Dual purpose

Kiss of Judas

Folio from Evangelarium
ca. 1500
Illumination on vellum
Boston Public Library, Josiah H. Benton Fund, Ms.pb.Med.186

no. 32

The Passion of Christ represents perhaps the most spectacular occasion for the visual juxtaposition and intermingling of secular and sacred exercises of coercive power in the New Testament, vigorously exemplified in this dramatically illustrated leaf, upon which are recorded the final text portion of the Gospel of Matthew, and the beginning of the Gospel of Mark.

Its illuminated initial portrays the Kiss of Judas and Betrayal of Christ to the authorities, as well as the simultaneous act of St. Peter wielding an earthly sword to cut off the ear of a soldier—a sword he would abandon in favor of an invisible, spiritual sword granted him by God as the foundation of his Christian Church.

In the four armorials that surround the text in a floriated border, the more common secular device of a coat of arms has been sanctified. The five wounds of Christ at his crucifixion—bloody symbols of the Roman magistracy's brutal nailing of Christ's hands and feet to the cross, and the piercing of his side with a spear, replace the traditional arms of a lay patron or prince.