Category:John the Baptist--fiction (subject)

John the Baptist (fiction); see John the Baptist (home page)

• Fiction : John the Baptist (fiction) -- John the Baptist (art) -- John the Baptist (literature) -- John the Baptist (music) -- John the Baptist (dance) -- John the Baptist (cinema)

• Scholarship : John the Baptist (research) -- John the Baptist (sources)

• People : John the Baptist -- Zacharias -- Elizabeth -- Mary of Nazareth -- Jesus of Nazareth -- Joseph of Nazareth -- Herod Antipas -- Herodias -- Salome -- Pharisees -- Sadducees -- Essenes

< Life of John the Baptist : Annunciation to Zacharias -- Visitation of Mary -- Birth of John the Baptist -- Child John the Baptist with Jesus -- Young John the Baptist in the Desert -- Preaching of John the Baptist -- Baptism of Jesus -- Question about Fasting -- Messengers from John the Baptist -- Death of John the Baptist -- Question about Authority -- Relics of John the Baptist >

Page authored by Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan, @2020.

Overview

In Christian iconography, John the Baptist emerged from the Middle Ages as a full-fledged and complex character, with a detailed biography based on scripture, hagiography, and patristic literature. Famous artists such as Giotto, Andrea Pisano, Filippo Lippi, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Andrea del Sarto, dedicated great cycles to the life of John the Baptist. These cycles came to include up to 20-25 episodes, covering all aspects of John's life: his birth, his childhood, his ministry, his relation with Jesus, and his death. No other New Testament character, besides Jesus and Mary of Nazareth, had received so much attention; see John the Baptist (art).

John was honored as a saint by Christians, and by Muslims as one of the main prophets. Many churches and mosques in the Middle East as well as in Europe offered relicts of his for the veneration of the believers; see Relics of John the Baptist.

Given such glorious premises it should be expected that John the Baptist would flourish as one of main characters in modern biblical fiction, from the renaissance to the present. But it was not the case.

It was the bizzarre circumstances of his death rather than the many accomplishments of his life, that first and mostly attracted the interest of playwrights and novelists, who gave John a quite marginal role in a drama where the real protagonists were others: Herod Antipas, Herodias and Salome. Soon John's name disappeared even from the titles of plays and novels.

With the success of the oratorio San Giovanni Battista by Alessandro Stradella in 1675, John the Baptist seemed to have found at last his most fitting role as a "voice" singing the praises of God. But even in music John was soon overshadowed by a mightier character, Salome, who revealed much greater potential as a singer and a dancer. She (not he) was the protagonist of the famous operas by Jules Massenet (Hérodiade, 1881) and Richard Strauss (Salome, 1905). In the Salomania that exploded in the early 20th century, John's role was limited to being the object and the victim of Salome's lustful desire.

Born in such a context, cinema has followed a similar pattern. John was featured in almost every major film on Jesus of Nazareth, with only a few notable exceptions. And in numerous movies he was the innocent victim of the intrigues of Herod Antipas, Herodias and Salome. He also appeared in supporting roles in movies on Peter, Mary of Nazareth, and Mary Magdalene. Among the "minor" characters of the New Testament, he is the only one to whom not a single film has been dedicated. It is as if he could not escape his eternal destiny of being overshadowed by someone mightier than he. Not only in the Gospel narratives but in the reception history of his character, John always saw somebody else rise to fame while he had to decline.

Only in the last decades have there been a few attempts by novelists to revisit his biography, the most ambitious of which is that of American author Brooks Hansen in 2009. Too little and too late to establish John the Baptist as a major protagonist of biblical fiction.

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