DOCUMENT XI. NICHOLAS MESARITES 1201

     The plot thickens when Nicholas Mesarites, in 1201 the skeuophylax (overseer) of the treasuries in the Pharos Chapel of the Boucoleon Palace of the emperors in Constantinople, again describes two separate objects.  One is

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 . . .^{3 6}

The words of this eyewitness intimate that he had seen a naked man’s image on one of these cloths.  His use of the word aperileipton, “uncircum­scribed,” suggests that this image was lacking an outline.  It could also be rendered as “uncontainable,” meaning that the limitless spiritual nature of God had somehow been contained in these cloths at the time when Jesus’ body was wrapped inside them.  His reference to the Passion implies the visible presence of blood on the cloth.  Without too great a stretch, Mesarites’ words provide us an eyewitness confirmation of the hints developed from so many other documents already discussed.

Nicholas, however, also specifically mentions as a separate second object in his care the towel (cheiromaktron) with a “prototypal” (prototupw) image of Jesus on it made “as if by some art of drawing not wrought by hand (acheiropoietw).”^{3 6 again}   So any absolute confirmation of the identification (made possible by the Gregory sermon, Document III, et al) of the Edessan Mandylion (facial image only) and shroud of Jesus (whole body image with presence of visible blood and water from the side wound) remains elusive.