CHAPTER XIII

OF THE PLACE WHERE OUR LORD WAS BAPTIZED

IN the place where our Lord was baptized, stands a wooden cross as high as a man’s neck, and sometimes covered by the water. From it to the further, that is, the eastern bank, is a sling’s cast; and on the nearer bank is a large monastery of St. John the Baptist standing on a rising ground, and famous for a very handsome church, from which they descend to the cross by a bridge supported on arches, to offer up their prayers. In the further part of the river is a quadrangular church, supported on four stone arches, covered with burnt tiles, where our Lord’s clothes are said to have been kept whilst he was baptized. Men do not enter this church, but come together round it from all quarters; from the place where the Jordan leaves the Sea of Galilee, to where it enters the Dead Sea, a journey of eight days.