The relic was a preserved right hand and forearm reputed to have belonged to St John the Baptist, the patron saint of their Order. John was remembered as an austere, courageous and uncompromising man. He lived largely in the wilderness of Judaea, wore clothing made from camel hair with a leather belt, and preached truths to power that eventually cost him his head.
According to Christian tradition, this was the very hand with which John baptised Jesus Christ in the River Jordan. Its presence must have given the Knights a powerful sense of divine protection as they embarked upon their hazardous missions.
Today, the magnificent gilded reliquary remains in St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, displayed behind glass. The relic itself, however, is no longer there. The story of its extraordinary journey takes some telling.
Before Malta: Rhodes
Before coming to Malta, the Knights had been based on Rhodes. An inventory compiled there in 1483 records a relic described as the right arm of St John the Baptist.
When the Ottomans forced the Knights to surrender Rhodes in 1522, the relic they venerated as St John’s arm travelled with them during their years of wandering through the Mediterranean. When the Order finally settled in Malta in 1530, the relic was initially kept in the Church of St Lawrence in Birgu.
Thirty-five years later, Malta faced the Great Siege of 1565. The Knights, assisted by Maltese soldiers and civilians, successfully defended the island against a much larger Ottoman invasion force. The siege prompted them to construct the heavily fortified city of Valletta as their new capital.
Between 1573 and 1577, they built the Conventual Church of St John as the principal church of their Order. The relic was installed there and became one of their most sacred possessions. Today, the church is called St John’s Co-Cathedral because Malta has two churches sharing cathedral rank: St Paul’s Cathedral in Mdina, the ancient and principal cathedral, and St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta.
A magnificent reliquary
In 1689, Grand Master Gregorio Carafa commissioned an ornate ceremonial reliquary for St John’s hand. Designed and cast in Rome by the Baroque artist Ciro Ferri, it was made from bronze with gilded-silver ornamentation.
It originally occupied a prominent position upon the altar in the Oratory of St John—the same oratory that contains Caravaggio’s extraordinarily powerful painting, The Beheading of St John the Baptist.
When Napoleon captured Malta and expelled the Knights in 1798, Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch was permitted to take the sacred hand and several other important relics with him. Ferri’s large ceremonial reliquary, however, remained in Malta.
From Malta to Montenegro
In 1799, the hand was presented to Tsar Paul I of Russia, who had been elected Grand Master of the Order. It was placed in the imperial chapel at Gatchina and subsequently became part of the religious ceremonial life of the Russian court.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the relic was removed from Russia. It passed through the care of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in Denmark and later through Berlin before being entrusted to King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. In 1932 it was taken to Belgrade and kept in the royal chapel at Dedinje.
During the Second World War, the relic was hidden at Ostrog Monastery in Montenegro. It was later recovered and eventually placed in Cetinje Monastery, where the claimed hand of St John the Baptist remains today.
From St John the Baptist's burial to Rhodes
But how did the relic supposedly travel from the grave of St John the Baptist to Rhodes in the first place?
After John was executed, his disciples reportedly buried his body at Sebaste in Samaria (now called Sebastia, near Nablus in the West Bank.
Christian tradition relates that St Luke the Evangelist later attempted to remove the body but was able to obtain only John’s right hand or arm—the limb believed to have baptised Jesus. Luke is said to have carried it to his native city of Antioch.
Antioch had been under Muslim rule for centuries when, in 956, the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII reportedly arranged for the relic to be removed secretly. A cleric named Job is said to have carried it first to Chalcedon and then to Constantinople, where it was preserved among the sacred treasures of the Byzantine imperial palace.
After Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, many of its Christian relics passed into the sultan’s treasury. In 1484, Sultan Bayezid II sent an arm identified as that of St John the Baptist to Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson on Rhodes. An Ottoman ambassador formally presented it to the Knights.
A mystery remains – one arm or two?
There is, however, a problem with this apparently straightforward history. The Knights’ inventory of 1483 records an arm of St John on Rhodes one year before Bayezid presented them with another one. The Knights therefore appear to have possessed two claimed arms after 1484. This arm below, is reported to be from St John the Baptist is in Topkapi Palace treasury, Istanbul, Turkey.
Numerous other churches and monasteries have claimed to possess an arm, hand or finger of St John the Baptist. It is consequently impossible to establish with certainty whether the relic that travelled from Rhodes to Malta—and ultimately to Montenegro—was Bayezid’s gift or the arm already held by the Knights.
Some stages are supported by historical records; others belong principally to religious tradition. Together, however, they form the remarkable story of a sacred object carried across continents, empires, wars and revolutions for almost two thousand years.
