Herodias

This chapter examines in detail the Homilia 48 on Matthew delivered by John Chrysostom at Antioch in the year 390. This homily, dealing with the biblical personages of John the Baptist, Herod and his wife Herodias is especially interesting in the context of the later life of John Chrysostom. Elevated to the episcopal see of Constantinople, he is reported to have verbally abused the empress Eudoxia, equating her with wicked female characters from the Bible, an assault that resulted in his banishment from the imperial capital. The homily is representative of a mental framework that enabled a swift translation of biblical characters and episodes into a contemporary setting, where the audience could be asked to both imitate the biblical heroes and to abstain from vices of the villains of old. While John’s audience acclaimed his preaching and was prepared to be challenged, some at Constantinople found both his preaching and his habits unacceptable. That in turn contributed to the polarisation of the ecclesiastical milieu in the capital and opened the way for the fall of John. While the sources on John’s exile and death are far from being unanimous, a verbal confrontation with the empress Eudoxia that sealed his fate is likely to have happened. Having failed to correctly identify and adequately approach the person upon whose favour his position depended, John approached the empress with the very biblically-loaded rhetoric he used habitually as a preacher.

This paper explores androcentric symbolism of the heretical woman as a literary topos to justify male superiority via the biblical interpretation of John the Baptist’s beheading and the purported influence of Herodias and Salomé, wife and stepdaughter of Herod Antipas. The gospels allege that this mother and daughter manipulated Antipas to execute John, which does not align with the historicity regarding the pragmatic, political motives Antipas likely had. Nevertheless, the circumstances under which Herodias and Salomé appear in the Christian Testament have consequently framed their portrait, which church tradition has preserved as an example of sinful, deviant, and heretical behavior. This paper argues that the degree of influence these women had in the execution of John the Baptist may have been deliberately constructed to convey the “dangers” of womanly influence and unorthodox behavior.

This case study provides an analysis of extrabiblical primary source literature—including the writings of Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Josephus Flavius, Suetonius, and Bernard of Cluny—alongside the gospel narratives of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. This paper also incorporates the necessary secondary historical source material, with a special emphasis on the various perspectives from modern feminist scholars of the Bible and early Church history. Additionally, this research will briefly address this particular biblical narrative’s contribution to the femme fatale complex in art and literature and its relative feminist interpretations. Ultimately, this methodology will reveal a constructive use of Herodias, Salomé, and their alleged role in John the Baptist’s execution as a paradigm for understanding how the topos of the heretical woman developed throughout the different phases of this religious tradition, as well as within the context of Western patriarchal culture.

Joachim von Sandrart admired Peter Paul Rubens enormously, as is shown by the Vita of Rubens in the Teutsche Akadmie (1675). In it he also mentions owning the painting of Herodias with her daughter by the hand of the master himself. This painting had been reproduced in an engraving by Schelte à Bolswert, and was later repeatedly copied by various artists. X-rays of a portrait that was overpainted in the eighteenth century, show a mutilated fragment of such a Herodias composition. Its various pentimenti and treatment of colour suggest that this painting was at least in parts by Rubens's hand.

This chapter examines in detail the Homilia 48 on Matthew delivered by John Chrysostom at Antioch in the year 390. This homily, dealing with the biblical personages of John the Baptist, Herod and his wife Herodias is especially interesting in the context of the later life of John Chrysostom. Elevated to the episcopal see of Constantinople, he is reported to have verbally abused the empress Eudoxia, equating her with wicked female characters from the Bible, an assault that resulted in his banishment from the imperial capital. The homily is representative of a mental framework that enabled a swift translation of biblical characters and episodes into a contemporary setting, where the audience could be asked to both imitate the biblical heroes and to abstain from vices of the villains of old. While John’s audience acclaimed his preaching and was prepared to be challenged, some at Constantinople found both his preaching and his habits unacceptable. That in turn contributed to the polarisation of the ecclesiastical milieu in the capital and opened the way for the fall of John. While the sources on John’s exile and death are far from being unanimous, a verbal confrontation with the empress Eudoxia that sealed his fate is likely to have happened. Having failed to correctly identify and adequately approach the person upon whose favour his position depended, John approached the empress with the very biblically-loaded rhetoric he used habitually as a preacher.