From the Mandylion of Edessa to the Shroud of Turin: The Metamorphosis and Manipulation of a Legend

227 Pages·2014·22.851 MB·English

by  Andrea Nicolotti

From the Mandylion of Edessa to the Shroud of Turin
Art and Material Culture in
Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Edited by
Sarah Blick
Laura D. Gelfand
VOLUME 1
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/amce
From the Mandylion of Edessa
to the Shroud of Turin
The Metamorphosis and Manipulation of a Legend
By
Andrea Nicolotti
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Lluís Borrassà, Retaule d’advocació franciscana. © Museu Episcopal de Vic, Spain.
Photo: Josep Giribet.
Brill and the author have made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted
material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes
communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in
future editions, and to settle other permission matters.
Work translated by Hiara Olivera.
Editing and additional revisions by Sarah Blick and Laura Gelfand.
Originally published in 2011 in Italian by Edizioni dell’Orso:
Dal Mandylion di Edessa alla Sindone di Torino. Metamorfosi di una leggenda. (ISBN: 978-88-6274-307-5)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nicolotti, Andrea.
[Dal Mandylion di Edessa alla Sindone di Torino. English]
From the Mandylion of Edessa to the Shroud of Turin : the metamorphosis and manipulation of
a legend / by Andrea Nicolotti ; edited by Sarah Blick and Laura D. Gelfand.
pages cm. -- (Art and material culture in medieval and Renaissance Europe, ISSN 2212-4187 ;
VOLUME 1)
ISBN 978-90-04-26919-4 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-27852-3 (e-book) 1. Holy Face of
Edessa. 2. Holy Shroud. 3. Jesus Christ--Relics. I. Title.
BT587.M3N5313 2014
232.9’66--dc23
2014023664
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering
Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.
For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 2212-4187
isbn 978-90-04-26919-4 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-27852-3 (e-book)
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To Gian Marco
∵

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of Illustrations xi
1 Introduction 1
2 Origins and Traditions 7
King Abgar and the Origins of the Legend 7
The Apparition of the Image in Edessa 9
The Development of Traditions about the Image 12
The Siege of Edessa 14
A Later Genesis? 17
An Older Genesis? 18
Silence in Syria and Traditions in Armenia 22
The Iconoclastic Era 26
3 Shifting Perspectives? 29
Acts of Thaddaeus 29
The Term tetrádiplon and the Reliquary of the Image 34
The Question of the Folds 39
The Letter of the Three Patriarchs and Jesus’ Height 47
4 The Translation of the Image of Edessa 53
Gregory Referendarius and the Translation of the Image 53
The Narratio de Imagine Edessena 66
The Keramion 72
The Edessean Cult of the Image 77
The Synaxarium 80
The Liturgical Odes 84
5 The Mandylion in Constantinople 89
The Name “Mandylion” 89
Persistence of Converging and Different Traditions 91
An Elusive Vision 96
The Preservation of the Mandylion in Byzantium 99
The Revolt of the Palace 106
viii Contents
Robert de Clari 109
Latin Sermon 112
6 An Overview of Iconography 120
The Holy Face of Lucca 120
Orderic Vitalis 126
Iconography of the Mandylion 128
Flowers or Holes? 148
Miniatures of the Mandylion 152
The Georgian Icon of Ancha 159
The Madrid’s Skylitzes 162
A Russian Icon 170
Byzantine Coins 173
Two Copies of the Mandylion of Edessa 182
The End 188
The Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and the Disappearance of the
 Mandylion 188
Conclusions 202
Index of Names 205
Acknowledgements
Between April 10th and May 23. 2010, the city of Turin witnessed the passage of
more than two million people who came on pilgrimage to the exhibition of the
Holy Shroud.1 At the same time, between the 18th and the 20th of May, an in-
ternational conference was held at the University of Turin, called Sacred Im-
prints and “Objects not Made by Human Hands” in Religions, organized by the
University’s Center of Religious Sciences. I was involved in the organization of
the conference and because I had been researching the Shroud of Turin since
2009, I was invited to lecture on the relationship between the Shroud and the
so-called “Mandylion of Edessa.”2 This was an opportunity to focus on other
aspects of the history of the Turinese relic, namely, the invisible ancient writ-
ings identified on the sheet,3 the alleged presence of the Shroud in the city of
Constantinople – claimed by the crusader Robert de Clari4 – and, most re-
cently, the historiographical theories regarding the Shroud’s supposed journey
from Constantinople to fourteenth-century France.5 This book – a significant
expansion of the topics covered at the conference – is therefore the fourth part
of a series of studies about a millennium of alleged history of the Shroud of
Turin covering the fifth through the fourteenth centuries.
The parallel study of the two acheiropoieta images led me to review the
entire dossier of sources referring to the Mandylion of Edessa and its icono-
graphic tradition; many testimonies are gathered here in the original texts –
Greek, Latin, Arabic, Armenian and Syriac, some of them unpublished before
– and translated with strict fidelity to the text. Readers should note that I have
chosen to sacrifice the smoothness and elegance of English for the sake of
1 The volume Icona del Sabato Santo. Ricordi dell’ostensione della Sindone, Cantalupa, Effatà,
2011, was published to commemorate the exhibition of the Shroud in 2010.
2 A. Nicolotti, “Forme e vicende del Mandilio di Edessa secondo alcune moderne interpretazio-
ni,” in A. Monaci Castagno (ed.), Sacre impronte e oggetti «non fatti da mano d’uomo» nelle
religioni. Atti del Convegno Internazionale – Torino, 18–20 maggio 2010, Alessandria, Edizioni
dell’Orso, 2011, pp. 279–307. The entire volume of the proceedings of the Congress can be
downloaded for free from the website www.unito.it/csr, or from Google Books.
3 A. Nicolotti, “I cavalieri Templari, la Sindone di Torino e le sue presunte iscrizioni,” Humanitas
65/2 (2010), pp. 328–339; Id., “La leggenda delle scritte sulla Sindone,” MicroMega 4 (2010), pp.
67–79.
4 A. Nicolotti, “Una reliquia costantinopolitana dei panni sepolcrali di Gesù secondo la Cronaca
del crociato Robert de Clari,” Medioevo greco 11 (2011), pp. 151–196.
5 A. Nicolotti, I Templari e la Sindone. Storia di un falso, Rome, Salerno, 2011.
x Acknowledgements
faithfulness to the original texts.6 Thus, I have provided the reader with an up-
dated and comprehensive presentation of the historical and legendary events
of the Edessean image, with particular attention to its alleged contacts with
the Turinese relic.
This book was published in 2011 in Italian, in the Collana di studi del Centro
di scienze religiose dell'Università di Torino. The original Italian edition was well
received in academic circles,7 so I have not made any substantial changes to
the English edition. However, I have taken the opportunity to correct some
minor mistakes,8 and to make some adjustments as well as several additions,
updates, and adaptations for English-speaking readers. This volume, therefore,
can be considered a revised and augmented edition.
I thank Prof. Adele Monaci and all the Fellows, colleagues and friends of the
Department of Historical Studies of the University of Turin, who work at the
Center of Religious Sciences and at the Erik Peterson Library. I would like to
express my gratitude to my colleagues and friends Roberto Alciati (Torino) and
Luciano Bossina (Padova), and to Livio Cavallo for help with some image pro-
cessing. I also thank the editors of this series, who have given me the opportu-
nity to publish an English translation of the book, and Edizioni Dell'Orso,
which kindly granted free translation rights.
6 All translations from Greek and Latin are mine. Those from Arabic and Syriac have been re-
vised and sometimes entirely done by Alessandro Mengozzi. Anna Sirinian translated all the
Armenian texts.
7 V. Kontouma, in Revue des études byzantines 70 (2012), pp. 308–309; V. Poggi, in Orientalia
christiana periodica 78/1 (2012), pp. 239–240; V. Polidori, in Medioevo greco 12 (2012), pp. 375–
376; A. Rossi, in Vetera Christianorum 48 (2011), pp. 391–392; P. George, in Revue d'histoire ec-
clésiastique 107 (2012), pp. 673–674; K. Toomaspoeg, in Rivista di storia del cristianesimo 10/2
(2013), pp. 508–511; G. Aragione, in Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 93 (2013),
p. 568; A. N. Palmer, in The Catholic Historical Review 100/2 (2014), pp. 319-320. This book of
mine, along with the one entitled I Templari e la Sindone, had deserved the attention of
L. Canetti – who published his deep reflections on the issue in “Dai Templari a Bisanzio o la
falsa preistoria della Sindone di Torino,” in G. Vespignani (ed.), Polidoro. Studi offerti ad Antonio
Carile, Spoleto, Fondazione CISAM, 2013, pp. 827–847 – and of F. Pieri, “La Sindone fra nuove
e antiche leggende,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 48 (2012), pp. 167–178.
8 An errata corrige of the Italian version can be found in my personal webpage at www.acade-
mia.edu.