mandylion

See also: Mandylion

English

WOTD – 29 August 2016

A 10th-century encaustic painting from Saint Catherine's Monastery in Saint Catherine, Egypt, depicting King Abgar of Edessa receiving the Image of Edessa or mandylion, an acheiropoieton

Alternative forms

• mandilion
• Mandylion

Etymology

From Byzantine Greek μανδύλιον (mandúlion), μανδίλιον (mandílion), μαντίλιον (mantílion), or μανδήλη (mandḗlē, “cloth, hand towel, handkerchief, tablecloth”) (the last word dating to the 5th century), especially in the term τὸ ἄγιον μανδήλιον (tò ágion mandḗlion, “the holy towel”); from Latin mantēlium, a variation of mantēle or mantēlum (“hand towel, napkin”) (probably misconstructed as a singular form from the plural mantēlia); probably from manus (“hand”) + tergere (“to rub, wipe, wipe off, clean, cleanse”). Probably cognate with Umbrian mantrahklu.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) (deprecated use of |lang= parameter) IPA^(key): /mɑnˈdɪlɪən/
• (deprecated use of |lang= parameter)

  Audio (RP)

  noicon

  (file)

• (General American) (deprecated use of |lang= parameter) IPA^(key): /mænˈdɪli.ən/, /-jən/
• (deprecated use of |lang= parameter)

  Audio (GA)

  noicon

  (file)

• (deprecated use of |lang= parameter) Homophone: mandilion
• (deprecated use of |lang= parameter) Rhymes: -ɪljən
• (deprecated use of |lang= parameter) Hyphenation: man‧dy‧li‧on

Noun

mandylion (countable and uncountable, plural mandylions)

1. (chiefly Eastern Orthodoxy) often 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.
   • 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:

     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.

   • 2009, Diarmuid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, London: Allen Lane, ISBN 978-0-7139-9869-6; republished London: Penguin Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0-141-02189-8, page 452:

     The special nature of Orthodox icons was emphasized by the growth of a notion, much encouraged by these bitter disputes, that there was one quite exceptional class of art: acheiropoieta, images of Jesus not made by human hands, the archetype of which was the now-mysterious Mandylion given by Christ himself to King Abgar of Edessa […].

Synonyms

• Image of Edessa

Related terms

• mandil
• mantilla

Translations

holy relic

• Greek: μανδήλιον (el) n (mandílion)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}

Coordinate terms

• veronica (image of Jesus's face believed to have been made on the cloth with which Saint Veronica wiped his face as he went to be crucified)

External links

Image of Edessa on Wikipedia.Wikipedia