Massacre of the innocent

The massacre of the innocent is the name given to an episode reported in the Évangile according to Matthieu at the same time as the Fuite in Egypt: the murder of all the children of less than two years in the area of Bethlehem, ordered by Hérode shortly after the birth of Jesus.

This episode is absent from other Évangiles and first apocryphal book S. Voilà what the Évangile says according to Matthieu, chap. 2: " Then Hérode, indicator which he had been played by the magi, was put in a great anger, and he sent to kill all the two year old children and below which were with Bethlehem and in all its territory, the date of which he was carefully enquis near the magi. Then achieves itself what had been announced by Jérémie, the prophet: One heard cries with Rama, Of the tears and great lamentations: Rachel cries his/her children, And did not want to be comforted, Because they are not any more. " Historicity in is doubtful, the more so as the bringing together is essential with the massacre of the male children ordered by Pharaon (Exodus 1,22). The memory of the episode would especially testify to the unpopularity of the dynasty of Hérode in the Jewish world of the Second Temple.

The massacre of the innocent in the Christian tradition

The Innocent Saints are the children of less than two years massacred for Christ by Hérode in Bethlehem. God allows the massacre of the holy innocent to make them them first steps of the redemption of Jesus-Christ. It is the jealousy and the fear which push Hérode to commit an amazing crime in the history; he was punished by it and in a terrible way, because he died in despair and devoured all alive by the worms.

Saint Augustin depicts thus seizing it table of this horrible butchery: " The mothers tore off the hair; they wanted to hide their small children, but these tender creatures betrayed themselves; they could not be keep silent, not having learned how to fear. It was a combat between the mother and the torturer; one violently seized its prey, the other retained it with effort. The mother said to the torturer: " To deliver my child me, to you! My entrails gave him the life, and you want to break it against the ground! " Another mother exclaimed: " Cruel, if there is a culprit, it is me! Or saving my son, or kills to me with him! " A voice was made hear: " Who do you seek? You kill a multitude of children to remove you from only one, and That which you seek escapes! " And while the cries of the women formed a confused mixture, the sacrifice of the small children was approved Sky.

Holy Jean, in the Apocalypse, watch Innocent saints surrounding the throne of the Lamb because they are pure, and following It everywhere where It goes. " Will you ask, known as Bernard saint, for which merits these children were crowned hand of God? Ask Hérode rather for which crimes they were cruelly massacred. Will the kindness of the Saver be overcome by the cruelty of Hérode? This impious king could put at dead innocent children, and Jesus-Christ could not give the eternal life to those which died only because of Him? The eyes of the man or the angel do not discover any merit in these tender creatures; but the divine grace was rained with the enrichir" , also the Church it established their festival at the latest as of the second century.

Artistic topic

The massacre of the innocent is a topic that many artists exploited, as a pretext with sophisticated compositions putting in scene of the bodies intermingled within an violent action.

Artists of the Renaissance took as a starting point Roman low-reliefs of the battle between the Lapithes and the Centaure S to represent naked characters as in this '' Massacre of the innocent '' of Amico Aspertini. The '' Massacre of the innocent '' of Guido Reni, painted in 1611 in an unusual vertical format, is with Bologna.

Several paintings of Pierre Paul Rubens illustrate this topic. One of them, currently in Munich, was engraved by Paulus Pontius in 1643, which explains the existence of reproductions in countries as remote as the Peru. Another, the Massacre of the innocent , belonged to the most expensive paintings of the world, after being bought by Kenneth Thomson for £49.5 million [[pound sterling|GBP]] in 2002 at the time of an auction organized by Sotheby' S. Kenneth Thomson made of it donation with the Art Gallery off Ontario of Toronto.

See too

Escape in biblical Egypt
Interpretation
the Massacre of the innocent (Guido Reni)

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