mandylion

plural mandylions · alternative mandilion · alternative Mandylion

1. countableuncountablechiefly Eastern Orthodoxyoften Mandylion: the Image of Edessa, a holy relic consisting of a piece of cloth upon which an image of the face of Jesus Christ had been miraculously imprinted without human intervention (that is, an acheiropoieton); an artistic depiction of this relic.

   In St. Barbara in Khé, a thirteenth-century Georgian church, the Mandylion is painted on the wall behind the altar, […]

   1999, Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Beholding the Sacred Mysteries: Programs of the Byzantine Sanctuary (Monographs on the Fine Arts; 56), Seattle, Wash.: College Art Association in association with the University of Washington Press, →ISBN, page 75

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   The tradition of the sacred image is related to established prototypes […] handed down in Christian art, the most important [of which] is the acheiropoietos ("not made by human hands") image of the Christ on the Mandilion. It is said that the Christ gave His image, imprinted on a piece of fabric, to the messengers of the King of Edessa, Abgar, who had asked Him for His portrait. The Mandilion had been preserved at Constantinople until it disappeared when the town was pillaged by the Latin Crusaders. A copy of the Mandilion is preserved in the cathedral of Laon.

   1967, Titus Burckhardt; Lord Northbourne (Walter Earnest Christopher James), transl., Sacred Art in East and West: Its Principles and Methods, London: Perennial Books, OCLC 896652107; republished Louisville, Ky.: Fons Vitae, 2001, ISBN 978-1-887752-41-1, pages 88–89

   According to a sixth-century legend, King Abgar Ukamâ of Edessa fell ill. Hearing about a healer named Jesus, he sent for the holy man and promised to become his follower. Christ learned of this and praised Abgar for having faith without visual evidence. Unable to travel to Edessa, Christ sent a likeness of himself produced miraculously on a cloth or mandylion (from Arabic mandil, "veil," and Latin mantele, "towel" or "napkin"). Abgar was cured, and the mandylion remained in Edessa until 544, when its magic turned back the invading Persians from the gates of the now-Christian city.

   1993, Joseph Leo Koerner, “Not Made by Human Hands”, in The Moment of Self-portraiture in German Renaissance Art, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 81

   These legends not only established the value of the Mandylion and the Vera Icon as authentic portraits of Christ, but also as acheiropoieta, i.e., images made without the intervention of human hands.

   1995, Maurits Smeyers, “An Eyckian Vera Icon in a Bruges Book of Hours, ca. 1450 (New York, Pierpoint Morgan Library, Ms 421)”, in Werner Verbeke et al., editors, Serta Devota in Memoriam Guillelmi Lourdaux. Pars Posterior: Cultura Mediaevalis (Mediaevalia Lovaniensia; Series I, Studia XXI), part II, Leuven: Leuven University Press, →OCLC, page 199

   We know the history of the transfer of the mandilion of Edessa to Constantinople from the text ascribed to Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913/944–959).

   2007, Acta Poloniae Historica, Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, →OCLC, page 37

   The mandylion became not just a holy relic but an image to be copied, either as textile or as iconographic type on a hard surface: a painted icon of a mandylion with Christ's face on it. Furthermore it became a theological prototype. Just as the mandylion bore the impression of the incarnate God on its surface and became a vessel of divine healing, so all icons bear witness to the power of matter to reveal divinity and of revealed divinity to effect eternal salvation.

   2009, Artemis Leontis, Culture and Customs of Greece, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, page 42

   Synonyms: Image of Edessa

1. Alternative letter-case form of mandylion.