i From the Mandylion of Edessa to the Shroud of Turin © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004278523_001 ii 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 iii From the Mandylion of Edessa to the Shroud of Turin The Metamorphosis and Manipulation of a Legend By Andrea Nicolotti LEIDEN | BOSTON iv 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) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. v To Gian Marco ∵ vi Contents Contents vii 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 202 205 Index of Names Contents Contents vii Contents vii Acknowledgements ix Acknowledgements ix List of illustrations xi List of Illustrations xi Chapter 1 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 7 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 Chapter 3 29 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 Chapter 4 53 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 Chapter 5 89 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 Robert de Clari 109 Latin Sermon 112 Chapter 6 120 An Overview of Iconography 120 The Holy Face of Lucca 120 Orderic Vitalis 126 Iconography of the Mandylion 128 Flowers or Holes? 149 Miniatures of the Mandylion 153 The Georgian Icon of Ancha 160 The Madrid’s Skylitzes 162 A Russian Icon 170 Byzantine Coins 173 Two Copies of the Mandylion of Edessa 182 Chapter 7 188 The End 188 The Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and the Disappearance of the Mandylion 188 Conclusions 202 Index of Names 205 AcknowledgementsAcknowledgements ix 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.