What are the testaments of A.D. 944?
There
are three references to the Image of Edessa from A.D.
944, the year that the image was brought to Constantinople by John
Curcuas while Romanus was the regent co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
- A lengthy document, the Narratio de imagine Edessena,
tells us that co-emperor Constantine VII described the image as
“extremely faint, more like a moist secretion without pigment or the
painter’s art.” That is a poignant clue for us that the Image of
Edessa was in this way like the Shroud of Turin.
- Symeon Magister’s Chronographia explains that
Constantine VII could see some image features but Romanus’ two sons,
Constantine's brothers-in-law, could barely any image at all. This
is significant evidence that the cloth with its image might be the
Shroud of Turin since that is a characteristic of the Shroud of
Turin.
- Gregory Referendarius, the archdeacon of Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia cathedral, gave a sermon in which he described the cloth as having an image, the likeness of a man, seemingly formed by sweat. He also mentions bloodstains and mentions a side wound, which implies that the image was a full body image.