Editing Image of Edessa (section)

==History of the legend==
{{More citations needed|date=August 2021}}
The story of the Mandylion is likely the product of centuries of development. The first version is found in [[Eusebius of Caesarea|Eusebius]]' ''History of the Church'' (1.13.5–1.13.22). Eusebius claimed that he had transcribed and translated the actual letter in the Syriac chancery documents of the king of Edessa. This records a letter written by King [[Abgar of Edessa]] to Jesus, asking him to come cure him of an illness. Jesus replies by letter, saying that when he had completed his earthly mission and ascended to heaven, he would send a disciple ([[Thaddeus of Edessa]]) to heal Abgar (and does so). At this stage, there is no mention of an image of Jesus.<ref>{{cite book |last1=of Caesarea |first1=Eusebius |title=Church History, Book I Chapter 13 |url=http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250101.htm |access-date=1 November 2018}}</ref>

In AD 384, [[Egeria (pilgrim)|Egeria]], a pilgrim from either Gaul or Spain, was given a personal tour by the Bishop of Edessa, who provided her with many marvellous accounts of miracles that had saved Edessa from the Persians and put into her hands transcripts of the correspondence of Abgarus and Jesus, with embellishments. Part of her accounts of her travels, in letters to her sisterhood, survive. "She naïvely supposed that this version was more complete than the shorter letter which she had read in a translation at home, presumably one brought back to the Far West by an earlier pilgrim".<ref name="Palmer 1998">{{cite journal | first=Andrew | last=Palmer | title=A time for killing | work=Gouden Hoorn: A Journal of Byzantium | issn=0929-7820 | date=Summer 1998 | volume=6 | number=1 | url=https://goudenhoorn.com/2011/12/03/a-time-for-killing/ <!-- https://web.archive.org/web/20040806003957/http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/goudenhoorn/61andrew.html -->}}</ref> Her escorted tour, accompanied by a translator, was thorough; the bishop is quoted: "Now let us go to the gate where the messenger Ananias came in with the letter of which I have been telling you."<ref name="Palmer 1998" /> There was however, no mention of any image reported by Egeria, who spent three days inspecting every corner of Edessa and the environs.

The next stage of development appears in the ''[[Doctrine of Addai]]'' [Thaddeus], c. 400, which introduces a court painter among a delegation sent by Abgar to Jesus, who paints a portrait of Jesus to take back to his master:

{{blockquote|When Hannan, the keeper of the archives, saw that Jesus spoke thus to him, by virtue of being the king's painter, he took and painted a likeness of Jesus with choice paints, and brought with him to Abgar the king, his master. And when Abgar the king saw the likeness, he received it with great joy, and placed it with great honor in one of his palatial houses.|''Doctrine of Addai'', 13}}

The later legend of the image recounts that because the successors of Abgar reverted to paganism, the bishop placed the miraculous image inside a wall, and setting a burning lamp before the image, he sealed them up behind a tile; that the image was later found again, after a vision, on the very night of the Persian invasion, and that not only had it [[Ancha icon|miraculously reproduced itself on the tile]], but the same lamp was still burning before it; further, that the bishop of Edessa used a fire into which oil flowing from the image was poured to destroy the Persians.

The image itself is said to have resurfaced in 525, during a flood of the Daisan, a tributary stream of the [[Euphrates]] that passed by Edessa. This flood is mentioned in the writings of the court historian [[Procopius of Caesarea]]. In the course of the reconstruction work, a cloth bearing the facial features of a man was discovered hidden in the wall above one of the gates of Edessa.

Writing soon after the Persian siege of 544, [[Procopius]] says that the text of Jesus' letter, by then including a promise that "no enemy would ever enter the city", was inscribed over the city gate, but does not mention an image.  Procopius is sceptical about the authenticity of the promise, but says that the wish to disprove it was part of the Persian king [[Khosrau I]]'s motivation for the attack, as "it kept irritating his mind".<ref>Kitzinger, 103–104, 103 with first quote; Procopius, ''Histories of the Wars'', II, 26, 7–8, quoted, and 26–30 on Jesus' promise, [https://archive.org/stream/procopiuswitheng01procuoft#page/364/mode/2up Loeb translation quoted].</ref> The Syriac ''[[Chronicle of Edessa]]'' written in 540-550 also claim divine interventions in the siege, but does not mention the Image.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cameron |first1=Averil |title=Changing Cultures in Early Byzantium |date=1996 |publisher=Variorum |isbn=9780860785873 |page=156 |language=en}}</ref>

Some fifty years later, [[Evagrius Scholasticus]] in his ''Ecclesiastical History'' (593) is the first to mention a role for the image in the relief of the siege,<ref>Kitzinger, 103</ref> attributing it to a "God-made image", a miraculous imprint of the face of Jesus upon a cloth. Thus we can trace the development of the legend from a letter, but no image in Eusebius, to an image painted by a court painter in Addai, which becomes a miracle caused by a miraculously-created image supernaturally made when Jesus pressed a cloth to his wet face in Evagrius. It was this last and latest stage of the legend that became accepted in Eastern Orthodoxy, the image of Edessa that was "created by God, and not produced by the hands of man". This idea of an icon that was ''[[Acheiropoieta|Acheiropoietos]]'' ({{langx|el|Αχειροποίητη}}, {{lit|not made by hand}}) is a separate enrichment of the original legend: similar legends of supernatural origins have accrued to other Orthodox icons.

The [[Ancha icon]] is reputed to be the ''Keramidion'', another ''acheiropoietos'' recorded from an early period, miraculously imprinted with the face of Christ by contact with the Mandylion.  To art historians it is a [[Georgia (country)|Georgia]]n icon of the 6th-7th century.

According to the ''[[Golden Legend]]'', which is a collection of [[hagiographies]] compiled by [[Jacobus de Voragine]] in the thirteenth century, the king Abgarus sent an epistle to Jesus, who  answered him writing that he would send him one of his disciples ([[Addai of Edessa|Thaddeus of Edessa]]) to heal him. The same work adds:

{{blockquote|And when Abgarus saw that he might not see God presently, after that it is said in an ancient history, as John Damascene witnesseth in his fourth book, he sent a painter unto Jesu Christ for to figure the image of our Lord, to the end that at least that he might see him by his image, whom he might not see in his visage. And when the painter came, because of the great splendour and light that shone in the visage of our Lord Jesu Christ, he could not behold it, ne  could not counterfeit  it by no figure. And when our Lord saw this thing he took from the painter a linen cloth and set it upon his visage, and emprinted the very phisiognomy of his visage therein, and sent it unto the king Abgarus which so much desired it. And in the same history is contained how this image was figured. It was well-eyed, well-browed, a long visage or cheer,  and inclined, which is a sign of maturity or ripe sadness.<ref>{{cite book |last1=de Voragine |first1=Jacobus |title=The Golden Legend or Lives Of The Saints |date=1275 |url=https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/goldenlegend/GoldenLegend-Volume6.asp |access-date=28 October 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Stracke |first1=Richard |title=Golden Legend: Life of SS. Simon and Jude |url=http://www.christianiconography.info/goldenLegend/simonAndJude.htm |access-date=28 October 2018 |language=en}}</ref>}}