John Long
Introduction
The Shroud’s Earlier History is a four-part review of the historical evidence for the Shroud of Turin from the first century to the beginning of the 15th. In Part 1, we saw that a mysterious object slowly emerged in antiquity as a cloth on which Jesus supposedly imprinted His face, and which was then sent to a king in the northern Mesopotamian city of Edessa. But during the sixth through tenth centuries, additional evidence would further indicate that this was, in fact, a large, folded cloth depicting Christ’s full, bloodied body.
Face Cloth or Folded Shroud?
The eighth through mid-tenth centuries were to make the Holy Image of Edessa the most famous icon in the Christian world, offering clues as to its physical appearance, but also reflecting predictable contradictions stemming from the great secrecy in which it was kept. John of Damascus (d. 749), a defender of image veneration, wrote “he [Jesus] took a cloth (rakos) and applied it to his face and impressed on it his own likeness (charakter), which is preserved until the present day” (Cameron 1998: 40). This description, very similar to and perhaps derived from the Acts of Thaddeus, appears to be the most common way of understanding it during these centuries. Pilgrims traveling to the Holy Lands and Syrian-educated churchmen migrating westward would undoubtedly spread what they heard about the Image. It is said that Pope Stephen (752–57) remarked “that he had often heard the story from those coming from the eastern parts of how Christ imprinted his face on a linen cloth and sent it to Abgar” (Chrysostomides 1997: xxxiii). Texts from outside greater Syria mentioning the Image are few before the later eighth century, but the great iconoclastic controversy (726–843) gave a major boost to its notoriety. Iconodules (“image lovers”) used it to argue Christ sanctioned pictures by making one himself. In the image-friendly atmosphere of the Second Council of Nicaea (787) the Edessa Icon was noted several times, and Evagrius’ history was used to help explain its past. The assembled ecclesiastics were concerned “with establishing the proper degree of respect for religious images-veneration (proskynesis), but not worship (lateria)” (Cameron 1998: 45). Theodore Abu Qurrah, from the same monastery and with the same theological views as John of Damascus, wrote (very early in the ninth century), “As for the image of Christ…it is honored by veneration especially in our city, Edessa, the blessed, at definite times, with its own feasts and pilgrimages” (Cameron 1998: 46). By the early tenth century Alexandrian Patriarch Eutychius assigned a lofty status to the Image, writing:
the most wonderful of His relics which Christ has bequeathed to us is a napkin in the Church of ar-Ruha [i.e., Edessa]…. With this Christ wiped His face and there was fixed on it a clear image, not made by painting or drawing or engraving and not changing (Cameron 1983: 90).
Eutychius uses the Arabic word mandil, usually understood to mean a handkerchief-sized cloth; other writers sometimes used “sweat-cloth” (soudarion), again suggesting modest size. These writers certainly imply that Christ’s imprint (ektypoma) was only of his face, though, as we will see, the accounts of its size may result, in part, from a mistaken conclusion resulting from only the face being displayed, with the remainder folded under.
The new style Christ images produced during these centuries appear to have a strong relationship to the Shroud face and Edessa Image. Wilson believes that artists copied the facial area
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within the circular opening of the Image’s slipcover and used it for a variety of different Jesus pictures (1979: 141). Vignon had already deduced that the numerous Pantocrator (Christ Enthroned) pictures had a strong resemblance to the Shroud face, with many “Vignon markings” to be seen (Wilson 1991: 161). One in particular, in Rome’s Catacomb of St. Pontianus, dated to the seventh century, caught his attention. It has a very unnaturalistic open topped square between Christ’s eyebrows (Wilson 1991: 167–68) as well as such other Shroud face characteristics as a raised eyebrow, transverse line on forehead, and long nose with one especially enlarged nostril (see illus. VIII in Wilson 1991). Two particularly noteworthy sixth century Christ Enthroned pictures in Rome, the mosaic in St. John Lateran and a painted panel in the Sancta Sanctorum Chapel of the Lateran Place, were called acheiropoietos, strongly suggesting their model was an original “not made by hands” image. No representations of the Image in its frame are known to exist before the tenth century, but certain works do appear to capture the Christ face in a circular halo like seen on later depictions of the Icon. Wilson identified two pilgrims’ flasks from the late sixth century (believed to be based on a lost mosaic from Jerusalem) and a seventh century icon of the saints Sergius and Bacchus in Kiev, each having a rigid front-facing face in a circular field (Wilson 1979: 142–43). The famous Veronica portrait, a prized Vatican relic, may date as early as the eighth century (Wilson believes early 11th), and is frequently understood by scholars to be a derivative of the Edessa Image (Meagher 2003). The commonly seen Veronica image showing a very naturalistic face was almost certainly not what the icon originally looked like; better copies showed a more blurry, impressionistic texture similar to the Shroud (see illus. VII in Wilson 1991). In the church of the Holy Cross in Telovani, Georgia (former USSR), there are also the faint remains of a mural dated to the eighth or ninth century with the inscription “Holy Face of God.” It represents what was once the face of Christ in a halo, probably a representation of the actual Edessa Icon, but without the frame (Skhirtladze 1997: 72–73). All these demonstrate the impact the Edessa Image was having on Christian art.
The superficial view during this period, that the Edessa Icon was a small cloth containing just Jesus’ face, is challenged by other descriptions obviously dependent on a more intimate knowledge of the icon (someone’s personal observation) and suggesting a semblance to the Turin Shroud. Mention has already been made of Wilson’s notice of tetradiplon in the Acts of Thaddeus. It surely is remarkable that anyone should be concerned whether Christ’s towel was folded or not, and especially that it was “doubled in four,” occurring in a short story not concerned primarily with the Image but rather the city’s evangelization. It strongly encourages the opinion that there was an eyewitness to that unusual feature, a feature that suddenly becomes very sensible if the cloth were large and contained a face at the same position as on the Turin Shroud.
Andrew of Crete in the early eighth century describes the Image as “the imprint…of the bodily [somatikou] appearance” of Christ, an interesting departure from those versions mentioning only a face (Scavone 2001: 14). And if in fact the cloth had to cover a whole body, did anyone believe it was larger than a mandil? In a second reference, John Damascene reports Christ pressed his facial image onto messenger Hanan’s himation, a Greek outer garment measuring about two yards wide and three yards long (and similar in size to the Shroud) (Scavone 2006: 20; Drews 1984: 39). The image color and texture also has been hinted at vaguely in the story of Athanasius bar Gumoye’s painter “dulling” the colors. In the ninth century, George the Monk (a writer in Constantinople) attributes to Patriarch Germanos, 100 years earlier, a description of the Image’s face as “sweat-soaked” (Wilson 1979: 115). Other contemporary texts also use this same description, one which anyone familiar with the colors of icons at the time might have used to characterize the Shroud’s oddly diffuse, monochrome, moist-like appearance. The tenth century Moslem historian Massoudi, who apparently knew little of the Abgar tale, understood the cloth was used to dry Christ after emerging from baptism; Scavone opines, “the historical elements remain still simple, natural, and comprehensible: Christ, a [necessarily] large cloth, an application on a damp body” (2001: 27). Another researcher also notices that Massoudi knew that the Icon “circulated” before its arrival in the Edessa cathedral (Palmer, 1988: 130), a tantalizing hint that more was once known about its pre-sixth century history. But all these references are only hints; what is needed for a stronger identification of the Icon with the Shroud is a very plain assertion that there was a full-body image, and that it depicted Christ’s Passion. And such evidence exists.
When Wilson did his research in the 60s and 70s he discounted any substantial evidence indicating that the Image of Edessa’s Syrian guardians knew the truth behind the hidden folds in the Icon’s frame. He had concluded that the cloth had been folded
John Long
What did Archdeacon Gregory see on August 16th, 944 AD?
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John Long
Author’s conception of Gregory illustrating features of the Edessa Image to his audience. Conventional (skeptical) wisdom has it that the Edessa Image (later to be called the Mandylion—“small towel”) was a little cloth with only Jesus’ painted face. However, even before the cloth arrived in Constantinople in 944, older texts had described it as an “himation” (2X3 yard outer garment), not painted but consisting of Jesus’ “sweat” and faint in appearance, and (in at least one text) consisting of his whole bodily imprint that in some way also suggested Christ’s Passion. On August 16th, 944 the Icon was actually on display before a privileged audience in Constantinople. A lecture was given by a priest, Gregory, and in a surviving copy of his text he appears to point to not only the “sweaty” face but also a bloody side wound —eyewitness evidence for an object remarkably like the Shroud of Turin.
and framed in Abgar’s time and remained that way until the 11th century. A 12th century text from the monk Odericus Vitalis reporting a full-body image was one of the earliest evidences of the truth’s disclosure. However, von Dobschutz had already observed that this and other Latin documents reporting a full-body image from about this time could trace their source to a Syriac text from about 800. In 1993, Italian classical scholar Gino Zaninotto announced the discovery of such an earlier Latin text from the tenth century, Vossianus Latinus Q69. These related manuscripts contain the “Oldest Latin Abgar Legend,” asserting that the Edessa Image was of Jesus’ full body and probably derived from a Syriac text even before 769 (Scavone 2006: 21). In them Jesus denies Abgar’s request for a visitation, but writes he will send him a linen “on which you will discover not only the features of my face, but a divinely copied configuration of my entire body.” The story then continued:
[Jesus] spread out his entire body on a linen cloth that was white as snow. On this cloth…the glorious features that lordly face, and the majestic form of his whole body were so divinely transferred….This linen, which until now remains uncorrupted by the passage of time, is kept in Syrian Mesopotamia at the city of Edessa, in a great cathedral (Drews 1984: 46–47).
Assuming the original “Oldest Latin Abgar Legend” source to have been an earlier Syriac text, it elevates the Edessa Image’s true nature, one consistent with the Shroud image, to a legitimate possibility. Additionally, elsewhere in some of these tracts (e.g., Vos. Lat. Q69) is the barest suggestion that in some vague way the cloth might have had a connection to Christ’s Passion:
on Easter it used to change its appearance according to different ages: it showed itself in infancy in the first hour of the day, childhood at the third hour, adolescence at the sixth hour, and the fullness of age at the ninth hour, when the Son of God came to His Passion…and…cross (Scavone 1999: 5).
A wounded, bloodied, whole-body image such as on the Shroud that was slowly raised from its chest during a day-long Easter ritual might explain this strange passage, and has
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suggested itself to a few Shroud scholars. But only additional evidence, hopefully from eyewitnesses, could clarify these mysteries. By later in the tenth century four such witnesses emerge who provide that clarification.
From Edessa to Constantinople
Constantinople and its empire endured periods of decline and resurgence like most great states. In the early seventh century Emperor Herakleios had just restored Byzantium by a series of military victories when militant Islam undid many of his successes, including placing Edessa under Moslem control in 639. After enduring two Arab sieges of Constantinople and making a modest recovery, the empire was wracked in parts of the eighth and ninth centuries by a serious internal strife, iconoclasm (“image breaking”). Iconodules venerated religious pictures, while iconoclasts were opposed to the practice, often supported by the emperor’s police powers. Many thousands suffered injury or banishment and much of the empire’s religious art was destroyed. Iconodules eventually triumphed in 843 and, once again, the pictures of saints adorned homes, churches, and monasteries. The imperial family played an important role in Byzantine religious life and needed the prestige major icons and relics would bring. To celebrate 100 years of the “Triumph of Orthodoxy,” the aging Byzantine emperor, Romanus Lacapenus, dispatched an army in 943 to wrench the famous Image from Edessan hands. As Moslem martial resources were in decline, no serious opposition prevented a Byzantine siege and a likely fall of the city. Although Islam was also iconoclastic, Moslem rulers enjoyed the fame and prosperity pilgrims brought to a
National Geographic
Constantinople was certainly the greatest city in early medieval Europe, capital for a powerful eastern Mediterranean state, and principal center for the Eastern Orthodox Church. Having settled the Iconoclastic struggle in favor of the permissible use of icons, in 943 the Byzantines desired the most famous image in all Christendom: the Holy Image of Edessa.
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Wilson and Schwortz
The above miniature painting is believed to have been done in the 12th c. to illustrate the Greek Byzantine history of John Skylitzes, written about a hundred years earlier. It depicts the Emperor Romanos Lekapenos embracing the Holy Image of Edessa on August 15th, 944, the first night of its arrival in Constantinople. Although the artist depicts a very clear, typical Jesus face on the framed cloth, a witness to the event wrote that Romanos’ three sons (standing behind him—one of whom was the Patriarch) could only see a “faint face.” The Byzantine nobility were used to the finest art in Christendom, and their disappointment would be understandable if what they actually saw was the faint, blurry Shroud face.
city in possession of so great an attraction. But in 944 the city’s emir accepted a Byzantine offer of money, freed prisoners, and exemption from further attack in exchange for the Image. The Christian population resisted and tried to pass off two copies before a bishop from a nearby city, visiting with the Byzantines and acquainted with the original, made the correct identification. Even then an Edessan crowd followed the withdrawing Byzantines, protesting the robbery. Wilson tells the above story well (1979: 147–150), leaving the reader to wonder how this mysterious object could generate such intense devotion and sacrifice.
The Empire of the Eastern Christians, Byzantium (after a Greek name for the earlier city Constantine modestly renamed for himself), was near its height in 944. Its capital was easily the greatest in Europe:
In the Middle Ages Constantinople lay at the eastern of Europe like a remote fairy-tale palace in a wilderness of hovels. As a center of art, culture, and commerce it was unrivaled, having preserved intact all the knowledge and experience of the old Roman Empire. Trade poured into it from all quarters. Its palaces, churches, and shrines were the envy of the world (Wilson 1979: 151).
It was to the Church of St. Mary Blachernae in the city’s northwest corner that the Image was first brought in the evening of August 15, 944. After celebrating the Mass for the Assumption of the Virgin (on the Orthodox calendar for that date), a small group of very privileged clergy and nobility anxiously waited to preview the most famous picture in all Christendom. This event was captured by a small painted miniature, one of originally more than 600 done in the 12th or 13th century to illustrate a history by the Greek John Skylitzes (see the picture above).
It shows the old emperor embracing a clearly visible, typical Jesus face on a cloth stretched in its picture frame housing; a long cloth adjacent to the Image might be the artist’s attempt to signal that the cloth was really very large, or a separate handling cloth used to protect precious objects (Crispino 1992). However, there is a major mistake made by this later artist: the Jesus face did not look like the artist’s clearly depicted rendition. The tenth
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century writer Symenon Magister reported that the emperor’s two ruffian sons, who were in attendance, “could see nothing but a faint face,” but their brother-in-law and soon future emperor, Constantine VII (and an artist himself), could discern various facial features (Scavone 1989a: 86). They obviously were having difficulty interpreting the image. These kinds of tenuous observations would be expected if what the assembled nobility, who were familiar with the best art in Christendom, actually viewed were a blurry image like on the Shroud. The following day it was welcomed officially into the city as the metropolis’ new palladium with, in the words of a contemporary history, “high psalmody, hymns…and boundless light from torches” among “a procession of the whole people.” That history continued:
It is impossible to describe in words all the weeping for joy and the intercession, prayers, and thanksgivings to God from the whole city as the divine image…passed through the midst of the city (Wilson 1979: 152).
Wilson knew that during the tumultuous August 16th celebration the Holy Image was placed on the Mercy Seat in Hagia Sophia, the most prominent church in Constantinople. Afterwards it found a resting place in the secret Pharos Chapel, a depository for precious treasures inside the emperor’s Great Palace. What he did not know in 1978 was that on the evening of that same day another special viewing was held, again probably for only a privileged few. Almost forgotten by researchers, an 11th century copy of a sermon preached on that occasion was discovered by Shroud sleuth Gino Zaninotto in 1986. The speaker was an important cleric and archdeacon of Hagia Sophia, a priest named Gregory, and he may well have been in charge of the Icon’s reception in Constantinople (Scavone 1999: 3–4). In his sermon Gregory reveals that
we went to Edessa [probably accompanying the army]… hoping to find in the manuscripts there what [first century King] Abgar had done. And we found a great number of manuscripts written in the Syriac language, from which we copied what was asked of us and translated it into Greek (Guscin 2004).
There Gregory learned that the Image was not produced during Christ’s ministry, “But Jesus, undergoing the passion…taking this linen cloth he wiped the sweat that was falling down his face like drops of blood in his agony” (ibid.). As he lectured the Image was almost certainly visible to his audience, and probably more unveiled than on any other known public occasion. At one point Gregory informs his listeners:
This reflection [Jesus’ image]…has been imprinted only by the sweat from the face [of Jesus], falling like drops of blood, and by the finger of God. For these are the beauties that have made up the true imprint of Christ, since after the drops fell, it was embellished by drops from his own side. Both are highly instructive—blood and water there, here sweat and image (ibid.).
Gregory continues later,“…the origin of the image made by sweat is in fact of the same nature as the origin of that which makes the liquid flow from his side (ibid.).” The import of these observations, certainly eyewitness observations, is clear. Once again we hear of “sweat,” an attempt to describe a color and texture unusual to Gregory and his audience. But now there also is blood to be seen on the Image, and the supposedly face-only Icon actually does have more body, at least including a portion of Jesus’ side with a very visible wound. Before the Shroud suffered burn marks in a 1532 fire, the face and bloody side wound would have been among the most visible objects on the cloth. The archdeacon is probably pointing to the side wound (“blood and water there”) and then face (“here sweat and image”) for his audience. How the cloth was presented on this occasion is not known, but if the Edessa Image were actually the Shroud, and the top portion of the Icon’s covering was unfastened so that the linen could be pulled up out of its frame far enough for the next (ordinarily hidden) panel to unfold, both the “sweaty face with blood drops” and the “blood and water from his side” would be visible together. Gregory did not draw the “Icon is a burial shroud” conclusion, but thought of it as a relic of Christ’s Passion from his agony in Gethsemane. Nevertheless a giant step had been taken towards a new understanding of the Image, and its identification with the Shroud of Turin.
One year later the Icon had its own feast day, August 16th on the Orthodox calendar. To help celebrate this occasion a detailed history was written for it, ostensibly by the new emperor, Constantine VII. Called the Story of the Image of Edessa, it is the first lengthy description of the Image’s 900-year history to survive, and is the third eyewitness account since it was welcomed into Constantinople the previous year. Wilson obtained a translation for his 1978 book (Appendix C in 1979: 272–90), and it was to play a crucial role in his historical reconstruction. Also known as the “Festival Sermon,” it claims to be based upon “painstaking inquiry into the true facts” from historians and Syrian traditions. In light of what is now known in Gregory’s sermon the year before, it probably drew upon the same Syrian manuscripts as did the archdeacon. The Story informs that King Abgar suffered from arthritis and leprosy and had heard of Jesus and his miracles. He sent his messenger Ananias to invite Christ to live in Edessa, and heal him. Jesus declines but promises to send a disciple to Abgar after he returns to his Father; he also
washed his face in water, wiped off the moisture that was left on the towel that was given to him, and in some divine and inexpressible manner had his own likeness impressed on it.
But the author of the Story found another version “which is neither incredible nor short of reliable witnesses.” Jesus was in his Gethsemane agony where “sweat dropped from him like drops of blood” when
they took this piece of cloth which we see now from one of the disciples and wiped off the drops of sweat on it. At once the still-visible impression of that divine face was produced.
Thaddaeus was the disciple sent by Christ and brought both the Gospel proclamation and the Image to Edessa. Abgar could see “that it did not consist of earthly colors” and Thaddaeus explained “that the likeness was due to sweat, not pigments.”
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King Abgar fastened the cloth to a board and decorated it with gold “which now is to be seen…”
The city enjoyed a growing evangelization while Abgar lived, but under the kingship of a grandson Christians were persecuted and the Image had to be hidden away atop a city gate, and was then forgotten. In 544 during the Persian siege a bishop had its location revealed to him in a vision and then the Icon aided in the victory described by Evagrius. Numerous miracles are sprinkled throughout the narrative, which may have originally presented as a lecture, (hence the “which we now see” passages), as with Gregory’s sermon, and again before a privileged audience. However, the Image did not appear to have been removed from its frame and covering this time, revealing no more than Jesus’ face. Nevertheless, it was another epiphany for Wilson.
Historians place little credence in much of what the Story narrates of the cloth’s earlier history. Wilson also recognized the semi-legendary nature of its contents, but believed it represented a serious attempt by the Byzantines to understand its unusual nature and mysterious past. He did not believe that at this time the Icon had been opened to expose more of its hidden figure. Nevertheless, something about the face, like the blood marks on the Shroud face, forced Byzantine officials to consider the possibility that the bloody sweat from the Gethsemane agony was responsible for what they saw (Wilson 1979: 116–17). But if the Shroud was to be equated with the Image, and the evidence was becoming stronger, then its largely silent first 500 years must be explained. Wilson agreed with the Story’s “hidden away, then discovered” scenario, but not with all the details. As Evagrius did not mention the discovery in 544 during the Persian siege, Wilson noticed that the 525 destruction by flood of Edessa and subsequent rebuilding of the city may have afforded the actual opportunity for discovery (1979: 138–39). This would accord well with the observed origin of the Shroud-like Jesus faces in the Ravenna mosaics in the early 540s. There is no textual evidence for this scenario, but it makes good sense with the evidence at hand. Wilson also relates another revealing event, this time from Edessa’s later history, with apparent implications for any “lost, then found” theory. In 1146 Turkish forces destroyed the Christian civilization in Edessa, and
for a whole year they [Turkish looters] went about the town digging, searching secret places, foundations and roofs. They found many treasures hidden from the earliest times of the fathers and elders, and many treasures of which the citizens knew nothing (1979: 151).
The hints of a full-body image in earlier documents, the bold assertion of such in the “Oldest Latin Abgar Legend,” and the signs of Jesus’ Passion clearly seen by Gregory and others privileged enough to get close to the Image, were eventually going to persuade the Icon’s new guardians that what they actually had acquired was Christ’s burial shroud. Although Wilson believed in 1978 that this occurred sometime later in the next century, there was a fourth tenth-century eyewitness account asserting it came much sooner. No one knew better what was in the emperor’s treasure chamber than the emperor himself. In 958 Constantine VII wrote a letter to encourage his troops in the field near Tarsus, announcing he was sending a supply of holy water blessed by contact with relics of the Passion kept in Constantinople. Scavone documents these as
the precious wood, the unstained lance, the precious inscription (titulus?), the reed which caused miracles, life-giving blood from his side, the venerable tunic, the scared linens…the sindon which God wore, and other symbols of the immaculate Passion (1989b: 316, 318).
Scavone advises that this is “the earliest text mentioning any burial cloth(s)” in Constantinople. Although “the precise identity of this sindon has been enigmatic”—especially because there was no celebration welcoming such a fabulous artifact or explaining to the faithful from whence it had come—it nevertheless “acquires some clarity with Zaninotto’s rediscovery of the Gregory Sermon” (2001: 31). If the Edessa Image was the burial shroud of Jesus, the emperor and chief clerics were not going to miss the opportunity of a millennium to promote it as such. From that time forward a shroud is documented in the capital at least once each century, but kept in great secrecy and, until the eve of its 1204 departure, never directly shown to the public at large. (In Part III, new art motifs will make clear it was revealed indirectly). Astute Shroud researchers have not missed the obvious conclusion to this sindon’s mysterious appearance so soon after the Edessa Image’s arrival, a judgment aided by knowledge of “the life-giving blood from his side” also in the relic treasury.
A Face Cloth, a Burial Shroud, and a Cover-Up?
Readers familiar with this subject will have noted that the word “Mandylion” has not been used for “Edessa Image.” Mandylion is the common name passed down through the centuries when referring to the Icon, and appears to be the Arabic word mandil (“handkerchief”) with the diminutive suffix “-ion” added by the Greeks to denote the cloth’s supposedly small size (“little handkerchief”). The word was known in Greek before the Icon’s arrival in 944, but apparently not used as a name for it until later in the tenth century, and even then not by its caretakers (Drews 1984: 38–39). The late tenth century writer Leon Diaconos still describes a large cloth when he calls it a peplos (robe). Additionally, those bastions of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Mt. Athos monasteries, record (about this time or a little later) the old Abgar stories with the king now asking for a full body painting of Christ (unpublished research by Mark Guscin). Once the Image reached Constantinople a painted picture of it became standard in most eastern churches, with the original regarded by the Eastern Orthodox as the source of Christ’s true appearance (Wilson 1986: 110). Most of the early depictions show Jesus’ face in a circular opening of what appears to be an ornate, trellis pattern covering (Wilson 1991: illus. 25 a-d). Wilson noted that the pattern looked remarkably similar to the trelliswork of a second century statue of Parthian King Uthal (1979: illus. 224f.), a motif of which Abgar (who in the Story of the Image of Edessa was responsible for mounting and decorating the cloth) would have been familiar. Mention has already been made of the icon’s horizontal, landscape shape in many of its earliest pictures, consistent with what the Shroud would look like if “doubled in four.” Another name applied to this type of Christ picture is
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Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) scientists could find no known way human artistry could produce the Shroud images.
“Holy Face,” usually just Christ’s face depicted on a cloth. If the face of Christ was the first art motif to be traced to the Shroud’s influence, then the “Mandylion” was the second.
Two questions remain for discussion. First, why such subterfuge? Why, when the Holy Image of Edessa was introduced (from hiding in the sixth century?), didn’t its custodians in Edessa and later in Constantinople simply announce it for what it was—the NT sindon with an imprint of Jesus’ whole body? Unfortunately, there might not be a “good” answer to this question, especially for modern Western ears in the age of Mike Wallace and Dan Rather, when it seems impossible to keep mega secrets, and when nudity and violence in cultural expression are common place. But there is an “adequate” answer. The Jesus depicted on the Shroud is brutally beaten, bloodily wounded, and obviously dead. He is also naked—butt naked. All of these characteristics were not just disagreeable to early Christianity, they were abhorrent, especially to sensitive, spiritual minds. Ephrem, who spent the last part of his life in Edessa, addressed Christ’s nakedness figuratively:
When he was stripped, the sun and the moon blushed with modesty. As soon as Christ was stripped, all creatures were covered with darkness…all creatures wept and cried out with anguish….Since He who clothes all creation was made naked, the stars hid their light (Savio 1982: 12).
Rev. Edward Wuenschel, the first important American sindonologist (1930s to 1960s), noted that early Christian artists were very reticent to depict Christ realistically on the cross. Only in the 13th century, and in the West, did this occur.
Now on the Shroud the effects of Christ’s crucifixion are visible in all their stark reality, more vivid and more appalling than in any artistic work….It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the Shroud was kept more or less hidden for centuries and a prudent silence observed about its imprint….Those who imagine that the guardians of the Shroud should have gone about waving it like a banner show little understanding on the Christian Orient (Humber 1978: 91).
In a conservative region like Syria there was little chance of the Shroud being shown in a very public way. Even in a somewhat more liberal Constantinople, it was unlikely to be revealed. Additionally, the authorities in the Great City had another problem to resolve.
Question two: What was to become of the most revered icon and relic in Christendom? The face cloth on which Jesus left his imprint had become one of the most celebrated extra-biblical stories of the first millennium, a pillar in Orthodox tradition. It would have been embarrassing to emperor and patriarch alike to suddenly announce that the Image had been something else all along. The Edessans had apparently decided to encourage the Abgar facial portrait-turned imprint stories to deflect the truth,
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although references to a tetradiplon, himation, and “The Oldest Latin Abgar Legend” (full-body image) versions demonstrate that the truth was leaking out. New Emperor Constantine VII, now faced with a similar dilemma, appears to have decided upon a more Byzantine solution. Wilson surmised:
But in order that the old Abgar tradition should be maintained, what seems to have happened is that a copy of the original form of the Mandylion was introduced into the [emperor’s relic] collection….This seems to be the only explanation for the mysterious way in which, from the late eleventh century on, burial linens are recorded…while a Mandylion is also recorded as an independent object (1979: 166).
Both a Mandylion and a shroud were thus recorded in Constantinople, especially in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Although the original Edessa Image may have served both functions for some time, choosing to make a painted copy to serve as the original allowed the Byzantines to have it both ways. It also explains why there is no history, ceremony, or explanation whatsoever in the textual evidence for the arrival of a shroud, surely a fabulous addition to their collection otherwise and ordinarily deserving such. The truth was to be guarded by maintaining the old Abgar traditions and remaining tight lipped about their new shroud’s origin.
Finally, one last observation on the Edessa Image, referred to as a Mandylion at this point but, in fact, probably the shroud of Constantinople and ultimately of Turin. If it did spend centuries folded or “doubled in four” there might still be some traces, even though faint, among the cloth’s creases. Dr. John Jackson, one of the scientific leaders in the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research team, has noticed “a series of fold marks which argue strongly for the identification of the Shroud as the Mandylion…” (Jackson 1995: 303). These occur at one-eighth length intervals on the Turin Shroud and, as Dr. Jackson discovered, no such folding arrangement is known during its “good” history since the 14th century.
Dr. Jackson also noted a series of other crease lines which help tell another story for Part III of this survey. In Part III we will summarize briefly the evidence so far for the sindon of Jesus being quietly preserved as the Holy Image of Edessa, but actually the Turin Shroud. We also will note reactions by modern members of academia, and follow in texts and art the documentation for the shroud being in Constantinople until the early 12th century.
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