Is This the Face of Jesus?

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Legend has it that this darkened cloth encased in a centuries-old silver frame may preserve an authentic and miraculous depiction of Jesus’ face. To the more skeptical, it’s probably a Byzantine icon that was painted with the face of Jesus in accordance with an age-old legend.

In either case, the cloth, known as the Mandylion of Edessa, has an interesting story to tell.^a As the story goes, the fabled first-century king Abgar of Edessa (modern Urfa in southeastern Turkey) sent a message to Jesus requesting that he come to Edessa to cure the king of a deadly illness. In his stead, Jesus sent the ailing king an impression of his face left miraculously on a cloth (Greek, mandulion) that he had used to dry his wet face. The image not only cured the king’s illness but, centuries later, was credited with stopping a Persian attack on the city. (The image below is a tenth-century painting of Abgar holding the Mandylion. The painting is now on display in St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai in Egypt.)

By the sixth century, the church historian Evagrius reports that the Mandylion of Edessa was venerated by many Eastern Christians as an acheiropieton, or a divine object “not made by human hands.” In the tenth century, the Byzantine emperor moved the relic to Constantinople, after which countless copies were made and distributed across the empire. The original Mandylion was then lost during the Crusader sack of Constantinople in the 13th century, only to reappear again centuries later. By then, however, several mandylions had laid claim to being the original image of Christ, including this one that has resided in Rome and the Vatican since at least the 16th century.

The Mandylion of Edessa and its intriguing story are among the highlights of a new 017British Museum exhibition that explores the long history of relics and icons in Christian devotion. In Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, the Mandylion is displayed alongside a number of other ancient relics that were believed to have come in contact with the body of Jesus, including thorns from his crucifixion crown, fragments of the True Cross and even breast milk of the Virgin Mary.

But for medieval Christians, many of whom truly believed that the Mandylion was nothing less than an actual image of their Lord’s face, the cloth was something special. “In the Middle Ages it would have been greeted in the same way that [English soccer star] David Beckham’s sweaty shirt would be greeted today,” said British Museum director Neil MacGregor. “The exhibition is all about trying to represent the universal human desire to reach out and touch the absolute.” The exhibit runs until October 9, 2011.

Legend has it that this darkened cloth encased in a centuries-old silver frame may preserve an authentic and miraculous depiction of Jesus’ face. To the more skeptical, it’s probably a Byzantine icon that was painted with the face of Jesus in accordance with an age-old legend. In either case, the cloth, known as the Mandylion of Edessa, has an interesting story to tell.a As the story goes, the fabled first-century king Abgar of Edessa (modern Urfa in southeastern Turkey) sent a message to Jesus requesting that he come to Edessa to cure the king of a deadly illness. In […]