NOTES
1 Robert
Drews, In Search of the Shroud of Turin (Totowa,
N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld 1984) 39, noted that the word
"Mandylion" first appeared in 990 in a biography of the
ascetic Paul of Mt. Latros, who was granted a miraculous
vision of "the icon of Christ not made by hands, which
is commonly [sýnethes] called the holy
Mandylion." Synethes, however, suggests earlier
occasions of the word. This paper is heavily indebted
to Ernst von Dobschütz, Christusbilder,
Untersuchungen zur christlichen Legende (Leipzig: J.
C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung 1899). This priceless
study was paginated as three volumes in one: 1-294;
1*-335*; and 1**-355**.
2 Paul
Edouard Didier Riant, Exuviae sacrae
constantinopolitanae, 2 vols. (Geneva: Sociètè de
l'orient latin 1878). See also Riant, Dépouilles
religieuses enlevés a Constantinople au XIIIe
siècle par les latins et documents historiques nés de
leur transport en occident (Paris: Sociètè Nationale
des antiquaires de France 1875). Jean Ebersolt,
Sanctuaires de Byzance: recherches sur les anciens
trésors des eglises de Constantinople (Paris:
Editions Ernst Leroux 1921).
3 See
especially Riant, Exuviae (above, n. 2)
II.133‑35.
4 Many of
these terms will be found in their appropriate contexts
in the notes to this paper. The list is not
exhaustive. See von Dobschütz (n. 1) 248** for a litany
of the terms used to describe the Mandylion. Also see
Drews (n. 1) 38f.
5 George
Howard, tr. from Syriac, The Teaching of Addai
(Chico, CA: Scholars Press 1981) 3-13. L.-J. Tixeront,
L'Église d'Édesse et la Légende d'
Abgar
(Paris: Maisonneuve et Ch. Leclercs 1888), 81-103,
discussed the scholarly arguments about the dates of
this work and placed it in the early 4th c. Eusebius
says three times that he translated the Abgar legend
from Syriac originals in the archives of Edessa and
twice that he cited word for word (pros lexin).
Tixeront concluded that this was the document
that Eusebius translated but lightly retouched and
interpolated, possibly in light of the main ideas of the
Council of Nicaea 325. Eusebius (H.E. I. 13.
1-22) describes only a letter sent by Jesus to Abgar,
but no portrait, miraculous or otherwise. Eusebius (c.
260-340) was an early opponent of images, and he may
have omitted that element if it was present in the
Edessan archive he consulted. He also changed Addai to
Thaddeus. Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine
Empire 312-1453. (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall 1972)
gives Eusebius's Letter to Constantia (sister of
Constantine the Great) 16-18, which manifests the
bishop's iconoclastic position. The same 4th c.
attitude to images is seen in the letters of Epiphanius
of Salamis to Emperor Theodosius and to John, Bishop of
Aelia on the imaged curtain in the Anablatha (Jerusalem)
church in Mango 41-43.
6 On the
question of Christianity's establishment in Edessa, see
J. B. Segal, Edessa, "The Blessed City" (Oxford:
Clarendon 1970) and his bibliography. See Steven
Runciman, "Some Remarks on the Image of Edessa,"
Cambridge Historical Journal, III. 1929-1931,
238-252 and Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in
Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press
1971) Ch. 1. For the archival Chronicle of Edessa,
L. Hallier, Untersuchungen über die Edessensiche
Chronik, 48-53 and 84-91. The account of the great
flood of 201 in Edessa includes among the buildings
destroyed "the sanctuary of the Christian church. See
also Terence Towers, "The Holy Face of Edessa," The
Downside Review, 90 (1972).