According to the legend, King Abgarus received the Image of Edessa from the apostle Thaddeus.

According to Christian legend, the Image of Edessa, (known to Orthodox Christians as the Mandylion), was a holy relic consisting of a square or rectangle of cloth upon which a miraculous image of the face of Jesus was imprinted — the first icon ("image"). The two-dimensional work of art depicted in this image is in the public domain in the United States and in those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Christianity. ... Separate articles treat Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Orthodox Judaism. ... This article is about Jesus of Nazareth. ... Christ the Redeemer (1410s, by Andrei Rublev) An icon (from Greek , eikon, image) is an image, picture, or representation; it is a sign or likeness that stands for an object by signifying or representing it, or by analogy, as in semiotics; in computers an icon is a symbol on the...

According to the legend, King Abgarus of Edessa wrote to Jesus, asking him to come cure him of an illness. The legend was first recorded in the early 4th century by Eusebius of Caesarea (E.H. 1.13.5 and .22), who said that he had transcribed and translated the actual letter in the Syriac chancery documents of the king of Edessa. Instead, the apostle Thaddaeus is said to have come to Edessa, bearing a cloth featuring Jesus' facial features, by the virtues of which the king was miraculously healed. Since Jesus was living at the time, this image would seem to have no connection with his alleged burial cloth, the Shroud of Turin. The vicissitudes of the Edessa image between the first century and its location in his own time are not reported by Eusebius. The materials, according to the skeptical scholar Robert Eisenman, "are very widespread in the Syriac sources with so many multiple developments and divergences that it is hard to believe they could all be based on Eusebius' poor efforts" (Eisenman 1997 p 862). Tenth-century icon of Abgar with the mandylion, the image of Christ Abgar V or Abgarus V of Edessa (4 BC - AD 7 and AD 13 - 50) is a historical ruler of the kingdom of Osroene, holding his capital at Edessa. ... Eusebius of Caesarea Eusebius of Caesarea (c. ... The Twelve Apostles (in Koine Greek απόστολος apostolos [1], someone sent forth/sent out, an emissary) were probably Galilean Jewish men (10 names are Aramaic, 4 names are Greek) chosen from among the disciples, who were sent forth by Jesus of Nazareth to preach the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles... Thaddeus was one of the Seventy Apostles of Christ, not to be confused with Thaddeus of the Twelve Apostles. ... The first photo of the Shroud of Turin, taken in 1898, had the surprising feature that the image on the negative was clearer than the positive image. ...

History

The legend of the mandylion as it is known today is the product of centuries of development. The first and earliest version involves a letter written by King Abgar of Edessa to Jesus, asking him to come cure him of an illness. It is found in the History of the Church (1.13.5-1.13.22) written by Eusebius of Caesarea who claimed that he had transcribed and translated the actual letter in the Syriac chancery documents of the king of Edessa. In this earliest account, Christ replies by letter, saying that when he had completed his earthly mission and ascended, he would send a disciple to heal Abgar (and does so). It is noteworthy that in this first account there is no mention of an image of Jesus. That was a later addition to the story. Tenth_century icon of Abgar with the mandylion, the image of Christ Abgar V or Abgarus V of Edessa (born between 4 BC - AD 7 and reigned AD 13 -50) is a historical ruler of the kingdom of Osroene, holding his capital at Edessa. ... Eusebius of Caesarea Eusebius of Caesarea (c. ...

In AD 384, a pilgrim from either Gaul or Spain, Egeria, was given a personal tour by the Bishop of Edessa, who gave her many marvellous accounts of miracles that had saved Edessa from the Persians and put into her hands transcripts of the correspondence of Abgarus and Jesus, with embellishments. Part of her accounts of her travels, in letters to her sisterhood, survive. "She naïvely supposed that this version was more complete than the shorter letter which she had read in a translation at home, presumably one brought back to the Far West by an earlier pilgrim." Her escorted tour, accompanied by a translator, was thorough; the bishop is quoted: "Now let us go to the gate where the messenger Ananias came in with the letter of which I have been telling you."(Palmer). There was no mention of an image reported by Egeria, who spent three days inspecting every corner of Edessa and the environs. In early Chistian history, Egeria, also known as Aetheria, is the name of a woman who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land about 381–384, taking about four years to do it, and who wrote a long letter to her beloved circle of women at home (probably along the...

The next stage of development appears in the Doctrine of Addai [Thaddeus], c. 400, which introduces a court painter among a delegation sent by Abgar to Jesus, who paints a portrait of Jesus to take back to his master:

When Hannan, the keeper of the archives, saw that Jesus spoke thus to him, by virtue of being the king's painter, he took and painted a likeness of Jesus with choice paints, and brought with him to Abgar the king, his master. And when Abgar the king saw the likeness, he received it with great joy, and placed it with great honor in one of his palatial houses. (Addai 13)

The image is said to have surfaced in 525, during a flood of the Daisan, a tributary stream of the Euphrates. This flood is mentioned in the writings of the court historian Procopius of Caesarea. In the course of the reconstruction work, a cloth bearing the facial features of a man was discovered hidden in the wall above one of the gates of Edessa. Events Bernicia settled by the Angles Ethiopia conquers Yemen The Daisan river, a tributary of the Euphrates, floods Edessa and within a couple of hours fills the entire city except for the highest parts. ... Look up flood in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Euphrates (the traditional Greek name, Arabic: الفرات Al-Furat, Armenian: ÔµÖƒÖ€Õ¡Õ¿ Yeá¹—rat, Hebrew: פְּרָת Perath, Kurdish: Ferat, Azeri: FÉ™rat, Old Persian: Ufrat, Syriac: ܦܪܘܬ or ܦܪܬ Frot or Prâth, Turkish: Fırat, Akkadian: Pu-rat-tu) is the westernmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia (the other being the... The writings of Procopius of Caesarea (500 ? - 565 ?), in Palestine, are the primary source of information for the rule of the emperor Justinian. ...

By 544, when Procopius recorded the recovery of Edessa from the Persians, he attributed the event to the letter sent from Jesus to Abgar. Yet in 593 Evagrius attributed the same event to a miraculous "God-made image," a miraculous imprint of the face of Jesus upon a cloth. It was this last and latest stage of the legend that became accepted in Eastern Orthodoxy and was mistakenly regarded as historical. Evagrius or Euagrius was also names of several bishops and scholar. ...

Evagrius Scholasticus mentions in his Ecclesiastical History the image of Edessa discovered in 544, that was "created by God, and not produced by the hands of man". This idea of an icon that was Acheiropoietos (Αχειροποίητος, literally "not-made-by-hand") is a separate enrichment of the original legend: similar legends of supernatural origins have accrued to other Orthodox icons. Evagrius Scholasticus, an ecclesiastical historian, who wrote six books, embracing a period of 163 years, from the second Council of Ephesus AD 431 to the 12th year of the emperor Maurice I, AD 594. ... Events Belisarius is sent back to Italy to once more fight the Ostrogoths who have been making reconquests in the area. ... Image of the Saviour Not Made by Hand: a traditional Orthodox iconography in the interpretation of Simon Ushakov (1658). ...

The Mandylion of Edessa from the private chapel of the pope in the Vatican. Photography taken in the pavilion of the Holy See during the EXPO 2000 in Hannover, Germany.

The Mandylion disappeared again after the Persians conquered Edessa in 609. An Arab legend, related to historian Andrew Palmer when he visited Urfa (Edessa) in 1999, relates that the towel (mendil) of Jesus was thrown into a well in what is today the city's Great Mosque. The Christian tradition is at variance with this, recounting how in 944 it was exchanged for a group of Muslim prisoners— at that time the Image of Edessa was taken to Constantinople where it was received amidst great celebration by emperor Romanus I, who deposited it in the Palatine Chapel. It remained there until the Crusaders sacked the city in 1204 and carried off many of its treasures to western Europe - though the "Image of Edessa" is not mentioned in this context in any contemporary document. This relic seems to have been in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris until it disappeared during the French Revolution. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1316x2060, 2267 KB)The Mandylion of Edessa from the private chapel of the pope in the Vatican. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1316x2060, 2267 KB)The Mandylion of Edessa from the private chapel of the pope in the Vatican. ... Map of Germany showing Hanover Hanover (in German: Hannover [haˈnoːfɐ]), on the river Leine, is the capital of the state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), Germany. ... The Persian Empire was a series of historical empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau (Irān - Land of the Aryans[1]) and beyond. ... Events The Pantheon is consecrated to the Virgin Mary and all saints (or 610). ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... Events City of Algiers (re)founded by the Zirid king Buluggin ibn Ziri Abu Yazid launches a rebellion against the Fatimids in the Aures mountains. ... Map of Constantinople. ... Contemporary coin of Romanus I. Romanus I Lecapenus (Romanos I Lakapenos, 870 - 948), who shared the throne of the Byzantine Empire with Constantine VII and exercised all the real power from 919 to 944, was admiral of the Byzantine fleet on the Danube River when, hearing of the defeat of... The Crusaders (formerly the Canterbury Crusaders) are a New Zealand Rugby Union team based in Christchurch, New Zealand that competes in the Super 14 (formerly the Super 12). ... // Events February - Byzantine emperor Alexius IV is overthrown in a revolution, and Alexius V is proclaimed emperor. ... La Sainte-Chapelle (French for The Holy Chapel) is a Gothic chapel on the Ile de la Cité in the heart of Paris, France. ... The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a vital period in the history of France and Europe as a whole. ...

Thus we can trace the development of the legend from a letter, but no image in Eusebius, to an image painted by a court painter in Addai; then to a miracle caused by the letter in Procopius, which becomes a miracle caused by a miraculously-created image supernaturally made when Jesus pressed a cloth to his wet face in Evagrius.

The later legend of the image recounts that because the successors of Abgar reverted to paganism, the bishop placed the miraculous image inside a wall, and setting a burning lamp before the image, he sealed them up behind a tile; that the image was later found again, after a vision, on the very night of the Persian invasion, and that not only had it miraculously reproduced itself on the tile, but the same lamp was still burning before it; further, that the bishop of Edessa used a fire into which oil flowing from the image was poured to destroy the Persians.

This long-developing legend of a miraculous first image of Jesus that appeared on a cloth he pressed to his wet face, was adopted by the Eastern Orthodox church not as legend, but as historical fact. Countless reproductions of what was considered to be the image were painted as icons; in the 19th century many reproductions were carried by the Russian armies of Tsar Nicholas II. According to Robin Cormack, almost every Byzantine church contained a representation of the image by the beginning of the Iconoclastic period.^[1] Because the miraculous image of the later legend was believed to be not made by humans but by God, it is called acheiropoietos in Greek -- "Not Made by Hands." Image of the Saviour Not Made by Hand: a traditional Orthodox iconography in the interpretation of Simon Ushakov (1658). ...

John of Damascus (died 749) mentions the image in his anti-iconoclastic work On Holy Images [1], quoting a tradition that Abgarus had requested an image of Jesus and Jesus himself put a cloth to his face to produce the image. The cloth is described as being a "strip", or oblong cloth, rather than a square, as other accounts hold. John of Damascus (Latin: Iohannes Damascenus or Johannes Damascenus also known as John Damascene, Chrysorrhoas, streaming with gold—i. ...

Other documents from the 6th century— it is said— in the Vatican Library and the University of Leiden, Netherlands, seem to suggest another image at Edessa. A 10th century codex, Codex Vossianus Latinus Q 69 found by Gino Zaninotto in the Vatican Library contains an 8th-century account saying that an imprint of Christ's whole body was left on a canvas kept in a church in Edessa: it quotes a man called Smera in Constantinople: "King Abgar received a cloth on which one can see not only a face but the whole body" (in Latin: [non tantum] faciei figuram sed totius corporis figuram cernere poteris)¹. This image is apparently not the same as the mandylion whose widely-disseminated and familiar iconic image is of a face alone. The Vatican Library (Latin: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana) is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. ... Leiden University in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. ... The Vatican Library (Latin: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana) is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...

However, some modern researchers have suggested that by folding the Shroud of Turin it is possible to display a rectangle of fabric showing only the face, suggesting that the Shroud and the Mandylion are in fact one and the same relic. This interpretation also reinforces the connections between the Image and the Holy Shroud now in Turin, of which no record exists before the fourteenth century. The first photo of the Shroud of Turin, taken in 1898, had the surprising feature that the image on the negative was clearer than the positive image. ...

Notes

1. Codex Vossianus Latinus, Q69 and Vatican Library, Codex 5696, fol.35

See also

• Shroud of Turin
• Relics attributed to Jesus
• Images of Jesus
• Veil of Veronica, the other "true image" (vera icon)

The first photo of the Shroud of Turin, taken in 1898, had the surprising feature that the image on the negative was clearer than the positive image. ... There are many relics attributed to Jesus that people believe or believed to be authentic relics of the Gospel accounts. ... There are no undisputed historical images of Jesus; he sat for no portraits which are preserved and of unquestioned authenticity and undoubted provenance. ... Veronicas veil, the Volto Santo, in Manoppello. ...

External links

• Andrew Palmer's essay on Edessa in Golden Horn: a Journal of Byzantium summer, 1998
• Icons of the Mandylion (mostly Russian)
• Is the Shroud of Turin the Image of Edessa

References

1. ^ Robin Cormack, "Writing in Gold, Byzantine Society and its Icons", 1985, George Philip, London, ISBN 054001085-5

• Eusebius of Caesarea. Epistle of Jesus Christ to Abgarus King of Edessa Historia Ecclesiae
• Eisenman, Robert., 1997. James the Brother of Jesus. (Viking Penguin). In part a deconstruction of the legends surrounding Agbar/Abgar.