The Gospels are silent as to the life of Judas before he became an apostle, but our progenitors of the middle ages, who could not conceive it possible that any being, however perverse, would rush at once into such an abyss of guilt, have filled up the omissions of Scripture after their own fancy. They picture Judas as a wretch foredoomed from the beginning of the world, and prepared by a long course of vice and crime for that crowning guilt which filled the measure full. According to this legend, he was of the tribe of Reuben. Before his mother brought him forth, she dreamed that the son who lay in her womb would be accursed, that he would murder his father, commit incest with his mother, and sell his God. Terrified at her dream, she took counsel with her husband, and they agreed to avert the threatened calamity by exposing the child. As in the story of Œdipus, from which, indeed, this strange wild legend seems partly borrowed, the means taken to avert the threatened curse caused its fulfilment. Judas, at his birth, is enclosed in a chest, and flung into the sea; the sea casts him up, and, being found on the shore, he is fostered by a certain king and queen as their own son; they have, however, another son, whom Judas, malignant from his birth, beats and oppresses, and at length kills in a quarrel over a game at chess. He then flies to Judea, where he enters the service of Pontius Pilate as page. In due time he commits the other monstrous crimes to which he was predestined; and when he learns from his mother the secret of his birth, he is filled with a sudden contrition and terror; he hears of the prophet who has power on earth to forgive sins; and seeking out Christ throws himself at his feet. Our Saviour, not deceived, but seeing in him the destined betrayer, and that all things may be accomplished, accepts him as his apostle: he becomes the seneschal or steward of Christ, bears the purse, and provides for the common wants. In this position, avarice, the only vice to which he was not yet addicted, takes possession of his soul, and makes the corruption complete. Through avarice, he grudges every penny given to the poor, and when Mary Magdalene anoints the feet of our Lord he is full of wrath at what he considers the waste of the precious perfume: ‘Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief.’ Through avarice, he yields to the bribe offered by the Jews. Then follow the scenes of the betrayal of Christ, and the late repentance and terrible suicide of the traitor, as recorded in Scripture. But in the old Mystery of the ‘Passion of Christ’ the repentance and fate of Judas are very dramatically worked out, and with all possible circumstances of horror. When he beholds the mild Saviour before the judgment-seat of Herod, he repents: Remorse, who figures as a real personage, seizes on the fated wretch, and