Holy
Scripture tells us that after St. John the Baptist was
beheaded, the impious Herodias forbade the
prophet’s head to be buried together with his
body. Instead, she desecrated the honorable head and
buried it near her palace. The saint’s disciples
had secretly taken their teacher’s body and
buried it. The wife of King Herod’s steward knew
where Herodias had buried St. John’s head, and
she decided to rebury it on the Mount of Olives, on one
of Herod’s estates.[1]
When word reached the royal palace about Jesus’
preaching and miracles, Herod went with his wife Herodias
to see if John the Baptist’s head was still in the
place they had left it. When they did not find it there,
they began to think that Jesus Christ was John the Baptist
resurrected. The Gospels witness to this error of theirs
(cf. Mt. 14:2).
Jerusalem. The First Uncovering of the Head of St. John
the Baptist.
May years later, during the reign of Equal-to-the-Apostles
Emperor Constantine, his mother, St. Helen, began
restoring the holy places of Jerusalem. Many pilgrims
streamed into Jerusalem, amongst whom where two monks from
the East, wishing to venerate the Lord’s Honorable
Cross and Holy Sepulcher. St. John the Baptist entrusted
these two pilgrims to discover his head. We only know that
he appeared to them in a dream; and that after finding the
head in the place he showed them, they decided to return
to their native city. However, God’s will determined
otherwise. Along the road, they met a poor potter from the
Syrian town of Emesa (modern-day Homs), whose poverty had
forced him to seek work in a neighboring country. Having
found a co-traveler, the monks either out of laziness or
carelessness entrusted him with carrying the sack
containing the relic. As he was carrying it, St. John the
Baptist appeared to him and told him to forget the
careless monks and run away from them, taking the sack
they had given him.
For the sake of the precious head of St. John the Baptist,
the Lord blessed the potter’s house with an
abundance of goods. The potter lived his whole life
remembering his Benefactor, giving alms generously. Not
long before his death he gave the precious head to his
sister, commanding her to pass it on to other God-fearing,
virtuous Christians.
The saint’s head was passed along from one person to
the next, and came into the hands of one Hieromonk
Eustacius, who sided with the Arian heresy. Sick people
who came to him received healing, not knowing that it was
due not to Eustacius’s false piety, but to the grace
coming from the hidden head. Soon Eustacius’s ruse
was exposed, and he was banished from Emesa. A monastery
grew around the cave where the hieromonk had lived and in
which the head of St. John the Baptist was buried.
Emesa and Constantinople. The Second and Third Finding
of the Precious Head.
After many years, the head of St. John the Baptist was
uncovered a second time. We know about this from a
description by Archimandrite Marcellus of the monastery in
Emesa, as well as from the life of St. Matrona
(†492, commemorated November 9/22), written by St.
Simeon Metraphrastes. According to the first description,
the head was discovered on February 18, 452. A week later,
Bishop Uranius of Emesa established its veneration, and on
February 26 of the same year, it was translated to the
newly-built church dedicated to St. John. These events are
celebrated on February 24/March 8, along with the
commemoration of the First Finding of the Precious Head.
After some time, the head of St. John the Forerunner was
translated to Constantinople, where it was located up to
the time of the iconoclasts. Pious Christians who left
Constantinople secretly took the head of St. John the
Baptist with them, and then hid it in Comana (near
Sukhumi, Abkhazia), the city where St. John Chrysostom
died in exile (407). After the Seventh Ecumenical Council
(787), which reestablished the veneration of icons, the
head of St. John the Baptist was returned to the Byzantine
capital in around the year 850. The Church commemorates
this event on May 25/June 7 as the Third Finding of the
Precious Head of St. John the Baptist.
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| The face of St. John the Baptist, in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Amiens. |
The Fourth Crusade and travel to the West.
Ordinarily, the Orthodox history of the finding of the
head of St. John the Baptist ends with the Third Finding.
This is due to the fact that its later history is bound up
with the Catholic West. If we look at the Lives of the
Saints written in the Menaon of St. Dimitry of Rostov, we
find a citation in small print, often overlooked by
readers, at the end of story of the Finding of the
Forerunner’s Head. However, after unexpectedly
discovering the head of St. John the Baptist in France and
then returning home to Russia, this citation became a real
revelation for us. It is this next “finding”
of the head of St. John the Baptist that we would like to
write about below.
Thus, we read in this citation that after 850, part of the
head of St. John the Baptist came to be located in the
Podromos Monastery in Petra, and the other part in the
Forerunner Monastery of the Studion. The upper part of the
head was seen there by the pilgrim Antony in 1200.
Nevertheless, in 1204 it was taken by crusaders to Amiens
in northern France. Besides that, the citation shows three
other locations of pieces of the head: the Athonite
monastery Dionysiou, the Ugro-Wallachian monastery of
Kalua, and the Church of Pope Sylvester in Rome, where a
piece was taken from Amiens.
The
history of the Baptist’s head’s appearance
in France differs little from the history of many other
great Christian relics.
On April 13, 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, an army of
knights from Western Europe seized the capital of the
Roman Empire—Constantinople. The city was looted and
decimated.
As Western tradition has it, Canon Wallon de Sarton from
Picquigny found a case in one of the ruined palaces that
contained a silver plate. On it, under a glass covering,
were the hidden remains of a human face, missing only the
lower jaw. Over the left brow could be seen a small
perforation, most likely made by a knife strike.
On the plate the canon discovered an inscription in Greek
confirming that it contained the relics of St. John the
Forerunner. Furthermore, the perforation over the brow
corresponded with the event recorded by St. Jerome.
According to his testimony, Heriodias in a fit of rage
struck a blow with a knife to the saint’s severed
head.
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| The Cathedral of Our Lady in Amiens (Notre Dame d’Amiens). Photo: S.P.A.D.E.M. – Editions d’art Yvon |
Wallon
de Sarton decided to take the head of the Holy
Forerunner to Picardy, in northern France.
On December 17, 1206, on the third Sunday of the Nativity
fast, the Catholic bishop of the town of Amiens, Richard
de Gerberoy, solemnly met the relics of St. John the
Baptist at the town gates. Probably the bishop was sure of
the relic’s authenticity—something easier to
ascertain in those days, as they say, “by fresh
tracks”. The veneration of the head of St. John the
Baptist in Amiens and all of Picardy begins from that
time.
In 1220, the bishop of Amiens placed the cornerstone in
the foundation of a new cathedral, which after many
reconstructions would later become the most magnificent
Gothic edifice in Europe. The facial section of the head
of the St. John the Baptist, the city’s major holy
shrine, was transferred to this new cathedral.
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Eventually, Amiens became a place of pilgrimage not only
for simple Christians, but also for French kings, princes
and princesses. The first King to come and venerate the
head in 1264 was Louis IX, called “the Holy”.
After him came his son, Phillip III the Brave, then
Charles VI, and Charles VII, who donated large sums for
the relic’s adornment. In
1604, Pope Clement VIII of Rome, wishing to enrich the
Church of the Forerunner in Rome (Basilica di San
Giovanni in Laterano), requested a piece of St.
John’s relics from the canon of Amiens.
Saving of the head from the outrages of the French
revolution.
After the revolution in 1789, inventory was made of all
Church property and relics were confiscated.
The reliquary containing the head of the Holy Forerunner
remained in the cathedral until November, 1793, when it
was demanded by representatives of the Convention. They
stripped from it everything of material value, and ordered
that the relics be taken to the cemetery. However, the
revolutionary command was not fulfilled. After they left
the city, the city’s mayor, Louis-Alexandre
Lescouve, secretly and under fear of death returned to the
reliquary and took the relics to his own home. Thus was
the sacred shrine preserved. Several years later, the
former mayor gave the relic to Abbot Lejeune. Once the
revolutionary persecutions had ended, the head of St. John
the Baptist was returned to the cathedral in Amiens in
1816, where it remains to this day.
At the end of the nineteenth century, historical science,
not without the participation of ecclesiastical figures,
determined that there had been many instances of false
relics during the Middle Ages. In an atmosphere of general
mistrust, veneration of the Amiens shrine eventually began
to wane.
The head of St. John the Baptist today.
In the mid-twentieth century, specifically in 1958, there
was a spark of renewed interest in the relics of St. John
the Baptist. The rector of the Amiens cathedral reported
to the ecclesiastical authorities that in eastern France,
in Verdun, was what was presumed to be the lower jaw of
St. John the Baptist. He wanted to rejoin the two parts.
With the blessing of the bishop of Amiens, a commission of
qualified medical experts was formed.
The relics were investigated for several months, in two
stages—the first in Amiens, the second in Paris.
After the work was completed, the commission’s
findings were gathered into a document, signed by the
members. In the first chapter of the document, which
covers the research performed in Amiens, the following
conclusions were made:
- Comparison of the subject called “of Verdun” with the subject from Amiens disclosed their anatomical differences, confirming without a doubt that they are of differing origins.
- From the chronological point of view, the subject called “of Verdun” is not as ancient as the Amiens subject. It is similar in form and weight to “bones of the Middle Ages”.
- The facial part, called the head of St. John the Baptist from Amiens, is a very ancient object—more ancient than “bones of the Middle Ages”. On the other hand, it is younger than human bones of the Mesolithic era—which allows us to date it at between 500 BC and 1000 AD.
- The man’s age could not be determined precisely due to the absence of teeth. But based upon the fact that the alveolar [tooth] sockets are fully developed and are slightly worn at the edges, it can be supposed that the man was an adult (between 25 and 40 years old).
- General characteristics of the head in the form of inadequate elements can be determined, but with great permissible variation. The facial type is Caucasoid (that is, not Negroid or Mongoloid). The small measurements of the subject from Amiens and the development of the lower eye sockets lead to the supposition that it could correspond to a racial type called “Mediterranean” (a type to which modern Bedouins belong).
Here ends the modern chronicle of the head of St. John the
Baptist. Unfortunately, few of the faithful have recourse
to the help of such a lamp of grace as the precious head
of St. John the Baptist, “the first among martyrs in
grace”.[2]
Many Orthodox Christians come to France, but not all of
them know how many holy relics there are still on
French soil despite the outrages committed against them
during the French Revolution and subsequent
forgetfulness of France’s Christian past.
Joyfully, during recent years more and more Orthodox
pilgrims are travelling to Amiens. Now, with the help of
the Pilgrimage Center of the diocese of Korsun (of the
Moscow Patriarchate, based in Paris) Orthodox molebens and
even Divine Liturgies are now being served before the head
of St. John the Baptist.
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