NOTES
20 See A. M.
Dubarle, Histoire Ancienne du linceul de Turin jusqu'
au XIII siècle (Paris: O.E.I.L. 1985) 55f. See too
Carlo Maria Mazzucchi "La testimonianza piú antica dell'
esistenza di una Sindone a Costantinopoli," Aevum,
57 (1983) 227‑231, which provides the original Greek of
the salient portions of the letter of 958. Though the
burial cloths emerge quietly and without fanfare or
ceremony in the capital from 958 with no mention of an
image, the large or main shroud is described with image
in the texts of Mesarites and Clari (Documents XI and
XII). 21 See above, n. 10. The manner of displaying
the Edessa cloth, in a frame wider than it is tall may
have been the result of folding the actual burial
wrapping in half three times and sealing it in a frame
to remove from view the blood and nakedness of the
body. In this form it came to Constantinople where only
gradually did the Byzantines become aware that a far
greater relic was present, one which derived from the
actual (Biblical) burial of Jesus, and not from the
Abgar story, a mere apochryphal and anachronistic
aetiological legend. Indeed, the fact that the arrival
in the capital of the burial wrappings, so prominant in
the relic collection, was not heralded by the usual
great processions and viewings, seems to support a
rather unorthodox discovery.
22 Drews (n.
1) 46, whose translations of Liturgical Tractate
passages, I have used, was properly curious about the
secrecy in which the icon was kept in Constantinople,
where it was carried in procession only once or twice a
century. Adopting Wilson's point of view, he asked,
"Is it conceivable that all of this secrecy--the guarded
chamber, the shuttered case, the slip-cover embroidered
with gold trellis, the cloth itself folded four [should
read three] times and packed against a board--was
perpetuated because no one knew there was anything of
interest on the rest of the cloth?"
23 See the
overview of interpretations in Einar Joranson, "The
Problem of the Spurious Letter of Emperor Alexius to the
Count of Flanders," AHR 55.4 (1950) 811‑32 and in
A. A. Vasiliev, A History of the Byzantine Empire
324‑1453 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press 1964)
II. 386ff. Anna Comnena assures us in the Alexiad
8.3‑5 that her father did write to seek mercenaries from
every quarter including Europe, and she singles out the
Count of Flanders.
24
See Kurt
Weitzmann,"The Origins of the Threnos," in De
artibus opuscula XL, Essays in Honor of Irwin
Panofsky (New York: New York Univ. Press 1961)
476‑490 and Wilson (n. 9) 133‑47. Good examples of
threnos and epitaphios art are the Pray Manuscript,
dated 1192-95, fig. 2 in Ilona Berkovits, Illuminated
Manuscripts in Hungary, XI-XVI Centuries (NY:
Praeger 1969; Z. Horn, tr.), 19; the 13th c.
epitaphios of king Uros Milutin now in Belgrade, in
Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud (n. 10), 116; and
the Image of the Savior in Rome's Sancta Sanctorum in
Lateran, fig. 112a in Bulst and Pfeiffer (n. 10). Words
of Pope Stephen in von Dobschütz (n. 1) 191*: quod si
faciem meam corporaliter cenere cupis, en tibi vultus
mei speciem transformatam in linteo dirigo . . .
25 For the
"Oldest Latin Abgar Text," Von Dobschütz (n. 1)
130**-131** identifies three codices: 14th c. cod. Par.
B. N. Lat. 6041A; 12th c. cod. Dijon 50; and 13th c.
cod. Dijon 638-642. In Rome in 1993, Zaninotto
presented 12th c. cod. Vat. Lat. 5696 and another that
he dates to the 10th c. It is cod. Vossianus Lat. Q.
69, from the Biblioteca Rijksuniversiteit at Leida.
This last ms would thus be his choice as the oldest
known version of the Abgar story in Latin. Von
Dobschütz (139** and 194*) ventured a date of about 800
for the Syriac original, but this ought to read "before
769," i.e., before Pope Stephen's discourse, for the
consistency of his position.