The Head of St. John the Baptist

Of the five great religions of the world, three venerate relics--i.e., Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. In Islam those relics tend to be objects associated with the Prophet Mohammed--e.g., the Holy Mantle and the Holy Banner. However graves of important Islamic and holy personages assume the role of a relic and are visited regularly by the devote. The Buddhist temple of Kandy, Sri Lanka is said to possess the tooth of The Buddha and a major festival is held each year to venerate that relic. In Christianity, relics tend to be saints or parts of their body. The Basilica of San Zeno, Verona, Italy, houses the whole body of San Zeno in a glass covered sarcophagus in the crypt.

One would think that for Christians the head of St. John the Baptist would have become a venerable relic. And, so it was, supposedly. There are three locations which, reportedly, possess the head of St. John the Baptist--the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus; San Silvestro in Capite, Rome; and the Residenz Museum in Munich. The Orthodox Church has one several sagas regarding the finding and losing the head. The journeys of the head takes on truly Byzantine twists.

An official by the name of Innocent, while building a cell, some say church, discovered the head of St. John the Baptist on the Mount of Olives. Fearing that the head would fall into hands of unbelievers, he reburied the head within the confines of the church. After Innocent died, without revealing the whereabouts of the head, the church fell into ruin. Later, during the times of Constantine the Great, two monks were on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem when they had a vision, revealing to them the location of the head. They placed the head in a sack and returned home. On the way the met a potter and gave him the sack to carry. During the night a vision came to the potter and revealed to him the contents of the head. In the night he took the sack with the head in it and went to his home and kept it hidden. As he was dying, he gave the sack with the head in it to his sister for safe keeping and the head remained in the possession of that family for some time. After some years an Arian named Eustathius, came into possession of the head and buried it in a cave near Emesa. In 425, a monastery was constructed over the site of the cave and a vision came the Archimandrite Marcellus of that monastery revealing to him the location of the head of St. John the Baptist. Around the year 820, the head was transferred to Comana in Cappadocia. In 850 a vision appeared to the Patriarch Ignatius of Constantinople revealing to him the location of St. John the Baptist’s head. He informed the Emperor Michael III of the vision and a delegation went to Comana, retrieved the head and brought it to Constantinpole where it was placed in a church.

During the Medieval Period relics became quite important. As a matter of fact there was a flourishing trade in relics from church to church. Burgos Cathedral possesses a huge inventory of relics, including the right index finger of St. Thomas á Becket and the body of El Cid. Several churches and monasteries throughout Europe claim(ed) to possess the head of St. John the Baptist. Even the small town of Saint-Jean-d’Angély, Charante Maritime, France, once claimed to possess the head.

From around the end of the XIV^th Century onwards there appears numerous rather grisly paintings of the Head of St. John the Baptist on a Charger. The painting of Dirk Bouts (1460) (See below) seemed to spawn a number of copies (See below). In them we see the severed head of the saint resting on a charger, eyes nearly closed and mouth slightly open. It is of interest to note that none of these paintings portray any blood. Nearly contemporaneous with Dirk Bouts painting is the representation of the severed head by Giovanni Bellini (1464) (See below). Bellini’s work is more realistic in the Southern Renaissance sense. And, a bit of gore is encountered. Further, in this work, the mouth of St. John the Baptist is gaping in this realistic interpretation.