Bust of Christ Pantocrator
Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai (6th c.)

The Image of Edessa

Earliest References to Christ's Burial Cloths

"Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb."
     - Mark 15:43-46

"Matthew, Mark and Luke speak only of the sindon that Joseph of Arimathea bought for the burial, and this word is often translated as 'shroud', though it is not solely confined to this meaning. St Mark, for example, uses it to indicate an article of clothing, while St. John, on the other hand, does not use the word at all. He says that the body was wrapped in othonia. Furthermore, he is the only Evangelist to describe how the cloths were found after the disappearance of the body. He tells us that the othonia were lying with the 'napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes but wrapped together in a place by itself.'. The word translated as 'napkin' is soudarion, which literally means a sweat rag."
"The most balanced opinion holds that othonia is the generic term for all the cloths I have mentioned, and sindon refers to the largest of them only, namely the Shroud. The soudarion seems to indicate something smaller, probably the cloth which was sometimes laid over the face, rather than the band of cloth tied under the chin and over the top of the head."
     - Noel Currer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail (1987)

"Vera Barclay of Great Britain notes that the nearby Dead Sea Qumran Community [a Jewish fort] (2nd century BC to AD 70) graves have been extensively excavated, and they have found skeletons in the exact position of the Man on the Shroud; stretched out flat on the back, face up, hands folded over the pelvic region, with elbows protruding at the sides."
     - Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection (1992)

Of the synoptic Gospels, Mark and Matthew make no mention of the empty shroud in the tomb after Jesus' disappearance. Luke, which predates the Gospel of John, mentions not a shroud but "strips of linen".

"Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened. "
     - Luke 24:12

"The body was dressed, the hands and feet tied so that they would stay in place, and the head bound with a bandage under the chin to stop the jaw sagging. But the crucified Jesus had no clothes (the soldiers took them), so Joseph's cloth could be a substitute, a shroud. John's pieces of linen might include it; they were not necessarily 'strips of linen' as the New International Version translates."
     - Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus

For a full account of Jesus' burial and the discovery of the empty tomb, click here.

Supposedly the cloth was removed from the sepulchre and preserved because:
"Ordinary burial clothes were very simple, inexpensive fabrics. The Turin cloth was no ordinary shroud, it was certainly very dear and so was probably meant to be cleaned for reuse. When the spices, which stuck loosely to the fabric, were washed off, the 'miraculous' image, which could not be washed out, came to light."
"It was not difficult for the Essenes to remove the seat cloth from the tomb because for them it was not a ritually impure object."
     - Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection (1992)

"Jerome quoted from it [Gospel of the Hebrews] that after Jesus' resurrection but before he appeared to his brother, James, Jesus gave his sindon to 'the servant [puero] of the priest'."
     - Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)

"The Lord, after he had given the linen cloth to the priest's slave, went to James and appeared to him."
     - Gospel of the Hebrews 9:1

"Some thought puero an error for Petro and supposed Peter had received the cloth. A fourth-century account mentioned a tradition that Peter had kept the sudarium, although what had subsequently become of it was unknown."
     -Joe Nickell, Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1987)

"In another tradition it was the angel at the tomb who had the foresight to hand the Shroud to Mary Magdalene for preservation. By another account, the fourth century apostle St. Nino, who had been raised in Jerusalem, reported that the common belief there during her youth was that Pilate's wife had given the Shroud to St. Luke. In the year 120, St. Braulio of Seville, Spain, wrote of the Shroud as a well-known relic at that time."
     - Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)

"At the Congress of Turin held in 1978, Fr. Egger showed that from the year 370, Roman sarcophagi presented a bearded Christ with long hair and other details necessarily inspired by the Holy Shroud."
     - Georges de Nantes, "The Holy Shroud - Evidence of a scientific forgery against The Holy Shroud" (1991)

"Not-Made-by-Human-Hand"

"In Jesus's day it [Urfa, Turkey] was the semi independent city-state of Edessa, totally outside the Roman Empire and with allegiance to the kingdom of Parthia, whose capital was Ctesiphon on the Tigris River, far to the east. Prosperous Edessa, astride a major east-west caravan route, was ruled by King Abgar V from 13 to 50. Our best account of Abgar's story comes form Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote his famous History of the Church about 325. Eusebius says he got the story by his own translation of Edessa archives from the Syriac into Greek."
     - Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)

Abgar, suffering from an incurable disease, invited Jesus to come to Edessa to heal him.

"In my thoughts I have arrived at two possible conclusions, that either you are God and have come down from heaven to achieve these things or you do these things because you are the Son of God...I have heard that the Jews murmur against you and wish to do you harm. My city is quite small, but it is honorable, and there is a place in it for both of us."

"Blessed are you with your faith in me, although you have not seen me. Indeed, it has been written of me that those who saw me would not believe in me, so that those who have not seen me would have faith and life. With regard to what you have written, that I should come to you, it is necessary for me to accomplish here that for which I was sent and, after it has been done, to return to Him who sent me. but when I have been taken up, I will send one of my disciples to you, to cure your illness and to give life to you and yours."
     - Eusebius, History of the Church (325)

"After this the Lord appointed seventy-two [Some manuscripts 'seventy'] others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go."
     - Luke 10:1

"Tradition has it that, after the Resurrection, through the casting of lots, disciple Thomas, one of 'The Twelve', was given responsibility for carrying Jesus' message to the nation of Parthia. From several sources we learn that, knowing of the correspondence between Abgar and Jesus, Thomas assigned Thaddaeus [one of the orginal 12 disciples - Mark 13:18], one of the 'Seventy', to go to Abgar in fulfillment of Jesus' promise and to carry the Shroud for deposit with Abgar for safekeeping."
     - Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)

Eusebius "mentions the Abgar/Jesus correspondence and (instead of Veronica) the woman with the 'issue of blood' who was cured when she touched Jesus' garment (Mark 5:25-34; Matthew 9:20-22; Luke 8:43-48). But Eusebius omits the figured cloth from his Abgar/Jesus account, and all account of such imprinted veils date from later times - probably the earliest certain reference being the mid-fourth-century The Doctrine of Addai."
     -Joe Nickell, Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1987)

"...Addai is the Syriac name for Thaddaeus."
     - Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)

Thaddaeus holds the "Image of Edessa" while King Abgar V receives a healingSaint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai (6th c.)

In The Doctrine of Addai "the Image of Edessa is described not as of miraculous origin but merely as the work of Hannan (Ananias), who 'took and painted a portrait of Jesus in choice paints, and brought it with him to his lord King Abgar'."
     -Joe Nickell, Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1987)

"...Abgar lived until AD 50 and...Edessa was known throughout the civilized world of that day as the first Christian city." The Image of Edessa "was well known through all the neighboring countries as an important Christian relic, which was called 'the true likeness of Christ' and the 'image not made by the hands of man'."
     - Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)

In the Middle East, religious relics "represented political status and power, and often had a talismanic potency, being seen as protection of the city that owned them, warding off foreign invasions and natural disasters alike. Known as palladia, every city had such a holy prophylactic, and Edessa's was the Mandylion - a fitting honor for the first city to be evangelized in Byzantium."
     - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled (1994)

Egeria was "an indomitable lady pilgrim from Aquitaine, who visited Edessa as part of a tour of the holy paces of Christendom about the year 383. She described sights of the city in minute detail, among them the Baliklar, the city's shady fishpools, famous even in her day. But she made no mention of the image-bearing cloth.
     - Ian Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud (1986)

"She was a sightseer of a thoroughness unrivaled even by the modern American; and, had so interesting a relic then existed, she would certainly have referred to it..."
     - Sir Steven Runciman, "Some Remarks on the Image of Edessa", Cambridge Historical Journal, III (1929-31)

"The so-called 'harp' of the Syrian church, St. Ephraim, who lived in Edessa during the late fourth century and wrote reams of ecclesiastical verse, made no reference to the Mandylion. The monk-author of the 'Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite', written at Edessa about 507, made no mention of it, nor did Jacob of Scrug, another most prolific Edessan writer, who died about 521."
     - Ian Wilson, The Shroud of Turin - The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ? (1978)

"A 5th c. Georgian (Russia) MS relates that Joseph captured Jesus's blood as it dripped from his crucified body not in a cup-Grail--but in the burial shroud itself. Grail and shroud are here identified!"
     - Daniel C. Scavone, "Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and the Turin Shroud"

The "Image of Edessa disappears from history until a disastrous flood in 525 which "destroyed public buildings, palaces, churches, and much of the city wall, and drowned one-third of the population.
"In the course of rebuilding, a secret chamber was found over the West Gate of the city wall. This gate was on high ground and was reputed to be the one through which Thaddaeus had ceremoniously entered with the Image. In the chamber was a chest containing the Image, still in excellent condition. It would seem that it had been sealed into the wall about 57 to protect it from Ma'nu VI's anti Christian zeal and then was forgotten in later generations. Along with the Image was a tile bearing the same face, which may originally have been displayed over the gate.
     - Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)

It was during this period that the Image was first referred to as the Mandylion. Several researchers think the Mandylion was the same cloth as the full-figured Shroud of Turin, The Image of Edessa, however, conforms to the size of the cloth placed over the face of a dead person or soudarion, not entire shroud or sindon. Ian Wilson hypothesizes that the Shroud was doubled in four and covered with a trelliswork embellishing cover which revealed only the face. Kersten & Gruber hypothesize that the trellis work, which is featured on representations of the Mandylion, was actually a netting fixed over the folded shroud, both of which were "mounted on a panel decorated with gold".

"A 6th c. text calls this cloth a sindon...and a tetradiplon, suggesting that it was seen folded in eight layers."
"Byzantine artists were finally allowed to paint reproductions which show us that this cloth was indeed kept folded in a rectangular case--presumably as a tetradiplon--whose lid permitted Jesus's face to be visible in a central circular aperture. This seems to be why the earliest 4th c. text described only a facial image. It was only gradually understood to be a bloodstained burial shroud. "
     - Daniel C. Scavone, "Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and the Turin Shroud"

"...The images of Christ which were used in the West to interpret the Veronica legend are found in vertical or 'portrait' format. The horizontal format of the Mandylion is a positive sign that it was not a small towel but rather part of a much larger cloth. If one folds the Turn cloth in the manner described, one obtains a width of 110 cm, with a height of just 54.5 cm; that is, a format closely matching that of the known Mandylion copies. "
     - Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection (1992)

"By the time of the Image's rediscovery soon after 525, religious ideas had changed, and by the middle of the sixth century strikingly 'coincidental' with the rediscovery of the Image in Edessa, icons, mosaics, and paintings of Jesus' face began to appear throughout all areas of Christian-Byzantine influence."
     - Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)

"The relic was first mentioned by the chronicler Evagrius in the 590s when he told how its miraculous powers repelled an attack by the Persian army fifty years previously. before that date, there were only legends that linked the cloth to a King Abgar V of Edessa..."
Evagrius said that the Mandylion was used to repel the Persians in 544, but he was writing fifty years after the event. And another chronicler, Procopius, writing just five or six years after the event, makes no mention of it at all. Even more significant is the fact that Evagrius based his account on that of Procopius. Presumably Evagrius invented the story to give Edessa's holy relic more eminence than those of rival cities, and therefore there is no proof that the Mandylion existed in 544."
     - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled (1994)

"Before reaching Edessa, the relic would seem to have stayed at Kamuliana in Cappadocia. From there it was transported to Constantinople [574], where it became the city's palladium, guaranteeing its security and the success of its imperial forces. It was always carried on military expeditions and presented by the Emperor or Commander in Chief to the troops to fortify them in the battle and to inspire them with the certainty of victory.
"Edessa was captured by the Arabs in 639, which is when the sacred relic was probably brought back to Constantinople for shelter. The fact is that from the end of the VIIth century, coins were struck in Constantinople by Justinian II during the first part of is reign (685-695) bearing an effigy of Christ's Face as imprinted on the Holy Shroud. As Fr. Pfeiffer notes, this is 'a unique fact in the whole history of coins'."
     - Georges de Nantes, "The Holy Shroud - Evidence of a scientific forgery against The Holy Shroud" (1991)

"Circa 700. Faced with crippling taxes, Orthodox Christians of Edessa surrender Mandylion in pawn to rich Monophysite Athanasius bar Gumayer. Athanasius is said to have substituted a clever copy for the original. If this story is correct, the latter comes to be stored in the Jacobite church of the Mother of God, Edessa. "
     - Ian Wilson, The Shroud of Turin - The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ? (1978)

In 942, the Byzantine general Curcuas laid siege to Edessa. To avoid destruction, Archbishop Abramius of Samosata arranged for the town to hand over the Image of Edessa. In exchange the town received the release of 200 captives, perpetual immunity from attack and 12,000 silver crowns.

The Image of Edessa "was then forcibly removed - despite violent protests from the local faithful - to Constantinople to join the Emperor's huge collection of relics in the Pharos Chapel."
     - Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled (1994)

"The entry into Constantinople took the form of a triumphant reception, choreographed in grand style, with a fine sense of dramatic detail. On the evening of the sacred feast day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, 15 August 944, the Mandylion arrived at the famous church of Our Lady at Blachernae, where the entire court, with the exception of Romanus [the Emperor] because of his illness, was able to admire the blessed relic. The two sons of the Emperor expressed their disappointment at the picture: they could hardly make out anything on it."
The following day a procession bore the image to the middle of the town "where it was put on display on the throne of mercy in the inner sanctuary of the Hagia Sophia. Finally the Rex Regnatium, in the symbolic form of his presence in the Mandylion, was place on the throne of the worldly ruler in the Blachernae Palace and crowned, until the time came for it to take up its final place in the Pharos chapel."
     - Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection (1992)

"How can we with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in heaven condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image. He who is seated with the cherubim visits us this day by a picture which the Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and love."
     - Byzantine hymn to the Mandylion

While the Mandylion was enthroned at Blachernae Palace, Gregory gave a commemorative sermon to a large congregation there. He asked those present to view the image "as if in a mirror " and " not applied with the ordinary paints of the artist's craft. " He contrasted the Mandylion with painted icons and their diverse colors.

"The splendor was derived solely from the drops of sweat at the agony in the garden, which emerged from the countenance, which is the source of life, flowing down like drops of blood and imprinting with divine fingers."
"These are truly the beauties which the color of the imprint of Christ has brought forth, which were finally improved by the drops of blood flowing out from his own side...I say it is these [blood and water] which have been imprinted on the cloth."
     - Archdeacon Gregory, 16 August 944

The reference to "the drops of blood flowing out from his own side" strongly suggestes the wound of the lance thrust - and therefore supports the theory that the Mandylion bore the image of the whole body, not just the head.

" For the same intermediary between God and humanity [Christ] himself, in order to satisfy the king [Abgar] in every way, stretched out his whole body on a cloth white as snow, whereupon the glorious image of the countenance of our Lord and the length of his whole body was so divinely pictured, that it suffices to allow all those who were not able to see the Lord bodily in the flesh, to see the transfiguration visible on the cloth."
     - 12th C. insert to a sermon by Pope Stephen II at the Lateran synod (769)

A 12th century Latin codex quotes Christ as sending this message to Abgar:

"...I send you a cloth on which the image not only of my face but of my whole body has been divinely transformed."
     - Vatican Library Codex 5696, fol. 35

"In 1201 Nicolas Mesarites, the treasurer or guardian of the Pharos chapel, defended the relics there against attacks by supporters of the usurper, John Commenus. Among these he lists the burial sindons of Christ, using the word in the plural, a sure sign that the Sindon/Shroud and the Soudarion/Mandylion were not one and the same."
     - Ian Wilson, The Shroud of Turin - The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ? (1978)

"These burial sindons of Christ are of linen, of a quite ordinary weave. They still smell of myrrh, and are indestructible since they once enshrouded the dead body, anointed and naked, of the Almighty after his Passion.'
     - Nicholas Mesarites (1201)

In 1204 after the sack of Constantinople by the army of the Fourth Crusade, the Mandylion disappeared without a trace. There is a possibly it still survives as the Sudarium Christi at Oviedo, Spain.

Representations of the Mandylion

6th to 8th Century Portraits "Before the end of the sixth century these images made without hands were propagated in the camps and cities of the Eastern empire; they were the objects of worship and the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of danger or tumult their venerable presence could revive the hope, rekindle the courage, or repress the fury of the Roman legions. Of these pictures, the far greater part, the transcripts of a human pencil, could only pretend to a secondary likeness and improper title; but there were some of higher descent, who derived their resemblance from an immediate contact with the original...The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a fraternal relation with the image of Edessa."
     - Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1910)

"...The greater number of the 'not-made-with-hands' images were reddish-brown, monochromatic Christ portraits. They were usually - if not always - of the entire head, with flowing hair (in the traditional Byzantine manner), and not merely facial imprints. The were invariably on white cloth, probably fine linen generally, as indicated by the artists' copies as well as the examples at St. Peters."
     -Joe Nickell, Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1987)

"Importantly, neither the distinctive Shroud-like Christ portraits nor the facial markings associated with them, are to be found datable before the sixth century. Many pre-sixth-century portraits of Jesus show him as an Apollo-like, beardless youth. Others, although of a bearded, long-haired type, lack the precision, frontality, uniformity of features, and Vignon facial markings so predominant from the sixth century on. Writing in the fifth century, St. Augustine complained that the portraits of Jesus in is time were 'innumerable in concept and design' for the good reason that 'We do not know of his external appearance, nor that of his mother.' The change came only in the sixth century."
     - Ian Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud (1986)

"Artist's renderings of the face of Jesus that were created from the sixth to thirteenth centuries seem uniquely to stand out as a group because their commonalty hints of a single subject that they copied. These include a 590 icon in St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, a fresco of Christ Pantocrator [the all-sovereign] in Daphni, Greece, and the Justinian coin."
"...A Byzantine icon in St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, painted in 590...so accurately reflects the facial contours of the Shroud of Turin that Dr. Alan Whanger of Duke University has counted more than 46 points of congruity when he has superimposed the two faces..."
     - Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)

There are several other examples of the same likeness in the sixth century "notably a mosaic Christ Enthroned at Ravenna's Sant'Apollinare Nuovo church, and a medallion portrait of Christ in the Byzantine manner on a silver vase discovered at Homs, the ancient Emesa, in Syria."
In the eighth century "an epoch in which most eastern portraits of Christ were destroyed during the wave of image-smashing or iconoclasm, the same likeness can be found, heavily influenced by Byzantium in a Pantocrator painting from the catacomb of St. Pontianus, Rome."
     - Ian Wilson, The Shroud of Turin - The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ? (1978)

A number of scholars believe that the real model for the early representations of Christ was the face of the great statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world.

Hyperlinks

• Mysteries of the Templars
  
• The Shroud: Physical Evidence