Red-Letter Day
Martyrs
December 28
also known as The Innocents, Holy Innocents Day, Innocents' Day, Massacre of the Innocents
The children of Bethlehem, killed on Herod's order when the wise men did not come back to tell him where the child was. Matthew gives them three verses and no names, and no other ancient source records the killing at all. The Church has kept them since antiquity as martyrs who witnessed to nothing they understood, and has never agreed on how many they were or, in the end, minded.
They are the only saints in the calendar who did nothing. They did not confess Christ, or refuse to sacrifice, or choose. Matthew gives them three verses. The wise men did not come back, and Herod, seeing that he had been mocked, "sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men."
That is the whole account. No child is named. No number is given. The Gospel does not linger over it and does not explain it. It turns instead to a prophet and borrows the voice of a woman weeping six centuries earlier: "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."
The child the soldiers came for was already gone. Joseph had been warned in a dream and had taken the mother and the child into Egypt in the night. The Church has never softened what that means. One family was told to run, and the others were not. The feast sets the rescue and the killing on the same page and declines to reconcile them.
Herod is not a difficult man to believe this of. Josephus, who despised him, catalogues the rest: his wife Mariamne, who "went to her death with an unshaken firmness of mind, and without changing the color of her face"; his sons Alexander and Aristobulus, strangled at Sebaste and carried to their graves by night; his son Antipater, killed five days before his father died. Josephus sums him up as "a man of great barbarity towards all men equally, and a slave to his passion." And yet Josephus, who leaves out none of the rest of it, does not mention Bethlehem. That silence is the hinge on which every argument about this feast turns, and the History below sets out honestly where the argument stands.
What the liturgy does with all this is worth noticing, because it is not what an apologist would do. It does not argue. The Byzantine books, which put the number at fourteen thousand, address the children as "acceptable victims and freshly plucked flowers, as divine first-fruits and newborn lambs," and then ask them to pray. The Coptic calendar, reading them into the hundred and forty-four thousand of the Apocalypse, does the same. These are not head counts. They are the liturgy reaching for a number large enough to carry grief, and the grief is the point.
For the feast does not depend on the arithmetic, and it never has. Whatever the soldiers did in that village, and however many doors they came to, the Church has kept this day for the children who are killed because they are in the way of somebody's power, and who leave no account of themselves. They are honoured not for what they professed but for what was done to them, which is the harder kind of honouring, and the kind most often owed.
There is no lesson in this one, and you should be suspicious of anybody who finds a tidy one. A family was warned and got out; the others were not warned and did not. The Church put that on the calendar three days after Christmas and has left it there for sixteen centuries without softening it, which is worth something in itself. Notice what the liturgy does instead of explaining. It does not argue that the children were secretly willing, or that the number was small enough not to trouble you, or that it all worked out. It calls them lambs and first-fruits, gives them a day in the middle of the feasting, and asks them to pray. Grief is allowed to be the whole of it. Most of what happens to people happens to them, not because of anything they chose, and a good deal of it is done by someone protecting their own position. You have probably been on the receiving end of a decision like that, and you have almost certainly been downstream of one that benefited you. What would it mean to keep a day for the people your own safety cost, without reaching for the sentence that makes it bearable?
Matthew 2:16-18 is the only account. Nothing else in the ancient world records the killing at Bethlehem, and the difficulty is that one source in particular ought to have. Josephus wrote a long and hostile history of Herod's reign, dwelling on exactly this kind of atrocity, and he does not mention it.
Scholars divide, and the division is worth stating properly rather than resolving. Those who take the episode as historical argue from scale as much as from character. R. T. France, its most careful modern defender, points out that estimates of Bethlehem's population in the first century are "generally under a thousand," so the number of boys under two "could hardly be more than twenty," and that on "the scale of atrocities known to have been perpetrated by Herod during his later years this would register very low." He is candid about how far that gets him, concluding only that Matthew recorded "a tradition which Matthew has received of what he himself at least believed to be an actual event."
Those who read the passage as shaped by Scripture rather than by report point to the pattern underneath it. Geza Vermes concedes the character argument as fully as anyone could wish, asking whether the story fits what we know of Herod and answering, "Without any doubt it is." He then observes that the Exodus supplies the model: a warning of a coming deliverer, a king who orders the male infants killed, a father reassured in a dream. The parallel is not a modern construction. Josephus himself tells the Moses story that way, and he was writing at roughly the same time as Matthew. E. P. Sanders puts the conclusion plainly: "Josephus narrated a lot of stories about Herod, dwelling on his brutality, but not this one."
One piece of apparent corroboration should be set aside. Macrobius, writing around AD 400, reports Augustus joking that it is better to be Herod's pig than his son, "when he heard that among the boys up to two years old whom Herod king of the Jews ordered to be killed in Syria Herod's own son also was killed." It is often produced as independent evidence. It cannot bear that weight, and France, who defends the massacre, is among those who say so: the remark "probably reflects a garbled knowledge of Christian tradition rather than independent information," and it appears in a compiled joke-book of imperial wit, next to quips about purple dye and prose style.
The traditional numbers are liturgical rather than historical. The Greek books say fourteen thousand, the Syrian sixty-four thousand, the Coptic Synaxarion a hundred and forty-four thousand, which it reaches by identifying the children with the unblemished multitude of Revelation 14. Modern estimates, which begin from an assumed population and an assumed birth rate rather than from any record, run between about six and about twenty. The population figure they start from is itself disputed. This page gives no count, because no source supports one.
The day is kept on the twenty-eighth of December in the West, the twenty-ninth by the Greeks, the twenty-seventh by the Syrians and Chaldeans, and by the Armenians in the spring, on the Monday after the second Sunday after Pentecost, because they reckoned the killing fifteen weeks after the Nativity. The Church has never agreed on the date any more than on the number.
What the Western books do agree on is what the children are for. The old Gelasian collect puts the whole theology of the day into six words: the Innocents non loquendo, sed moriendo confessi sunt, they confessed not by speaking but by dying. Every English collect for the day descends from that sentence.
In medieval England the three days after Christmas belonged to three ranks of the church's household. At Salisbury the twenty-sixth was the feast of Deacons, for Stephen; the twenty-seventh the feast of Priests, for John; and the twenty-eighth the feast of Children, which the English called Childermas. On that day the boy bishop reigned. Elected on St Nicholas's day, robed and mitred, he presided until the Innocents' feast, and the Sarum books have the choristers processing at Vespers to the altar of the Innocents, the boy bishop among them "designating Christ the Child, the true and eternal Pontiff," and intoning the responsory Centum quadraginta quattuor millia, the hundred and forty-four thousand of the Apocalypse. The children sang the number the liturgy had given them. That number was not an accident of the custom: the Prayer Book of 1662 appoints Revelation 14, the vision of the hundred and forty-four thousand who follow the Lamb, as the Epistle for the day, which is very likely how the figure attached itself to these children in the first place.
Childermas was also reckoned the unluckiest day of the year. Victorian antiquarians recorded that no one who could avoid it began work or entered an undertaking on it, that to marry on Childermas was thought especially ill-omened, and that Cornish housewives would not scour or scrub. They recorded too a grimmer custom, of whipping children awake that morning "that the memorie of Herod's murder of the Innocents might stick the closer."
And the day has a carol, which is sung in the voices of the mothers. The Coventry pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors carried three songs, and this is the middle one, marked in the manuscript as the women's, set between two that belong to the shepherds. Robert Croo corrected the play in 1534 and Thomas Mawdycke added the songs in a later hand in 1591; the manuscript itself burned in the Birmingham free library fire of 1879, so the words survive only in what antiquaries had already printed from it.
Further reading. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (New International Commentary on the New Testament, 2007), is the fullest modern defence of the episode's historicity and states the case against it fairly; his earlier article is "Herod and the Children of Bethlehem," Novum Testamentum 21 (1979), 98-120. For the other reading, see Geza Vermes, The Nativity (Penguin, 2006), and E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (Penguin, 1993). Raymond E. Brown's The Birth of the Messiah remains the standard reference on the infancy narratives and discusses the numbers at pages 204-205.
Online resources. Josephus's account of Herod's reign is free in William Whiston's translation at Project Gutenberg; the killings of Mariamne, of Alexander and Aristobulus, and of Antipater are in Antiquities books XV to XVII. The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia article on the feast, which collects the traditional numbers, is at New Advent.
The Innocents be called innocents for three reasons. First, by cause and reason of life, and by reason of pain, and by reason of innocence. By reason of life they be said innocents because they had an innocent life. They grieved nobody, neither God, by inobedience, ne their neighbours by untruth, ne by conceiving of any sin, and therefore it is said in the psalter: The innocents and righteous have joined them to me. The innocents by their life and righteousness in the faith, by reason of pain, for they suffered death innocently and wrongly, whereof David says: They have shed the blood of innocents by reason of innocency that they had, because that in this martyrdom they were baptized and made clean of the original sin, of which innocence is said in the psalter: Keep you innocency of baptism and see equity of good works.
Holy church makes feast of the Innocents which were put to death because of our Lord Jesu Christ. For Herod Ascalonita for to find and put to death our Lord which was born in Bethlehem, he did do slay all the children in Bethlehem and there about, from the age of two years and under unto one day, unto the sum of one hundred and forty-four thousand children. For to understand which Herod it was that so cruelly did do put so many children to death, it is to wit that there were three Herods, and all three were cruel tyrants, and were in their time of great fame and much renowned for their great malice. The first was Herod Ascalonita: he reigned in Jerusalem when our Lord was born. The second was Herod Antipas, to whom Pilate sent Jesu Christ in the time of his passion, and he did do smite off S. John Baptist's head. The third was Herod Agrippa, which did do smite off S. James's head, said in Galicia, and set S. Peter in prison. But now let us come to this first Herod that did do slay the innocent children. His father was named Antipater as history scholastic says, and was king of Idumea and paynim; he took a wife which was niece to the king of Arabia, on whom he had three sons and a daughter, of whom that one was named Herod Ascalonita. This Herod served so well to Julian the emperor of Rome that he gave to him the realm of Jerusalem. Then lost the Jews kings of their lineage, and then was showed the prophecy of the birth of our Lord. This Herod Ascalonita had six sons, Antipater, Alexander, Aristobulus, Archelaus, Herod Antipas, and Philip. Of these children, Herod sent Alexander and Aristobulus to school to Rome, and Alexander became a wise and subtle advocate. And when they were come from school again they began to enter into words against Herod their father, to whom he would leave his realm after him, wherefore their father was angry with them, and put tofore them Antipater their brother for to come to the realm. Upon that, incontinent they treated of the death of their father, wherefore their father enchased them away, and they went again to Rome and complained of their father to the emperor.
Anon after this came the three kings in to Jerusalem, and demanded where the king of Jews was, that was new born. Herod when he heard this, he had great dread lest any were born of the true lineage of the kings of the Jews, and that he were the very true heir, and of whom he might be chased out of the realm. And when he had demanded of the three kings how they had had knowledge of the new king, they answered by a star being in the air, which was not naturally fixed in the heaven as the others were. Then he prayed them that they would return to him after that they had worshipped and seen this new king, that he might go after and worship the child. This said he fraudulently, for he thought to slay him. After that the three kings were gone without bringing him any tidings, he thought that anon he would do slay all the children newly born in Bethlehem and thereabouts, among whom he thought to slay Jesu Christ. But his thought was empeshed and let, for the emperor sent to him a citation that he should come to Rome for to answer to the accusation that Aristobulus and Alexander, his two sons, had made against him, and therefore he durst not put then the children to death, to the end that he should not be accused of so cruel a deed with his other trespasses; so he was in going to Rome and abiding there, and in coming, more than half a year, and in that while Jesus was borne into Egypt. When Herod came to Rome the emperor ordained that his sons should do him honour and obey him, and he should leave his realm after his death where it best pleased him. Upon this, when he was come again, and felt himself confirmed of the realm, he was more hardy to slay the children than he had tofore thought. Then he sent into Bethlehem and did do slay all the children that were of the age of two years, because it was passed more than a year that the three kings had told him tidings of the king of Jews new-born. But wherefore then did he do slay the children that were but one night old? Hereto S. Austin says that Herod doubted that Jesus, to whom the stars served, might make himself some younger than he was. After this came upon Herod a right vengeance, for like as he dissevered many mothers from their children, in like wise was he dissevered from his children. It happed that he had suspicion upon his two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus; for one of his servants said to him that Alexander had promised to him great gifts if he would give to his father to drink poison or venom, and the barber said to the king that he had promised him a great thing if, when he made the king's beard, he would cut his throat, and for this cause Herod did do slay them both, and ordained in his testament that Antipater, his son, should be king after him. Upon this Antipater, his son, had great desire to come to the realm, and was accused that he had made ready venom for to empoison his father, for a maid, a servant, afterward showed the same venom to the king, wherefore he did do put his son Antipater in prison. When Augustus, the emperor of Rome, heard say that Herod ruled thus his children, he then said: I had liefer be the swine or hog of Herod than his son, for he which is strange in his living spares his swine, and he put to death his sons.
Herod when he was seventy years old he fell in a grievous malady by right vengeance of God, for a strong fever took him within and without; he had his flesh hot and dry chauffed, his feet swelled and became of a pale colour. The plants of his feet under began to rot, in such wise that vermin issued out, and a stench issued so great out of his breath and of his members without forth, that no persons might suffer it. On that other side he had great grief and annoy of the anger that he had for his sons. When the masters and physicians saw that he might not be holpen by no medicine, then they said that this malady was a vengeance of God, and for as much as he heard say that the Jews were glad of his malady and sickness, therefore he did do assemble the most noble of the Jews out of the good towns, and did do put them in prison and said to Salome, his sister, and to Alexander her husband: I know well that the Jews shall be glad of my death, but if you will do my counsel and obey to me I shall mowe have great plaint and wailing of many that shall beweep my death, in this wise that I shall show you. Anon as I shall be dead, do you to be slain all the noble Jews that be in prison, and thus shall be no house of the Jews, but they shall, against their will, beweep my death. And he had a custom to eat an apple last after meat. On a time he demanded a knife for to pare the apple, and one delivered him a knife, and shortly he took it, as all despaired, and would have slain himself, but anon Aciabus, his neighbour, caught his hand and cried loud, that it was supposed that the king had died. Antipater his son, which was in prison, had heard the cry and weened his father had been dead. He was glad, and promised to the keepers of the prison great gifts for to let him out. When Herod knew this by his servant, he travailed the more grievously because his son was more glad of his death than of his sickness, and anon did do slay him, and ordained in his testament, Archelaus to be king after him, and he lived but five days after and died in great misery of annoy. Salome, his sister, did not his commandment of the Jews that were in prison, but let them go out. And Archelaus became king after Herod his father, which as to strangers in the battle he was fortunate and happy, but as to his own people he was right unhappy. Then I return again; after that, Joseph was gone with our Lord into Egypt and was there seven years, unto the death of Herod. And after the prophecy of Isaiah, at the entering of our Lord into Egypt, the idols fell down, for like as at departing of the children out of Egypt, in every house the oldest son of the Egyptians lay one dead, in like wise at the coming of our Lord lay down the idols in the temples.
Cassiodorus says in the History tripartite, in Hermopolin of Thebaid there was a tree called Persidis, which is medicinal for all sicknesses, for if the leaf or rind of that tree be bound to the neck of the sick person, it heals him anon, and as the blessed Virgin Mary fled with her son, that tree bowed down and worshipped Jesu Christ. Also Macrobius says in a chronicle that, a young son of Herod was nourished at that time, and he was slain among the other children. And then was fulfilled the prophecy saying: The voice is heard in Rama of great weeping and wailing, that the sorrowful mothers wept for the death of their children, and might not be comforted, because they were not alive.
Where it rests is best said by Paul Anderson: "Not necessarily does not imply necessarily not, so rather than claiming to know Matthew's account is 'not historical,' it is more accurate to say that it is 'not confirmed by external sources historically,' which is to say its historicity is problematic, not overturned."
Almighty God, out of the mouths of children you manifest your truth, and by the death of the Holy Innocents at the hands of evil tyrants you show your strength in our weakness: We ask you to mortify all that is evil within us, and so strengthen us by your grace, that we may glorify your holy Name by the innocence of our lives and the constancy of our faith even unto death; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who died for us and now lives with you and the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.
British (Received Pronunciation): Augustine /ɔːˈɡʌstɪn/
Jeremiah 31:15–17Psalm 124Revelation 21:1–7Matthew 2:13–18