Part 1a. The Blessed city of Edessa

Posted on July 24, 2020 by

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The city of Urho (now called Sanliurfa in the south-eastern Turkey) was in Jesus’ time called Edessa.  It is situated in the banks of the River Daisan in northern Mesopotamia. 

Edessa

Map of Mesopotamia and India.

In Christian historical terms, Edessa is linked with South India because St. Thomas played a part in the conversion of both places to Christianity, and the city both its official name ‘Edessa’ and its native name ‘Urho’ has a particular resonance for the Syrian Christians of Kerala.  According to ancient Syriac manuscripts, after Jesus’ ascension, St. Thomas was instrumental in sending Thaddaeus, one of the 70 Evangelists to Edessa, in fulfilment of a promise made by Christ to the king of Edessa.  Later, St. Thomas himself went to southern India on his evangelical mission.

King Abgar

Around the time when Jesus was nearing the end of his earthly mission, Edessa was ruled by King Abgar V.  Abgar was suffering from an incurable disease, and hearing of the miracles that Jesus was performing in Judea, he sent his trusted envoy called Hannan to Jesus, carrying a letter.  He said in his letter that he had heard of Jesus being a Great Physician miraculously curing people of their illnesses.  He begged Jesus to come to Edessa and heal him, and he also offered Jesus a place of refuge from his enemies.  Jesus excused himself saying he had a mission to accomplish in Jerusalem, but promised to send one of his disciples to heal him of his affliction.  Jesus blessed Abgar for believing in Him without having seen him.  He also blessed the city of Edessa: “your city will be blessed.  The enemy shall not prevail against it for ever”.  Hanan took down this reply from Jesus.

King Abgar had also asked Hannan to bring back a ‘likeness’ or an image Jesus.  So Hannan drew a ‘likeness’ of Jesus in ‘choice paints’.  (According to another tradition, when Hannan was attempting to draw Jesus, Jesus pressed a cloth to His face, and His image was miraculously imprinted on it.)  When Hanan returned to Edessa with the letter and the image, Abgar received them as Jesus himself, and waited for the arrival of Jesus’ healer to come and heal him.  

Abgar receiving the Image of Jesus: ‘When Hannan, the keeper of the archives, saw that Jesus spoke thus to him, by virtue of being the king’s painter, he took and painted a likeness of Jesus with choice paints, and brought with him to Abgar the king, his master. And when Abgar the king saw the likeness, he received it with great joy, and placed it with great honor in one of his palatial houses.’ (Doctrine of Addai, 13)

King Abgar’s conversion

After Jesus’ crucifixion, death, resurrection and Ascension, the Apostles gathered in Jerusalem and cast lots to decide who was to go where as evangelists, and the lot for India fell to Thomas.  At some point after this, Thomas is said to have deputed Thaddaeus to go Edessa to fulfil Jesus’ promise to King Abgar.  According to Syriac tradition, Mar Thaddaeus (or Mor Addai) was one of the 70 Evangelists, and was also the twin-brother of Thomas.  Thomas himself was actually called Judas, but he was commonly referred to as ‘Thomas’ (or ‘the Twin’), to distinguish him from others of the same name.

Thaddaeus preached the Gospel of Christ to King Abgar, the king was miraculously healed of his illness, and he and his subjects believed in Jesus and adopted Christianity. Abgar had the image and the letter placed in a glass case over the gate of the city-wall, and Edessa came to be called ‘The Blessed City’.  Over the coming centuries, this became celebrated as the image of Jesus, known as the ‘Mandylion’(meaning ‘small cloth’ or ‘towel’ in Greek), or ‘Image-not-made-by-hand’.

Images from an ancient manuscript: left:  Thaddaeus, one of the 70 Evangelists of Jesus, preaching to King Abgar; right, King Abgar with the Mandylion of Jesus.

Detail of the image of King Abgar V  and the  Mandylion, ‘Image not-made-by-hands’

Source

One of the earliest writings containing this account of King Abgar’s conversion and the origin of Christianity in Edessa, (and in India) was by Eusebius of Caesarea, the great 4th century Church historian.  Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, written in Greek in about AD 324-5, is a comprehensive account of the first 300 years of Christianity and its spread.   He also mentioned that he got his information from the Chronicles of Edessa, kept in the royal palace of Edessa. 

Eusebius also mentioned that St. Thomas was the Apostle who evangelised India, and that the Apostle was martyred and buried in a place in India called Calamina. 

Eusebius dated the evangelisation of both Edessa and South India to the very first century, making this Syrian city and far away region of south India as two of the earliest places to receive the Gospel of Christ.  These narratives were generally accepted as the foundational traditions of Christianity by Church historians over the succeeding centuries.

Challenge

However, in the 18th century when the European Age of Reason reached its height, Western scholars reviewed these narratives with scepticism.  This was the age when Rationalism and the scientific approach was developed in European scholarly circles, which demanded that everything had to be questioned, analysed, and examined carefully, and ‘truths’ arrived at only on the basis of evidence.  In this spirit of the demand for evidence-based histories, Eusebius’ history of the King Abgar of Edessa was rejected as fanciful and mythological.  The question was: ‘where did Eusebius get his information from? Are his sources reliable and authentic?  Where is the evidence?’  

Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum

From 1843 onwards, for a ten-year period, hundreds of Syriac manuscripts were brought in crates to the British Museum.  Because there were not many Syriac scholars at that time, they lay in the store-rooms of the Museum for a while.  Eventually, William Cureton, Curator of the Museum, studied some of the most ancient looking ones among them, and published in 1864, a critical edition of them.  He dated these particular volumes to between AD 65 and 80.  Cureton was convinced of the genuineness of these ancient texts and their contents.

William Cureton on King Abgar

One of Cureton’s manuscripts contained the account of the correspondence between Jesus and King Abgar, and Abgar’s eventual conversion to Christianity.  Cureton also recognised that these were indeed Eusebius’ sources.  This is how we know that this account, firmly believed by the ancient Christians of Edessa as their heritage, is based on sound foundations.  Eusebius, writing his Ecclesiastical History between AD 300-325, affirms that he had personally seen the letters of King Abgar and Jesus’ reply written by Hanan, and a general account of these events, in the Chronicles of Edessa, and that he had himself translated them from the Aramaic Syriac to Koine Greek.  Although Eusebius does not mention seeing the cloth with the Holy Image imprinted on it, St. Ephrem, a contemporary of Eusebius in the 4th century, also mentions the Image-not-made-by-hand that Abgar received from Jesus.

Edessa’s later history

Later Edessan kings abandoned Christianity and returned to pagan gods.  The city was brought under the protectorate of the Roman Empire in AD 217-8, and the Holy Image and the letter over the city gate were covered up with tiles.   From then on it was attacked many times in the wars between Roman and Persian empires, in the 4th 5th and 6th c., but the city remained unconquered.  The citizens of Edessa believed this was because of divine protection from Jesus’ promise, contained in the letter and the miraculous image over the city gate.

In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Edessa became famous as an important centre of learning and the cultural capital of early Christianity, and by the 4th c., an important diocese of the Syriac Orthodox Church, second only to Antioch. 

St. Thomas, Edessa and Mylapore

According to the testimony of St. Ephrem who spent the last ten years of his life in Edessa, the relics of St. Thomas was brough to Edessa and enshrined in a church there.  In St. Ephrem’s own time (ie., before 373), a new magnificent cathedral was built to house the relics.  This event remembered and celebrated in the cultural and religious life of the Syriac Christians to the present day.

These events in the first 4 centuries of the Christian Era brought the great and Blessed City of Edessa or Urho in Upper Mesopotamia, and the distant south Indian city of Mylapore, now in the suburbs of Chennai in Tamil Nadu, into an intimate connection through St. Thomas.

The importance of Edessa to Jacobite Syrian Christians

Edessa was the cultural capital of the Syriac Church, especially from the 4th c. onwards.  A vast amount of literature on aspects of the Christian religion, including its doctrine, theology, liturgy, and Church History were produced here between the 4th and 8th centuries, and also to a somewhat lesser extent well into the 14th c.  For a full account, see the 19th c. Cambridge scholar Dr. William Wright’s A Short History of Syriac Literature (website address below.)

The Mandylion

According to Edessan tradition, the Holy Image of Jesus was covered up by a tile by unbelieving kings that followed Abgar V.  When a later king returned to Christianity, the tile was removed the Holy Image was seen not only to have remained intact, but also to have transferred itself to the tile.  So, from then onwards, many copies of the image were made by human hands. 

Because of the presence of the Mandylion, the icon of Edessa, and the relics of St. Thomas, Edessa became a place of pilgrimage in the region, next only to the Holy Lands of Palestine. 

Egeria’s testimony

In around AD 380, a Western European lady called Egeria went on a pilgrimage to Palestine and Edessa.  A letter she wrote giving an account of her travels has survived and come down to us, where she mentions her visit to Edessa.  In it she mentions how she was personally taken by the Bishop of Edessa to see this letter placed in a niche in the wall above the city gate. 

Cover of a translation into English of The Pilgrimage of Etheria, published in 1919.

According to Syriac scholar and historian Rev. Pratten, the Abgar legend was popular in England in the Medieval times, as is evidenced from an Old English poem of the 11th c. (See Pratten 1921:18).  The Letter of Jesus was also copied and hung in Christian homes as a talisman for protection.

Fate of the Mandylion

The Mandylion was taken from Edessa to Constantinople on August 16, 944, by the Byzantine Emperor Romanus I.  This date is still celebrated as a feast day in the Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Church’s calendar.  It was recorded as being kept in a golden vessel in the Sacred Chapel, and was only taken out once a year for the public to venerate. 

When Constantinople was sacked by the Fourth Crusaders 1202-4; the Holy Image was taken as a prize to France. 

It is thought to have been destroyed or lost in the chaos of the French revolution 1789-1799.

Surrender of the Mandylion to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, along with other Holy Relics of Christ’s Passion (detail from a manuscript) in c.a. 944 AD.

Rejection and challenges again

In modern times, numerous scholars have again rejected the authenticity of the narrative of King Abgar and the Madylion etc.  Some have proposed that the Edessans manufactured the story for added prestige to themselves, and that perhaps it was a later King, Abgar IX who was king between AD 179 and 216 who was converted to Christianity. 

However, instead of dying down as a fabricated story would, century after century of writers, including pilgrims and Church Fathers in their writings attest to the truth of these narratives.  Christians of Edessa continued to believe this to be the true story of their Church’s foundation and progress.

Modern Edessa, showing the ruins of two ancient Roman columns.

Fresco from the St. Gevorg chapel in Varaga showing king Abgar with the ‘Not-made-by-hands’ image of Jesus. During the genocide of the Syriac and Armenian Christians in April–May 1915, most of the monastery and church were destroyed.  This photo of 2016 is from the ruins of the chapel.

One of the many mosaics discovered (in 2015-6) in a cemetery in central Edessa with Syriac inscriptions but which were later looted. This one thought to be that of the “Christian king” Abgar.

King Abgar V’s image on the 100,000 Dram Armenian banknote

References

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