John 20 1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, she said, “and we do not know where they have put Him!
3Then Peter and the other disciple set out for the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down and looked in at the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in.
6 Simon Peter arrived just after him. He entered the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there. 7 The cloth that had been around Jesus’ head was rolled up, lying separate from the linen cloths. 8Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in. And he saw and believed. 9For they still did not understand from the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.
King Abgar of Edessa wrote to Jesus, asking him to come cure him of an illness. Abgar received a reply letter from Jesus, declining the invitation, but promising a future visit by one of his disciples. One of the seventy disciples, Thaddeus of Edessa, is said to have come to Edessa, bearing the words of Jesus, by the virtues of which the king was miraculously healed.
This tradition was first recorded in the early 4th century by Eusebius of Caesarea, who said that he had transcribed and translated the actual letter in the Syriac chancery documents of the king of Edessa, but who makes no mention of an image. .[3] The report of an image, which accrued to the legendarium of Abgar, first appears in the Syriac work, the Doctrine of Addai: according to it, the messenger, here called Ananias, was also a painter, and he painted the portrait, which was brought back to Edessa and conserved in the royal palace.[4]
The first record of the existence of a physical image in the ancient city of Edessa (now Urfa) was by Evagrius Scholasticus, writing about 593, who reports a portrait of Christ of divine origin (θεότευκτος), which effected the miraculous aid in the defence of Edessa against the Persians in 544.[5] The image was moved to Constantinople in the 10th century. The cloth disappeared when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and is believed by some to have reappeared as a relic in King Louis IX of France's Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. This relic disappeared in the French Revolution.[6]
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