Editing Image of Edessa (section)

==Later events==
The ''Holy Mandylion'' disappeared again after the [[Sassanid Empire|Sassanians]] conquered [[Edessa, Mesopotamia|Edessa]] in 609.{{Citation needed |date=May 2024}} A local legend, related to historian Andrew Palmer when he visited [[Urfa]] (Edessa) in 1997, relates that the towel or burial cloth ({{lang|ar|منديل}} {{transliteration|ar|mendil}}) of [[Jesus Christ|Jesus]] was thrown into a well in what is today the city's Great Mosque.<ref name="Palmer 1998" /> The Christian tradition exemplified in [[Georgios Kedrenos]]' ''Historiarum compendium''<ref>Kedrenos, ed. Bekker, vol. I:685; see K. Weitzmann, "The Mandylion and Constantine Porphyrogennetos", ''Cahiers archéologiques'' '''11''' (1960:163-84), reprinted in ''Studies in Classical and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination'', H. Kessler, ed. (Chicago, 1971:224-76).</ref> is at variance with this, [[John Scylitzes]]<ref>John Scylitzes. 231f, noted in Holger A. Klein, "Sacred Relics and Imperial Ceremonies at the Great Palace of Constantinople", 2006:91 and note 80 ([ reprinted on-line]).</ref> recounting how in 944, when the city was besieged by [[John Kourkouas]], it was exchanged for a group of Muslim prisoners. At that time the Image of Edessa was taken to [[Constantinople]]  where it was received amidst great celebration by emperor [[Romanus I|Romanos I Lekapenos]], who deposited it in the [[Theotokos of the Pharos]] chapel in the [[Great Palace of Constantinople]]. Not inconsequentially, the earliest known Byzantine icon of the Mandylion or Holy Face, preserved at [[Saint Catherine's Monastery]] in [[Egypt]], is dated c. 945.<ref>K. Weitzmann, ''The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Icons I: From the Sixth to the Tenth Century'', Princeton, 1976:94-98, and plates xxxvi-xxxvii.</ref>

The Mandylion remained under Imperial protection until the Crusaders sacked the city in 1204 and carried off many of its treasures to Western Europe, though the "Image of Edessa" is not mentioned in this context in any contemporary document. Similarly, it has been claimed that the [[Shroud of Turin]] disappeared from Constantinople in 1204, when Crusaders looted the city. The leaders of the Crusader army in this instance were French and Italian (from Venice), and it is believed that somehow because of this, the Shroud made its way to France.<ref>''[[Archaeological Study Bible]]'' by [[Zondervan]]</ref> A small part of a relic, believed to be the same as this, was one of the large group sold by [[Baldwin II of Constantinople]] to [[Louis IX of France]] in 1241 and housed in the [[Sainte-Chapelle]] in Paris (not to be confused with the Sainte Chapelle at [[Chambéry]], home for a time of the Shroud of Turin) until it disappeared during the [[French Revolution]].<ref name="artnet1931"/>

The Portuguese Jesuit [[Jerónimo Lobo]], who visited Rome in 1637, mentions the sacred portrait sent to King Abgar as being in this city: "I saw the famous relics that are preserved in that city as in a sanctuary, a large part of the holy cross, pieces of the crown and several thorns, the sponge, the lance, Saint Thomas's finger, one of the thirty coins for which the Saviour was sold, the sacred portrait, the one that Christ Our Lord sent to King Abagaro, the sacred staircase on which Christ went up and down from the Praetorium, the head of the holy Baptist, the Column, the Altar on which Saint Peter said mass, and countless other relics."<ref>The itinerario of Jeronimo Lobo, 1984, page 400</ref>

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File:Cathedral of the Holy Mandylion (Andronikov Monastery) 10.jpg|The [[katholikon]] of [[Andronikov Monastery]] is the oldest (outside the Kremlin) building in [[Moscow]] and one of numerous Russian churches dedicated to the Holy Mandylion
File:Christos Acheiropoietos.jpg|''The Saviour Not Made by Hands'', an icon of the [[Novgorod school]], {{circa|1100}}
</gallery>