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.
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.
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.
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.
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”. 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.
By Priest Maxim Massalitin
Translation
by OrthoChristian.com
Source: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/52051.htm
CONVERSATION