Details in regard to some Judas legends and superstitions are given in Notes and Queries, 2nd series, v., vi. and vii.; 3rd series, vii.; 4th series, i.; 5th series, vi. See also a paper by Professor Rendel Harris entitled “Did Judas really commit suicide?” in the American Journal of Philology (July 1900). Matthew Arnold’s poem “St Brandan” gives fine expression to the old story that, on account of an act of charity done to a leper at Joppa, Judas was allowed an hour’s respite from hell once a year.
(G. Mi.)
[1] Other forms make him a Danite, and consider the passage in Genesis (xlix. 17) a prophecy of the traitor.
JUDAS-TREE, the Cercis siliquastrum of botanists, belonging to the section Caesalpineae of the natural order Leguminosae. It is a native of the south of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Asia Minor, and forms a handsome low tree with a flat spreading head. In Spring it is covered with a profusion of purplish-pink flowers, which appear before the leaves. The flowers have an agreeable acid taste, and are eaten mixed with salad or made into fritters. The tree was frequently figured by the older herbalists. One woodcut by Castor Durante has the figure of Judas Iscariot suspended from one of the branches, illustrating the popular tradition regarding this tree. A second species, C. canadensis, is common in North America from Canada to Alabama and eastern Texas, and differs from the European species in its smaller size and pointed leaves. The flowers are also used in salads and for making pickles, while the branches are used to dye wool a nankeen colour.
JUDD, SYLVESTER (1813-1853) American Unitarian clergyman and author, was born in Westhampton, Massachusetts, on the 23rd of July 1813. He bore the same name as his father and grandfather; the former (1789-1860) made an especial study of local history of the towns of the Connecticut valley, and wrote a History of Hadley (1863). The son lived in Northampton after his tenth year, was converted in a revival there in 1826, graduated from Yale in 1836, and taught in 1836 at Templeton, Mass., where he first met Unitarians and soon found the solution of his theological difficulties in their views. He entered the Harvard divinity school, from which he graduated in 1840. In the same year he was ordained pastor of the Unitarian church of Augusta, Maine, where he died on the 26th of January 1853. His widest reputation was as the author of Margaret, a Tale of the Real and the Ideal, including Sketches of a place not before described, called Mons Christi (1845; revised 1851), written to exhibit the errors of Calvinistic and all trinitarian theology, and the evils of war, intemperance, capital punishment, the prison system of the time, and the national treatment of the Indians. This story, published anonymously, attracted much attention by its true descriptions of New England life and scenery as well as by its author’s earnest purpose. Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family (1850) is in much the same vein as Margaret. A poem entitled Philo, an Evangeliad (1850) is a versified defence of Unitarianism. He published, besides, The Church, in a Series of Discourses (1854). As a preacher and pastor he urged the desirability of infant baptism. He lectured frequently on international peace and opposed slavery.
See Arethusa Hall, Life and Character of the Rev. Sylvester Judd (Boston, 1857) published anonymously.