“THE reading of the Holy Gospel hath set a scene of cruelty before our eyes even the head of St. John in a charger; a message of death sent forth to discharge the bloody commands of one that hateth the truth; a damsel dancing, and a mother rabid; a rash oath sworn in the midst of uncleanness and the revels of a supper, and a wicked fulfillment of the oath so sworn. It befell unto John according to his own saying. For he had said concerning the Lord Jesus Christ: He must increase, but I must decrease John iii. 30, so John decreased by an head, and Christ’s height was made higher upon the Cross. The truth drew hatred. It could not be borne in patience that the holy man of God should utter a rebuke, albeit he sought by his rebuke nothing but the soul’s health of them to whom he addressed it. They repaid him evil for good.”
— –St. Augustine on the beheading of St. John the Baptist
“It is against the law for you to take the wife of your brother.”
So John the Baptist rebuked King Herod. Herodias, his brother’s wife, and Salome, her daughter, plotted John’s death, eliciting a promise from Herod in exchange for Salome’s bewitching dance at his birthday party.
“Who is there, that, on seeing the messenger hasten from the dinner-table to the prison, would not have forthwith concluded that he carried an order for the Prophet’s release. If any one had heard that it was Herod’s birth-day, and that he was giving a great feast, and that he had offered a damsel the choice of whatever she listed, and that thereupon a messenger had been sent to John’s dungeon. If any one, I say, had heard this, what would he have supposed? He would have concluded that the damsel had asked and obtained John’s freedom. What have executions in common with dinners, or death with gaiety? While the banquet was going on, the Prophet was hurried to death, by an order from the reveller whom he had not troubled even by a prayer for release. He was slain with the sword, and his head was served up in a plate. This was the new dish demanded by a cruelty which the Feast had been powerless to glut.”
— St. Ambrose
