Copyright © Stephen E. Jones[1]
acheiropoietos #5
This is part #5, "acheiropoietos," of my new Turin Shroud Encyclopedia. For information about this series, see part #1 and part #2. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated.
[Index #1] [Previous: Accetta, August #4] [Next: Acts of Thaddeus #6]
Meaning Acheiropoietos is a Greek word meaning "not made by hands.". It is a compound of three Greek words, a = "not" + cheiro = "hands" + poietos = "made".
[Above: Twelfth century Christ Acheiropoietos ("not made with hands" - see Mk 14:58; 2Cor 5:1; Col 2:11. Cf. Acts 7:48; Heb 9:11,24), copy of the Mandylion/Shroud face panel) from the Assumption (Dormition) Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin, now in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow[2] [see 20Dec18]. By my count this icon of the Image of Edessa has 12 out of the 15 Vignon markings found on the Shroud! Which is further evidence that the Image of Edessa was the Shroud "four-doubled" - tetradiplon!]
New Testament The word and its variants occur three times in the New Testament:
Mk 14:58. "We heard him saying `I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands [acheiropoieton].'"Acheiropoietos is God's work, in contrast with human work:
2Cor 5:1. "For we know that if our earthly house, the tent we live in, is taken down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands [acheiropoieton], eternal, in the heavens."
Col 2:11 "In him you also were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands [acheiropoietoo], by the putting off of the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ."
"The NT [New Testament] contrasts what is made by human hands with God's work. Mk. 14:58 refers to a temple not made with hands [Jesus' resurrected body - Jn 2:18-21] ... Col. 2:11 refers to the circumcision that is made without hands, i.e., that of Christ, whereby his people are buried and raised again with him. The heavenly house of 2 Cor. 5:1 is not made with hands. After death, God will have ready for us the new dwelling with which we shall be clothed"[3].Evagrius Scholasticus c.590 In about 590 the ancient historian Evagrius Scholasticus (c.536-594) recorded in his Ecclesiastical History that in the 544 siege of Edessa by the Persian king Khosrow I (r. 531-579), "the divinely made image not made by the hands of man" [acheiropoietos], i.e. the face of the Image of Edessa/Shroud, caused the Persian siege tower to catch fire and saved the city:
"The mine was completed; but they [the Edessans] failed in attempting to fire the wood, because the fire, having no exit whence it could obtain a supply of air, was unable to take hold of it. In this state of utter perplexity they brought out the divinely made image not made by the hands of man, which Christ our God sent to King Abgar when he desired to see him. Accordingly, having introduced this sacred likeness into the mine and washed it over with water, they sprinkled some upon the timber ... the timber immediately caught the flame, and being in an instant reduced to cinders, communicated with that above, and the fire spread in all directions."This is the first known use of the word acheiropoietos in relation to the Image of Edessa/Shroud.
Acheropita, Rome c.590-754 Since at least 754 and probably before 590, a copy of the Image of Edessa/Shroud called the
[Right (enlarge)[4]: The Acheropita since at least 754 has been preserved in Rome's Sancta Sanctorum [Latin "Holy of Holies"] chapel of the Vatican's Lateran Palace Sancta Sanctorum chapel, originally the private chapel of the popes before papal residence shifted to the Vatican. The icon's cover is thirteenth-century, and its face a crude over-painting. But beneath it lies a near totally-effaced original that dates back at least as far as 754 and probably before 590. Note that the head is centred in landscape aspect, exactly as it is on the Shroud and the icon's proportions appear close to the Shroud's 4:1[24Feb17].]
Acheropita, a Latinization of acheiropoietos ("not made with hands" - Mk 14:58; 2Cor 5:1; Col 2:11) was in the Sancta Sanctorum Chapel of the Vatican's Lateran Palace by at least 754. That is because when Rome was threatened by the Lombards after their capture of Ravenna in 751, Pope Stephen II (r. 752-757) in 754 personally carried this Acheropita barefoot at the head of a huge procession in Rome, praying for this icon to be instrumental in the deliverance of their city. Yet it likely was brought to Rome over 160 years previously by Pope Gregory I the Great (r. 590-604). Before he became Pope, Gregory had been the papal legate in Constantinople at the court of the Byzantine Emperor Tiberius II (r. 574-582), when interest in acheiropoietic images, after the discovery of the Image of Edessa in 544, was at its peak in Constantinople. It is therefore very likely that this Acheropita icon was given to Gregory before 590, based on the Image of Edessa, for him to take back to Rome[24Feb17]!
Gregory Referendarius, Constantinople 944 Gregory Referendarius was the archdeacon of Hagia Sophia cathedral in Constantinople when the Image of Edessa/Shroud arrived in Constantinople from Edessa on 15 August 944. The next day, 16 August 944, Gregory delivered a sermon in which he referred to the Image of Edessa as not only "sweat from the face of the ruler of life, falling like drops of blood" but also "drops from his own side ... [of] blood and water." Since the face-only Image of Edessa does not show the blood and fluid stained spear wound in Jesus' side that is on the Shroud,
[Above (enlarge)[5]: Face and spear in the side wound on the Shroud, showing that it would have been impossible for Gregory Referendarius to have seen that under the face of Image of Edessa, there was the image of a body with a spear wound in its side. Gregory could not simply have looked down below the face panel and seen the spear wound in the side (which he could only do if there was a body under the face of the Image of Edessa), because the latter was folded under the face panel [see 15Sep12]. Gregory would have had to have unfolded at least the front half of the Shroud to see the spear wound in the man's side, and why would he have stopped there?]
Gregory must have known that under the Image of Edessa's face was the full-length, bloodstained, body image of Jesus that is on the Shroud! This is a further corroboration of Ian Wilson's insight that the Image of Edessa was the Shroud ("four-doubled" - tetradiplon)! In the course of his sermon, Gregory referred to the Image of Edessa, when it was in Edessa in 544, as being on "linen" and "not made by human hands [acheiropoietos]"[6].
Church of the Acheiropoietos, Thessaloniki, Greece This Byzantine church [Left[7].] dates from the 5th century. The conventional explanation of its name is that a so-called "not made by hands" icon of "Panagia Hodegetria" (Mary holding the infant Jesus) was housed there in the 14th century. However, that icon was transferred to Constantinople where it was lost in the 1453 Fall of Constantinople. But there is another explanation linked to the Shroud. After the 1204 Sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, the Crusade's leader Boniface I, Marquess of Montferrat (c.1150–1207), in 1205 married the recently widowed Empress Mary-Margaret of Hungary (1175-), whose husband Emperor Isaac II Angelos (r.1185-1195, 1203-1204) had died during the conquest. After the conquest, Boniface founded the Crusader Kingdom of Thessalonica and moved there with his new Queen.
Boniface granted the title "Lord of Athens" to one of his commanders, Othon de la Roche (c.1170-1234). Othon was a direct ancestor of Jeanne de Vergy (c.1332–1428), wife of Geoffroy I de Charny (c.1300-56), the first undisputed owner of the Shroud. Evidently Boniface had granted Othon to take the Shroud from Constantinople as a reward for his share in the successful campaign. Othon's Duchy of Athens was 
immediately to the south of Boniface and Mary's Kingdom of Thessalonica [Right[8].]. It has therefore been proposed that the Shroud was temporarily housed by Othon on its way to Athens in this church in Thessaloniki, then called the "Church of the Mother of God"[9]. And the church was then renamed by Queen Mary-Margaret the Church of the Acheiropoietos, to commemorate the Shroud's brief stay there[10].
Church of the Acheiropoietos, Cyprus This Church of Panagia Acheiropoietos[Left[11].] is part of the Acheiropoietos Monastery, near the village of Karavas, Cyprus. The monastery, now a monument, was a medieval Byzantine Orthodox Monastery. According to tradition the monastery was named after an acheiropoietos ("made without hands") icon believed to have been miraculously moved from its original location in Asia Minor by the Virgin Mary in order to save it from destruction due to the Turkish conquest (1071-96). According to legend, the shroud of Joseph of Arimathea was once held in the monastery and was taken to Turin, Italy, in 1452 where it is now known as the Shroud of Turin! That in this first tradition the icon does not have a name, and in the second legend, this Shroud came to Turin in 1452 (when it was in 1578 that the Shroud came to Turin from Chambéry, France) makes me question whether this 11th century Byzantine monastery was originally named after the Shroud?
Anne de Lusignan (1418–62), was a daughter of King Janus of Cyprus (1375–1432), and grew up there until she married Duke Louis I of Savoy (r. 1440-65) at the age of 16 in 1434. Up to then Anne had lived in the de Lusignan Palace at Lapithos, which was near this Church of the Acheiropoietos in Karavas. The Greek Orthodox Church in Cyprus
[Above: Map of part of northern Cyprus showing that Lapithos (red arrow), where Anne de Lusignan had lived until she was 16, and Karavas (blue arrow), where this Church of the Acheiropoietos was, are only 5.5 kms (3.4 mi.) apart!]
would have every 16 August celebrated the coming of the Image of Edessa to Constantinople. Although a Roman Catholic, Anne would surely have been aware of these celebrations in the next town. She likely would have recognized similarities between the face of the Image of Edessa and that of the Shroud of Lirey, and believed that the two may have been one and the same. If so this would have been an important factor in Anne and Louis persuading Marguerite de Charny (c. 1393–1460) to transfer the Shroud to them, representing the House of Savoy.
Icons Icons named acheiropoietos based on the Image of Edessa/Shroud include the above Christ Acheiropoietos in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and the above Acheropita, in the Sancta Sanctorum Chapel of the Vatican's Lateran Palace, but now deteriorated and covered.
The Shroud I am not aware of any early reference which explicitly states that the Shroud is acheiropoietos. That is not surprising because the first appearance of the Shroud in undisputed history was at an exposition in the French village of Lirey in 1355. That was in Latin, not Greek, Christianity when the Greek word acheiropoietos would be unlikely to be used of the Shroud.
But as historian Prof. Daniel Scavone pointed out, there is a reference in the seventh century Acts of Thaddeus [see next part #6] where the words sindon "shroud," tetradiplon "doubled in four" and acheiropoietos "not made by human hands" are all used to describe the one cloth, which can only be "the Shroud of Turin":
"Still another version of the Abgar story [see "Abgar V"] appeared in a work called The Acts of Thaddeus. The messenger of Abgar, in this account named Ananias, tried to paint Jesus, but he was unsuccessful. Taking pity on him, Jesus washed and then wiped his face with a cloth `doubled in four.' On this towel Jesus left the miraculous `not-made-by-human hands' imprint of his face. Three details should be noted. First, the word used for `towel' in this version is sindon, which is the Greek word for body shroud. Second, the towel is tetradiplon, `doubled in four.' Third, the portrait is now `not made by human hands' (Greek word, acheiropoietos). These three clues finally bring us back in touch with the Shroud of Turin"[12]
To be continued in the next part #6 of this series.
Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of this post (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. "File:Christos Acheiropoietos.jpg," Wikipedia, 2 July 2008. [return]
3. Kittel, G. & Friedrich, G., eds., 1985, "Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in one Volume," Bromiley, G.W., transl., Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, Reprinted, 1988, p.1312. [return]
4. Wilson, I., 1991, "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, p.46C. [return]
5. Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Durante 2002: Horizontal (Major bloodstains)" (rotated left 90°), Sindonology.org. [return]
6. Guscin, M., 2009, "The Image of Edessa," Brill: Leiden, Netherlands & Boston MA, pp.76-77. [return]
7. "File:Church of the Acheiropoietos (Thessaloniki) by Joy of Museums 4.jpg," Wikimedia Commons, 27 October 2018. [return]
8. "File:Carte Thessalonique 1204.png," Wikimedia Commons, 21 May 2017. [return]
9. Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK, p.108. [return]
10. Wilson, I., 1983, "Some Recent Society Meetings," BSTS Newsletter, No. 6, September/December, p.13; Currer-Briggs, N., 1988, "The Shroud in Greece," British Society for the Turin Shroud Monograph no. 1, pp.1-16, 4. [return]
11. "File:Παναγία Ἀχειροποίητος in 1973 35 mm.jpg," Wikimedia Commons, 19 November 2016. [return]
12. Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA, pp.81-82. [return]
Posted: 13 March 2019. Updated: 21 September 2021.
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