Please assist support the mission of new Advent and get the full contents of this website as an immediate download. The Greek Liturgy asserts that Herod killed 14,000 boys (ton hagion id chiliadon Nepion), soho1015.ooi.kr the Syrians speak of 64,000, many medieval authors of 144,000, in response to Apocalypse 14:3. Modern writers cut back the quantity considerably, since Bethlehem was a rather small city. Knabenbauer brings it all the way down to fifteen or twenty (Evang. S. Matt., I, 104), Bisping to ten or twelve (Evang. Kellner to about six (Christus and seine Apostel, Freiburg, 1908); cf. 15 Febr., 1909, p. 32. This cruel deed of Herod isn't mentioned by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, though he relates fairly quite a few atrocities dedicated by the king throughout the final years of his reign. The quantity of these kids 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 adult son of Herod, who, by command of the dying king was decapitated for sex having conspired in opposition to the life of his father. It is unattainable to find out the day or the 12 months of the demise of the Holy Innocents, because the chronology of the delivery of Christ and the subsequent Biblical events is most unsure. All we know is that the infants were 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 are the primary buds of the Church killed by the frost of persecution; they died not only for Christ, but in his stead (St. Aug., "Sermo 10us de sanctis"). In connection with them the Apostle recalls the phrases of the Prophet Jeremias (xxxi, 15) talking 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, representative 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 spoil of her folks, led away to Babylon, is only a kind of the break which menaces her youngsters now, when the Messias is to be murdered and is compelled to flee from the midst of His own nation to escape 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 folks, ushered in by the slaughter of her children and the banishment of the Messias. The Latin Church instituted the feast of the Holy Innocents at a date now unknown, not before the end of the fourth and never later than the end 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 stored within the octave of Christmas as a result of the Holy Innocents gave their life for the newborn Saviour. Stephen the primary 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 youngsters; in other Latin international locations they are called merely Infantes and the feast had the title "Allisio infantium" (Brev. Holy Innocents were killed fifteen weeks after the birth of Christ.
In 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 2 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 correct preface of the Gelasian Sacramentary for this feast continues to be discovered in the Ambrosian Missal. We possess a lengthy 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.