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| Judas Iscariot's window can only be seen from outside the cloister. It's the last window on the right when you are standing in front of the parish house. |
As you walk through the cloister from the parish house towards the church, there will be six windows on your left and six windows on your right. However, the next time you walk along the oval drive in front of the parish house, take a look at the outside wall of the passageway. You'll notice that there are seven windows. The seventh window, which would be the seventh window on your right as walk from the parish house to the church inside the passageway, is Judas Iscariot's window. It's not visible from inside the building. There's a plastered wall and a door frame in that area.
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| Looking south from the sacristy entrance toward the parish house doors, there are six windows on either side. St. Peter's window is on the left foreground and st. Matthias' is on the right. The sixth window on the left side is blocked by the wheelchair lift. |
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| This view from the oval driveway in front of the parish house shows seven windows in the cloister. The last one, all the way on the right, is Judas Iscariot's window, visible only from the outside. |
Judas' surname is more probably a corruption of the Latin sicarius ("murderer" or "assassin") than an indication of family origin, suggesting that he would have belonged to the Sicarii, the most radical Jewish group, some of whom were terrorists. Other than his apostleship, his betrayal, and his death, little else is revealed about Judas in the Gospels. Always the last on the list of the Apostles, he was their treasurer. John 12:6 introduces Judas' thievery by saying, ". . . as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it."
He disclosed Jesus' whereabouts to the chief priests and elders for 30 pieces of silver. They provided the armed guard that he brought to the Garden of Gethsemane, near Jerusalem, where Jesus went to pray with the other 11 Apostles after the Last Supper. There he identified Jesus with a kiss, addressing him as "master." Matt. 26:14-16 and John 12:6 designate Judas' motive as avarice, but Luke 22:3-6 ascribes his action to the entrance of Satan into his body, paralleling John 13:27, where, after Judas took the bread at the Last Supper, "Satan entered into him." Jesus then says, "What you are going to do, do quickly." This is the culmination of John 6:70-71, which, after Jesus says, "Did I not choose you, the Twelve, and one of you is a devil?" discloses that he meant "Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was to betray him."
There are variant traditions about Judas' death. According to Matt. 27:3-10, he repented after seeing Jesus condemned to death, then returned the silver and hanged himself (traditionally from the Judas tree). In Acts 1:18, he "bought a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out," implying that he threw himself down, rather than that he died accidentally. Apocryphal gospels developed the point in Acts that calls the spot of his death the place (field) of blood. The 1st/2nd-century Apostolic priest Papias is quoted to have given macabre details about Judas' death, presumably to show that Gospel prophecies were literally fulfilled. His account appears in numerous legends, particularly in Coptic works, and in medieval literature. In Dante's Inferno Judas appears in the deepest chasm of hell with Julius Caesar's assassins, Brutus and Cassius.
In Muslim polemic literature, however, Judas ceases to be a traitor; instead, he supposedly lied to the Jews in order to defend Jesus (who was not crucified). The 14th-century cosmographer ad-Dimashqi maintains that Judas assumed Jesus' likeness and was crucified in his place. The 2nd-century apocryphal Gospel of Judas favourably evaluates him. His name has subsequently become associated with traitor (a Judas) and treacherous kiss (a Judas kiss).
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