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Historical Journal.
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C
BY STEVEN RUNCIMAN
HRISTIAN relicshaveneverreceived inhistory.
theirdueattention
Historians, justlysuspecting theauthenticity ofthemoreeminent
ofthem,havetendedtherefore to putthemall to one side,for-
gettingthatevena forgery can have its historicalvalue; and onlythe
theologianshavetakennoticeofthem,intheirrelations totheapocryphal
improvements onChristian thought andstory. Thisneglect is undeserved;
forthereare someofthemthatnotonlythrowimportant on
sidelights
thehistoryof theirtimes,but evenhave playedan activepartin the
moulding ofthathistory.
The ImageofEdessa,wereitsauthenticity established,wouldrightly
haverankedamongst thefirst ofall theholyrelicsofChristendom; and
in days whenpedigreeswereless meticulously scrutinised it indeed
occupiedsucha position.Theologianshavemadeit theobjectofstudy,
chieflyfromits connexionwiththe wholesaga of King Abgar. For
example,Tixeronthas exposedits falseclaimsin his Les Origines de
and
1lglise d?Adesse, alltheotherwriters on theEdessan church havehad
necessarilyto referto it: whilevon Dobschfitz has
in his Christusbilder
givenitthehonourofa longchapterto itself.Butforthelastthousand
years,sincethedaysofConstantine Porphyrogennetus, secularhistorians
havegivenit no morethana cursorymention.Whilethe questionof
authenticity is oftheologicalratherthanofhistorical importance, thefact
thattheauthenticity was forso longacceptedby theworldis ofgreat
historicalvalue,notonlyas illustrating thestateofaffairs andmindthat
ledto thevariousstagesofitsacceptance, butalsoin thatitenabledthis
dimpiece of canvasto exercisea directinfluence on the destiniesof
Christendom.
The townof Edessa or Urfastandssomeseventymileseast of the
Euphrates, in a districtclaimedby geographers alikeforSyria,Meso-
potamiaand Armenia.Duringthelast century B.C. and the first
two
centuries A.D. it was the capitalof a statecalled Osrhoene,tributary
alternatelyto theRomansandtheParthians and ruledbya lineofArab
Image had been walled up; and it was not till the Persian siege thatthe
bishophad miraculouslydiscoveredit. A lamp was stillburningbeforeit
and duringits fivecenturiesof confinement it had managedto reproduce
itself. Havingbeen discovered,it thenmiraculouslyhelped in the defeat
of the Persians.
Such,roughly, arethevariousdevelopmentsin thelegendoftheImage.
Subsequentlyminormiracleswere attachedto it, dealingchieflywithits
powersof self-reproduction and the cures thatit effected.But these are
unimportant;the formerclass arose to explainthe extantreplicasof the
Image, forit seemed wrong that mortalhands should copy a divinely
paintedportrait;the latterclass belongs to the domain of faithhealing,
thatdangerousfieldplaced betweentheologyand medicinethat no one
has dared thoroughlyto explore. I shall not deal with these minor
miracles. Here I wantto discuss the real factsthatlie behind the meta-
morphoses,to see how far they illustrateand have affectedthe course
of history.
The firstproblemis to date the originofthe Image. It is essentialhere
to subdividethisquestion,to separatethelegendthatChristhad His por-
traitpaintedfromthe actual icon thatexistedlaterat Edessa6. The story
ofthe portraitfirstappearsin the DoctrineofAddai. Eusebius makesno
mentionof it in his account of the Abgar legend. Now the Doctrineof
Addai and Eusebius obviouslydrewtheiraccountsfromthesame source,
thedocumentsin the Edessene archivescitedby Eusebius. But whilewe
knowEusebius to have writtenhis accountabout the year 320, the Doc-
trineofAddai seemsdefinitely to be post-Nicenein itstheology,thatis to
say,tohavebeenwrittenafter325,thoughon the otherhand itclearlyante-
datesthereligiousproblemsof the fifthcentury7;and itwould probably
be safe to place it beforethe translationof St Thomas's body to Edessa
in 394-as otherwiseSt Thomas could hardlyhave been kept out of the
story.One maytherefore date thefirstextantversionofthelegendsome-
whereinthemiddleofthefourthcentury. But thefactthatEusebius does
not mentionit does not provethat it was not mentionedin the lost ar-
chivesofEdessa. He includesthepassagesplaced immediately beforeand
aftertheportraitepisode in the accountgivenin theDoctrine;but he may
well have suppressed the storyof the portrait. He disapprovedvery
6 It is here that writerslike Tixeront fail, in assuming that a legend at once creates
the objects that it mentions. Early Christianmentalitywas not, I think,so invariably
childish.
I See the theologicaldiscussionin Tixeront, Origines,ch. iii. But he assumes thatthe
Doctrinemust post-datethe visitof Sylvia-Etheria,because she mentionsno icon. That
argumentis I thinkvalueless. He is also badly handicapped by the fact that when he
wrote,Moses of Chorene, who mentionsthe existenceof the icon, was supposed to be
a genuine fifth-century author.