Icon Showing the Image of Edessa (Mandylion)

Icon Showing the Image of Edessa (Mandylion)

The Image of Edessa or the Mandylion (see image top right), is a relic of a cloth onto which the face of Christ had been imprinted. Not to be confused with other, similar, relics (such as the Veronica veil or the Shroud of Turin), the story of the Mandylion was first recorded in the 4th century. The traditional story relates that ailing King Abgar of Edessa wrote to ask Jesus to come to Edessa to heal him. Jesus declined to visit, but instead sent a disciple and the Mandylion. The image eventually came to reside in the Imperial Treasury in Constantinople in the 10th century, and was lost in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade. According to some reports, it perhaps reappeared among the relics at Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, however, this relic was also lost during the French Revolution.

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