Elizabeth fled with her son John the Baptist when he was about eighteen months old into the wilderness, where after forty days she died. His father Zacharias, at the time of his ministration, which happened about this time, was killed in the court of the Temple. According to the tradition of the Greeks, God deputed an angel to be his guardian and nourisher, as he had formerly done to Ishmael and Elias.
DEATH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
The Jews ascribed to the murder of John the Baptist the fate that befell Herod and Salome. Herod, in journeying to Rome four years after Christ’s death, was deprived of his tetrarchate and banished along with Herodias to Gaul, and they died in great misery at Lyons or in Spain. Salome in crossing the ice in winter fell into the water; and the ice, after parting, joined again, and decapitated her. John the Baptist’s disciples honourably buried his body. It was said the Pagans rifled the tomb and burned the body in the reign of Julian the Apostate; but some of the bones were sent to St. Athanasius at Alexandria. In 396 Theodosius built a great church in that city in honour of the Baptist, and there the holy relics were deposited. The head of the Baptist was discovered in 453, and in 800 it was conveyed to Constantinople; in 1203 the lower jaw was taken to France, and is preserved to this day. Part of the head is in St. Sylvester’s Church at Rome.
BURIAL OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
Jeremy Taylor says that John was imprisoned in the castle of Macheruns, where Herod sent for him and caused him to be beheaded. His head Herodias buried in her own palace, thinking to secure it against a reunion, lest it should again disturb her unlawful lusts and disquiet Herod’s conscience. But the body the disciples of John gathered up, and carried it with honour and sorrow, and buried it in Sebaste, in the confines of Samaria, making his grave between the bodies of Elizeus and Abdias the prophets. And about this time was the Passover of the Jews.
CHURCHES DEDICATED TO THE BAPTIST.
Temples were dedicated to John the Baptist in the first ages of Christianity, the earliest and most celebrated being that known at Rome as St. John Lateran. The next most celebrated church dedicated to St. John is the Baptistery at Florence, dedicated by the Princess Theodolunda about 589. In this baptistery every child born in Florence of the Roman Catholic faith must by law be baptised. This renowned church is decorated both inside and without with miracles of art.
PONTIUS PILATE.
Pilate, after ten years of service, was disgraced and called to Rome. One of that cloud of false witnesses who sprang up every year told the people of Samaria that he knew where the sacred vessels lay hid, and fixed a day when they should meet him in thousands on Gerizim to dig them up. Hearing of this movement, Pilate sent troops into the highways and villages round Shechem; and these soldiers, setting upon the people, slew the innocent with the guilty, and put the whole body of Samaritans to flight. A great cry for vengeance arose in Samaria; the Senate sent an embassy to Antioch; and Vitellius, a man of craft and policy, wishing to stand well with the Jews, put the government of Samaria and Judæa into fresh hands, and commanded Pilate to report himself in Rome. Here we lose sight of him. Legends make him a suicide—some in a Roman prison, others in Gaul, and others again near the Lake of Lucerne, on the summit of the mountain which bears the name of Mount Pilatus.