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Mandylion of Edessa

Συγγραφή : Lampada Despina (16/7/2008)
Μετάφραση : Loumakis Spyridon

Για παραπομπή: Lampada Despina, "Mandylion of Edessa",
Εγκυκλοπαίδεια Μείζονος Ελληνισμού, Μ. Ασία
URL: <http://www.ehw.gr/l.aspx?id=9036>
Ιερόν Μανδήλιον Εδέσσης (23/7/2009 v.1) Mandylion of Edessa (6/2/2009 v.1) 
 

1. The tradition regarding the Mandylion

With this name one of the most important holy relics that were kept at Constantinople is mentioned in the sources, from the 11th century and thereafter:1 an - according to the legend - acheiropoietos (=not made by human hands) icon that was translated from the Syrian town of Edessa (mod. Urfa in Turkey) to the imperial capital in 944. It was supposed to be a piece of cloth upon which the features of Jesus’ face have been miraculously imprinted.

The tradition attributed the icon to the times of the earthly life of Jesus and connected its creation with Avgar, king of Edessa in the 1st century A.D., and with the epistle, with which he had invited Jesus to Edessa. According to the legend, Avgar begged Jesus to travel as far as Edessa in order to cure him from some disease. Jesus responded by sending to Avgar his icon: he washed his face and took a piece of cloth to wipe it up; through the physical contact his features were imprinted on the cloth. By receiving the icon, Avgar was cured. Since then the miraculous icon was lost, so as to be found again in the 6th century, this time under the capacity of city palladium.

The icon remained in the Church of Edessa even after the conquest of the city by the Arabs, until 944, when it was translated to Constantinople.

2. Formation of the Mandylion legend

The legend about an acheiropoietos icon of Jesus in Edessa seems to have been born sometime in the second half of the 6th century: it is preserved for the first time in the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrios (around 594), in reference to the narration about the siege of Edessa by the Persians under Chosroes in 544. According to Evagrios, during the siege some bishop found the acheiropoietos icon at the city gateway; miraculously the icon put Chosroe’s army to flee and the town was saved.2 The fact that Procopios, who recorded the same siege a little after 544, when the events were still fresh, is not referred to any miraculous icon, shows that until the middle of the 6th century the legend of the acheiropoietos icon of Edessa was not yet well-known.3

In any case, however, the formation of the story of the icon in relation to the history of Avgar passed through many phases, since the earliest sources do not always talk about an acheiropoietos icon, not even about an icon upon a cloth. The earliest report, in Doctrina Addai, a Syrian text of the early 5th century,4 speaks about a Jesus portrait that had painted Avgar’s messenger, Ananias, on behalf of his king. In the narration of Eusebios about the communication of Jesus with Avgar there was not even a mention to an icon, and the reply of Jesus was a simple epistle, to which Christ appeared to promise that he will always protect the city; Procopios mentions the promise. The promise of divine protection was incorporated into the legend of the acheiropoietos icon that Evagrios cites, and the icon appeared as the palladium of Edessa5.

Later sources, now from the 8th century, make mention of an imprint upon a cloth,6 but even in the Narratio attributed to Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos that relates the translation of the icon to Constantinople and where the legend of the Mandylion appears already fixed, the icon is referred to as “holy icon” and not as the Mandylion. In addition, in the Narratio it is mentioned that the cloth with the imprint of Jesus face had been nailed on a wooden plank and fixed with a golden frame: it seems that the icon that was translated to Constantinople, even though it was finally known as the “Mandylion”, was possibly a wooden portable icon.7 In any case, from the 11th century and thereafter the use of the name “holy Mandylion” became generalized in the sources.

3. The Mandylion and the veneration of icons

It seems that already from the 5th century, especially, however, and more intensely from the second half of the 6th century, the veneration of the icons was developed, connected initially with the earlier veneration of holy relics. Soon the icons started playing the same role as that of the relics of a holy man as a miraculous remain of his earthly presence, in front of which a believer may pray and his prayer be heard and upon which a believer or a whole city can be based for protection against any danger.8 The exaggerations to which gradually this practice of worship reached were usually presented as one of the causes of Iconoclasm.

As P. Brown has shown, Iconoclasm was a dispute about the holy and its content while Byzantium was in the period of transition from late Antiquity to its medieval form. During this dispute the tradition of acheiropoietos icon, which had started being created in late 6th century, became a powerful argument that reappears all the time on the texts of the iconolater authors. Such icons were not believed to be a work of human hands but a creation of divine will, which thus appeared approving the production of icons. At the same time, their alleged generation by physical contact reassured not only their authenticity but also their holiness, while their supposed anciency showed the tradition of the icon veneration as being established back to the times of Jesus.9

The Mandylion was one of the supposed not made by hands icons that were mentioned since the late 6th century. The spreading of their legend has been connected with the public cult and the search by the emperors for strong religious symbols that could play the role of the divine military ensign for the Byzantine army, such as the labarum with the symbol of the cross for Constantine the Great, in present case for the war against the infidel Persians and Avars.10 However, due to the status of a firm argument that the crisis of Iconoclasm kept for the acheiropoietai icons, and due to the new theory for the icons towards which the crisis was directed, enriched the tradition of these icons and gave them new dimensions and theological meaning, beyond their protective character. It is quite characteristic that the tradition about the Mandylion is very poor and fragmentary before Iconoclasm, whereas we find it composed and enriched in the Διήγηση of the 10th century.11 The Mandylion became the epitome of the post-iconoclastic perception about icon as bearer of the holy and as an indispensable element of the Byzantine religiosity.

4. The Mandylion in art

The translation of the Mandylion to Constantinople in 944 stirred up an interest about the object itself, a fact that is evident in the way this object already became a new iconographic theme: the representation of the Holy Mandylion was integrated from the 11th century and thereafter in the iconographic programs of monumental painting, either on the arc above the Holy Altar or above the entrance of the temple.

In the illuminated manuscripts, as well, representations of Mandylion are met, integrated in a narrative circle, the story of Avgar, in stead of being an individual iconographic theme, as it happened in the monumental painting. However, the earliest depiction of the Mandylion was on a 10th century icon from Saint Catherine Monastery at Mount Sinai. It is about the left leaf of a triptych. On the upper part Avgar is depicted receiving the Mandylion.12

The frequent depiction of the Mandylion in art does not necessarily indicate, however, the reproduction of the original icon: the artists may have very well created an iconographic type based on tradition and not just copied the relic. On the depictions of the Mandylion the nimbed head of Christ is represented, his face bearing the characteristics of the Pantokrator type, while he is depicted as if he was imprinted on a horizontal lane of white cloth occasionally adorned with decorative friezes. We do not know, though, in what degree, this icon echoes the original object.

It is, therefore, very difficult to talk about any possible influences of the famous relic on art and especially on the iconographic type of Jesus. There is, however, a characteristic that appears in the depictions of Christ in the 10th century and has been connected with the alleged acheropoietos icon: it is about a lock of hair that falls in the middle of the forehead of Jesus.13

The relic is believed to have been lost from Constantinople during the Fall of 1204 by the Crusaders. It is supposed to have been carried with other relics to Sainte Chapelle in Paris, which Louis IX erected for this purpose.14 A different tradition identifies the Mandylion of Genoa as the Image of Edessa, while it has been also suggested that the Shroud of Turin might be the legendary relic. In the West, however, the Mandylion had been very famous and the variation of the «Veronica» type had been evolved (the etymology of the name is believed to derive from vera icon, true icon). Particularly famous was the icon of the Mandylion in the Slavic world until the First World War.15

1. Cameron, A., “The Mandylion and Byzantine Iconoclasm”, in  Kessler, H.L. and  Wolf, G.(eds.), The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation (Villa Spelman Colloquia 6, Bologna 1998), p. 37.

2. Ευάγριος, Εκκλησιαστική Ιστορία, IV. 27, ed. Bidez, J. - Parmentier, L., (London 1898, repr. 1979), pp. 174-6.

3. Cameron, A., "The History of the Image of Edessa. The Telling of a Story", Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7 (1983), p. 85.

4. It is about the final version of the text, attributed to Rabbula, bishop of Edessa during the years 412-36, see Η.J.W. Drijvers, “The image of Edessa in the Syriac tradition”, in Kessler, H.L. and Wolf, G. (eds.), The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation. (Villa Spelman Colloquia 6, Bologna 1998), p. 15.

5. Ευσέβιος, Εκκλησιαστική Ιστορία Ι 13.1-11, ed. Bardy, G. (Paris 1952), pp. 40-43; Προκόπιος, Υπέρ των πολέμων ΙΙ 12.26, ed. Haury, J. - Wirth, G. (Leipzig 1963).

6. For example, in the Acts of Thaddeus and in the Chronicon of John, bishop of the Egyptian city of Nikiu; further in texts of John Damaskenos for the defense of icons, see Cameron A., "The History of the Image of Edessa. The Telling of a Story", Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7 (1983), pp. 83-87.

7. Κωνσταντίνος Πορφυρογέννητος, Narratio de Imagine Edessena, 25.4-5 (PG 113, col. 437). Cf. Cameron, A., "The History of the Image of Edessa. The Telling of a Story", Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7 (1983), p. 92.

8. Kitzinger, E., “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954), pp. 89-90, 95-96, 115.

9. Brown, P., "A Dark-age crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic controversy", The English Historical Review 88, No. 346 (Jan. 1973), pp. 5-8.

10. Kitzinger, E., “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasme”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954), pp. 109-112; Grabar, A., L’Iconoclasme byzantin. Le dossier archéologique (Paris 1984), pp. 36-37. It is characteristic that Herakleios put his army under the protection of the Kamoulianai acheiropoietos icon; see Morrisson, C., Le monde byzantin I: L’empire romain d’Orient (330-641) (Paris 2004), pp. 231, 300.

11. Cameron, A., “The Mandylion and Byzantine Iconoclasm”, in  Kessler, H.L. and  Wolf, G. (eds.), The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation (Villa Spelman Colloquia 6, Bologna 1998), pp. 50-51.

12. Weitzmann, K. , “The Mandylion and Constantine Porphyrogennetos”, Cahiers archéologiques (1960), pp. 163-184, fig. 1-3.

13. Evans, H.C. - Wixom, W.D. (eds.), The Glory of Byzantium. Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843-1261 (cat. exhib., New York 1997), no. 128, p. 175.

14. Runciman, S., «Some remarks on the image of Edessa», Cambridge Historical Journal 3 (1931), p. 251.

15. “Mandylion”, The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium 2 (Oxford 1991), p. 1283. Cf. Belting, H., Bild und Kunst. Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich 1990), pp. 233-252.
     
 
 
 
 
 

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