Articles / Special

The Virgin and Child Surrounded by the Holy Innocents (Credit : Peter Paul Rubens, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) 

The Holy Innocents are the children of Bethlehem, put to death by order of King Herod, as part of his efforts to eliminate the child Jesus, whom prophecies announced as the Messiah and new King of Israel. They have been honored as martyrs since the early centuries.

The Holy Innocents did not know Jesus, but they died in his place. Dec. 28 marks the feast of these baby boys who are, today, recognized as the first martyrs and pro-life patron saints.

Their story appears in the Gospel of Matthew.

After Jesus’ birth, King Herod the Great of Judea — named “king of the Jews” by the Roman Senate — learned of this “newborn king of the Jews” from the Magi. Troubled by the news, he deceivingly asked the Magi to report back to him Jesus’ location “that I too may go and do him homage.” But a dream warned the Magi not to return to Herod.

St. Matthew (2:16–18) records what happens next.

“When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the Magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the Magi,” the Gospel reads. “Then was fulfilled what had been through Jeremiah the prophet: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.’”

Since then, artists through the centuries — from Giotto di Bondone to Léon Cogniet and Angelo Visconti — have captured the haunting moment of terrified mothers desperately clinging to their little ones. In music, the Coventry Carol, traditionally considered a Christmas carol, tells the story with an equally haunting tune.

Fact vs. fiction

Some historians dispute Matthew’s account because Herod biographers, such as Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, does not write about the slaughter. Catholic apologist Trent Horn responds to this argument in Catholic Answers.

“Such an act of cruelty perfectly corresponds with Herod’s paranoid and merciless character, which bolsters the argument for its historicity,” Horn wrote in 2019. “Josephus records that Herod was quick to execute anyone he perceived to threaten his rule, including his wife and children.”

Horn suggested that Josephus may not have considered the event notable.

Back then, “Bethlehem was a small village that would have included, at most, a dozen males under the age of 2,” Horn wrote. “Josephus, if he even knew about the massacre, probably did not think an isolated event like the killings at Bethlehem needed to be recorded, especially since infanticide in the Roman Empire was not a moral abomination as it is in our modern Western world.”

Josephus, he added, failed to record other historical events, including when Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome in A.D. 49.

Reflection

The Holy Innocents are few in comparison to the genocide and abortion of our day. But even if there had been only one, we recognize the greatest treasure God put on the earth—a human person, destined for eternity, and graced by Jesus’ death and resurrection.

- Article by Catholic Time Staff