Spy Wednesday: The Day of Betrayal

 

Judas, Shadows, and the Price of a Soul

The Medieval Holy Week Series: 

Palm Sunday Holy Monday Holy Tuesday Holy Thursday Good Friday Holy Saturday

I hate to disappoint, but Spy Wednesday is not a day to watch James Bond movies. I mean, I'm not saying you can't. Watch James Bond if you like, but Spy Wednesday is named for the “spying” of Judas as he sought an opportunity to betray Christ, which traditionally is believed to have happened on the Wednesday before Passover.

The term wasn't actually used until the 1800s, but medieval Christians felt the shadow of treachery as they reflected on Judas's betrayal on that Wednesday.

Judas was both villain and warning. Medieval sermons for the day typically explored:

• Greed

• Despair

• False friendship

• The danger of small sins growing into great ones

Customs and Beliefs

Some towns held ritual condemnations of Judas, including burning effigies or reciting curses.

In many churches, the clergy moved from altar to altar, reenacting Christ’s movements from Bethany to the Temple to the Mount of Olives. These “stations” were predecessors to the later Stations of the Cross.

Medieval people considered this Holy Wednesday, with its association with treachery, a bad day for:

• Travel

• Signing contracts

• Beginning major tasks

The shadow of Judas lingered in the cultural imagination, a dark portent of what he did on Holy Wednesday.

Scotland

While there are no surviving copies of sermons in Scotland in particular, the evidence we do have of medieval practices of Holy Week in general, and the Scottish focus, suggests Shawn, spending Holy Week in Glenmirril in 1315 and 1316 may well have heard a Scottish slant on the above themes:

The importance of loyalty to the clan: Judas was the archetype of the traitor. In the Highlands especially, priests would have warned against breaking trust within the 'clan' of the disciples, selling out one's own people, dishonoring one's own name forever. They would have used Judas to warn of a false foster-brother, a traitor who eats at your table while plotting your death, or a man who sells his own kin for silver. Seems apropos.

Judas as a warning against hidden sin, for his deed was hidden (except of course from Christ)

Judas as abusing hospitality: of Bethany, of Christ's table, of his disciple's fellowship. He was, in a Scottish sermon, 'the guest who betrays the host.' This would have been a very real image to the Scots, as they often carried their sgian dubh--their 'black knife,' and perhaps feared others doing the same, because it could be hidden in a boot or under the arm when all other weapons were left at the door. 

In Gaelic homilies, Mary of Bethany was often seen as a seer, as a woman of spiritual insight, and her actions interpreted as foreseeing Christ's death. Judas was, therefore, the man who failed to see what she did, failed to understand why she acted as she did, decried her devotion, and valued money over spiritual truth.

The disciples, to the medieval Scottish mind, were a brotherhood. Judas was the warning against breaking the bond of the clan, abandoning your place in the clan, and choosing money over kin.

These are, of course, themes we may hear in our present day, too.

Look for the coming day's articles on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.

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