Judas in the Middle Ages

The character of Judas (mentioned yesterday) from the New Testament both horrified and fascinated Christians of the Middle Ages. Although he does not survive after the Crucifixion like the other apostles, who went on to travel and proselytize, he lived on in the imagination and in literature. Someone in the 2nd century CE created the Coptic Gospel of Judas, a series of dialogues between Judas and Jesus that express 2nd century theological ideas. It paints Judas' actions as directed by Jesus himself, rather than a disgruntled (for whatever reason) apostle turning on his leader.

Matthew 27:5 says he hanged himself. Acts 1:18 says he fell into a field that he bought with the silver and his body burst open. Judas does not get mentioned outside of Acts and the Gospels. The canonical New Testament has nothing else to say about him. Although Judas' end is mentioned in the Bible, not every early Christian writer knew his story, leading some to extend it, which in turn gave later centuries fodder for literature.

Papias, Bishop of Hieropolis, writing around 130 CE, relates how Judas, rather than killing himself right after the betrayal:

went about in this world as a great model of impiety. He became so bloated in the flesh that he could not pass through a place that was easily wide enough for a wagon – not even his swollen head could fit. They say that his eyelids swelled to such an extent that he could not see the light at all; and a doctor could not see his eyes even with an optical device, so deeply sunken they were in the surrounding flesh.

The 12th century Latin Vita Judae ("Life of Judas") creates a biography for him, painting him as a tragic figure with an anecdote that might seem familiar to fans of Greek tragedy:

Before the child is born, his father has a vision that his son will kill him; so when Judas is born, his legs are wounded and he is abandoned outside of Jerusalem. Some shepherds find the baby and he is raised by a woman in a town called Scariot. As a grown man, Judas enters the service of King Herod. When Herod desires fresh fruit for one of his feasts, Judas steals some from a local orchard, and when caught he kills the farmer, not knowing it is his own father. When the townspeople threaten to kill Judas, he finds protection in Herod, who has him married to the murdered farmer’s wife (Judas’s mother, though unknown) to make peace. Judas’s true identity is revealed when his mother sees him naked and recognizes the scars on his legs.

Judas flees and meets Jesus; the rest happens as the Gospels tell it.

So there he is, turned from a demonic betrayer into a villain, but a villain perhaps worthy of pity because of fate and circumstances out of his control. Even stranger than that, however, is the idea that Judas was not completely bad, and that during his life he performed one or more good deeds. Those good deeds had a softening effect on his post-death existence. Tomorrow I'll tell you how his good deeds allows people (like a Celtic saint) to meet him and speak to him.