The road (is) thence to the city of Samaria, the chief place of that country, and in that city were twelve (leg. ten) tribes of the children of Israel, and therein John the Baptist was buried between the two other prophets, namely Heliseus and Abdon. Howbeit he was beheaded in the castle of Maicin (Macheron), beside the Dead Sea, and his disciples bore bis body thither. And the Emperor Julian the Apostate ordered bis bones to be taken up and to be burned completely; but the finger which he had stretched out to the Lord through bis mother's womb, when he said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’, that could never be burned. The virgin Saint Thekla brought it to the hills (of Sebaste), and there great honour was shewn to it. And the Emperor Theodosius found John's head in the wall of that place, and he ordered it to be taken out, together with a cloth wrapped round it and full of blood; and he sent it thus to Constantinople; and thenceforward one half of it is there and the other half in the church of Sylvester in Rome. And the platter into which John's head was put after it had been smitten off is at Genoa, and it receives great honour from that country. And some men say that John's head and the platter are in Picardy, and others say that it is not John's head that is there, but the head of a holy bishop, who dwelt in that country.