mk 3:19; Lk 6:16). Jesus knew from the beginning “who was the traitor” (Jn 6:64) and designated him with the titles “a devil” and “son of perdition” (Jn 17:12). Yet one must not suppose that Judas from the outset harboured perverse desires or that he was an intruder in the apostolic college; he was chosen by Jesus along with the others: he must have had practical abilities and good qualities that rendered him worthy of being elected apostle and steward.
The crisis may have begun in the synagogue at Capharnaum, where Jesus’ reply to Peter suggests that Judas did not share the faith of the head of the Apostles (Jn 6:70-71). More than Peter, Judas must have been scandalised by the repeated predictions of Jesus’ Passion (Mt 16:21-23; 17:22-23; 20:18-19). Then avarice grew in him, making him “a thief” (Jn 12:6), and he incurred Jesus’ rebuke at the supper in Bethany (Jn 12:7-8), where he learned from the Master’s words that the end was now near. He received confirmation of this after Jesus’ glorious entry into Jerusalem, when Jesus alluded to his own Crucifixion (Jn 12:32). At that point the crisis broke open. Judas went to the priests to ask what they would give him if he handed Jesus over to them (Mt 26:14). It is hard to establish the psychological motive for the betrayal. The Evangelists, besides pointing to the divine plan (Jn 13:18; 17:12; Acts 1:16), indicate avarice. Yet this does not fully explain Judas’ conduct after Jesus’ condemnation. Love of money, wounded pride, shattered illusions must all have contributed to the betrayal, and one cannot exclude a certain human love for Jesus—an impulse that resurfaced in a surge of despair when the consequences of the horrendous deed became clear. Then Judas, returning the money, went and hanged himself (Mt 27:5); the rope broke or the branch gave way, and he, falling to the ground, “burst open in the middle” (Acts 1:18).
Legend also constructed a Judas. While the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy claims he was possessed by a demon from childhood, Papias refers to some who believed he survived the hanging (in F. X. Funk, Patres apost., Paderborn 1901, pp. 360-63).
Judas also found his apologists over the centuries. From the Cainites of the 2nd century down to a modern Roué, passing through E. Renan, Petruccelli della Gattina, G. Bovio and others, a trail of admirers has sought to defend the person and the act, or at least to excuse them. Yet against every attempt at rehabilitation stands the word of Jesus: “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had never been born” (Mt 26:24).
ICONOGRAPHY. —
I. Archaeology
In some Christian sarcophagi two successive scenes of Judas with the Redeemer are observed: the first represents the encounter, when the traitor approached greeting: “Hail, Rabbi”; the second moment is the kiss (Mt 26:47-48). Thus in the sarcophagus of Servanne (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 15, 2). Of the scene of Judas’ kiss more examples are known in sarcophagi, among which one known since the time of A. Bosio (Roma sotterranea, Rome 1632, p. 431); others published by Garrucci and Le Blant. Among these are recalled the sarcophagi of Verona (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 150, 2), of Arles (ibid., pl. 32, 3; 148, 2; 217, 3). In sarcophagi there is a single example of Judas’ hanging at Arles; of this Wilpert recognised in the Museum of Nîmes the fragment with Judas’ two-faced head; the artist thus wished to express his duplicity (ibid., pl. 15, 1).In non-cemetery art Judas is represented on one of the columns of S. Marco in Venice when he receives the thirty pieces of silver (Venturi, I, fig. 252). In the ivory casket of Brescia Judas points Jesus out to the soldiers (J. Kollwitz, Die Lipsanothek von Brescia, Berlin 1933, p. 15, pl. 1).
In the Rabbulan Evangelistary, Judas in Gethsemane embraces the Redeemer (R. Garrucci, Storia dell’arte cristiana, III, Prato 1876, pl. 138); in the mosaic cycle of S. Apollinare Nuovo (6th century) he is shown first giving the kiss, as in one of the columns of S. Marco in Venice, and then in the act of returning to Caiaphas the price of his betrayal—a scene also found in a diptych of the cathedral of Milan and on one of the columns of the ciborium of S. Marco. In the mosaic cycle of a basilica in Spain, perhaps at Saragossa, Judas was depicted hanging from a tree, as attested by the illustrative distich composed by Prudentius (Dittocyalon, no. 41); this scene recurs several times, e.g. in the Lipsanotheca of Brescia (J. Kollwitz, op. cit., p. 32, pl. 5); in an ivory in the British Museum (O. M. Dalton, Catalogue of the ivory carvings of the Christian era in the British Museum, London 1909, no. 291); and in a diptych of the cathedral.
JUDAS ISCARIOT — Judas returns the money and hangs himself. Miniature from the purple codex of Rossano (6th century).
JUDAS ISCARIOT — Judas receives the thirty pieces of silver. Relief at the entrance to the crypt of the Cathedral — Modena (12th century).
BIBL. 1. H. Leclercq, Judas, in DACL, VIII, cols. 255-79; Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pp. 314-16.
1947. Art
Apart from his appearance in the countless images of the Last Supper, the depictions of the kiss and the arrest form an essential element of the Passion cycles in medieval Byzantine and Italian monuments (mosaics in S. Marco in Venice and Monreale; frescoes in S. Angelo in Formis; bronze doors at Benevento and Monreale), reaching their highest artistic level with Giotto’s fresco in the Arena Chapel in Padua. Further iconographic development of the above themes concerns the introduction of realistic details in the posture of the guards (cf., for example, the late Gothic German prints and still the three woodcuts by Dürer); Renaissance artists experimented with the depiction of a nocturnal scene.Of the other scenes with G. as the protagonist, corruption by means of the thirty pieces of silver appears for the first time in the 9th century (Chludov Psalter in Moscow); in the West the related examples are divided among Germany (illustrations in the Gospel Book of St Bernward in Hildesheim, c. 1000; relief on the façade of Naumburg Cathedral, c. 1270), southern France (Romanesque reliefs in the friezes of St-Gilles and Beaucaire) and Italy (relief on the aforementioned ciborium column of St Mark’s, the relief on the façade of Modena Cathedral, the panel by Duccio in Siena, the frescoes by Giotto in Padua and by Barna in S. Gimignano). Unlike the repentance of G., of which the ciborium column in Venice gives one of the rarest representations, the punishment of the traitor—namely his hanging—already found in an ivory in London from AD 400, is encountered in the Rabbûlâ Gospels, in Byzantine miniatures, in Catalan Bibles (c. 1000) as well as in the ciborium column in Venice. As time goes on, there is a tendency to render the scene of the suicide, originally limited to the most essential elements, ever more horrifying: in accordance with the text of Acts 1:18, 13th-century reliefs on the portal of Rouen Cathedral and on the central façade of Reims show the entrails spilling from the disembowelled body, while in a Strasbourg relief (c. 1300) the devil himself extracts them.