One of the most difficult questions concerning the Antichrist is that of his nature: will he be a collective entity encompassing all those dominated by his spirit? Or will he be a concrete individual who will appear at the end of history, before the Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Will the Antichrist, therefore, be personal or impersonal?
In his famous treatise Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei adversus hujus temporis Haereticos (Disputations on the Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of This Time), the standard edition of which was published in Venice in 1596, Saint Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) devoted numerous pages to the ecclesiological doctrine concerning the Supreme Pontiff. Aware of Protestant interpretations identifying the Popes with the Antichrist and the Catholic Church with the “great harlot” in the Book of Revelation, Cardinal Bellarmine discussed at length the various interpretations concerning the Antichrist. In this context, for example, he opted for a synthesis of the two interpretations. Thus, the spirit of the Antichrist, which will dominate those who do not love the Truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10), will ultimately manifest itself through a historical individual.
If Saint Robert Bellarmine’s treatise represents the most extensive work by a Saint and Doctor of the Church devoted to eschatological subjects, then perhaps the last significant treatise on this subject is the volume published under the title The Patristical Idea of Antichrist, comprising four lectures by John Henry Newman (1801–1890). Reprinted in 1872, following his conversion to Catholicism, the text addresses with caution the question of whether the Antichrist is personal or impersonal in nature. Like his eminent predecessor, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, Cardinal Newman would also lean toward a mixed interpretation. At the same time, however, in order to demonstrate the validity of the “personalist” interpretation of the Antichrist, he reviewed all those tyrants and persecutors traditionally regarded as “foreshadowings” (“types”) of the Antichrist, such as King Antiochus IV Epiphanes (c.215–164). Although he expresses himself with a certain degree of caution, speaking in terms of probability, Newman inclines toward the personalist interpretation:
Further, that by Antichrist is meant some one person, is made probable by the anticipations which, as I have said, have already occurred in history, of the fulfillment of the prophecy. Individual men have arisen actually answering in a great measure to the above descriptions; and this circumstance creates a probability, that the absolute and entire fulfilment which is to come will be in an individual also.[1]
Indeed, many of the Church Fathers followed the same interpretation. In particular, the persecutors of Christians, such as the infamous Nero, were regarded as types of the Antichrist. In addition to them, King Antiochus, already mentioned above, was another name frequently cited. Yet there are also notable omissions. I have always been intrigued by the omission of a name that would have been at least as suitable for such comparisons: King Herod, the man who attempted to kill the newborn Divine Child. Although I have not yet identified such an interpretation in any of the Church Fathers, I recently discovered a sermon by the famous “Angel of the Apocalypse”—as Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419) was nicknamed by his contemporaries. In a sermon devoted to the Epiphany of the Lord, he stated the following:
The holy kings, before they came to Herod, were guided by a star, but after they had gone to King Herod, they turned again to holy scriptures to guide themselves, etc. Herod signifies the Antichrist, because just as Herod wishing to kill the Christ, killed the innocents, so the Antichrist wishing to destroy the faith of Christ, shall kill Christians contradicting him.[2]
Few negative figures in the New Testament are as suitable as “types” of the Antichrist as King Herod. Just as the Antichrist will precede the Second Coming of our Saviour Christ, Herod was in power when God became incarnate. Just as the Antichrist, according to certain interpretations, will initially present himself as a good Christian, Herod tells the Magi that he wishes to worship the divine Child. There is, however, a disturbing detail underlying Saint Vincent’s interpretation: whereas Herod killed the infants in an attempt to destroy a potential rival to his throne, the Antichrist will kill Christians in order to eradicate the supernatural faith through which God is made present in the darkness of the fallen world. The only detail Saint Vincent did not foresee was that the Antichrist, like Herod, would not merely kill Christians but would also kill unborn children on a scale unprecedented in history.
The research I began after discovering Saint Vincent’s sermon led me to an author who identified Herod as a type of the Antichrist. A brilliant intellectual and commentator on Sacred Scripture during the Carolingian era, Saint Rabanus Maurus (c.780–856), a student of Blessed Alcuin of York (c.735–804), bequeathed to us a veritable encyclopaedia inspired by Saint Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies. Entitled De rerum naturis (On the Natures of Things), Rabanus’s work appears to be the Christian counterpart to the work of the pagan poet and philosopher Lucretius (c.99–c.55), De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). What particularly interests us is a list of biblical figures whom the Benedictine author interprets allegorically on the basis of the meanings of their names. As for Herod, we find a brief and unequivocal statement:
Herodes interpretatur pellicius versipellem, significans Antichristum. Herod is interpreted as one who changes his skin, representing the Antichrist.[3]
The essential core of the above quotation points to Herod’s duplicity: he is a pseudo-religious hypocrite who feigns piety, yet beneath this mask conceals a murderous violence born of his craving for power—that vice which Saint Augustine named libido dominandi (i.e., “lust for power”). It is no surprise that ancient sources indicate his paranoid fits led him to kill one of his favorite harem members, Mariamne I, as well as three of his adult sons—men whom he perceived as threats to his tyrannical rule.
In his brief remark, Saint Rabanus captures the very essence of the Antichrist, likely drawing upon the Apostle Paul’s description of the “antichrists” of the end times: those who possess “an appearance indeed of godliness, but deny the power thereof” (2 Timothy 3:5). Rabanus’s observation inspired a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew by another Benedictine monk from the Carolingian era, Remigius of Auxerre (c.841–908), who identifies Herod with the very figure—the Devil—who will ultimately bestow all his power upon the Antichrist.[4]
Its primary source may be an allegorical commentary by the most famous theologian of the Western intellectual tradition, Saint Augustine (354–430). Pondering the meaning of the Old Testament prohibition, “Thou shalt not boil a kid in the milk of its mother” (Deuteronomy 14:21), he first points out that no such custom—cooking a young animal in its own mother’s milk—actually exists.[5] How, then, is this prohibition to be explained? Augustine interprets it as a prophecy concerning the persecution unleashed by Herod against the divine infant. The fire heating the milk signifies tribulation—the perpetual persecution to which the Savior was subjected from the very moment of His birth, at the hands of Herod. A similar persecution will be unleashed by the Antichrist at the end of history, just before the Second Coming of the Savior, Jesus Christ.
Although he does not explicitly name Herod, Saint Augustine describes a form of violence in which we can recognize the fury fueled within Herod’s vicious soul by his thirst for tyrannical power. Saint John Henry Newman grappled with difficult questions regarding the nature of persecution. Yet, neither he, nor Saints Augustine, Rabanus Maurus, or Vincent Ferrer, could have foreseen the horror of the abortion industry, which destroys the very possibility for children to be born. Never before in the history of the world has there been such an extreme method for eliminating human beings created “in the image and likeness of God.” Official statistics indicate approximately seventy-three million abortions annually.[6] In all likelihood, since the moment Communist Russia legalized abortion in 1920 through the “Decree on Women’s Healthcare,” more than two billion abortions have been performed worldwide. It is a figure that almost seems implausible—a number that exceeds the total death toll of all the wars throughout history.
Any one of these unborn children could have been one of those saints whom God created for the purpose of combating the unprecedented crisis currently afflicting His Church Militant. Just think of those countries that were once Catholic—Italy, Poland, Ireland etc.—which today are slowly but surely sinking under the burden of the “demographic winter.” Let us remember that, in many cases, emigration controlled through political decisions is nothing else than a desperate and unwise attempt to combat this reality.
Whenever I am asked why, in some of my articles, I emphasize the unprecedented scale of the crisis that both the world and the Church are enduring in the modern era, I find myself bewildered. How is it possible for a Catholic not to perceive the magnitude of what Pope John Paul II termed the “culture of death”? In any case, the very same spirit that drove Herod to kill his own children and to slaughter newborn infants is undoubtedly the dark force behind a reality for which there are no adequate words. If this is not the spirit of the Antichrist, then I do not know what else it could be. Never before in the entire history of the Church has the question regarding the final manifestation of the Antichrist been more relevant than it is now. At the same time, the virtue of prudence and the gift of Wisdom have never been more necessary than they are now.
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[1] Lecture I: The Times of Antichrist: https://www.newmanreader.org/works/arguments/antichrist/lecture1.html [Accessed 10 October 2026].
[2] Vincent Ferrer, “Sermon on the Feast of the Epiphany (A191),” Translated by Albert G. Judy, O.P., Sermons of Saint Vincent Ferrer: https://www.svfsermons.org/A191_EpiphanySermon.htm [Accessed 10 October 2026]. It is worth reading and carefully reflecting on the entire passage:
“The holy kings, before they came to Herod, were guided by a star, but after they had gone to King Herod, they turned again to holy scriptures to guide themselves, etc. Herod signifies the Antichrist, because just as Herod wishing to kill the Christ, killed the innocents, so the Antichrist wishing to destroy the faith of Christ, shall kill Christians contradicting him. And that star signifies human science, logic, philosophy, laws, canons, by which we are now directed and ruled. But in the time of the Antichrist it shall be necessary to turn again to sacred scriptures, because the Antichrist shall not believe in logic, nor philosophy nor poetry nor laws, etc. Only with sacred scripture shall we make a stand against him. Therefore how guilty are we now, because no one cares about the Bible. Laypeople give themselves to profitable sciences. And among religious, who ought to study sacred scripture, one devotes himself to Virgil, another to Ovid, another to Terence, and so for the others. This is one sign, among others, of the nearness of the Antichrist. Because the Antichrist, to prove his error that he is the Messiah and the son of God etc., shall bring forth only the text of the Bible and the prophets. How do you defend yourself, to refute him, if you are ignorant of the Bible? About this there is a prophecy of Solomon saying, ‘When prophecy shall fail, the people shall be scattered’ (Proverbs 29:18). This prophecy speaks of the old testament. Christ speaks to all, saying, ‘Search the scriptures, for you think in them to have life everlasting; and the same are they that give testimony of me’ (John 5:39).”
[3] The complete Latin text of Saint Rabanus Maurus’s treatise can be found online here: https://www.intratext.com/IXT/LAT0385/_PC.HTM [Accessed 10 October 2026].
[4] Remigius Antissiodorensis, Homiliae: “Herodes interpretatur pellicius, sive pellis gloria, et significat diabolum” https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Homiliae_(Remigius_Antissiodorensis) [Accessed 10 October 2026].
[5] Sanctus Aurelius Augustinus, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, Questio XC: https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Quaestiones_in_Heptateuchum_(ed._Migne) [Accessed 10 October 2026].
[6] See “Abortion Law: Global Comparisons:” https://www.cfr.org/articles/abortion-law-global-comparisons [Accessed 10 October 2026].