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At four o’clock one dark morning in the Basilica of San Silvestro in Rome, Brother Padraig O’Halloran entered a side chapel and paused before a sealed glass cube to offer a prayer to the brown, waxy, misshapen object reposing on a bed of velvet within. His whispered words went on for several minutes, a susurrus of faith drifting through the great silence of the basilica.
When he was done, he opened his eyes and read, yet again, the label in Latin that identified the object in the box.
Caput
St. Joannis Baptistae
Praecursoris Domini
Brother Padraig, whose Latin was excellent, knew well the translation: “Head of St. John the Baptist, Forerunner of the Lord.” This was one of the most sacred relics in all of Christendom, and every morning before Lauds, Brother Padraig would light a candle and enter the chapel to contemplate in prayer at the precious object.
More than anything, Brother Padraig cherished his role as a member of the Irish Pallottine Fathers of the Basilica, the religious order that served as caretakers of this holiest of objects. The relic was not, it must be admitted, the entire decapitated head of Saint John, but rather a model of his head made from wax, in which a large piece of the saint’s actual skullcap had been imbedded. The wax model had suffered greatly overthe centuries, softened and distorted by time, until it had taken on a strange, if not grotesque, appearance. Looks notwithstanding, its spiritual authority remained undiminished.
As every good Christian knows, Saint John the Baptist was the messenger of God sent ahead of Christ, the prophet who foretold of His coming—“He that cometh after me is mightier than I,” Saint John proclaimed, “whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.” It was Saint John who baptized Jesus in the River Jordan, and when Jesus emerged from the water, He received the revelation of God—“The heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
That morning, as he often did, Brother Padraig contemplated the life and—particularly—the martyrdom of Saint John: how the woman Salome danced before Herod Antipas in his palace in Jerusalem; how Herod promised to grant her any wish; and how she had demanded the head of Saint John. And so the Forerunner of Christ was beheaded, and his head brought to Salome on a silver platter. The head was later taken from its resting place in Jerusalem to Constantinople. In 1204, Crusaders found it and carried it to France. In 1604, the back half of the skull of that holiest of relics was sent from France to Rome for the Basilica of San Silvestro, where it was incorporated into a wax model of the complete head.
When Brother Padraig first assumed his role with the Pallottine Fathers, the holy relic was absent from the Basilica. It had been taken from the church to be restored and stabilized. Brother Padraig well remembered that joyous day when the relic was returned to the chapel, to be placed in a climate-controlled glass cube that would preserve it for millennia to come. Every morning since, Brother Padraig had visited the chapel and offered a prayer to Saint John the Baptist, Forerunner of the Lord, by candlelight, as was proper.
On this particular morning, as he gazed at the holy object, eyes tracing the contours that he knew like the back of his own hand, he noticed something not quite right about it. He wasn’t sure what it was, but the misshapen head didn’t, somehow, seem the same. He approached closerand raised the candle, but the cube sat high on a golden plinth, and he couldn’t get near enough to inspect it properly.
Brother Padraig cast about for something to climb on. The chapel had short wooden pews where the faithful could sit and pray. They were heavy, but Brother Padraig was strong, and he shifted one of them over to the base of the plinth and stood on it. Now he could look directly into the cube. Holding up the candle, he peered inside and immediately saw that something was indeed awry. The dome of the saint’s actual skull had come loose from its wax bedding.
He squinted, peering closer. It had shifted, yes—but in addition, a square-centimeter piece of the skull was missing. Had it fallen out? Holding the candle this way and that, he examined the velvet cushion on which the head rested but could not see a fallen fragment. A more thorough inspection of the missing piece revealed that it did not look like a natural break—not at all. The edges were smooth. There was a light dusting of bone particulates on the red velvet cushion, as if the head had been cut with a small saw.
Brother Padraig suddenly felt faint. With great care not to fall, he climbed down from the bench and then sat upon it, trying to steady his mind and gain control of his breathing.
It was unthinkable, this desecration, this sacrilege, this despoilation of the holy relic, a crime scarcely to be comprehended: Someone had stolen a piece of the true skull of Saint John the Baptist.
