VII. THE MARK OF CAIN.

In the Oberammergau Passion Play, where scenes from the New Testament are preceded by tableaux from the Old, Cain killing Abel is made to foreshadow Judas betraying Jesus. In some Eastern lands Cain has always been regarded as a Wanderer still living; and to this day the Bedouin recognises his presence in the hot Khamseen (Cain-wind), as in the destructive hurricane the Picardy peasant exclaims, “C’est le Juif errant qui passe.” For a long time, indeed, Cain was supposed to be the Wandering Jew, and possibly this belief was thought of by Shakspeare (King Richard II., v. 6) in the words of Bolingbroke to Exton:

In Tabari (i. 30), Adam says:

The so-called ‘mark’ of Cain was conceived to be a physical sign, and this appears in the legend of the Wandering Jew: he was said to have the mark of a blood-red cross on his forehead. Xeniola says the Inquisition sought to secure him by this sign, but the Wanderer concealed it under a black bandage.

In Rabbinical superstition Cain was not the son of Adam but of Sammaël, the later demon derived from wandering Esau. He (Cain) was banished to the Wilderness of Dendain, where his companions are Behemoth and Leviathan, who harm him not, though they are ever fattened by devouring wicked mortals in order that they may supply food for the righteous amid the desolations preceding the last day.

As Cain wandered in a wilderness to the east of Eden, in distinction from Seth, who dwelt in a fair region of the west, so while St. John was bodily alive in his paradise, Judas “went to his own place.” As Cain was son of Sammaël, Satan “entered into” Judas.

The obvious evil counterpart of John was Judas. The two had sat nearest Jesus at the Last Supper, and had come in contact with his immortalising flesh—one by leaning on his breast, the other by a treacherous kiss. A more potent security against death lay in the immediate way in which Jesus gave to both the bread and wine, of which he said, “he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood shall never die.” This was indeed given to all of the disciples, and it was—still is—the Christian theory that they who partake of the Eucharist do not die, but “fall asleep.” But there were always degrees of quickening effect in this communion. Thus, the Seven Sleepers of Tours, who came to that city to receive the benediction of St. Martin, received from him the Eucharist, and afterwards sank into an unconsciousness from which they never awoke. Their bodies remained, with all the external appearance of life in their seven graves, still shown in front of their grotto.⁠[21]

It is doubtful whether any such person as Judas ever lived. The name is the Greek form of Judah, and the traitor may be a personification of the kingdom which refused to part with the sceptre at the demand of the Christian’s “Shiloh,” before whom alone, in the words of Jacob, Judah was to surrender. It may also be that this hostility was assigned the form of treachery, because of a real Judas who, according to Josephus, betrayed a fortress of Jerusalem to the army of Titus. However this may be, even the circumstantial account in the New Testament of his death could not save Judas from becoming one of the evil wanderers.

But this fate of Judas was postponed because of circumstances which brought a more important agent of Antichrist to the front. While Rome was yet pagan, and the Christians suffering there, the Man of Sin confronting the Son of Man would naturally be visible there. The mark of Cain is seen as the mark of the Beast, and the forehead of the Beast was Nero. It so happened that among the Romans themselves there prevailed, for some time after his death, a belief that Nero had not really died. The fears of some, the pride of others, forbade them to believe that this powerful representative of the throne of the Cæsars was no more, and they looked for his return to give battle to the rising kingdom of the Nazarene.⁠[22]

But when Rome had been converted to Christianity, it became necessary to transfer the rôle of Antichrist to some race which still refused to surrender to the new kingdom.

The one unconquerable race—outside Rome, where the poor Jews had found their need of an immediate revolution too strong for their sufferance and loyalty to old traditions—was the Jewish. This people could be tortured, driven from land to land under the curse of Cain, but not converted to Christianity. Then attention returned from Nero to Judas.

There was an ancient story about Cain, reproduced in the Koran, but no doubt following the much earlier rabbinical tradition before mentioned, that the Devil came to Eve in a dream, when she was pregnant with her first son, and persuaded her to call the child by a name which meant “servant of Satan.” In the course of time a somewhat similar legend grew around the phantasmal Judas. It was said that the mother of Judas had a dream shortly before his birth, in which it was disclosed to her that her son would murder his father and sell his God. She and her husband thereupon resolved that the child should not live, and at his birth he was enclosed in a chest and cast into the sea. But the sea cast him on shore, and he was found by a king and queen, who adopted him. But they had another son, whom Judas slew during a quarrel over a game of chess. Thereupon he fled to Judea, and entered the service of Pilate as his page. Having committed other predestined crimes, including the murder of his father, Judas learned from his mother the secret of his birth, and of the dream that preceded it. In terror and contrition, Judas hears of a prophet who has power to forgive sins; he seeks out Jesus, throws himself at his feet; and Jesus, recognising his predestined betrayer, accepts him as a disciple, and entrusts him with the purse, so that Judas’s avarice might be cultivated and this peculiarly divine scheme should not fail. Judas was thus made a retrospective Wanderer.

In old Greek and Russian pictures, Judas is represented on the knees of Satan as his beloved son, beside the serpent which appears to be the dove in this infernal trinity; but this Christian fable about Judas would seem to show Satan indebted to Jesus for his beloved son’s training in wickedness.

That, according to the New Testament, Judas had grief and remorse, and expiated his offence by death, might naturally have awakened some compassionate feeling for him, or sense of his humanity. But in the mediæval faith this grief and remorse were not in him, they were Furies sent to torment him. In the old Passion Plays Remorse is a real personage, who torments Judas until he invokes Despair, who lays before him poison, a dagger, and a rope to choose from. Nor was Christian logic equal to the consistency of Disraeli’s contention that, according to the faith, the betrayal and crucifixion, being essential to salvation, were compulsory on Judas and the Jews.

It will be remembered that the earliest recorded Wandering Jew, Cartaphilus, informed the Armenian Bishop that he had been Pilate’s doorkeeper. By this item he is linked with the legendary Judas, who is said to have been a page in Pilate’s palace. It may now be remarked that Pilate also was the subject of a somewhat similar legend. There are two classes of legends concerning him. In the Abyssinian Church Pilate became a martyr and a saint, his calendar day being June 25. But in the south of Europe the story ran that Pilate became a remorseful Wanderer. He committed suicide by drowning himself in a tarn on Mount Pilate, near Lucerne. It is a myth, as Professor Sayce has shown, evolved from the old name of the mountain—“Pileatus,” meaning capped (either with foliage or cloud⁠[23]). That little lake has lost all its natural picturesqueness. It is called the “infernal lake.” Now and then, in the dusk, a man is seen to emerge and wash his hands in it as in a basin; when he disappears a hurricane follows.

The curse of Cain came upon yet another name,—Malchus. This servant of Caiaphas, whose ear cut off by Peter was healed by Jesus, had no reason to be thankful, it would appear by the legend; this relates that he struck Christ with an iron gauntlet, and was doomed to walk around a column underground, against which he vainly dashes his head, until Judgment Day. We have already seen (I.) that the Wandering Jew, under the name of Joseph, was reported as undergoing a similar punishment in Jerusalem, in 1641. The story of Malchus seems to blend that of Ahasuerus with the Talmudic myth of Cain, which is related in Mr. Baring-Gould’s Curious Myths (ii. p. 116). When Seth sought the Tree of Knowledge in order to plant a scion of it in the grave of Adam, (see VIII.), he saw its roots in Hell, and Cain trying to climb thereby into Paradise. The roots laced themselves around Cain and pierced him through and through, holding him bound in living agony for ever.

According to Christian and Jewish revelations Cain must have discovered that, in his fratricide, he had been unsophisticated in the art of punishing an offender against one’s will. The divine method is more ingenious. In the romance of Huon de Bordeaux (13th Cent.) by Huon de Villeneuve, the writer reports having seen a cask, with serpents and iron prongs inside, rolling rapidly along. Cain is shut in it, and therein must roll on till the end of the world. This rolling cask would appear to be the prison and punishment of Malchus, adapted to the idea of perpetual wandering. Al Sâmeri was also called Al kharaïti, “the turner.” Professor D’Ancona (Nuova Antologia, Oct., 1880, “La Leggenda dell’ Ebreo Errante”) shows that the story of Malchus is Italian. M. Gaston Paris ascribes it great antiquity, identifying the name and idea with the legend of Marcus the Leper, which is old enough to be represented in early Italian proverbs. This Marcus, having been cured by Jesus, afterwards struck him, and the curse laid upon him was held to explain the incurability of leprosy. M. Paris finds in this legend the idea of the blow given Jesus. If with this are combined the legend of Joseph of Arimathea (thrown into prison by the Jews, where his life was miraculously preserved), and the words to St. John, we have, he thinks, the story of Cartaphilus.