Since May 2002, an icon with a fascinating history has been on display in the Blue Chapel of the National Museum of Montenegro at Cetinje. The provenance of this icon links with the alleged right hand of St John the Baptist and with that people say to be a fragment of Christ's cross.

They are now in the small church within the Cetinje Monastery. The painter of the icon, called the Madonna of Philermos, is unknown but there has been some speculation that it was St Luke the Evangelist.

Johns Knights Hospitallers

It seems to have been Hellenic, acquired by the Order of St Johns Knights Hospitallers from Jerusalem. There the order came by some Christian relics. In 1187, after the fall of Jerusalem when the knights transferred their headquarters to the island of Rhodes, they carried these treasures with them.

After the Turks conquered Rhodes in 1522 the Knights moved on via the various Mediterranean havens. These included Crete and Malta, where they became known as the Knights of Malta. All the while they retained the holy relics (in common with Montenegro, the tiny island of Malta, also in the sultan's sights, always succeeded in resisting Turkish subjugation).

Until 1798 the Madonna of Philermos was on display in a dedicated chapel in the conventional church of the order. The hand of St John the Baptist was placed in the oratory of the same church. But when in that year Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Malta, the Grand Master of the order, Ferdinand Hampesh, was given permission to carry these relics to Rome. The Knights were to establish a further residence here. Shortly afterward Tsar Pavle I contrived to become the new Grand Master of the knights and Hampesh passed on the relics, which were then placed in a convent at Vorontsov Palace in Russia.

The journey continues

Thereafter the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church celebrated the receiving of these sacred objects in St Petersburg every October. Surly a measure of their value. After the 1917 revolution the mother of the murdered tsar took them for protection. She carried them via Crimea, London, and Denmark. They went to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in exile who deposited them for safekeeping in the Karađorđević royal chapel in Belgrade.

In 1941, after German troops occupied Serbia, they moved to the Ostrog Monastery where King Peter II Karađorđević of Yugoslavia had taken shelter. In 1952 Montenegrin police searching for the gold that King Petar II would have taken to Ostrog. They found the relics instead and passed them to the National Museum at Cetinje.