The martyrdom of the Forerunner of the Lord in the year 32 after the Birth of Christ is narrated by the Gospels according to Matthew (Matthew 14:1-12) and Mark (Mark 6:14-29). However, the Holy tradition of the Apostolic Church has preserved some details of these events that took place shortly before the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.
After the death of Herod the Great, the Romans divided the territory of Palestine into four parts and put their protege as ruler in each part. Herod Antipas received Galilee from the Emperor Augustus. He had a legitimate wife, the daughter of the Arabian king Aref. Herod left her and cohabited with Herodias, his brother's wife. The prophet John repeatedly rebuked him, but the king did not dare to harm him, as he revered John the Baptist as a prophet and was afraid of popular anger. Nevertheless, St. John the Baptist was imprisoned by King Herod (Luke 3:19-20).
On his birthday, Herod held a rich feast, at which Salome, the daughter of Herodias, danced in front of the guests. She pleased Herod so much with these that he swore in front of the guests to give her everything she asked for. Salome went to her mother for advice. Herodias taught her daughter to ask for the head of St. John the Baptist. Herod was saddened: he was afraid of the wrath of God for the murder of the prophet, but he could not break his careless oath.
John the Baptist was beheaded and given to Salome. According to legend, the head continued to denounce Herod and Herodias. The frantic Herodias pierced the prophet's tongue with a pin and buried his head in an unclean place. But Joanna, the wife of the royal steward of Khuza, secretly took the holy head, put it in a vessel and buried it on the Mount of Olives, in one of Herod's estates. The body of St. John the Baptist was taken by his disciples and buried.
God's wrath fell upon those who decided to destroy the prophet. Salome crossed the Sycoris River in winter and fell through the ice. She was hanging with her body in the water, and her head was above the ice. Just as she had once danced with her feet on the ground, now she danced helplessly in the icy water. She hung there until the sharp ice cut her neck. Her head, cut off by a sharp ice floe, was brought to Herod and Herodias, as the head of John the Baptist had once been brought to them, but her body was never found. The Arabian king Aref, in revenge for the dishonor of his daughter, the wife of Herod the fourth ruler, moved his troops against the wicked king and defeated him. The Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Caligula (37-41), in anger, exiled Herod along with Herodias to Gaul and then to Spain. There they were swallowed up by the gaping earth.
Many years after the execution of John the Baptist, when the land in which the vessel with the holy head of the Forerunner rested became the property of the pious nobleman Innocent, this vessel was found during the construction of the church, Innocent learned about the greatness of the shrine from the miracles and signs that had been there. But before his death, fearing that the shrine would not be reviled by the Gentiles, he again hid it in the same place.
Many years have passed, and the church built by Innocent has fallen into disrepair. During the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great, Saint John the Baptist appeared twice to two monks who came to worship in Jerusalem and indicated the location of his honest head. Having unearthed the shrine, the monks put it in a camel's hair bag and went home, but on the way they met an unfamiliar potter who was entrusted with carrying a precious burden. Then the Forerunner himself appeared to the potter and ordered him to flee from the negligent monks along with the burden. In the potter's family, the honest chapter was kept and passed down from generation to generation in a sealed vessel, until it was taken over by the priest Eustathius, infected with the heresy of Arianism. Using the miraculous power emanating from the head, he seduced many people into heresy. When his blasphemy was revealed, he fled, burying the shrine in a cave near Emessa, hoping to take it back later. But God did not allow this. Pious monks settled in the cave, and a monastery was founded.
In 452, St. John pointed out to the archimandrite of the monastery Markell in a vision the place where his head was hidden, and it was rediscovered. The shrine was moved to Emessa, and then to Constantinople. The feast of the first and second miraculous finding of the head of John the Baptist is celebrated by the Church on March 8 (February 24, art.
During the time of iconoclasm, the head of John the Baptist was secretly taken out of Constantinople and hidden in Koman (near Sukhumi), where St. John Chrysostom died in 407, returning from exile. Only after the VII Ecumenical Council, which restored Orthodox veneration of icons in 787, according to legend, Patriarch Ignatius received an indication of the location of the shrine during night prayer. By order of Emperor Michael III, an embassy was sent to Komany, which around 850 found the head of John the Baptist in the place indicated by the patriarch. After that, the head was moved to Constantinople and was laid in the court church; part of it is kept on Mount Athos. The feast of the third finding of the head of St. John the Baptist is June 7 (May 25, art.).
In memory of the beheading of the head of St. John the Baptist, the Church has established a holiday and strict fasting as an expression of Christian sorrow over the violent death of the great Prophet.