Saintly Subversions: The Role of Speech in the Polemics Between the Judas Kyriakos Legends and Toledot Yeshu’s Rabbi Yehuda

Abstract

In hagiographic accounts, the fictitious Christian saint Judas Kyriakos is made to speak Hebrew-like words. In both his inventio and passio narratives, Judas Kyriakos’ voice is made to transverse the fraught landscape of Jewish conversion, and highlights his indelible Jewishness even long after his conversion to Christianity. Despite not being actual Hebrew, his pseudo-Hebrew gibberish has been labelled as Hebrew across sources for a millennium. The present essay examines how Judas Kyriakos’ speech is challenged and subverted by a parallel figure, Rabbi Yehuda, composed as his foil in the Jewish Toledot Yeshu tradition; and the ways in which doctrine, magic, polemic, and identity are all entangled within saintly speech in both legends. Specific case studies of Judas Kyriakos’ cult in the medieval trade cities of Provins and Ancona are analyzed to illustrate how his public veneration posed direct polemical threats to local Jewish communities, further necessitating the counter-narrative.

1. Introduction

This paper examines two mirror legends.1 One is a version of the Inventio sanctae crucis, the late antique Christian tale of the discovery of the relics of Jesus’ crucifixion, featuring Constantine’s mother Helena and a Jewish figure named Judas Kyriakos. While today the character Judas Kyriakos is for most obscure or completely forgotten, in medieval Europe he was a central personality in Holy Cross narratives and liturgies. He most frequently appears as a major part of both the feast in May of the Invention of the Holy Cross, with his own feast day often preceding or following, and in September for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. He can be found not only in dozens of extant early manuscripts, including passionales, missals, breviaries, and other liturgical sources, but also in vernacular traditions and ballads, stained glass windows and carvings, and medieval miracle plays. His cult spreads into the early modern era in both the eastern and western church.2

The other legend is the Jewish antitype of this story that appears at the end of several versions of the “Helena” recension of the polemical folk literature collection, Toledot Yeshu. Toledot Yeshu (TY) is a corpus of late antique Jewish texts that present a polemical and satirical counter-narrative to the New Testament accounts of Jesus, depicting him as an illegitimate child and false prophet/magician. While highly varied in form and detail across manuscripts and languages, the TY tradition as a whole served as a vehicle for Jewish communities to articulate resistance to Christian theological claims and social pressures.3 Some TY versions sub-grouped as “Helena Italian A” contain a late postscript tale that closely follows the plot and details of the earliest manuscripts of the Judas Kyriakos story.4 However, in this counter legend, Rabbi Yehuda is a Jewish hero who successfully tricks the Christians and saves the Jews, all the while proving to the Jews that the purported relics are a complete hoax. The two versions of the story share many common features, but above all, both center the speech of a protagonist whose words have the power to uphold or to undermine Christianity’s claims.

The Christian hagiography of Judas Kyriakos first emerged in the early fifth century. His newly crafted character is credited with locating the cross and nails used in Jesus’ crucifixion, and he is eventually martyred under Emperor Julian. His name, Iuda, is synonymous in Latin with “Jew,” and simultaneously signals patriarchal authority (Judah) and perfidious treachery (Judas Iscariot). Accordingly, he is depicted as a Jew with esoteric knowledge about the cross who ultimately converts to Christianity, as a second Judas.5 The narrative emphasizes his Jewish heritage through specific tropes and markers, including moments where he speaks “in Hebrew.” However, aside from a few isolated names and syllables, the “Hebrew” across the tradition is merely fabricated nonsense words. While much scholarly attention has been given to the portrayal of Jews in Christian literature and certainly to the Inventio sanctae crucis legend itself, including its transmission and the related relics, the study of Judas Kyriakos’ depiction has been relatively neglected in Jewish-Christian academic discourse, and there has been no examination of the significance of his speech, either on its own, or in relationship to the Toledot Yeshu traditions.6

The following study therefore explores the ways in which Rabbi Yehuda’s speech in the “Italian A” TY recension challenges the voice of his polemic nemesis, Judas Kyriakos, and examines the latter’s relationship to the TY tradition as a whole. Section 2 below outlines the two legends and the importance of speech in each. Section 3 demonstrates how Rabbi Yehuda’s voice functions to subvert Judas Kyriakos’ using humor and parody. Section 4 examines the significance of that inversion given the function of the Jewish voice in Christian inventio stories. The final section presents examples of the proliferation and celebration of the cult of Judas Kyriakos in early medieval Europe and its proximity to the Jewish population. Because the spread of these texts and ideas was greatly aided by the growing network of religious and commercial centers in Europe, as well as along established roads of intellectual exchange and pilgrimage, it is vital to examine the legends of Judas Kyriakos and Toledot Yeshu’s Rabbi Yehuda in relationship to these routes. In both legends, the Hebrew speech of the protagonists effects miracles; what is at stake for the audiences of these tales is the mode and authority of that speech. Ultimately, the evidence in the final section will demonstrate that Judas Kyriakos’ voice reverberates in physical time and space as much as in its devotional, spiritual dimensions, resulting in the polemical need for the counter figure of Rabbi Yehuda.

2. The Legends

2.1. Judas Kyriakos and the Holy Cross

The narrative evolution of the legend of discovery of the Holy Cross relics resulted in three principal iterations that emerged in the fourth and early fifth centuries, named respectively after their key figures: Protonike, Helena, and Kyriakos.7 The Protonike version, circulating largely in Syriac and Eastern Christian traditions, credits the wife of Emperor Claudius, Protonike, with discovery of the cross in the first century. In the Helena version, Helena, the mother of Constantine, discovers the cross in the fourth century with the bishop Macarius. The Kyriakos legend centers entirely upon a new character, a Jew named Judas. Here is that legend, in brief:8

The emperor Constantine, having recently converted to Christianity, wishes to locate the physical cross of Jesus’ crucifixion. To this end, his mother Helena travels to Jerusalem, where she convenes a group of Jewish representatives and demands they reveal its location. They plead ignorance, and she in turn threatens violence against them unless they give up a learned member of the community to disclose its site. Enter Judas, a community elder who admits having secret knowledge passed down from his grandfather, father, and even Saint Stephen, the protomartyr, presented here as a close relative. Initially, while admitting he knows where it is, Judas does not want to divulge the location, having been cautioned by his ancestors to keep it a secret. Helena imprisons him for seven days at the bottom of a dry well, and he eventually capitulates to her demands. He then prays “in Hebrew,” followed by a long, sermon-like prayer, after which he digs and uncovers three crosses. To determine which is the True Cross, a corpse is brought on a stretcher; upon contact with one of the crosses, the dead man is miraculously revived. Judas accepts Christian baptism and receives the name Kyriakos. He and Helena go on to find the Holy Nails. At the culmination of the legend, the Jews are expelled from the region, and Judas Kyriakos is appointed bishop of Jerusalem.

Judas Kyriakos’ passio opens later in the reign of Julian the Apostate, who sought to reverse Constantine’s Christianization of the empire. Judas and his mother, Anne, are commanded to sacrifice to pagan gods but steadfastly refuse. As a consequence, they are subjected to severe tortures: Judas endures amputation of his hand, pouring of molten lead into his mouth, and being stretched upon a heated iron bed; Anne is suspended by her hair and scourged with iron combs, ultimately succumbing to her injuries without renouncing her Christian beliefs. Judas Kyriakos survives to undergo further ordeals, including being cast into a pit of serpents and being punctured through by a spear, finally to perish in a cauldron of boiling oil. Just before his demise, Judas Kyriakos reminds his audience of his indelible Jewishness, miraculously praying once again “in Hebrew,” despite having just ingested molten lead. Here is one example of his miraculous “Hebrew” from a sixth century manuscript, the oldest surviving Latin version:

ai saarabrim ilas filomabon ach uiro iloemlem et dochzod failem faudiu bariccata adona helui elecanro abraxio etedal barucadtam dextrambuzim atucatta dauid auiatherahel bememon segen gemini9

(MS Paris, BnF lat. 2769, f.19r)

Pseudo-Hebrew, including this kind of voces magicae language, appears with some regularity in late antique sources. It is possible here to discern “real” Hebrew words and names (the blessing formula “baruch ata”, as well as names like David, Sarah, Abram, and Adonai) alongside angel names (using the prefix or suffix -el) and the widespread Abraxio, from the Greek magical papyri tradition.10 The magical pseudo-Hebrew is copied and recopied across the centuries. Borgehammer lists seventeen variations of the inventio pseudo-Hebrew from the sixth to thirteenth centuries (Borgehammar 1991, pp. 272–75); I have collected nearly two dozen more examples, including one as late as the sixteenth century in a copy of the passio, which demonstrates retention of similar sounds, names, and material a thousand years later:

baruch ata inamunihel tharcus arnamiddodh abuchat carazel biebmoth nanatha Iabel ioarameth iabel adonam iereludh

(MS Provins, Bibl. mun. 232, f. 337v)

In both the Inventio and his passio, these “Hebrew” prayers are followed by a Latin “translation,” material that borrows liberally from biblical material. Here is an example from the Inventio:

Deus, Deus, qui feciste caelum et terram, qui palmo metisti caelum et pugno terram mensurasti; qui sedes super curram Cherubin, et ipsa sunt volantia in aeris cursibus luce immensa… Et nunc, Domine… fac nobis, Domine, prodigium hoc… sicut exaudisti famulum tuum Moysen, et ostendisti ei ossa patris nostri Joseph; ita et nunc, si est voluntas tua, ostende nobis occultum thesaurum… ut et ego credam crucifixo Christo, quia ipse est Rex Israel, et nunc et in secula seculorum.

(Acta Sanctorum Maii I [1680] 1968, p. 447)

God, God, who made heaven and earth, who gauged heaven with the palm of your hand and measured the earth with your fist; who is seated upon the chariot of the cherubim, and they themselves are flying in the courses of the air with immense light…And now, Lord…work for us, O Lord, this miracle…just as you heard your servant Moses and showed him the bones of our father Joseph; so even now, if it be your will, show us the hidden treasure…that I too may believe in the crucified Christ, for he is the King of Israel, both now and forever. (translation mine)

Both speeches show the power of his saintly voice: it reveals the potency of his secret Jewish knowledge, and delivers his verbal testament to Christian truth.

2.2. Toledot Yeshu and the Cross

TY similarly flourished and circulated in multiple versions and languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Ladino, and Yiddish. As covert folk literature, TY was revised multiple times, leading to numerous alterations and additions within the narrative. Consequently, it lacks a uniform text, though excellent recent critical editions are available.11 It is a complex and layered collection; age estimates range from parts as early as the second century to additions as late as the middle ages. Some of its traditions, such as the Roman soldier Panthera being Jesus’ father, were known to Christians as early as Origen (d. 254) (Contra Celsum 1.32–33; see Migne 1857, vol. 11, pp. 828–29). Other sections are less well-attested. The story of Rabbi Yehuda and the cross only appears in one family of TY variants, the so-called “Helena” recension, among the strain called “Italian A.” Although extant manuscript witnesses postdate the fourteenth century, scholarly consensus agrees that the legend circulated much earlier. Evidence includes Christian polemical objections to TY material: Agobard, Amulo, and Hrabanus Maurus knew the “Pilate” recension material in the early middle ages (more on which in Section 5, below); while the “Helena Italian A” version is known to Raymond Martini, who mentions the TY Rabbi Yehuda parody in his c. 1280 polemical work, Pugio fidei (Meerson and Schäfer 2014, I: pp. 25–26). Similarly, Goldstein (2023) argues for a medieval composition date of the Judeo-Arabic “Italian A” TY, although RNL Evr.-Arab. II: 919 is the only manuscript in this group to preserve this legend (pp. 17–23). She suggests Italy as a route of its transmission, which will be further discussed in Section 5 (ibid., pp. 110–11). While scholars are familiar with the Rabbi Yehuda text and its mimicry of the Judas Kyriakos story, it has not been shown when, how, or why that mimicry appears in this single tradition.12

Just like Judas Kyriakos, TY’s Rabbi Yehuda displays Hebrew speech, secret knowledge, and incantations, but subverts them back into Judaism within the story’s plot. The tale opens in a fashion similar to the Christian legend, but when Yehuda promises Helena to find the cross, here he secretly tells the other Jews to find some old pieces of wood and bury them. Instead of spending three days in a pit, he tells Helena he needs three days to “pray” so that God will reveal the location. After three days, Helena follows him and the wood is “found,” and they go to test the wood on a corpse, just as in the original version. But in this one, the dead man moves because Yehuda has uttered God’s secret Ineffable Name, the Shem Hameforash, over his body. Here are snippets of the exchange:

Rabbi Yehudah said to them cleverly, “Come, follow me,” and he was walking, circling and whispering with his mouth, and everyone was following him. And he stood and said, “Dig here.” And they dug, and they found there three trees… Then he began to whisper as one who prays, and prolonged it until they found a dead man on the (funeral) bed, and people were crying. [Rabbi Yehudah] touched one tree out of those trees, and he (the dead man) began to shake from the power of the Ineffable Name that (Yehudah) pronounced over him…

(Meerson and Schäfer 2014, pp. 271–72)13

“By the power of the Ineffable Name” בכח שם המפורש is repeated for each cross, and on the third the man is wholly revivified and the crowd is amazed. It is similarly stated explicitly in the Judeo-Arabic version related to the “Italian A” group, where the text states at that moment: “All of this was because of the power of the Name that Rabbi Yehuda the elder used.”14 Because of Rabbi Yehuda’s cleverness, which is stressed throughout the story—each time he speaks with Helena, it is with wisdom (חכמה)—the Christians leave all believing it is the miracle of Jesus’ cross, but the Jews know better. Rabbi Yehuda saves the Jewish community from Helena’s threats. He has secret knowledge, but keeps it for the Jews. Instead of a candidate for conversion, Yehuda is a presented as a thoroughly Jewish hero, and any power that Jesus’ supposed relics may have had is dismissed.

Use (and misuse) of the Ineffable Name occurs throughout TY’s “Helena” version: for example, at one point Jesus steals it from the Holy of Holies and hides it in his crotch, then performs a series of tricks.15 As Gideon Bohak (2020) has shown, similar reversals occur in the older TY “Pilate” recension (pp. 90–94). For example, in that version, Jesus sees his cross, speaks a magical spell, and flies away; whereupon another Yehuda, in this story the gardener, utters the Shem Hameforash and flies after him.16 The Shem Hameforash is a common trope through the TY stories; as God’s holiest name it is allowed to be written under certain conditions but is forbidden to be pronounced aloud. The knowledge, mystery, and power of its utterance is a hidden tradition. As an outsider to that secret, Jesus therefore must steal it. Not only is he a thief, but his use of the Shem Hameforash is both blasphemous and illicit; his miracles are therefore dismissed as wizardry. Magic may be impressive, but in the end is only trickery, slight-of-hand sorcery meant to lead the just astray; incantations are no match for the simple powerful truth of God’s name spoken by the righteous, those who have sanctioned knowledge of the Name and use it in the correct way.

Given this pattern already present in TY material, it is reasonable to assume that the Rabbi Yehuda tradition is familiar with Judas Kyriakos’ pseudo-Hebrew “prayer,” seen in the deliberate double mention of “murmuring” at the analogous places in his tale. Judas Kyriakos’ “Hebrew” in the Christian story must be accounted for and neutralized in the Jewish retelling, a phenomenon to be discussed further in the following section. Rabbi Yehuda reveals Judas Kyriakos’ speech to be mere magical incantation, since the actual power involved is the Shem Hameforash, but it is notable that this is done in such a way that the Christian onlookers in the story (including Helena) are none the wiser. They are allowed to keep their belief. The TY Jewish audience can therefore laugh secretly at Christian gullibility, take pride in the truth of the situation only they know, and dismiss Christian claims within a polemic framework without direct confrontation or inviting a further attack on the community.

3. Subversive Voices: Humor and Power

The rhetorical tension between Judas Kyriakos and Rabbi Yehuda invites broader questions about the functions of satire, prompting a turn to modern theoretical approaches that frame such narratives as deliberate instruments of polemic. Power dynamics, subversion, and parody transcend historical periods and cultures, revealing how communities have long used humor to challenge authority and reinforce shared identities. Subversive counter-narratives neutralize oppressors through laughter and invert power dynamics, transforming fear and humiliation into agency and resilience. Satire and parody serve as weapons for marginalized groups, creating psychological freedom while eluding direct retaliation by cloaking critique in storytelling or jest. When aimed at an “inside” audience, this laughter fosters communal solidarity, shared understanding, and covert resistance, allowing oppressed communities to sustain cultural identity and dignity under conditions of domination.

Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of heteroglossia and dialogism have given a frame for many scholars in this space. “Heteroglossia” refers to the range of perspectives within a language, and “dialogism” to the way the interplay of those inherent multiplicities creates meaning. Together, these enable subversive laughter, disrupting fixed hierarchies.17 This insight was later taken up by postcolonial theorists for whom subversive laughter functions as a tool of cultural resistance.18 In the TY tradition, Amos Funkenstein (1993) and others have understood narratives such as TY as “counter-history,” oppositional narratives inverting the values of the original story (Sewell 2010, pp. 302–3, note 21).19 A counter-history is meant to rob the Other of its identity; the resulting entanglement is that the counter-history must rely on the Other for its own self-definition.20

All of this scholarship examines laughter operating on multiple levels: sometimes outward against an agent of power, and sometimes including the community at itself. The TY retelling of the Judas Kyriakos narrative belongs firmly to the former, where the counter-narrative is a weapon of resistance rather than self-reflection, but these inquiries in cultural and political studies and their frameworks can be useful in this instance of hagiographic speech. First, and perhaps obviously, Rabbi Yehuda does not need to be made to “speak Hebrew,” as it is clear to his audience that he would be speaking Hebrew. This is most obvious in the TY versions that circulated in Hebrew, of course, but as he does not need any overt indicator of his Jewishness for the audience, this does not need additional narrative specification in any version, regardless of language. Therefore the Judas Kyriakos speech must be countered by something else. The gibberish he murmurs is for show—an inside joke for the audience. However, with Hebrew as normative, he now needs another source of miraculous power in his speech. Enter the Shem Hameforash. Judas Kyriakos’ “Hebrew” is thereby made a kind of punchline by comparison, while the secret joke is on the Christians.21

Second, the result makes both relics and the entire legend risible while leaving Christians satisfied and none the wiser—a safe inside joke that does not give the Christian oppressors any reason to increase their persecutions or engage in further religious harassment, for polemics are not just a matter of faith. Moreover, analyses of relics and their inventio legends are not just competitive dualities; the political and social contexts were more dynamic and complex.22 Figures like Judas Kyriakos and Rabbi Yehuda are vibrant characters within their own narrative frameworks, shaped by a socio-religious and political contest where each voice sought to overpower opposing claims.23 After all, the stakes in these stories are more than doctrinal: the Judas Kyriakos story ends with Helena’s triumphant expulsion of the Jews, a literary expulsion that ultimately echoes in political reality across the centuries to come, from the Visigoths to the twentieth century. Similarly, violence is not just a literary device that remained contained in a saintly story. The very detailed depictions of gratuitous violence against both Judas Kyriakos himself and against the Jewish community (before and after the finding of the cross) in many of the circulating versions would have made the need for a counter-story with a clever hero that much more resonant to its audiences.24 It is no mistake that TY’s Rabbi Yehuda must be deeply cunning in order to outsmart Helena and save the Jews. His solution preserves the status quo: the Christians are ignorant but happy, and the Jews wise and momentarily safe. Preserving that status quo is a key element to Rabbi Yehuda’s success, and the humorous result for his (Jewish) audience unleashed by his clever verbal subterfuge provides a potent beacon of levity and hope.

4. Development of the Legends and Their Tropes: The Jewish Voice

In both the Christian version and the TY rendition, the plot is largely advanced through Helena’s and Judas/Yehuda’s acts of speech. Public acts of speech include calling assemblies, calling forth groups, vocal public prayer, and simultaneous uttering of incantations. Direct and private acts of speech include threats and begging, mutual promising, bearing witness to purported truths, and the whispering of secrets. Above all, however, whatever temporal and political power Helena may leverage through her speech, it is the authoritative, “knowing,” Jewish voice that produces the culminating miracle in both stories. We turn now to this trope in Late Antiquity and the Jewish power to effect verbal miracles in the inventio genre.

The concept of the “Knowing Jew” and similar motifs within these two narratives is central to understanding the importance and function of the characters’ speech. For Christians, the promised land and the Hebrew Bible were seen as their own legacy from the rejected Jews, whose former covenants with God they had now inherited. Throughout fourth century Christian literary traditions, themes of validating this inheritance and supporting supersessionist assertions prevail; defensive stories around sacred sites contribute to prominent motifs of “Jewish knowledge” in Christian tradition. In these narratives, a Jewish character often reveals a location or relic, shares an ancestral tale, and/or verifies Christian claims about the site or object. Incorporating a Jewish figure in authenticating inventio legends compels an imagined Jewish presence to acknowledge Christian triumph while confirming the truth of the physical claim. Judas Kyriakos, for example, is ultimately credited not only with discovering the cross and the nails but also with passing down the traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition in early versions of the Dormition legend, which closely postdate the original Judas Kyriakos cross tales (Shoemaker 1999, p. 802). It is not sufficient, however, for Jews to merely offer testimony, memory, and validation; they must also provide tangible evidence. Relics and their accompanying stories were central to the imperialization of holy spaces.25 Speech is the most immediate tool used to establish legitimacy and assert authority across the genre, and also frequently the medium which produces the requisite authenticating relic.

These narratives adhere to predictable formulae, so it is unsurprising to find common components across various legends that connect TY’s Rabbi Yehuda and Judas Kyriakos. For example, as we saw above, the author of Judas Kyriakos’ tale establishes his character’s credibility by revealing his lineage from the Christian protomartyr, Stephen. In Acts 7, the Jewish convert Stephen delivers an extended speech to a Jewish audience before being executed by stoning. In the story of Judas Kyriakos, Helena’s address to the Jews mirrors Stephen’s speech. Both elements are deliberate, reflecting the early fifth century significance of Stephen as both Jewish convert and martyr central to new relics and holy sites. Stephen’s inventio, which predates that of Judas Kyriakos, involves Gamaliel appearing and speaking to a priest in Jerusalem named Lucianus to reveal the location of Stephen’s bones. Gamaliel serves as the Jewish authority in the inventio, a composite figure best known in Christian tradition as the Pharisaic teacher of the Apostle Paul. As Andrew Jacobs notes, “The circulating narratives and bones of Saint Stephen and the True Cross provided imperial Christians with a new way of integrating the otherness of the past into a triumphant present” (Jacobs 2003, p. 32). Indeed, it is not just narrative and bones, but verifying speech that unites Stephen, Gamaliel, and Kyriakos.

As we also saw earlier, when asked to reveal the cross, Judas Kyriakos’ “translated” prayer includes an invocation to God, “who revealed the bones of our father Joseph,” exposing a connection to late antique Jewish sources. The narrative of Moses carrying Joseph’s bones, buried in Egypt, appears in both Exodus 13 and Joshua 24, but with no clue as to how Moses would have known the burial site centuries later.26 To address this biblical lacuna, Jewish tradition explains that Moses tossed an amulet inscribed with the incantation, “Aleh shor” (Arise, bull) into the Nile to raise Joseph’s coffin from the water (Midrash Tanhuma, Beshelach 2).27 Similarly and significantly, the lesser-known Actus Sylvestri, circulating during the fifth century alongside the Inventio sanctae crucis narratives, also features Helena and Constantine, a public debate with Jews, and a magical resurrection of a dead bull, with “Arise, bull” as the chant invoked by the Roman bishop Sylvester. In this legend, Helena, initially a convert to Judaism, ultimately converts to Christianity after a debate with learned Jews.28 Lastly, just as with “Aleh, shor,” the connection to the biblical Joseph is echoed in the punishment chosen for Judas Kyriakos: like Joseph, he is cast into a dry well until rescued (Gen 37:24). This is referenced again in Judas Kyriakos’ passio, where he prays “qui liberasti Joseph de lacu,” potentially referring to either Joseph’s “pit” or “body of water,” symbols that align with both Joseph’s initial entrapment and his later aquatic burial.29

These formulaic tropes and tales with shared material demonstrate the enduring power of the ideas of Jewish testimony and efficacious speech in the Christian imagination. The examples provided also illustrate how conversions, miracles, and demonstrations of power often coalesce in contested spaces, where the boundaries between faiths are challenged and negotiated. Such stories not only show the intricate dynamics of religious interaction but also reveal the importance of Jewish counter-narratives. The speech of the figure of Rabbi Yehuda, as he mimes prayers with murmurs and employs the Shem Hameforash, provides a vehicle for Jews to be active agents in shaping and contesting religious identity and authority, and to reclaim the true power of their speech for themselves.

5. Judas Kyriakos/Rabbi Yehuda: The Need for Rivalry

We turn now to the circulation, spread, and aftermath of these dueling hagiographies at the end of the first millennium and into the second. Well-developed, ample material counters New Testament claims across all the TY traditions, leaving open the question of why a late regional Rabbi Yehuda postscript arose with the specific features just examined. The answer may be found in the cultural strength of his polemic nemesis. The question of when and why Rabbi Yehuda appeared, however, remains unsolved. The following section presents case studies of the rise of Judas Kyriakos’ cult in the medieval cities of Provins and Ancona, and examines how his veneration served as a direct polemic threat to local Jewish communities, ultimately precipitating the rise of the Rabbi Yehuda postscript as a necessary counterbalance, and providing a possible explanation for its composition.

In his “Thinking with Saints,” Simon Ditchfield notes, “It is worth observing at this juncture that the distinction made between the two literary genres—hagiography and history—is of comparatively recent origin, emerging with any clarity only in the nineteenth century” (Ditchfield 2009, p. 571). Ditchfield demonstrates the ways in which hagiographic accounts, cultic celebration, and relic veneration combine into a “mobile gesamtkunstwerk,” reinforcing a town’s political importance while uniting all layers of society in a unified expression of identity (ibid., p. 576). Saints, he writes, function as “essential describers of sacred geography, particularly on the contested frontiers of Roman Catholicism, as well as models of political power and mirrors of social hierarchy” (ibid., p. 579). The story of Judas Kyriakos as his own political gesamtkunstwerk in two medieval cities in Europe will follow. Before proceeding, however, we must first determine the extent of European awareness of his cult, and when and where the TY tradition might have engaged with it.30

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, for which the Inventio of its relics was central to its celebration, was a polemical event from its own inception in late antiquity. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra has shown how its assigned position in the calendar sets it as an “evident counterpoint” to the Jewish festival of the New Year, Rosh Hashana (Ben Ezra 2018, pp. 194–95). Judas Kyriakos, then, is the central polemical puppet within a polemical liturgical celebration. His early entry into post-Roman Europe seems to begin with his inclusion in the Liber Pontificalis (c. 530), in which he is enshrined with Holy Cross devotions. Soon after, the legend captured the attention of Gregory of Tours (c. 538–594) (Drijvers 2011, p. 167). As a leading bishop and historian in late sixth-century Gaul, Gregory stands as a crucial figure at the crossroads of the political, religious, and cultural transformations of the post-Roman world. In his influential Decem Libri Historiarum (a.k.a. Historia Francorum), Gregory reasserts the claim that the cross was found by “Judas the Hebrew, who after his baptism is called Kyriakos” (Gregory of Tours 1951, p. 26).31 Through the popularity of Gregory’s work, at least two French monasteries already had claimed Judas Kyriakos as their patron by that point: one in Clermont-Ferrand (where Gregory’s uncle Gallus was bishop) and one near Marseille (de Maillé 1939, p. 63). By the ninth century, the city of Orléans (then under the ecclesial authority of Sens) boasted the head-relic of the saint (Acta Sanctorum Maii I [1680] 1968, p. 440 § 7). Not to be outdone, Carolingian Sens itself had a strong devotion to both Saint Stephen and Judas Kyriakos. The foundation of Notre-Dame du Charnier in Sens also claimed to have his skull, brought to them from Jerusalem by none other than Charlemagne himself (Bautier and Gilles 1979, p. 62; Verdier 2009, pp. 82–87; de Maillé 1939, p. 63).32

By this time in the ninth century, Judas Kyriakos was established in nearly every corner of Western Europe: from Durham to Toledo, Paris to Rome. His story was copied and incorporated into a variety of ecclesial and liturgical books: offices, acta sanctorum, passionales, and even a book of canon law (MS Vercelli, Bibl. Cap. CLXV). The oldest surviving work in Old English, Cynewulf’s poem Elene, from the eighth or ninth century, even features his powerful saintly “Hebrew” speech:

Word stunde ahof elnes oncyðig, ond on Ebrisc spræc:

“Dryhten hælend, þu ðe ahst doma geweald, ond þu geworhtest þurh þines wuldres miht heofon ond eorðan ond holmþræce, sæs sidne fæðm…”

(Foys et al. 2019, lines 724b–728a)33

And after a time with strange authority he lifted up his voice and spake in Hebrew:

“O Savior Lord, Thou who hast dominion of doom, who in the strength of Thy glory didst fashion heaven and earth and the tossing waves, the wide bosom of the sea…”

(Kennedy 2000, p. 15)

Similarly, two tenth century Mozarabic manuscripts include variations of a processional hymn for the cross, Dulce carmen lingua, which also mentions the efficacy of his prayers. Here is an excerpt with my translation, from the Latin preserved in BL Add. MS 30,846 (Blume 1897, p. 92):

Illico electus inde prece fundit Domino

Ut saluis nostrae signum crucis patefieret…

Dominum Iudas deposcit exorando fletibus

Sacri corporis ut sui propalet fixorio

Immediately, the chosen one [identified earlier as Judas] from there pours forth a prayer to the Lord, that the sign of the cross for the safety of our salvation might be revealed…Judas entreats the Lord, pleading with tears, that He might disclose the fastening place of His sacred body.

Judas Kyriakos is widely established across Europe by the early middle ages, but it is at their height that he reaches his own. For his story ultimately travels most widely through Jacobo de Voragine’s (c. 1228–1298) mid-thirteenth century Legenda Aurea, which recounts Judas Kyriakos’ inventio legend with aspects of the Helena version, and includes his martyrdom.34 In truth, however, de Voraigne was a relative late-comer to Judas Kyriakos’ cult, as de Voraigne’s version comes after most of the stories, celebrations, hymns, foundations, and the veneration of his many relics were already widespread and long-established. The importance of his proliferating head as the relic of choice, however (over, say, an arm or a hand) takes on particular interest when compared to the ubiquity of his voice across these sources. However they came to be, the devotional materials circulate alongside the official legends, reaching a zenith during the Crusades and solidifying Judas Kyriakos in the Western medieval imagination.

For among all the many goals and meanings the Crusades held over their centuries and iterations, they were principally framed as the Christian liberation of Jerusalem, a recapturing of Constantine’s imperial vision, and the triumph of the Holy Cross. Religious practices increasingly sought connection to the Holy Land, through virtual pilgrimage practices for those not on physical crusade, and through veneration of fragmented True Cross relics.35 Crusaders “took up their cross,” in interpretation of Jesus’ command in Mt. 16:24 (similarly, Mk. 8:34 and Lk. 9:23), and crusading sermons spoke of redeeming a captive cross in Jerusalem that is “ridiculed (illudere), damaged, and defiled by Jews” (Marcos 2024, p. 213).36 As the fervor of the Crusades swept through Europe, the reverence for Judas Kyriakos gained prominence, and with it the anti-Jewish sentiment it bolstered. However, things took a decided turn in 1187 with the loss of the largest piece of the True Cross remaining in Jerusalem to Saladin and his forces at the Battle of Hattin.37 The interplay of Judas Kyriakos’ and Rabbi Yehuda’s voices and their reception ultimately develops against this backdrop. The following final section therefore explores the dynamics of two medieval cities claiming him as patron, Provins and Ancona, and demonstrates the historico-political necessity for Rabbi Yehuda’s Jewish voice to emerge against Judas Kyriakos’.

Today’s small rural town of Provins was at that time the third largest city in France: a fair town at the center of France’s commerce and industry, and residence of the powerful Counts of Champagne. Nearby Sens was the influential regional see. As discussed earlier, two other churches in the diocese of Sens had also claimed to have a head of Judas Kyriakos during the Carolingian era, and Sens’ own cathedral was dedicated to Saint Stephen, whose inventio story is closely related as we have seen above. Hugh (c.1074–1130), the first Count of Champagne, set out on three separate pilgrimages during the First Crusade, connecting the nobility of the region with the Crusades and crusading. Hugh’s successor Thibaut (a.k.a. Theobald “the Great,” 1090–1152) ruled for the second quarter of the twelfth century. It was under his rule that the fairs in Provins and neighboring Troyes began to truly flourish, and with the fairs, Jewish merchants’ fortunes and their importance. But it was Henri I (“the Liberal,” 1127–1181) under whom Provins reached its zenith. Henri I, too, went on crusade, this time with Louis VII of France.38 The building of upper Provins’ main church had begun under Hugh, but under Henri I’s building plan, had it been finished, it would have surpassed the size of the nave of Paris’ Notre Dame.39 And there Provins’ most prized Crusader relic would ultimately reside, dominating its skyline: the head of Judas Kyriakos, in the church now bearing his dedication, brought by Milon de Breban in 1209 (MS Provins Bibl. mun. 136, f. 31; Verdier 2009, p. 86; Veissière 1961, pp. 120–21; Hermant 2020). It was carried in triumphal procession for veneration by the faithful, and the magical prayers of his voice were reenacted annually on his feast day with his purported skull on display.40 The imposing edifice of Saint-Quiriace casts a physical shadow over the medieval Jewish quarter of the upper town, which lay on the next street directly below the foot of its hill.41 Provins’ medieval Jews watched a huge church being built to dominate their skyline: a church whose patron saint is not only a Jewish convert, but one credited with the discovery of the relics of the cross, the same discovery that led to so much suffering on their part. Inside, the church had his head on display, a head whose words were spoken back to life on feast days. Was it a relic for veneration, or a trophy of a dead Jew, a figure meant to symbolize all Jews? It may not have been entirely clear.

Judas Kyriakos’ head was not limited to five places in France. His remains are also professed to reside in the Cathedral of San Ciriaco in Ancona, Italy, where a body venerated as Kyriakos’ still lies visible in a glass tomb, skull exposed.42 Ancona, like Provins, is another major medieval trade city whose enormous hilltop church dominates both skyline and city below. The Jewish community of Ancona is one of the oldest and most significant in Italy, dating from the tenth century. The community grew because of the importance of the port and commercial links with the Levant, and most of its Jewish population initially came from Muslim lands (Skolnik 2007, 2:140, s.v. “Ancona”).43 While the Papal States are known for their global commercial interests and tolerance of non-Christians over the longue durée (if only to protect economic and political interests), by the later Middle Ages Ancona’s Jews suffered ghettoization, forced conversion, and martyrdom, most notoriously during the inquisitorial auto-da-fé executions under Paul IV in 1555–56.44 That they would have had reason to attach Rabbi Yehuda’s story to the Italian A version and to a Judeo-Arabic TY tradition is highly probable, particularly given the history of his cult there.45

In Ancona, Judas Kyriakos was not just his usual saintly self, but also hailed as one of their own. One eighteenth-century source gives the following account: Judas Kyriakos was bishop of Ancona from 327 until 363. In that latter year, he was said to have been so homesick for Jerusalem that he set out for a visit, but upon arrival he was captured by Julian the Apostate and suffered martyrdom. His body was reportedly returned to Ancona under Galla Placidia in 418. Following misadventures with the Goths, it was hidden in the sixth century and the church rededicated to Saint Lawrence, but in 1097, his relics were once more retranslated and celebrated (Girolamo 1759, pp. 15–21).46 That year, however, is challenged by nineteenth century historian Antonio Leoni, who argues that the cathedral continued to be referred to by its earlier dedication to Saint Lawrence until 1306, when it was rededicated to Judas Kyriakos (Leoni 1810, II: pp. 243–45).47 Similarly, the church in Ancona’s fondaco (a trade colony with warehouses) in Constantinople, which had been dedicated to Saint Stephen, was also renamed for Judas Kyriakos (ibid., p. 134).48 If Judas Kyriakos had indeed been Ancona’s celebrated and beloved patron before the Middle Ages, why did their church only come to bear his dedication many centuries later?

Possible clues lie in the years mentioned above: 1097 and 1306. The former was the year after the horrific slaughter of the Jewish community of Mainz, and saw the massive mobilization of Crusader fleets in Italy’s Adriatic ports, including Ancona. Jerusalem and the Christian imperial imagination loomed large in the cultural moment, and Judas Kyriakos’ story certainly fit the bill. Subsequent evidence of increasing polemical activity in the thirteenth century includes the Quaestiones de vera fide of Odo Biagi of Ancona, based on a disputation with a “Jew from Piceno” he met on trade there in the 1260s (MS Yale, Beinecke 837). However, the preponderance of historical evidence for 1306 suggests it as a more likely date, and this aligns with an immediate polemical need. While there is early evidence for Jewish settlement in Ancona, including a synagogue there (destroyed in the earthquake of 1279), it is only in the early 1300s that an organized community was reestablished.49 Moreover, 1306 is the year that Philip IV (“the Fair,” 1268–1314) expelled the Jews from France with an edict in late July that seized their property and gave them one month to leave. The year before, the same Philip had a hand in the election of Archbishop of Bordeaux to the papacy as Clement V; however, once elected, the new French pope refused to move to Rome and eventually settled in Avignon. Both of these events affected Ancona. First, Jewish refugees came immediately to the trading ports of Italy in late summer 1306. As with Venice and Genoa, as a papal state, Ancona was seen as a safer option by fleeing Jews because it was not under a monarch. Second, with the pope in Avignon instead of Rome, it was essentially able to function as a free maritime republic.50 The concurrence of a suddenly-enlarged Jewish population alongside the simultaneous revival of Ancona’s devotion to Judas Kyriakos and his relic is not coincidental. Nor is the contemporaneous appearance of Rabbi Yehuda in medieval versions of a distinct TY tradition from the same region. Both are arguably polemical responses to a single phenomenon, and at the heart of that lies the efficacy of the speech of their saintly figure: the speech that produces the miracle corroborating their claims.

6. Conclusions

For over a thousand years, Judas Kyriakos was synonymous across Europe with the miracles of the cross, necessitating the creation of a robust polemic foil in the form of Rabbi Yehuda. Like many figures in Christian apologetics, Judas Kyriakos’ Jewish voice is entirely fictitious, an imaginary Jew crafted to utter the magical “Hebrew” words Christians desired. His story culminates in the violent expulsions of Jews from Judea, mirroring the expulsions across Europe during the resurgence of his cult. Toledot Yeshu’s Rabbi Yehuda, by contrast, subverts intensifying antisemitism in the name of Jesus and his cross with the inaudible whisper of the Ineffable Name of God.

The network of ecclesiastical and commercial centers, along with intellectual and pilgrimage routes, effectively disseminated texts and ideas, making Judas Kyriakos’ story widespread and influential.51 His speech, far from being confined to the obscure hush of monasteries and rare manuscripts, was audible across Europe. His multiple skulls became objects of public devotion and pilgrimage, an inseparable part of the story of Christianity’s most beloved relic of all: the True Cross. The Toledot Yeshu tradition, particularly through the character of Rabbi Yehuda, serves to subvert and challenge the narrative of Judas Kyriakos, highlighting the enduring and resilient voice of Jewish tradition. The humor and defiance in the Rabbi Yehuda tale offer a powerful counter-narrative to the Christian legend, demonstrating the complexities and tensions in Jewish-Christian relations.

Jewish voices in medieval inventio stories often functioned to reaffirm religious boundaries. In the case of Judas Kyriakos’ cult in burgeoning medieval commercial hubs like Provins and Ancona, the necessity of appending the Rabbi Yehuda legend to the Toledot Yeshu tradition becomes clear. As a late addition, it emphasizes the ongoing interchange and resistance within Jewish communities in the face of pervasive Christian ideologies. The two dueling saintly voices express the Jewish struggle for cultural and religious autonomy within the overwhelming dominance of a Christianized medieval Europe.