The image of Edessa
- Daniel Oltean
- Aug 31
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 11
In the Byzantine world, the icon of Edessa was arguably the most famous image “not made by human hands” (acheiropoieton). According to legend, before his death, Christ imprinted the image of his face on a cloth, which he sent to King Abgar V of Edessa with a letter. This story is not credible, especially since, unlike other Christian legends whose origins are unknown, we can understand the formation of this story to a greater extent. Indeed, according to the oldest version of the legend, it was not Christ who created the icon, but an artist sent to Jerusalem by King Abgar.
The origins of the legend
The oldest text that mentions a special connection between Christ and the city of Edessa (present-day Urfa/Şanlıurfa, Turkey) is the Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius of Caesarea (4th c.). The writer cites a tradition developed in the region of Edessa, according to which King Abgar sent a messenger to Jerusalem to request Jesus’ help in delivering him from his bodily sufferings. On this occasion, Christ wrote him a letter, but nothing is said about an image of Christ that would have been sent to the king. [1]
This story without historical basis was likely intended to fill a gap in information about the beginnings of Christianity in Edessa and promote the myth of its apostolic origins. Over time, the tradition developed, and the letter sent to Abgar became a talisman, like other objects and letters that “fell from the sky” and were venerated by Christians. According to Egeria, a pilgrim from the West who visited Edessa around 384, whenever enemies came to attack the city, the public reading of the letter would quickly disperse them. But the legend of the miraculous image still remained unknown at that time. [2]
The earliest text that mentions an icon of Christ in Edessa is the Doctrine of Addai (CANT 89), preserved in the Syriac language. The oldest manuscript of this work dates from the late 5th or early 6th century. In addition to Christ’s letter, the author adds the story of an image that arrived in Edessa. However, the text does not speak of a miraculous icon, but of an image made two days before the Passion of Christ by the messenger sent to Jerusalem, called Hannan/Ananias:
While Jesus was speaking to him, the archivist Hannan, who was the painter of the king, painted the image of Jesus with chosen pigments and brought it to his master. When King Abgar saw it, he received it with great joy and placed it with great honour in one of the rooms of his palace. [3]
The transformation of the legend
The next stage in the development of the legend is recorded in the Acts of Mar Mari, a work generally dated to the end of the 6th or the beginning of the 7th century. According to this text, Abgar’s messengers arrived in Jerusalem two days before the Passion of Christ, when the exchange of letters took place. After their return to Edessa, Abgar decided to send some painters to Jerusalem to paint a portrait of Jesus. Puzzlingly, despite the distance between the two cities (ca. 900 km), they arrived before Jesus’ death! And since they were unable to paint Christ, he intervened and printed his image on a cloth:
After seeing the painters struggling to obtain an image that conformed to reality, the Life-Giver of the world took a cloth, printed it on its face, and it conformed to reality. The cloth was taken as a source of help and deposited in the church of Edessa to this day. [4]
Thus artificially rewritten, the legend quickly gained widespread recognition. Evagrius Scholasticus (6th c.) mentions an image “divinely created, which human hands had not made, the one that Christ the God sent to Abgar when he yearned to see Him.” The icon protected the city of Edessa during the Persian siege in 544. [5] However, the historian Procopius of Caesarea (6th c.), who had already described the same event before Evagrius, does not seem to have heard of a miraculous icon in Edessa. [6] This fact places the creation of the second version of the legend in the second half of the 6th century.
The image of Edessa became very popular in the Byzantine world, as evidenced by the Acts of Thaddeus (7th c., CANT 299, BHG 1702-1703) and the Story of the Image of Edessa (10th c., CANT 931, BHG 794-796). [7] The second text attests to the existence of other stages in the development of the legend. It seems that there was not just one acheiropoietos icon in Edessa, but three! Moreover, on his way back from Jerusalem to Edessa, Ananias is said to have stopped at Hierapolis/Mabbug (today Manbij, in Syria), where the face of Christ was also imprinted on a brick (keramion). A similar miracle and the appearance of another “holy brick” are also said to have taken place in Edessa. [8]
In 944, the image of Edessa (also known as the Mandylion; Latin: mantile) was purchased by Emperor Romanos I (919-944) and solemnly transported to Constantinople. At that time, the face of Christ was almost effaced, an occasion to say that only the righteous persons could see it, not the wicked ones. [9] A few decades later, probably in the time of Nicephoros II Phokas (963-969), the keramion of Hierapolis was also transferred to the capital. In the Byzantine calendar, the commemoration of these two events takes place on August 16.
After the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, there are few remaining traces of these miraculous objects. However, their memory has been preserved in other legends, such as those of the Veil of Veronica in the Vatican, of the Mandylion in the Church of S. Bartolomeo degli Armeni in Genoa, and of the Mandylion in the Church of San Silvestro in Capite in Rome.
The acheiropoietos image and Iconoclasm
Why did an image painted by King Abgar’s messenger become an image “not made by human hands”? In the 6th century, the idea that humans could paint the divine was still little accepted. One of the commandments of the Decalogue prohibited the creation of images and the representation of divine things (Ex 20,4-5). In these conditions, the first version of the legend, which promoted a human-made image of Christ, and therefore an iconophile thesis, had little chance of gaining acceptance at that time. On the other hand, the second version, in which Christ himself is the creator of the image, was practically incontestable. However, these hesitations regarding the creation of the image of Edessa suggest that the appearance of the first icons was not driven by theological or artistic considerations, but rather by the desire to multiply miraculous objects that attracted crowds and generated material benefits.
Moreover, the legend’s new version had a clear iconoclastic tendency. For, indeed, if Ananias failed to paint the face of Christ, how could others succeed? A paradox remains thus hidden behind the miracle. Even after the end of the disputes over the images, the absolution of the last iconoclastic emperor, and the establishment of Orthodox Sunday in the 9th century, the iconoclastic theses of this legend were still preserved. At the end of the 12th century, in a didascalia by Constantine Stilbes (future Metropolitan of Cyzicus, in Turkey) on the image of Edessa, we still read arguments that would have produced great pleasure among the iconoclasts a few centuries earlier:
Indeed, the divine form [i.e., the face of Christ] is elusive to the eyes, even if the artist continually sends upon this form the spiritual rays of vision, as one touches with the hands; as he [probably, a reference to Gregory of Nazianzen] who spoke of His nature says, it is elusive and unlimited, and the grace which makes the face shine comes to stop the painter [from painting]. [10]
[1] Eusèbe de Césarée, Histoire ecclésiastique, §1.13, trans. G. Bardy (SC, 31), Paris, 1986, p. 40-45. SC refers to the collection Sources chrétiennes.
[2] Égérie, Journal de voyage (Itinéraire), §19, ed. et trans. P. Maraval (SC, 296, Paris, 1982, p. 202-213.
[3] A. Desreumaux et al. (trans.), Histoire du roi Abgar et de Jésus (Apocryphes, 1), Turnhout, 1993, p. 59 (§6). CANT refers to Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamenti. See J. A. Lollar, Doctrine of Addai, e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha, https://www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christian-apocrypha/doctrine-of-addai.
[4] C. Jullien – F. Jullien, (trans.), Les Actes de Mar-Mari. L’apôtre de la Mésopotamie (Apocryphes, 11), Turnhout, 2001, p. 67 (§3). See J. A. Lollar, Acts of Mar Mari, e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha, https://www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christian-apocrypha/acts-of-mar-mari.
[5] Evagrius Scholasticus, The Ecclesiastical History, §4.27, trans. M. Whitby (Translated Texts for Historians, 33), Liverpool, 2000, p. 226.
[6] Procopius of Caesarea, The Persian War, §2.26-27, ed. J. Haury – G. Wirth, Procopii Caesariensis Opera omnia, 1, De Bellis Libri I-IV, Leipzig, 1962, p. 268-282. See A. Cameron, The History of the Image of Edessa: The Telling of a Story, dans Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 7 (1984) = Okeanos: Essays Presented to Ihor Ševčenko on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. C. Mango – O. Pritsak, Cambridge (MA), p. 80-94.
[7] N. J. Hardy, Acts of Thaddaeus, e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha, https://www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christian-apocrypha/acts-of-thaddaeus; N. J. Hardy, Story of the Image of Edessa, e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha, https://www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christian-apocrypha/story-of-the-image-of-edessa. Thaddeus is the Greek name for Addai. BHG refers to Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca. The second text exists in three versions, contained in the synaxaria (acronym A), pre-metaphrastic menologia (acronym B1), and metaphrastic menologia (acronym B2); see B. Flusin, L’image d’Édesse, Romain et Constantin, in A. Monaci Castagno (ed.), Sacre impronte e oggetti «non fatti da mano d’uomo» nelle religioni, Allesandria, 2011, p. 253-278.
[8] M. Guscin, The Image of Edessa (The Medieval Mediterranean, 82), Leiden, 2009, p. 42-45 (first copy); 46-47 (second copy); 20-25 (brick of Hierapolis); 32-39 (brick of Edessa) (§20; 23; 8-9; 15-17).
[9] Theophanes Continuatus, ed. I. Bekker, Bonn, 1838, p. 750 (Chronicle of Pseudo-Symeon Magistros, §52).
[10] B. Flusin (ed. and trans.), Didascalie de Constantin Stilbès sur le Mandylion et la sainte Tuile (BHG 796m), in Revue des études byzantines, 55 (1997), p. 53-79, ici 73 (§6), https://www.persee.fr/doc/rebyz_0766-5598_1997_num_55_1_1936.
