The Holy Innocents

Martyrs (Feast)

Feast Day

December 28

Born

Bethlehem and its surroundings

The Feast of the Holy Innocents commemorates the male children of Bethlehem and its surroundings, two years old and under, killed by Herod the Great in his attempt to destroy the infant Christ after the Magi failed to return to him with information about the child's whereabouts (Matthew 2:16-18). Matthew sees the slaughter as a fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:15, which he applies to Rachel weeping for her children. The historicity of the episode is consonant with the documented record of Herod's reign: Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, records Herod's execution of three of his own sons (Antipater, Alexander, and Aristobulus), of his wife Mariamne, of her grandfather, mother, and brother, and of forty-six leading Pharisees, among many other killings, in the climate of paranoia of his last years.

The number of children killed at Bethlehem is unknown; given the small population of a first-century village (perhaps 300-1000 inhabitants), the actual number of male children under two would likely have been between six and twenty - far fewer than the medieval traditions of fourteen thousand or more, which arose from confused lists. Their commemoration as martyrs is among the most ancient in the Church, attested in the West by Saint Augustine in the late fourth century and by Saint Quodvultdeus of Carthage, who called them flowers of the martyrs cut down by the early frost of persecution. They are the third of the comites Christi (companions of Christ) of the Christmas Octave - after Stephen, who died for Christ in will and deed, and John, who suffered exile but not death, the Innocents who died for Christ in deed without yet possessing the will.