The Translation from Edessa to Constantinople of the Image Not Made by Hands of Our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ (944); Anchiskhatoba — the Feast of Father Anthony at Martqopi

The translation from Edessa to Constantinople of the Image Not Made by Hands of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ. According to tradition, at the time of the Saviour’s preaching in Syria the ruler of the city of Edessa was Abgar. He was stricken with an incurable disease. The physicians lost all hope of saving the sick man. Abgar, who had heard the report of the miracles of Jesus Christ, believed in Him as the Messiah and sent Him a letter, asking Him to come to him and deliver him from his illness; and he offered Him, persecuted and hard pressed by the Jews, his own city to live in. The prince of Edessa sent this letter to Judaea with the painter Ananias, and charged him besides to paint the face of Christ. The painter came to the Saviour, but because of the great crowd he could not get near Him. Then he stood on a raised place and tried to transfer Christ’s face to parchment. All his attempts proved fruitless: the face, shining with unearthly grace, could not be painted. Meanwhile Jesus, who saw Ananias’s efforts, called him by name and asked him for Abgar’s letter.

When He had read the prince’s request, Christ had water and a towel brought, washed His face and dried it with a cloth folded in four. On it the Saviour’s face was miraculously imprinted. Together with this image not made by hands Jesus sent Abgar a letter, in which He wrote: “Blessed art thou, Abgar, for thou hast not seen Me and hast believed… Thou askest Me to come to thee, but I must accomplish the work for which I have been sent, and after that return to My Father who sent Me. After My ascension to Him I will send thee one of My disciples, who will heal thee completely and grant life to thee and to others with thee.”

The joyful Ananias set out for Edessa. Night overtook him near Hierapolis, and he spent the night at the house of a potter living on the outskirts of the city, while the image, for fear it might be damaged, he laid between two fired tiles. At midnight a pillar of fire came down from heaven and stood over the image, and it drew the attention of the head of the city as well. He was told the story of how the image had come to be, and when they took it out from between the tiles they saw that the Saviour’s face had passed onto the upper tile as well. The governor carried that tile away to his palace. In the sixth century the tile bearing the image of the Saviour came into a church of the followers of the Monophysite heresy. There Saint Anthony of Martqopi, one of the thirteen fathers, saw it, and so that this great holy thing should not remain in the hands of heretics, he secretly carried it away; when the saint came to Georgia with John of Zedazeni, he brought the image with him. It is known that after the death of Anthony of Martqopi the copy that had passed from the Saviour’s Image Not Made by Hands onto the tile was kept at Martqopi. By drawing near to it the sick King of Georgia David VII Ulu (1246–1270) was miraculously healed; in the reign of George VII, King of Georgia (1393–1407), during the invasions of Timur-leng, Giorgi the Solitary, for fear of the lawless, hid the tile with the image of the Saviour in a place known to no one. Later Giorgi the Solitary died a martyr’s death and took with him the secret of where this great holy thing was.

As for the first face of the Image Not Made by Hands, Ananias brought it to Edessa. Abgar, who had been bedridden for six years already, received the Saviour’s letter and the image with joy, and at that very moment felt himself freed from his pains; but traces of leprosy still remained on his face until the coming of the disciple promised by the Lord, Thaddeus, an apostle of the Seventy (commemorated 21 August), who preached the Gospel and baptised the ruler of the city and all his household. Abgar had the Image Not Made by Hands fixed to a board, with the inscription: “O Christ God, all who have believed in Thee shall never be put to shame”; he adorned it and set it in a niche cut above the city gates, where an idol had formerly stood.

For many years there was a holy custom at Edessa that everyone entering or leaving the city bowed down before this great holy thing; but afterwards one of Abgar’s great-grandsons, who had fallen into idolatry, resolved to take the image down and set up a statue of a false god in its place once more. The Lord revealed this lawless intention beforehand to the bishop of Edessa, who went by night with his clergy to the gate, lit a lamp before the image, and walled up the niche with a clay tile and bricks. According to tradition, Saint Nino, equal to the apostles, together with Gaiane and Rhipsime, also went to Edessa to venerate the Saviour’s Image Not Made by Hands.

Many years passed. The inhabitants of the city lost the fear of God altogether, and forgot even what a holy thing they possessed. In 539, or according to another account 545, Khosrow, king of the Persians, came up against Edessa with his numerous army. The city’s situation seemed hopeless. Just at that time the All-holy Theotokos appeared to Bishop Eulavios and commanded him to bring out of the walled-up niche the image that would save them. The hierarch broke through the wall at the place shown in the vision and brought out the holy thing. The lamp was still burning before it, and on the clay tile another image had appeared, like the Image Not Made by Hands. After prayer and a procession, confusion broke out in the enemy camp, and Khosrow was forced to order his soldiers to withdraw.

In 630 Edessa was conquered by the Arabs. They did not hinder the veneration of the Image Not Made by Hands, whose fame had by now spread over the whole East. In 944 the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (912–959) resolved to translate the holy thing to Constantinople, the centre of the Orthodox world at that time. The emir of Edessa hesitated for a long time, but at last, in return for the release of two hundred Saracen captives, twelve thousand silver coins and a promise not to attack Edessa, he gave up the Image Not Made by Hands and the letter written to Abgar, which the clergy on 16 August 944 translated with great honour to Constantinople. According to one account it was placed in the church of Hagia Sophia; according to the testimony of other sources, in the church of the All-holy Theotokos of the Pharos.

The image of the Saviour was kept in Constantinople until the beginning of the thirteenth century. By this time the cloth, the Image Not Made by Hands, had been removed from the board onto which the Saviour’s image had miraculously passed.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century a grave political situation arose in Constantinople: besides the Muslim world, Catholic Europe too was attacking it. In 1204 Constantinople was taken by the European crusaders. According to one tradition, at about this time the cloth with the Saviour’s Image Not Made by Hands was handed to the Doge of Venice, Dandolo. He sent the holy thing to Venice on a ship which sank in the Sea of Marmara. According to another view, the Saviour’s Image Not Made by Hands may have been among the holy things that Louis IX, king of France, acquired in Constantinople and took to Paris.

As for the board to which the Image Not Made by Hands had been fixed and onto which the image had miraculously passed: so as somehow to preserve this very great holy thing for the Orthodox world, it was translated from Constantinople to Georgia, specifically to mountainous Klarjeti, and placed in the cathedral of Anchi. From that time the Image Not Made by Hands was called Anchiskhati. In Georgia it was also called the Icon of the Face of God. John, archbishop of Anchi, asked Queen Tamar for permission to adorn the Image Not Made by Hands with precious stones. The icon was chased with great art by the famous goldsmith Beka Opizari, and John of Anchi dedicated a hymn to this very great holy thing that had come to Klarjeti. People of every rank and class of the Georgian nation went to Anchi from every corner of Georgia to venerate the Saviour’s Image Not Made by Hands.

In 1453 Constantinople passed into the hands of the Ottomans. After this the lawless attacked the southern provinces of Georgia as well. The Georgians defended their own land bravely, but the enemy far outnumbered them and so advanced little by little. At this time the Image Not Made by Hands was moved from Anchi to Akhaltsikhe, from where it came first to the village of Chala, to the family of Iotam Amilakhvari, and then was brought to Tbilisi and given a place in the catholicos’s church. After this the cathedral church too, which had been built in the seventh century in the name of the All-holy Theotokos, came to be called Anchiskhati. After Soviet power was established in Georgia, Anchiskhati was moved to the State Museum, where it rests to this day in the Treasury.