DOCUMENT V.   LITURGICAL TRACTATE CA. 960

Von Dobschütz (110**-114**) identified the next important document appended to two codices of the Narratio.  He called it the “Liturgical Tractate,” and attributed to it a date around 960.  Its importance lies in its description of the rituals and preservation of the imaged cloth while it had been in Edessa. In that city the image had been shown to the public only rarely.  On its festival day,

a throne was brought forward and on it was placed the revered and acheiropoietos image of Christ and God, draped with a white linen cloth.  Four bishops, if they happened to be present, or otherwise four presbyters, elevated the throne, and holding it aloft they came out of the treasure chamber, the archbishop leading the way.

During Holy Week a second exposition occurred. 

The archbishop alone entered the room of the icon.  He opened the chest (theke) in which it had been kept, and with a wet sponge that had never been used, he would wipe the icon and then dispense among the whole people the drops that could be squeezed out. . . . And since the old chest was encased with shutters, so that it would not be visible to all whenever they wished, on these two days of the week--I mean on Thursday and Saturday--when these shutters, so to speak, were opened up by means of very slender iron rods that were thrust through (these were called “sceptres”), then all the assembled throng gazed upon it; and every person besought with prayers its incomprehensible power.  But nobody was allowed to draw near to it, or to touch their lips or eyes to the holy shape.  So holy dread increased their faith, and made them shiver with yet more awe in their worship.

This text does not speak to the question of what really lay within the shuttered theke in Edessa, whether a small towel with facial image or a folded larger tetradiplon.^{2 2}  

Whatever the chronology of an unfolding and recognition in Constantinople, no significant new information, whether about the Mandylion or the burial shroud, appears again in the capital’s documents for more than a century after 960 (Doc. V).  During that time only casual references to one or the other occur.  Still we may be sure the cloth or cloths in question remained the property of the Emperors, for subsequent references describe them exactly as previous documents had.  Significantly, from 958 on, the burial cloth icon is named in every description of the imperial relic collection.