Wandering Jew (The), Kartaph´ilos (in Latin, Cartaphilus), the door-keeper of the judgment hall, in the service of Pontius Pilate. The tradition is that this porter, while haling Jesus before Pilate, struck Him, saying, “Get on faster!” whereupon Jesus replied, “I am going fast enough; but thou shalt tarry till I come again.”
⁂ The earliest account of this tradition is in the Book of the Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Alban’s, copied and continued by Matthew Paris (1228). In 1242 Philip Mouskes, afterwards bishop of Tournay, wrote the “rhymed chronicle.”
Kartaphilos, we are told, was baptized by Ananias, who baptized Paul, and received the name of Joseph.--See Book of the Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Alban’s.
Another tradition says the Jew was Ahasue´rus, a cobbler, and gives the story thus: Jesus, overcome by the weight of the cross, stopped at the door of Ahasuerus, when the man pushed Him away, saying, “be off with you!” Jesus replied, “I am going off truly, as it is written; but thou shalt tarry till I come again.”
⁂ This legend is given by Paul von Eitzen, bishop of Schleswig, in 1547.--See Greve, Memoirs of Paul von Eitzen, Hamburgh (1744).
In Germany, the Wandering Jew is associated with John Buttadæus, who was seen at Antwerp in the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and at Brussels in 1774.
⁂ Leonard Doldius of Nürnberg, in his Praxis Alchymiæ (1604), says the Jew Ahasuerus is sometimes called Buttadæus.
In France, the name given to the Jew is Isaac Laquedem, or Lakedion.
⁂ See Mitternacht, Dissertatio in Johan., xxi. 19.
Salathiel ben Sadi is the name of the Wandering Jew, in Croly’s novel entitled Salathiel (1827).