The Ordo Rachelis, Interfectio Puerorum, or Ludus Innocentium is a medieval dramatic tradition consisting in four plays and based on the Massacre of the Innocents, an event recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, and on the prophecy recorded in the Book of Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not". The prophecy, which Matthew believed to be fulfilled when Herod the Great ordered the slaughter of all boys under two in Bethlehem, looks backwards to Rachel, the matriarch of the Hebrews, and towards her lamentation over the death of her children, the Hebrew children, in the massacre.
Massacre of the Innocents from the late 10th-century Codex Egberti
Massacre of the Innocents
The Massacre of the Innocents is a myth recounted in the Nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew (2:16–18) in which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Some Christians venerate the Holy Innocents as the first Christian martyrs, but modern scholarship finds no evidence that it happened outside the passages in Matthew.
The Virgin and Child Surrounded by the Holy Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens
Herod orders the Massacre of the Innocents; the Flight of Elizabeth; the martyrdom of Zachariah (illumination from a 9th-century manuscript)
10th-century illuminated manuscript
Giotto, Massacre of the Innocents
