Please assist support the mission of recent Advent and get the full contents of this webpage as an instantaneous obtain. The Greek Liturgy asserts that Herod killed 14,000 boys (ton hagion id chiliadon Nepion), the Syrians speak of 64,000, many medieval authors of 144,000, oral, https://t.antj.link/192379/3785/0?bo=2753,2754,2755,2756&pyt=multi&po=6456&aff_sub5=SF_006OG000004lmDN, in keeping with Apocalypse 14:3. Modern writers cut back the quantity significantly, since Bethlehem was a slightly small town. Knabenbauer brings it right down to fifteen or twenty (Evang. S. Matt., I, 104), Bisping to ten or twelve (Evang. Kellner to about six (Christus and seine Apostel, porn Freiburg, 1908); cf. 15 Febr., 1909, p. 32. This merciless deed of Herod isn't talked about by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, although he relates quite plenty of atrocities committed by the king through the last years of his reign. The number of these children was so small that this crime appeared insignificant amongst the opposite misdeeds of Herod. Jewish legislation of not eating, and consequently not killing, swine. Dreves, "Petri Abaelardi Hymnarius Paracletensis", Paris, 1891, pp.
But this "infant" talked about by Macrobius, is Antipater, the grownup son of Herod, who, by command of the dying king was decapitated for having conspired towards the life of his father. It is impossible to find out the day or the 12 months of the death of the Holy Innocents, for the reason that chronology of the beginning of Christ and oral the subsequent Biblical events is most unsure. All we know is that the infants had been slaughtered within two years following the apparition of the star to the Wise Men (Belser, within the Tübingen "Quartalschrift", 1890, p. 361). The Church venerates these children as martyrs (flores martyrum); they're the primary buds of the Church killed by the frost of persecution; they died not only for Christ, however in his stead (St. Aug., "Sermo 10us de sanctis"). In reference to them the Apostle recalls the phrases of the Prophet Jeremias (xxxi, 15) speaking of the lamentation of Rachel. Th is po st has been gen erat ed with t he help of GSA Con tent Generat or Demov er sion!
At Rama is the tomb of Rachel, consultant of the ancestresses of Israel. There the remnants of the nation were gathered to be led into captivity. As Rachel, after the fall of Jerusalem, from her tomb wept for the sons of Ephraim, so she now weeps once more for the males children of Bethlehem. The wreck of her folks, led away to Babylon, is barely a kind of the smash which menaces her kids now, when the Messias is to be murdered and is compelled to flee from the midst of His personal nation to flee from the sword of the apparitor. The lamentation of Rachel after the fall of Jerusalem receives its eminent completion at the sight of the downfall of her individuals, ushered in by the slaughter of her kids and the banishment of the Messias. The Latin Church instituted the feast of the Holy Innocents at a date now unknown, not before the top of the fourth and not later than the tip of the fifth century.
It is, with the feasts of St. Stephen and St. John, first found in the Leonine Sacramentary, dating from about 485. To the Philocalian Calendar of 354 it is unknown. The Latins keep it on 28 December, the Greeks on 29 December, the Syrians and Chaldeans on 27 December. These dates don't have anything to do with the chronological order of the event; the feast is kept throughout the octave of Christmas because the Holy Innocents gave their life for the newborn Saviour. Stephen the first martyr (martyr by will, love, and blood), John, the Disciple of Love (martyr by will and love), and these first flowers of the Church (martyrs by blood alone) accompany the Holy Child Jesus coming into this world on Christmas day. Only the Church of Rome applies the phrase Innocentes to these children; in different Latin countries they are known as merely Infantes and the feast had the title "Allisio infantium" (Brev. Holy Innocents have been killed fifteen weeks after the start of Christ.
Within the Roman Breviary the feast was only a semi-double (in different breviaries a minor double) up to the time of Pius V, who, in his new Breviary (1568), raised it to a double of the second class with an octave (G. Schober, "Expl. rit. brev. rom.", 1891, p. 38). He also introduced the two hymns "Salvete flores martyrum" and "Audit tyrannus anxius", which are fragments of the Epiphany hymn of Prudentius. Before Pius V the Church of Rome sang the Christmas hymns on the feast of the Holy Innocents. The proper preface of the Gelasian Sacramentary for this feast remains to be discovered in the Ambrosian Missal. We possess a prolonged hymn in honour of the Holy Innocents from the pen of the Venerable Bede, "Hymnum canentes martyrum" (Dreves, "Analecta hymnica") and a sequence composed by Notker, "Laus tibi Christe", however most Churches at Mass used the "Clesa pueri concrepant melodia" (Kehrein, "Sequenzen", 1873, p. 348). At Bethlehem the feast is a Holy Day of obligation.