| Because the betrayal is closely connected to the crucifixion and the resurrection, Judas Iscariot, perhaps the most infamous personage of the New Testament, occupies a privileged place in the Christian imagination. Judas figures prominently in patristic commentaries and exegetics, as well as in a number of extra-canonical texts and traditions from late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and beyond. This project considers the matter of Judas in two apocryphal legends of the later Middle Ages, situating them between canonical and extra-canonical traditions, and focuses on their circulation in British and Irish manuscripts. This original research rests upon a philological foundation, correcting a number of errors in previous scholarship on these texts.;The first legend, De ortu Judae, is an Oedipodean biography of Judas that fills in gaps left by the evangelists and uses the 30 silver coins paid to Judas as the basis of an explanation for the betrayal of Jesus. Close comparison of Latin and Middle English texts shows that Jacobus of Voragine’s Legenda Aurea is the direct source of the South English Legendary version of the Judas legend, rather than the anonymous Historia Apocrypha as some scholars have suggested. A further conclusion, that the unknown SEL poet was creative and innovative, is supported by annotated translations into modern English prose of the South English Legendary chapters on Judas and Pilate.;In the second legend, De gallo redivivo, the miraculous resuscitation of a cooked cock proves to Judas the error of his ways, ultimately providing a motivation for his suicide, as well as making an explicit connection between the sins of Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s denials of Jesus. This apocryphon also links the 30 silver coins paid to Judas with the 30 silver hoops placed around the rood-tree by King David, centuries before its wood was made into Christ’s cross. An examination of the Latin manuscript traditions demonstrates that, despite thematic similarities, De ortu Judae and De gallo redivivo hardly ever circulated together, and that, moreover, they were not integrated into a continuous narrative.;Analysis of Judas texts from the Leabhar Breac and several other late medieval Irish manuscripts yields a preliminary conclusion that while De gallo redivivo was attested in the Irish vernacular, De ortu Judae was not well represented in Ireland and may even have been unknown there. Another conclusion that may be drawn from the test case of Judas is that there was always a great deal of interaction between canonical scriptures and apocryphal writings, and, for that matter, between official interpretations and popular traditions. |
