DOCUMENT VII.  ENGLISH PILGRIM 1150.

The Edessa cloth with facial image is not mentioned in Constantinople again until 1150 by an English pilgrim to Constantinople.  He saw what he describes as a gold container, capsula aurea, in which “is the mantile which, applied to the Lord’s face, retained the image of his face.”^{3 1}  He also mentions the “sudarium which was over his head.”  It is yet another reference to a funerary cloth of Jesus in Constantinople, though it does not seem to be a body shroud.^{3 2}  This and the following three documents continue the confusion that thwarts one’s efforts to identify the precise objects in the imperial relic collection.

DOCUMENT VIII.  NICHOLAS SOEMUNDARSON 1157.

     Seven years later (1157) this confusion of terms continues when Nicholas Soemundarson (Thingeyrensis), an Icelandic pilgrim, wrote in his native Icelandic his very detailed inventory of the palace relics.  Riant has given us a Latin translation of Nicholas’ Icelandic: “fasciae with sudarium and blood of Christ.”  Nicholas made no mention of the frame or box holding the cloth of Edessa, and indeed, the reference to blood demands that we interpret these as Passion cloths.  Meanwhile, as between fasciae (“bands”), as distinguished from sudarium, both Latin translations from Icelandic, it is possible but not certain that one of the terms may denote a larger body cloth.^{3 3}

DOCUMENTS IX and X. WILLIAM OF TYRE; ANTONIUS OF NOVGOROD

In 1171 Archbishop William of Tyre was admitted, he says, into the imperial treasury, where saw the syndon of Christ.  This is the ordinary New Testament word for a body shroud and its sometime use in these contexts to denote the Edessa cloth seems only to hint further that either the Edessa cloth was larger than a face-towel or that another cloth, large and bloodstained, was present in the treasury.^{3 4}  After this time, both the Edessa cloth and the burial linens regularly appear in the same inventories. 

In 1200 the inventory of Antonius of Novgorod similarly names two linen cloths: linteum and “linteum representing the face of Christ.”^{3 5}  Recall that earlier documents had tended towards the conclusion that the Edessa cloth was large (tetradiplon) and bloodied, and therefore might be identical with that cloth reputed in the inventories to be the burial wrapping of Jesus.  The text of Antonius does nothing to elucidate those conclusions.