POPE TO VISIT THE 'HOLY FACE' OF MANOPPELLO
SANTUARIO DEL VOLTO SANTO DI MANOPPELLO, ABRUZZO
18/02/2006 16:56
TERESA BENEDETTA
Post: 1357
Here is exciting news reported by Paul Badde, Vatican correspondent for the German newspaper DIE WELT, longtime neighbor in Rome and friend of Joseph Ratzinger, in
www.kath.net/detail.php?id=12868 from Rome last night. In translation, I have indicated passages where I am not sure I understood the sense of the words correctly, and for which I hope our native German speakers can help out) -
---------------------------------------------------------------
For the first time a Pope will visit
the Pilgrim Church of the "Holy Face"
By Paul Badde
John Paul II repeatedly called for the “purification of memory” in the Catholic Church. Benedict XVI will be taking a spectacular new step in this direction in May when he visits the “Holy Face” of Manoppello, first disclosed to the world in September 2004 by
Die Welt.
“Should we not see the true destiny of the world and call on God louder and more urgently to show us his face?” this Pope asked years ago when he was a cardinal. Recently he explained that Dante’s
Divina Commedia had inspired him in his first encyclical (on love), in which, what in the end we meet in the innermost light of Paradise is not just a more blazing light but the tender face of a man: the face of Jesus Christ. That God has “a human face” is the all-moving high point of the “cosmic excursion.”
Dante’s poem from 1320, along with the Pope’s travel plans, remind us that the current “war of caricatures” is truly a caricature of earlier picture storms. The true conflict over the true picture of God has a history of insane frenzy behind it, in which thousands have been killed, though at the hand of Christians, not Muslims. Countless icons have been burned or chopped to pieces, and those who honored these icons banned, persecuted, and murdered.
In the year 730, Emperer Leon III, the Isaurian, wanted to destroy all the icons of the Byzantine kingdom in order “to purify” the Christian cult. After him, the same fever has infected Christianity every so often, accompanied by heated debates.
The central point made by stubborn defenders of sacred images has always been the same: Christians have an original image of God. In Jesus Christ God showed his face. Therefore Christians must illustrate Christ.
In the beginning of Christianity, therefore, was not something written but a picture. Until the Gospels were written, the early Church only had the Jewish Bible. But that did not make Christianity a religion by the book. For example, Ethiopian Christians up to the 9th century were able to grow and develop only using icons and oral narrations, totally without written materials.
The original experience of a God that showed himself to man was soon coupled to reports of a secret original picture that has been passed on in the innermost sanctums of Christianity from generation to generation.
Such a “picture of King Abgar” with “many creases”, from Edessa in north Anatolia (now Turkey), was first described in early Roman texts in the 6th century. Immured securely within a city gate, it reportedly had withstood several assaults. Later its presence was documented in Constantinople where it reportedly served as a model for the great Christ mosaic on the dome of St. Sophia.
Then in the 8th century, (references to) the picture dropped out of Byzantine texts altogether, at the same time as a similarly enigmatic portrait on a soft filmy cloth suddenly appeared in Rome, where soon it was called “Veronica’s sudarium" (Schweisstuch - literally, sweat-sheet). In the grottoes under St. Peter’s Basilica are five frescoes which show the “Ciborium” which Pope John VII ordered made for this “most holy sudarium.”
The pillared altar was the most important reliquary shrine of the old Basilica. In 1506 when the construction of the present Basilica started, Donato Bramante erected over the foundation stone a new treasure chamber for the crown relics. The first of the four towering columns on which the dome of St. Peter’s rests was built as a high-security repository for “Veronica’s veil,” which was reportedly placed in it in 1608 when the old shrine was torn down.
Then once again, later in the 17th century, the Ur-icon once again “disappeared” – although since then, once a year for a few seconds, a “Veronica relic”* is shown on the Loggia of this column.
The so-called Mandylion,or Christ-Portrait, of Edessa
kept in the Priavte Chapel of the Popes - photographed
at the Vatican booth in the Hamburg World's Fair of 2000.
(As correspondent for Die Welt, having “seen” this relic on March 13, 2005, I am convinced that the naked eye cannot see anything on this “portrait.”)[
Badde describes that experience in a story I translated and posted in the RFC forum last year.]
Has the Mother-Icon of Christ disappeared from this world? Perhaps not. In the meantime, a whole series of indicators have now shown overwhelmingly that the "Holy Face” of Manoppello which Pope Benedict will visit in May is identical to “Veronica’s sudarium” and to the even older Abgar picture. It has, all at once, the qualities of a photograph, a holograph, a painting, along with signs of puzzling impossibilities and imprecisions.
The material is finer than nylon. Above all, however, the Face of Christ does not resemble any known art work. The shadowing on the portrait is delicate, as only Leonardo could magically create with sfumatura.
In many ways the picture looks like a photograph, but the right pupil (of the eye) is slightly raised upward
["in der Iris ist die rechte Pupille leicht nach oben verschoben" - this is the phrase that I particularly cannot make sense of],
which is not possible in any photograph. Neither can it be a holograph, which it resembles when the veil is lit from behind. Four clear creases mark the piece of cloth, as though it had been for a long time folded (once lengthwise and then twice horizontally).
The colors shimmer, changing from umber, sienna, silver, slate, copper, bronze or gold, like butterfly wings [
and I might add, exactly like Benedict's eyes!]; but under the microscope, no trace of color can be seen in the texture of the cloth, and if one holds it against the light, it appears transparent as clear glass and even the folds disappear! This last phenomenon can only be seen in so-called “mussel silk.” the most precious fabric in antiquity.
The difference from other "normal" fabrics however can be appreciated with the naked eye. On the upper part the portrait has no right and left corners where at some time, a patch of finest silk was placed. [Denn
links und rechts oben fehlen dem Bild zwei Ecken, die irgendwann durch Flicken aus feinster Seide ersetzt wurden.] Against the light these patches look gray, while the veil is transparent as only mussel-silk can be.
In Manoppello the Portrait is highly venerated. Here they believe the legend that in 1506 an angel brought the portrait there. This legend was not questioned until a few years back when Sister Blandina Schloemer and Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, a German Trappist nun and a German Jesuit, began to investigate where “the angel” came from.
Certainly from Rome. But even the German Pope can have no answers for where it really came from before it survived the past few centuries in Italy. Here he will confront the question for the first time, kneeling before the icon.
The face has a peculiar mirror effect {Spiegelwirkung] It seems far and near at the same time. It most resembles the man who was wrapped in the Shroud of Turin. It is as majestic and puzzling as the Shroud – that other fabric, though far far coarser than Veronica’s Veil, which has been described since earliest times as “not made by human hands.”
But no two fabrics could be less like each other than these two: one is linen, the other mussel-silk – each of completely different density, thickness, structure and weave. Each one “twists” differently.
Imprecision and highly problematic measurableness are almost "woven" into both materials. Thus. the congruence between the two images found on such completely different fabrics is even more stunning.
The Holy Face of Manoppello
Both fabrics show an identical face, both are original images, but are completely different otherwise. All others are copies. However, if there is any other fabric in the world that can lay claim to be the “second shroud”, then it is this one which the 265th successor to Peter will be coming to kneel before.
John the Evangelist wrote that Peter was the first to see “the linen bindings and sudorium” in the empty grave (after the Resurrection). Right after him, John had gone in, “saw and believed.” What did he see that made him believe immediately? And what will Benedict XVI see this time?
He knows that in the 6th century, Byzantine army generals carroed a secret portrait of Christ as victory flags in their wars and massacres against the Persians, just as the Israelites carried the Ark of the Covenant in their battles against the Philistines. The Ark of the Covenant itself – Israel’s most holy relic containing the Commandments from Sinai - has been lost and found again in adventurous manner until it finally disappeared. Will the reappearance of God’s Face inspire the Pope as a rediscovery of the Ark? [
Muss das Wiederauftauchen des Göttlichen Gesichts den Papst da nicht noch mehr beflügeln als eine letzte Wiederentdeckung der Bundeslade?]
Christianity today cannot and should not fight any more wars, whether against the Persians or th[e Philistines. But on the day he was elected, Benedict XVI did take on tremendous challenges in which Christianity can well use its ancient battle flag: the divine measure of man, whom Dante glimpsed in the light of love, Him who “moves the sun and stars.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Badde has written a book about the Manoppello icon. More information about it can be found on the quadrilingual website www.voltosanto.it/
I have also posted a brief backgrounder from the site in ODDS AND ENDS.
P.S. The Vatican possesses the so-called "Mandylion of Edessa" which for centuries was believed to be "Veronica's veil" but it now appears that the relic in Manoppello may be the authentic relic.
=====================================================================
THE FOLLOWING IS MATERIAL I HAVE ADDED FOR THIS SPECIAL SECTION WHICH WAS NOT ORIGINALLY POSTED IN THE FORUM.
In a follow-up to its 1999 article on the same subject, Inside the Vatican presents text and photos by Paul Badde documenting the mysterious cloth in a Capuchin church in Manoppello, Italy, which may be the famous veil of Veronica. The process by which the image was impressed on the ancient fabric is unknown to modern science, and the image appears the same on both sides. It is on a finely woven cloth called byssus, which cannot be painted on, and the image matches not only the exact dimensions of a human face but the exact characteristics of the face on the Shroud of Turin, in every particular.
Veronica's Veil Found?
by Paul Badde
Nestled in the Abruzzi mountains, just three hours from Rome by car, is the little town of Manoppello. Here is preserved a mysterious image of a wounded man. (See image) Now, our good friend Paul Badde, Vaticanist for Die Welt of Germany, has made a startling discovery: the fabric is almost certainly byssus, a rare ancient cloth which, among its other properties, cannot be painted on.
If the image in Manoppello was not painted — and it seems it was not — we cannot explain how it was made. Badde argues that it is, in fact, "Veronica's Veil," lost for centuries and thus is . . . the true face of Jesus Christ.
This article first appeared in the German daily
Die Welt.
— The Editor
By Paul Badde
September 29, 2004
Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel & Raphael
What did Jesus look like? A bit like Jim Caviezel in the film
The Passion of the Christ? Or like the portraits of Christ by Durer and El Greco and other artists, which hang in the Vatican Museum?
But none of these artists ever saw Jesus. What did he really look like?
To these questions, there is an old, old answer: Jesus looked like the image of a man's face preserved on a cloth kept in a little village not far from Rome — an image even the Pope has never seen. And this is a matter which can hardly be mentioned in the Vatican.
Up until the year 1600 A.D., the cloth, known as "Veronica's Veil," was kept inside the old St. Peter's Basilica built by the Emperor Constantine. Millions saw it there.
Since the early 1600s, however, this "true icon" (the literal meaning of "vera icona" which initially formed the name "Veronica") has been seen by almost no one.
In the new St. Peter's Basilica, designed by Michelangelo, a cloth said to be Veronica's veil has been kept locked up for centuries. And, "over the course of time, the image has become very faint," Cardinal Francesco Marchisano, the archpriest of the basilica, told me in a letter on May 31, 2004. But in fact, the image in the Vatican has not only grown faint; most probably it is also a fake.
It hasn't only become virtually invisible to us: not a single photograph of the image exists.
Devotees of icons of Christ were for this reason in recent times often directed to another image in the sacristy of the Popes, the so-called Abgar portrait from Edessa, which is said to be the oldest painting of Jesus in the world — and it looks it. This image has, over the centuries, become almost completely black, like many ancient paintings executed in tempera on linen.
The "true image" of Christ, however, was made with no colors at all. Before it came to Rome, it was in Constantinople, and before that in the Middle East. A Syrian text from Kamulia in Cappadocia from the 500s tells us that the image was on a material "drawn out of the water" and was "not painted by human hand."
When this image came to Rome, curious pilgrims were drawn to it as to a magnet. As pilgrims to Jerusalem decorated themselves with branches of palm-trees on their return in the first half of the second millennium, and as the sign of the pilgrims on the route to Santiago de Compostela is even today a shell, so pilgrims to Rome stitched miniature images of Christ onto their capes on their way home: little pictures of the "Sancta Veronica Ierosolymitana": the holy Veronica from Jerusalem.
Thus, the new St. Peter's Basilica ordered by Pope Julius II contained a great treasure chamber to hold and protect this unique treasure. But, during the construction of the new basilica — which was hotly contested and controversial in those times — the veil of Veronica mysteriously disappeared from Rome. The only vestige of the veil that remains today in Rome is a Venetian frame with a pane of old, crackled glass, still on display in St. Peter's treasury.
But the veil was not lost.
For 400 years the most important relic of Christendom, before which the Emperor of Byzantium knelt once a year, preserved between two panes of glass, has been on display in a tiny Capuchin church which is completely empty for many hours each day, in the town of Manoppello, in Italy's Abruzzi region.
It is the missing image of Jesus Christ for which all of Western civilization senses the need. Today, finally, it must be regarded as rediscovered.
The image fades away against light, it darkens in shadow, yet it endures through the centuries, unchanging.
It shows the bearded face of a man with Jewish side-curls at the temples (
peyes), a man whose nose has been smashed like one of the hostages of today's "jihadists" ("God's warriors") — or of one of the detainees in the Abu Ghreib prison.
The right cheek is swollen, the beard partly ripped off. The forehead and lips have on them hints of pink, suggesting freshly healed wounds.
Inexplicable peace fills the gaze out of the wide open eyes. Amazement, astonishment, surprise. Gentle compassion. No despair, no pain, no wrath.
It is like the face of a man who has just awakened to a new morning. His mouth is half open. Even his teeth are visible. If one had to give a precise phrase to the vowel and word the lips are forming, it would be just a soft "ah."
All proportions of the image show, 1-to-1, the life-size measurements of a human face, filling the center of a 17 by 24 centimeter cloth.
The veil is transparent, like a silk stocking. The image is less like a painting than a large photographic slide. Held up to the light, it is transparent. In the shadow, without light, it becomes almost slate grey.
A tiny, broken piece of crystal rests in the lower right corner of the frame.
In the light of electric bulbs, the delicate cloth is gold and honey-colored, just as the face of Christ was described by Gertrud of Helfta in the 13th century. For only in the light and contrast, does the fine cloth show the countenance in three-dimensional, almost holographic clarity — and from both sides!
The fabric is finely woven, so fine it seems it would fit into a walnut shell if it were folded tightly.
Professor Donato Vittori of the University of Bari and Professor Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua have discovered, through microscopic examinations, that there is no trace of color or paint at all on the entire cloth. Only in the black pupils of both eyes does there appear to be a slight scorching of the threads, as if they had been heated.
All of this cannot be considered a completely new discovery. The farmers and fishermen of the Adriatic from Ancona to Tarentum have revered this veil for centuries as the "Holy Face" ("Il Volto Santo"). It is said in Manoppello that "angels" brought the cloth to them 400 years ago (citing in this regard an old report).
That may be. But it is more likely that some rascals, too, slipped in beneath the angels' wings, rascals who simply swiped the relic during the reconstruction of St. Peter's Basilica, in perhaps the most impudent piece of knavery in the entire Baroque era (which was not poor in rogues and villains). The broken crystal in the old frame of Veronica's Veil in St. Peter's Basilica treasury seems to sing one verse of this larger song even today.
The story has elements of a farce, of a detective story, of a drama — and of a fifth Gospel for our image-obsessed age.
But when Professor Heinrich Pfeiffer of Rome's Gregorian University for the first time brought to the attention of the scholarly world that the Manoppello Countenance most likely had to be considered the ultimate point of reference for the oldest pictures of Christ, both in the East and in the West, the sensational news appeared in the back pages of the world press under the category "miscellaneous." This happened about a decade ago.
And no matter how precisely Pfeiffer, a German scholar of early Christian art, investigated to prove that the image in Manoppello must be acknowledged as the "mother of images" for all Christian iconography, his colleagues also, along with many prelates and cardinals in the Vatican, shook their heads over the exuberant professor's fertile "imagination."
Sister Blandina Paschalis Schlomer, a German Trappist nun, pharmacist and icon painter, was the one who initiated Pfeiffer's research and conclusions. She had discovered, years before, after painstaking comparisons of the image on the Manoppello cloth and the face of the man depicted on the Shroud of Turin, that the two images were identical: that they were both displaying the very same person.
Every detail of both faces is exactly congruent: the same size and shape, the same wounds. The one difference: on the Shroud, the wounds are still open. On the cloth of Manoppello, the wounds have closed.
These results, also, did not persuade or convince other scholars of the authenticity of the image of Manoppello. Quite the opposite.
The chief objection was simple and categorical: that the Manoppello image had been painted. The image was just too clear and fine for it not to have been painted, scholars argued. The eyes, the eyelashes (not visible until photo enlargements were made), the tear ducts in the eyes, the whiskers, the teeth (!), all that simply could not have appeared without the delicate hand of a master artist. In short, the Manoppello image was not an original, a model for all later works, but a careful copy of an unknown original — or even of the original on the Turin Shroud.
A question seldom posed up to now, but a crucial one, concerns the fabric itself. By its consistency, it seems like colored nylon — though nylon was not invented 400 years ago. What is it, then? Cotton, wool, linen?
No, all are much too thick to allow this immaterial transparency. Even silk does not permit this.
Meanwhile, the Capuchins of Manoppello have decided to wait before subjecting the cloth to any scientific or chemical tests, or even to take it out of the glass where it has been held for 400 years. "Not necessary!" Father Germano, the last guardian of the cloth, said to me a few weeks ago. "Science will progress to meet us. It develops so fast that we only need to wait." (He is probably correct. Many photos which I took in recent months with my digital camera show the fabric in a way I have never seen in other photos.)
What could this cloth be? In the Gospel of John, John speaks of two cloths found in the empty tomb of Christ in Jerusalem. According to that source, Peter and "the other young man" (probably John himself) ran toward the tomb in the early dawn of Easter Sunday. John ran faster and reached the tomb first.
John writes: "They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the cloth, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed."
It is this second cloth, the small one which had been on Christ's head, which the inhabitants of Manoppello have always regarded as the one they have in their town. This cloth is sometimes known as the "sweat cloth." The Manoppello cloth, however, has not a drop of sweat detectable on it. But then, the cloth is so fine, it cannot hold even a single drop of blood or sweat.
Rome, September 1, 2004, Fiumincino Airport.
A fresh breeze from the nearby Mediterranean cools the late summer morning. The clock in Hall A reads 7:35 a.m., as the Alitalia flight 1570 from Cagliari touches down outside on the runway. Minutes before, terrorists had stormed a school in far-off Beslan, in Northern Ossetia, the most heinous crime since 9/11. Apocalyptic events have become the daily bread of many reporters on earth. But I heard no news reports that morning. Also later, on the Autostrada heading for Pescara, I did not switch on the radio.
Reporters have it easy, it came to my mind instead at the airport. They do not have to prove anything. They are not judges, lawyers or teachers. They just report things, things they observe each day, from every angle.
When Chiara Vigo crosses the barrier, I recognize her immediately, although I had never seen her before. Her fingernails are spindles, long and pointed. Pier Paolo Pasolini might have cast her as the star in any of his films.
She comes from the small island of Sant' Antioco off the coast of Sardinia, where she is the last living byssus weaver on earth, heir to an unbroken tradition dating to ancient times.
"To our people, byssus is a holy fabric," she says in the car. What does she mean, "Our people?" Isn't her island simply part of Sardinia? No, she laughs roughly. On her island, Sardinian and Italian are spoken, but they also know many Aramaic songs, for the population is descended from Chaldaeans and Phoenicians. They trace their art of byssus production to the Princess Berenike, one of Herod's daughters, the lover (mistress?) of the Emperor Titus, after Titus destroyed Jerusalem.
Then she held out to me a bundle of unspun, raw byssus. In the morning light, it shone more finely than angel hair. The gold of the seas! In her hand, it shown like bronze in the sun. The material is produced from threads a certain kind of sea mussel ("pinna nobilis") generates to cling to the ground. Every May Chiara Vigo dives under full moonlight five meters deep in the sea to collect and harvest them. Then they are combed and spun and woven into a most precious fabric.
Byssus was the most costly fabric in the ancient world. It has been found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, and it is mentioned often in the Bible, where it is said to be obligatory for the carpets of the Holy of Holies and for the "Ephod," the vestment of the high priest.
Steeped in lemon, it becomes golden. In former times, soaked in cow's urine, it became paler and brighter.
We fly down the highway toward Manoppello. Sister Blandina awaits us on the hill just above the church, where she lives.
As we walk up the central aisle, the "Holy Face" appears to be a milky, rectangular communion host above the altar. In the window, a cross shimmers from the back of the choir right through the veil.
After we climb the steps behind the altar and draw close to the image, Chiara Vigo falls to her knees. She has never seen a veil so finely woven. "It has the eyes of a lamb," she says and crosses herself. "And a lion." And then: "That is Byssus!"
Chiara Vigo says it once, twice, thrice.
Byssus can be dyed with purple, she had explained to me in the car.
"Yet byssus cannot be painted on. It is simply not possible. O Dio! O Dio mio!" ("Oh my God! Oh my God!")
"That is byssus!" What she meant was: it cannot be any sort of painted picture.
Thus, the image on the veil is something else. Something that transcends any picture.
=====================================================================
This appears to be the 1999 article referred to above.
Has Veronica's Veil Been Found?
by Antonio Gaspari
Urbi et Orbi Communications
November 1999
At a Roman press conference this summer, a German Jesuit scholar, Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, announced he had located "Veronica's Veil" — the veil that, according to tradition. Veronica used to wipe the face of Jesus on his way toward Calvary.
Pfeiffer, Professor of Christian Art History at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, says he located the veil at a small Capuchin friary, the Sanctuary of the Sacred Face, in Manoppello, a small town in the Abruzzo region about 150 miles from Rome in Italy's Apennine mountains.
"After 13 years of study, I am convinced that this is the authentic veil of Veronica" Pfeiffer, official advisor to the Papal Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, said during the May 31 conference.
The Vatican has had no comment on Pfeiffer's claim. (His conclusion is a bit controversial, since Veronica's veil should officially still be inside Saint Peter's Basilica. There, beside the main altar, one will find a statue of Veronica and a Latin inscription saying the veil is preserved within.)
Some British scholars, however, have reacted with skepticism. "The Gregorian University is quite respectable, but I think the claim about the veil is totally absurd," Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, said. "Almost everybody accepts that it is a legend. I would put it on the same level as seeing the face of Mohammed in a potato."
Cambridge Professor of Divinity Lionel Wickham was more positive. "Pfeiffer may have found an object that was venerated in the Middle Ages — I wouldn't discount that," he said. "But whether it dates back to early events is another matter."
To learn more,
Inside the Vatican visited Manoppello to take a look at the veil.
Manoppello is an ancient town, its origins dating to the period before Christ. The first Christian community was formed by the Benedictines in the early Middle Ages. The town is distant from main roads and has often suffered from earthquakes.
We were met by Brother Germano, the friar in charge of the Sanctuary.
Together we entered a small, relatively modern church. We immediately noted, above the altar, a reliquary where there is a silver ostensory. At the center of the ostensory there is a white transparent linen measuring 6.5 by 9.5 inches (17 by 24 cm).
From a distance the veil is barely visible. It is so thin one can easily see through it. Father Germano says the veil is "so ethereal that it is possible to read a newspaper through it."
As we approached the altar, the material began to appear more and more colored and the face of a suffering man began to be visible.
The face is that of a young man who has suffered greatly. He looks tired. The marks of blows that have struck him are clear: bruises and other scars on the forehead, clotted blood on his nose, one pupil slightly dilated. Yet, in spite of the evident signs of suffering and pain, the look is that of a serene man enduring his suffering with patience.
"The fact that the face appears and disappears according to where the light comes from was considered a miracle in the Middle Ages" Pfeiffer notes. "This is not a painting. We don't know how the veil became colored or how the image was impressed. We can only say that it has the color of blood."
Another detail: the image clearly appears on both sides of the cloth, like a photo slide.
Father Germano is cautious. He does not want publicity. He reveres the image with devotion and loving care. He studies to understand and know more about its history. One senses that he is convinced this is really the veil of Veronica.
According to an ancient legend from the apocryphal Acts of Pilate (c. 6th century), a holy woman whose name was Veronica dried Christ's face on the road to Calvary. The result: the image of his face was impressed onto the cloth.
Many critics have questioned the name "Veronica," which seems to be a lexical deformation of the Greek and Latin words "vera icona" ("real icon" or "authentic image"), used in the Middle Ages to mean Christ's miraculous images.
The story of Veronica's veil persisted, becoming part of popular Catholic piety. (Film director Franco Zeffirelli recently re-told the story in his movie
Jesus of Nazareth.)
As early as the 300s, there were documents, which spoke of the existence of the veil, but only in the Middle Ages was it strictly connected to the Passion of Jesus Christ.
On the occasion of the first Holy Year in 1300, the Veil of Veronica was publicly displayed and became one of the "Mirabilia Urbis"' ("wonders of the City") for the pilgrims who visited Rome.
Numerous descriptions note the veil's fine material — so fine that a breeze can pass through — with an image stamped on both its sides of a still living person with eyes wide open, a face full of suffering and with evident blood spots. The great Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, mentions the veil in the Divine Comedy (Paradiso, Canto XXXI, verses 103-111).
Pfeiffer argues Veronica's Veil was stolen from the Vatican in the years following the Holy Year of 1600, when Saint Peter's was in the chaotic phase of being rebuilt, and he notes that the veil appeared in Manoppello at that time.
Recent historical research shows that, in 1608, during Saint Peter's restoration under Paul V's papacy (1605-1621), the Chapel where Veronica's veil was kept was demolished.
Pfeiffer thinks it likely that on that occasion the veil was stolen.
Pfeiffer notes that Pope Paul V in 1616 prohibited copies of Veronica's veil not made by a canon of Saint Peter's Basilica. He argues that this suggests that the precious relic wasn't in the Vatican anymore.
In fact, all the copies made after this period showed the image of Christ with his eyes closed, though earlier images show Christ with his eyes open.
Urban VIII (Pope from 1623 to 1644) not only prohibited reproductions of Veronica's veil, but also ordered all existing copies to be destroyed. Pfeiffer argues that this action also suggests the veil had been lost or stolen.
In 1618, Vatican archivist Giacomo Grimaldi made a precise list of the objects held in the old Saint Peter's.
On his list: the reliquary containing Veronica's veil. But, he writes, the reliquary's crystal glass was "broken." (Pfeiffer notes that the veil in Manoppello has, on its bottom edge, a small piece of glass.)
Pfeiffer has no theory about how the veil was brought to Manoppello.
According to an account written in 1646 by the Capuchin friar Donato da Bomba, in 1608 Marzia Leonelli, to ransom her husband from jail, sold Veronica's veil, which she had received as her dowry, for 400 scudi (an old Italian unit of currency) to Donato Antonio de Fabritiis.
As the relic was not in good condition, after 30 years, de Fabritiis gave it, in 1638, to the Capuchin friars of Manoppello.
Friar Remigio da Rapino cut out the veil's contour and fixed it between two panes of glass framed with chestnut wood — the glass and frame, which can still be seen today.
Many have said the veil in Manoppello is a simple painting. But the image does not have the characteristics of any painter, artistic school or epoch.
In 1977, Professor Donato Vittori of the University of Bari examined the veil under ultraviolet light and found that the fibers do not have any type of color.
Observing the veil under a microscope, it is clear that it is not painted and not even woven with colored fibers. Through sophisticated photographic technology (digital enlargements) it is possible to see that the image is identical on both sides of the veil.
Scientific research carried out recently shows that the image on the Holy Shroud of Turin and the image which appears on the veil in Manoppello are of identical size and superimposable, the only difference being that on the relic of Manoppello the mouth and eyes are open.
Research carried out by Father Enrico Sammarco and Sister Blandina Paschalis Schomer show that the dimensions of the face on the Holy Shroud are the same as on the veil of Manoppello.
Comparing the two images, they say, it is clear that the face is the same, "photographed" at two different moments.
To seek more evidence for his theories, Pfeiffer carried out a systematic study of the main works of art, which represent Veronica's veil before the image imposed by Pope Paul V. He found that several details — the hair cut, the blood traces, the shape of the face, the beard's characteristics and the cloth's folds — all reflect a single model: the image in Manoppello.
"When the different details are assembled in one image, it means the image must have been the model for all the others," Pfeiffer argues. "So, we can say that the veil of Manoppello is nothing other than the original Veronica's Veil."
For Christians, in the case of Veronica's Veil — as also in the case of the Shroud of Turin — to believe or not to believe in its authenticity is not a matter of faith.