Would you like to know what was the judas problem Iscariot by not believing in Jesus? Presented as a man possessed by the devil by the Gospels, Judas sees himself with all the stigmata of the Middle Ages: new Oedipus, he kills his father and marries his mother; Greedy treasurer, betray his mistress; A Jew with feminine biological attributes, and therefore devilish, he offers his soul to Satan by committing suicide.
The study of the appearances of this character in the medieval scene has allowed us to understand how the theology of possession and theatrical practice have fertilized each other.
A puppet in the hands of Lucifer, a didactic instrument in those of the Church, the incarnation of evil in those of the Fatistas, Judas is, like the actor, a possessed body: the phenomenon of possession is a means of representing evil and illness.
Summary of the Judas problem
Judas Iscariot is one of the best-known apostles but also one of the least commented on in the New Testament: we have counted seventeen occurrences divided into four or five episodes.
Here you can learn about:
Two evangelists describe him as possessed;
- luke writes: “Then Satan entered Judas, who was nicknamed Iscariot, one of the twelve “
- John reports that: “after having eaten this morsel, Satan entered him” as I had predicted to Jesus: “However, one of you is a devil”.
The parsimony with which the biblical texts inform us about him, his role in history and his evil aura have allowed the authors the most fanciful speculations both about his life and about his death, which thus became plural.
In the Middle Ages, this character fascinated both theologians and Christians, who continued to wonder why Judas betrayed Jesus.
Why did he return bad for good? And among all the answers given, such as greed, envy, predestination or bad possession, the latter seems to have received the guarantee of the Gospels. So if all the clues suggest he’s possessed,
Can Judas be considered guilty, can he be “saved” to the extent that he participated in the salvation of men?
The study of the character of Judas as possessed, that is, as he is staged at the end of the Middle Ages, allows us to show how the theology of possession and theatrical practice came together, fertilized each other.
First of all, we are interested in the fate that theologians reserve for Judas: by making him possessed, they use him as an effective preaching argument, even propaganda: this character defines himself as the incarnation of evil (without actually giving his origin).
So our study of the different attributes of Judas will confirm that the phenomenon of possession is a means of representing evil, how it is used to designate evil and disease. Finally, we will demonstrate that by becoming an element of dramatization, possession becomes an instrument of redemption.
A preaching argument on the Judas problem
Now, let’s see the arguments that deal with the problem of Judas, his betrayal, possession, metal condition, among other factors that clouded the vision of this apostle who lost his way for believing in his own ideals and not becoming a follower like the other 11 apostles.
The fate of the possessed (the Judas problem for possession)
Several versions, sometimes contradictory, of the biography of Judas coexist in medieval culture, but we can say that the authors agree to give him a criminal life, ignominious death and hellish eternity.
Although the evangelists attribute different attitudes and motivations to Judas, the versions of his life before his encounter with Christ are even more numerous (PF Baum has listed forty-two) and more divergent.
However, they have in common to paint him as the worst criminal since he was guilty of all the crimes “possible and imaginable“. The Life of Jesus in Arabic, an apocryphal Christian writing, relates the following fact: when he was three years old, crying, Jesus cast the devil out of the body of another child.
Immediately this demon came out of Judas and ran away like a mad dog. This child was Judas Iscariotwho delivered Jesus to death, and the place where he struck our Lord is also the place where he was pierced by the lance during the Passion.
The golden legend. The beginning of the problem of Judas in the apocryphal books
In the Golden Legend, Santiago de Voragine tells the story of Judas, insisting that it is apocryphal: following a premonitory dream, Judas’s parents, Rubén and Ciborée, decide to abandon him to the sea.
The queen of the Isle of Scarioth and later murders her adoptive mother’s son. Judas flees and puts himself at the service of Pilate, who asks him to steal the fruit from the apple tree that grows in the garden of his neighbor, a certain Rubén.
- By committing his robbery, Judas kills the owner of the premises. To reward him, Pilate gives him to marry his victim’s widow, who had great wealth.
But, when questioning him about his origins, his wife Ciborée understands that Judas is the murderer of her father and the husband of her mother. She leaves everything to go find Jesus and do penance.
He ends up handing his master over to certain death. Thus, the medieval tradition painted the portrait of a fratricidal, thief, parricide, incestuous and deicidal Judas. To finish him off, she insists that she killed herself. Judas embodies evil because he commits crimes and even these acts are considered crimes because they are committed by Judas.
The problem of Judas told in the Gospels
Although the Gospels seemed unanimous about the life of Judas, the New Testament writings give two versions of his death: according to the Gospel of Matthew, taken with remorse, he goes to look for the priests to pay them back before hanging himself (Mt 27.3)
But, according to the Acts of the Apostles (text attributed to Lucas) he buys a field with the money from his crime, the “field of blood” into the earth from which it falls, and its body splits open, letting its viscera escape ().
After a long series of guesses, each one more eccentric than the next, Santiago de Voragine manages to produce a version that allows the two texts to coincide:
- It is true that moved with repentance he brought and went and hanged himself with a cord, and having hanged himself, he was punctured in the middle of his stomach and all his entrails spilled out; he did not reject anything with his mouth. He died in the air, so that he might be placed in another place than the habitation of angels and men, and that he was associated with demons in the air.
The problem of Judas and his final destiny
Finally, a terrible fate awaits him in the afterlife: when Jesus descends into hell to save souls, Judas finds himself condemned to eternal damnation with companions who, like him, have committed sins that they did not commit.
They can receive forgiveness: the apocryphal gospel of Bartholomew quotes him with Cain and HerodDante describes him with Brutus and Casio and the frescoes in the churches represent him in the company of Nero, among others…
After such an accumulation of misfortunes, no one can doubt the possession of which he is a victim. At the moment when the scaffolding multiplies both to accommodate theatrical performances and the executions of criminals, Judas no longer appears only as the scapegoat on which the clerics persist, he obtains the right of reply, he becomes a man who chose your destiny.
The problem of Judas and his trial
Regarding the problem of Judas, the medieval Church strives to inculcate a teaching in the form of accusation. For her, this character sums up all the sins he struggles with.
Only transgresses all of them prohibited, and especially the most recent: civil FORBIDDEN endogamy invented and defined by the Church since the XI ° century (to a better control of princely and aristocratic alliances) and the prohibition of practical wear Judas as a Jew, as shown in this excerpt from an early fourteenth-century mystery of the passion:
- ANA
- I’m only twenty eight!
- But, by the law that unites us,
- If you advance me two denarii,
- There are four that you will receive!
Judas, above all, betrayed Jesus and thus becomes the archetype of the traitor, the criminal par excellence. In the feudal system, he is identified with the criminal vassal.
Can you be held responsible for your actions?
But if he is possessed, that is, unable to choose between good and evil, can he be held responsible for his actions? The law refuses to condemn the madman. For this reason, unlike ecclesiastical preaching, the theater rather offers education in the form of law.
Give the floor to the accused: from now on it is Judas who tells his story. In the Passion of Provence, the story is very different from what is found in the other texts: no precognitive dreams, no fratricide, no apple theft.
Abandoned to escape the massacre of the Innocents, Judas is raised in a distant land before returning to Jerusalem, where he falls in love with a woman he marries. He lives happily until the day his wife discovers that she is also his mother.
Then, at the end of the fifteenth century, Jean Michel is the first to dramatize the pre-evangelical life of Judas appears on stage just after committing his first murder. The role of this character grows as he acquires some psychological depth.
However, in the middle of the fifteenth century, Arnulfo Greban introduced a fight between Judas and despair for the possession of his soul, a show like a trial, the dialogue in which the accused ended up condemning and a demon employee served.
The Judas Problem (Suicide)
Suicide becomes the occasion for a scene that is both pathetic and comic: out of pride, Judas persuades himself that forgiveness is impossible and damnation inevitable, and out of despair, he decides to end his life, l. 55-80, to end up giving himself up to the devil of his own free will, a decision that seems to be the best way to maintain control.
In fact, the possession argument seems more pernicious: as Judas makes the decision to surrender to Lucifer, he is no longer a victim, he becomes an actor. The theater allows the humanization of Judas at the same time that the speech of the character allows to see the scene since it describes the infernal scene.
A means of representation for the Judas problem
Now, let’s go to the representations of the Judas problem as an example of the multiple errors. In the midst of art, this fallen apostle personified and symbolized the man of sin. Let’s see:
The problem of Judas represented as the physiognomy of evil
Thanks to a rich iconography, we have a long list of elements that allow us to identify Judas, among which we only cite the most common: he is red-haired, wears a canopy or a tunic (because the apostles are dressed in “ancient” yellow clothing, he is left-handed, he has a bag (in his hand or on his belt), he is represented in profile by the evil eye, then in three quarters, finally facing the viewer in the 17th century, because now evil has a face.
In representations of the Last Supper, even the place at the table occupied by the traitor bears witness to his character…