Since the wise men from the East did not tell him who the newborn King was, Herod ordered that all children under two years of age in Bethlehem and its surroundings be killed. The soldiers cut the children, smashed them with stones, strangled them, and trampled them under their feet. This would have been a year after the birth of Christ. Herod continued to search in order to find the Infant Jesus. He asked Zechariah for his son John to kill him, because he thought he was the King. Zechariah did not give John up and was killed in the temple. He killed Herod and the high priest Hyrcanus and seventy elders from the Sanhedrin who had told him where the Messiah was to be born, and he killed his brother, sister, wife, and three of his sons, so that in the end he himself died, and that in the greatest torments, filled with worms and smelling terribly.

Venerable Marcellus. Venerable Mark the Gravedigger and Theophilus the Lamentable. The Feast of the Nativity of Christ.