, enshrined in its own Roman side chapel in the
San Silvestro in Capite,
Rome , in
Damascus, Syria, purportedly houses the head of John the Baptist. coin of the
Knights Hospitaller, depicting the head of Saint John the Baptist on a round silver platter. John the Baptist is said to have been buried at the
Palestinian village of
Sebastia, near modern-day
Nablus in the
West Bank. Mention is made of his
relics being honored there in the fourth century. The historians
Rufinus and
Theodoretus record that the
shrine was
desecrated under
Julian the Apostate around 362, the bones being partly burned. The tomb at Sebastia continued, nevertheless, to be visited by pious pilgrims, and
St. Jerome bears witness to miracles being worked there. Today, the tomb is housed in the
Nabi Yahya Mosque ("John the Baptist Mosque").
John the Baptist's head What became of the head of John the Baptist is difficult to determine.
Nicephorus and
Symeon Metaphrastes say that Herodias had it buried in the fortress of Machaerus (in accordance with Josephus). Other writers say that it was interred in Herod's palace at Jerusalem; there, it was found during the reign of Constantine and thence secretly taken to
Emesa, in
Phoenicia, where it was concealed, the place remaining unknown for years, until it was manifested by a revelation in 453. Over the centuries, there have been many discrepancies in the various legends and claimed relics throughout the world. Several different locations claim to possess the severed head of John the Baptist. Among the various claimants are: • In medieval times, it was rumored that the
Knights Templar had possession of the head, and multiple records from their
Inquisition in the early 14th century make reference to some form of head veneration. • During the Crusaders'
looting of Constantinople in 1204, Wallo or Walo(n) de Sarton, canon of
Picquigny in
Picardy, discovered a half-ball of transparent crystal on a silver plate that contained front facial bones of the skull without
mandible. The Greek lettering around the plate indicated that the bones were from John the Baptist but he could not read Greek and so went from monastery to monastery trying to get information. Walon sold the plate in order to pay for his voyage back home, brought the relic and gave it to the bishop at
Amiens. This made the
Amiens Cathedral a major pilgrimage site in France, and was the main impetus for building the magnificent Gothic cathedral that still stands. • At the beginning of the 17th century there was some confusion about whose relics were venerated in the
Basilica of Saint Sylvester the First: some claimed they were bones of
St. John, the martyr of Rome, and the others that they were the Baptist's.
Pope Clement VIII, to remove all reasonable doubt, requested that the canons of Amiens provide a particle of the relics of St John for the basilica. In 1604, he was given a part of
parietal bone that was inserted into a wax skull, and is still kept in the basilica. The
Roman Catholic tradition holds that the bone on display in
San Silvestro in Capite is a true relic of John the Baptist. • The
Eastern Orthodox Church of
John the Baptist in Jerusalem displays a purported fragment of the Skull of John the Baptist. • A reliquary at the Residenz in Munich, Germany, is labeled as containing what previous Bavarian rulers thought was the skull of John the Baptist. • It is also believed by some that a piece of his skull is held at the
Romanian skete
Prodromos on
Mount Athos. •
Islamic tradition maintains that the head of Saint John the Baptist was interred in the once-called
Basilica of Saint John the Baptist in
Damascus, now the
Umayyad Mosque.
Pope John Paul II visited the Mosque during his visit to
Syria in 2001.
John the Baptist's right arm • According to some traditions,
Luke the Evangelist went to the city of
Sebastia, the place of John's burial site, from which he took the right hand of the Forerunner (the hand that baptized Jesus) and brought it to
Antioch, his home city, where it performed miracles. It is reported that the relic would be brought out and shown to the faithful on the Feast of the
Exaltation of the Cross (14 September). If the fingers of the hand were open, it was interpreted as a sign of a bountiful year; if the hand was closed, it would be a poor harvest (1 September was the beginning of the
liturgical year and the harvest season). • The arm is then said to have been transferred from Antioch to
Constantinople in 956. On 7 January, the Orthodox Church celebrates the "Feast of the Transfer of the Right Hand of the Holy Forerunner" from Antioch to Constantinople and the Miracle of Saint John the Forerunner against the
Hagarines at
Chios. • In 1204, after the
Sack of Constantinople by the
Crusaders, the Frankish emperor
Baldwin allegedly gave one bone from the wrist of Saint John the Baptist to
Othon de Cicon, who in turn gave it to
Cîteaux Abbey in France. • Having been brought from
Antioch to Constantinople at the time of
Constantine VII, the arm was kept in the Emperor's chapel in the 12th century, then in the
Church of the Virgin of the Pharos, then in the Church of Peribleptos in the first half of the 15th century. Spanish envoy Clavijo reported that he saw two different arms in two different monasteries while on a visit to Constantinople in 1404. • When the
Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, they seized possession of the relic. In 1484,
Sultan Bayezid II sent it to the
knights of Rhodes, who held his brother Cem captive in order to obtain the relic back. Two different accounts then exist as to the fate of the relic: • The Turks allege that in 1585,
Sultan Murad III managed to retrieve a part of the relic from the
Christian Knights and had the arm brought back to Constantinople (presently
Istanbul, Turkey), where it remains up to this day at the
Topkapı Palace. The arm is kept in a gold-embellished silver reliquary. There are several inscriptions on the arm: "The beloved of God" on the forefinger, "This is the hand of the Baptist" on the wrist, and "belongs to monk Dolin" on the band above the elbow. • The Orthodox Christians, nonetheless, claim that, when in 1798
Napoleon conquered the island of
Malta, then the Knight's siege, John's arm was one of the few treasures that Grand Master
Ferdinand von Hompesch was allowed to take with him. On 12 October 1799, after the resignation of Hompesch, it was presented to Russian emperor
Paul I, who had been elected the
new Grand Master of the Order, and taken to the chapel of the
Priory Palace at
Gatchina in Russia. After the
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917,
Eastern Orthodox Church authorities had it transferred from the church in Gatchina to the
Ostrog Monastery in
Montenegro, and from there to its current location at
Cetinje Monastery, also in Montenegro, where it is displayed up to this day. • The right hand of John the Baptist that is kept in
Siena Cathedral (in the chapel in the north arm of the transept) was acquired by the first
Serbian archbishop
Saint Sava, as testified by the inscription on the reliquary, sometime after the fall of Constantinople. It was kept in the
Žiča monastery, and around 1290, when warfare made the northern areas of Serbia unsafe, transferred to the newly established archiepiscopal see of the
Serbian Orthodox Church at
Peć. From there it was presumably relocated by
Helena, daughter of the last Byzantine emperor,
Constantine XI Palaiologos and widow of the despot of Serbia,
Lazar Branković, either to Constantinople or directly to her uncle
Thomas Palaiologos, despot of the Morea, who fled to Italy in 1461 and sold his whole collection of relics to
Pope Pius II. The pope bequeathed the hand to Siena cathedral in 1464. A special chapel was built for it. The relic is displayed only once a year, on
Whit Monday. Other purported relics include: • It has also been claimed that a fragment of the right forearm is kept at the
Dionysiou Monastery on
Mount Athos, Greece. At the beginning of the 19th century, the advisor to
Prussia in Constantinople, John Frangopoulos, was in possession of this relic and he adorned it with jewels. On 10 March 1802 it was brought to Dionysiou Monastery through the efforts of its abbot, Joachim Agiostratiti. • Relics of John the Baptist are said to be in the possession of the
Coptic Orthodox Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great in
Scetes, Egypt. •
Aachen Cathedral, in
Germany, contains a robe supposedly worn by John the Baptist, adored as a relic. • In July 2010, a small
reliquary was discovered under the ruins of a 5th-century monastery on
St. Ivan Island, Bulgaria. Local archaeologists opened the reliquary in August and found bone fragments of a skull, a hand and a tooth, which they believe belong to John the Baptist, based on their interpretation of a Greek inscription on the reliquary. The
Bulgarian Orthodox bishop who witnessed the opening speculated that the relics might have been a gift from an 11th-century church on the island possibly dedicated to the saint. The remains have been
carbon-dated to the 1st century. • A reliquary with a purported finger of Saint John the Baptist is displayed in the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. On 29 August 2012, during a public audience at the summer palace of
Castel Gandolfo,
Pope Benedict XVI mentioned the traditional crypt in the
Palestinian town of
Sebastia, where relics of the Baptist have been venerated since at least the fourth century. The
Pope also noted that a religious feast particularly commemorates the transfer of John's head
relic to the
Basilica of San Silvestro in Capite in
Rome. ==Biblical commentary==