himation

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.

The Size of a Burial Cloth?

We get a sense that the Image of Edessa—or at least that an image of Jesus in Edessa—is large, perhaps the size of a burial cloth. The words tetradiplon and himation are important clues. The face we are told is unusual. And the face, in some ways, certainly resembles the face on the shroud. It will not be until the cloth arrives in Constantinople in 944 that we get a clear indication that it indeed has a full body image. It won’t be until the advent of modern science that we learn how extraordinary that image of a face and the entire body is or until we discover new evidence that links the Turin shroud to Edessa and even the environs of Jerusalem.

But before we leave the Edessa era and look at these things we need to examine three other accounts that, if not provably linked, tend to strengthen the case that the Shroud of Turin is the Image of Edessa and possibly the burial shroud of Christ.

Two Cloths?

Others  had mentioned seeing two cloths and not without some attendant confusion. Around 1150, an English pilgrim tells of seeing a gold container in which the mantile (long robe) which having been touched to Christ’s face had an image of it. He also mentions a sudarium that had been over his head. Nicholas Soemundarson, an Icelandic cleric wrote in his native tongue of seeing two cloths with blood. In 1171, Archbishop William of Tyre saw the sindon of Christ. In 1200, Antonius of Novgorod speaks of seeing two cloths. In 1201, Nicholas Mesarites, the overseer of the treasures in the Pharos Chapel describes two cloths.

the Burial sindones of Christ: these are of linen. They are of cheap and easy to find material, and defying destruction since they wrapped the uncircumscribed, fragrant‑with‑myrrh, naked body after the Passion.  . . . In this place He rises again and the sudarium and the burial sindons can prove it . . .

It is hard to tell which is which. Skeptics tend to throw their hands up in confusion and use the confusion itself as evidence. It is hard not to blame them. True believers in its authenticity—and you can see it in web site after web site—get selective. We shouldn’t do either of these things. But what we can see, in the full conspectus, through the fog, is evidence of full-length cloth, a tetradiplon, a himation, image bearing, seemingly a full body.