Abgar
Urfa
No one is sure when Urfa was originally settled. According to local tradition and the belief of some Muslims, it was the Biblical city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham. However, most biblical scholars and many archeologists and historians of the ancient Tigris and Euphrates region think that the Chaldean city of Ur Kasdim, now Tell el-Mukayyar in southern Iraq near the Persian Gulf, is Biblical Ur.
Seleucus I, a Macedonian officer under Alexander the Great, established an outpost in this already settled town for his newly formed kingdom in 303 B.C., twenty years after the death of Alexander. He named it Edessa after the city of the same name in Macedonia. By about 132 B.C. the dynasty he established, the Seleucid dynasty, collapsed and the city came under the control of the Abgar dynasty, a series of client kings for Parthia, very much the way Herod I and Herod Antipas were client kings of Israel under Roman control. In the years that followed the Abgar dynasty, which lasted for 350 years, Edessa fell under Armenian, Persian and Roman control. It would become part of Byzantine Empire. It repulsed the Persians in A.D. 544, but fell to Muslim Arabs in 639 not to be retaken until the First Crusades in 1098 by French forces under command of Baldwin of Boulogne, who would later become King Baldwin I of Jerusalem.
The Legend of Abgar
Legend has it that a cloth with an image of Jesus was brought to King Abgar V Ouchama of Edessa who reigned over the city state off and on between A.D. 13 and 50. We know of this legend from Eusebius of Caesarea’s early 4th century Ecclesiastical History. Therein, we learn of a now lost document (if it ever existed) that had been in Edessa’s archives. It was purportedly written by King Abgar V and delivered to Jesus by an envoy named Ananias. Abgar supposedly asked Jesus to come to Edessa to cure him of a malady. Eusebius’ history reports that the Apostle Thomas did send Thaddeus sometime after Jesus’ death and that he founded a church in Edessa.
Historians are highly critical of this account since Eusebius’s history includes, as elements of the letter, references from the Gospels, which were written later than the legendary account, as well as theological concepts, which probably developed many years after the reign of Abgar.
Doctrine of Addai
Another Syrian manuscript, the Doctrine of Addai, fills in some gaps. According to this document, which also mentions Abgar’s letter, Ananias painted a portrait of Jesus “with choice pigments.” A later document, the Acts of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus, written in the early part of the 6th century, adds more detail. It suggests that the image was formed when Jesus wiped his face on the linen cloth and it refers to the cloth as a tetradiplon, meaning it was folded into eight equal sections. Daniel Scavone writes:
In the 6th c. the Greek apocryphal book called the Acts of Thaddeus (=Greek for Addai) retold the Abgar legend with two important alterations. First, the image was heralded as miraculously imprinted on a cloth by Jesus himself (acheiropoietos) but still during his ministry. Second, the cloth is described as much larger than needed for a cheiromaktron or a face-towel. In this version, Abgar’s agent, in Greek named Ananias, could not capture the likeness of the Lord because of its dazzling brilliance, so Jesus compliantly washed his face and wiped off on a cloth which was oddly called a tetradiplon, (“four-doubled” = eight layered). Then, “having imprinted his image on the sindon he gave it to Ananias.” The operative word sindon is the N.T. synoptics’ word for large burial shroud. A sindon folded in eight layers, a single exposed panel of which could present a life-sized face, is large indeed. (18)
We can only safely assume that the story of Abgar is legendary. Taking such a position given the absence of evidence that stands up to scrutiny is the only historically responsible thing to do. However, we should recognize that legends often develop as attempts to give a historical explanation when one is needed. Two very famous German linguists and collectors of folklore, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, better known to us as the Brothers Grimm, pointed out that legends, unlike other forms of folklore and fiction were historically grounded to a particular place. A “legend cannot, like a fairy tale, find its home anywhere.” (19)
Historians and Legends
The historian can use legend, by ascertaining its need, to construct clues. From the story told of Abgar we can gather three very important clues: 1) A cloth with an image thought to be of Jesus somehow turned up in Edessa. 2) The image is understood to be unique in that it was described as painted with choice pigments or formed when Jesus wiped his face on the linen cloth. 3) The cloth is large and described as folded in eight layers.
In the middle of the 6th century, a cloth with an image believed to be that of Jesus turned up in Edessa. Historians have believed that this happened during repairs of the city walls in A.D. 525, or more likely, during the Persian invasion of the city in 544. Reportedly, it was concealed behind some stones above one of the city gates. It was a practice—or so it seems—in ancient cities of this area to mount a stone tile with a picture of some favored deity above the city’s main gate. It may be that the Image of Edessa was simply stored behind such a tile, as suggested by an ancient Byzantine painting. It could well have been that because of severe floods, to which Edessa was prone, that the cloth was placed high in the city’s walls for protection. There is also the possibility that it was hidden to conceal it from invaders or to protect it during times of Christian persecutions. We know that during the many persecutions of the first three centuries, valuable relics, writings, and ceremonial items of the church were routinely destroyed. If the cloth was taken to Edessa in the earlier part of the 1st century or even later, it might have been hidden for protection.
The cloth, when it was found, was placed in a church built especially for it. It was, to the people of Edessa, the lost cloth of the legend. The image, we find from the historical narrative, was thought to be a true and miraculous facial image of Jesus—described as a divinely wrought image and an image not made by hand.
Plausible Alternative to the Abgar Legend
Historian Jack Markwardt has developed a plausible alternative to the Abgar legend to the account of cloth’s discovery in Edessa. From early documents he has inferred that the best explanation was that the shroud was taken, not to Edessa, but to Antioch during apostolic times. There it remained until late in the 2nd century when it was taken to Edessa for the baptism of King Abgar the Great—Abgar the VIII, not to be confused with Abgar V of the legendary account. Markwardt writes:
. . . Avircius Marcellus, the Bishop of Hieropolis, was summoned to Rome, where he was introduced to Abgar’s wife, Queen Shalmath, that he then travelled to Antioch, where he was joined by Palut and provided with the Shroud, identifiable as the historically-documented sacred Christ-icon which had been taken from Palestine to Syria, and that he then proceeded to Edessa, where he displayed the imaged relic to the king and baptized him into the Christian faith, thereby resulting in the Shroud’s commemoration, in legend, as the Portrait of Edessa.
This makes sense. It fits with a general scholarly consensus that Edessa was evangelized at about this time and probably not before. And it gives us a plausible scenario for seeing how the legend of Abgar might have developed.
Sister Egeria
Sister Egeria was given a three-day tour of the city by the Bishop of Edessa. We learn from her account of many miracles that saved Edessa from the Persians. And we learn that she was introduced to the legend of Abgar, even shown a copy of Abgar’s letter to Jesus. She wrote lengthy detailed accounts of her visit and we might think that had there been an image bearing cloth, she would have mentioned it. (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" (Palmer 1998). 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 however, no mention of any image reported by Egeria, who spent three days inspecting every corner of Edessa and the environs.
Regardless of how the cloth arrived in Edessa, by 544 the cloth was an important part of Edessa’s history.
Ecclesiastical History
In the late 6th century, Evagrius Scholasticus’ Ecclesiastical History mentions that Edessa was protected by a “divinely wrought portrait” (acheiropoieton) sent by Jesus to Abgar. Not yet enough for a decent inference, but at least a beginning: There was in Edessa a piece of cloth with an image thought to be of Jesus. It was not an ordinary image. The clue is that it is variously described as painted with choice pigment, of formed by sweat and not made by human hands.
There are no descriptions of Jesus’ appearance in the New Testament. Nor are there any reputable descriptions in any known early church sources. St. Augustine of Hippo made a point of this when he wrote his monumental works in the 5th century. Yet, starting in the 6th century a new common appearance for Jesus emerged in art. We see it today in hundreds of icons, paintings, mosaics, and Byzantine coins. This common quality seems to have started in Christian Byzantium about the same time that the Image of Edessa was discovered. Prior to this time, images of Jesus were mostly of a young, beardless man, often with short hair, often in story-like settings in which he was depicted as a shepherd.
Many Images of Edessa?
The fact of the matter is that there is more than one image claiming to be the Image of Edessa, even claiming to be the image of the Abgar legend. And this causes no end of confusion. One is The Holy Face of Genoa, kept in the Church of St. Bartholomew of the Armenians in Genoa. Another is the Mandylion of Edessa, once kept in the Church of Saint Silvestro in Rome and now kept in the Matilda chapel in the Vatican.
These two images look remarkably alike. And they do have some similarities to the facial image on the shroud; at least the long thin nose and the long hair. But the eyes are not owlish and the beard is apparently not forked. I say apparently because outline frames may be obscuring part of the beard. Unlike the shroud, these images are not negative images, are not monochromatic and appear to have been painted. There is a sense of photorealism to them and yet they seem primitive as well. Whether or not they are what the claim to be, authentic acheiropoieta is beyond our scope here.
John of Damascus and the Himation
John of Damascus, a priest and monk who served as an advisor to the Muslim Caliph of Damascus, was able from the relative safety of the Caliph’s court, to criticize the Leo III and iconoclasm. He wrote Apologetic Treatises against those Decrying the Holy Images, in 730, the same year that the pope excommunicated Leo.
Though it wasn’t the main thrust of his work, the Edessa Image was mentioned. He retells the legend of Abgar. The king, he tells us, sent envoys to obtain a likeness of Christ, a painting if necessary. Christ, who is “all knowing and all powerful took” a himation and pressed it to his face that his likeness might be on the cloth. The Greek word himation was a long rectangular cloth worn as sleeveless garment in ancient Greece and well into the middle Byzantine era. Similar to a toga, but shorter, it was often used as a garment in iconography of Christ or other biblical persons. This may be the first mention, among extant documents, of the Image of Edessa being such a large cloth.
Constantine the Great
Much of what we know about Constantine, or think we know about him, comes from Eusebius of Caesarea who reported the legend of Abgar. And historians recognize that much of what Eusebius wrote about Constantine as legend, as well.
Constantine did issue an edict of tolerance for Christianity. He was not the first of the Roman emperors to do so. Galerius had done so two years earlier. But the difference was that Constantine restored confiscated property to the church. He adopted Christianity, his mother’s religion, as his own. When, exactly, and how sincerely, is something that historians debate unceasingly.
Nevertheless, he built churches. He began the process of bringing squabbling bishops together to hammer out their theological differences. In a sense he consolidated much of Christianity. He made Christianity respectable among the ruling elite; indeed he began the process of fusing Christianity with the state, laying the seeds for Christendom.
McNeal’s Sudarium
And what is the sudarium, that McNeal mentions? Possibly it is many things. Was it another image, perhaps painted from the face on the tetradiplon-folded cloth in Edessa? There is another small facial image called the Image of Edessa in the Vatican Museum. Or was it Veronica’s Veil, a completely different icon with a completely different legend? It is not implausible that there were among Constantinople’s vast treasury of icons and relics many such images with independent of confused legends even as there are today.
Dictionaries define sudarium (or sudarion in Greek) as a sweat cloth. And thus it seems plausible to call the facial imprint from the Legend of Abgar and the Legend of Veronica a sudarium. But the word is also widely used to describe the other cloth in the tomb: “and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.” (John 20:7 NRSV)
Constantinople’s Vast Treasury
If there is any truth to be recovered from the list of relics in the purported letter from Alexios I to Robert of Flanders—not that these relics were real deals—then we can at least understand that there was an understanding in this time that Constantinople had a vast treasury, perhaps more than one treasury of relics in the city. Alexios or the author of the propaganda piece gave us at least a taste even if imaginative in its detail. The author said the list was too vast to itemize completely. Robert of Clari, seemingly more reliable, tells us:
And all these marvels which I have related to you, and still many more which we cannot relate to you, did the Franks find in Constantinople when they had conquered it. Nor do I believe, of my own knowledge, that any man, be he never so skilled in accounting, could number all the abbeys of the city, so many were there of them, both of monks and of nuns, to say nothing of the other minsters [=churches] in the city. And they counted, in round numbers, some thirty thousand priests in the city, both monks and others.
Of the other Greeks - the high, the lowly, the poor, the rich; of the greatness of the city, of the palaces, and of the other wonders which are therein - will we forbear to tell you further; for no earthly man, though he abode never so long in that city, could number or relate all this to you. And if he were to describe to you the hundredth part of the riches and the beauty and the magnificence which were to be found in the abbeys and in the minsters and in the palaces and in the city itself, it would seem that he was a liar, nor would ye believe him at all.
It is not hard to picture a city brimming with relics, fake and real. It is not hard to imagine that there might not be a sudarium of the tomb, a sudarium of the Abgar legend distinct and different from the burial cloth, a Veronica and maybe something else as well. Robert provides context. There is no reason to doubt that Robert de Clari did not see what he said he saw.
Vanillin as a Validation of Carbon Dating
It is not as good a way of dating a piece of linen as carbon dating. But the carbon dating was flubbed. And so for the time being this as good as it gets, scientifically. It really doesn’t tell how old the cloth is, only that it is at least 1300 years old and quite possibly older. It certainly existed when someone illustrated a burial shroud in the Hungarian Pray Manuscript with holes that resemble the poker holes on the Turin cloth. It certainly existed when the Image of Edessa was brought from Edessa to Constantinople. It certainly existed when Leo III was attempting to banish images of Christ and John of Damascus was objecting.
And if all this is so, the shroud that is now in Turin may well have existed when the words, “Peter ran with John to the tomb and saw the recent imprints of the dead and risen man on the linens” were made part of the Mozarabic Rite in Spain. Vanillin testing can’t tell us that. Inference can. It may well have existed when Abgar the Great was baptized. It may have existed at the time that the body of Jesus was buried in a tomb.
Dan Scavone
In the 6th c. the Greek apocryphal book called the Acts of Thaddeus (=Greek for Addai) retold the Abgar le-gend with two important alterations. First, the image was heralded as miraculously imprinted on a cloth by Jesus himself (acheiropoietos) but still during his min-istry. Second, the cloth is described as much larger than needed for a cheiromaktron or a face-towel. In this version, Abgar’s agent, in Greek named Ananias, could not capture the likeness of the Lord because of its dazzling brilliance, so Jesus compliantly washed his face and wiped off on a cloth which was oddly called a tetradiplon, (“four-doubled” = eight layered). Then, “having imprinted his image on the sindon he gave it to Ananias.” The operative word sindon is the N.T. synoptics’ word for large burial shroud. A sindon folded in eight layers, a single exposed panel of which could present a life-sized face, is large indeed.