Pope Benedict XVIs September 2006 visit to an Italian monastery has drawn increasing public attention to a small piece of cloth kept there which contains an image many believe to be the face of Jesus (see photo). The cloth has been compared to the Turin Shroud, because of the extraordinary similarities between the two images and the inexplicable nature of the images themselves.
According to Christian tradition, a woman named Veronica wiped Jesus face as he walked on the road to Calvary, and an image of Jesus face was impressed onto the cloth. Other reports say the name comes from vera icona or true icon. Documents dating back to the fourth century refer to the existence of such a cloth, referred to as Veronicas Veil, which reportedly had miraculous and healing properties. It was mentioned in Dantes poem The Divine Comedy, written between 1306 and 1321, and was publicly displayed for Christian pilgrims in the Vatican Chapel from the 12th century until 1608. In that year, when the Chapel was being re-built, the cloth went missing, believed stolen. A short time later, records show that a cloth thought to be Veronicas Veil was given to the monks at a monastery in Manoppello, a small town about 150 miles from Rome, where it has resided until now. However, the Vatican maintains that it still holds the original veil.
In 1977, Italian scientists examining the Manoppello veil under ultraviolet light found that the fibres contained no pigment, and concluded that the image of a mans face on the cloth could not have been painted or woven with coloured fibres. In 1999, a German priest and scholar, Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, announced that, after 13 years of research, he concluded that the cloth in Manoppello was the authentic veil of Veronica. The cloth, measuring 9.5 by 6.5 inches, and made from byssus, a very fine fabric woven from mussel fibres, possesses a number of extraordinary properties: the image on the cloth appears or disappears depending on the angle of the light; the image appears to be three-dimensional when viewed from a certain distance and angle; and the identical image appears on both sides of the cloth, like a photographic slide, which would not have been possible to achieve using ancient techniques. Scientific research comparing the facial image on the Turin Shroud with that on the veil in Manoppello shows that they are exactly the same size and superimposable.
The only differences between the two images are that on the Shroud the wounds visible on the face are still open, while on the cloth of Manoppello the wounds have closed; and on the Manoppello cloth the mouth and eyes are open, while on the Shroud they are closed. The researchers who studied the two images concluded that the face in both images is the same, photographed at two different moments.
The clarity of the image, supposedly more than 2,000 years old, surprises visitors to the shrine. Italian pilgrim Silvana Fiorelli said that the image filled her with a sense of wonder: I cant explain how the face of Christ remained so visible after all this time, she said.
Friar Emiliano, one of the sanctuarys Capuchin guardians, called the Popes visit an historical event. The pontiff, he said, like many pilgrims, comes not so much to see Christs face on Veronicas Veil but to be seen by it, to be loved by the eyes of the Lord. (Source: Reuters; Zenit News Agency, Rome; www.catholic-forum.com; Die Welt, Germany; Daily Telegraph, UK)
(Benjamin Cremes Master confirms that the Veronica Veil at Manoppello is genuine.)
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At one point it MUST have been artistically “enhanced,” was it not? It doesn’t look photographic to me in the least, unlike the shroud of Turin, which is quite convincing at a glance. The eyes and hair especially look fake fake fake.
PS: this facial image reminds me of portraits of the kindly Cesar Franck’s. Did Jesus look homely but kindly? I tend to think He did! It fits the bible narrative, and His character as expressed in the bible, quite nicely. Maybe this face is only symbolic of a real McCoy which has been lost to the mists of time, but it is a suitable face of a comforting Savior.
Turin | Manoppello |
The sizes of images are different to compensate for the closer cropping in Manoppello. I think, the proportion of chin to cheeks is wrong. The Manoppello face has weaker chin and more elongated cheeks and nose. There are other differences: the bridge of the nose is wider in Manoppello; the hair line seems receded; the mustache, the beard, and the eyebrows are thinner; the asymmetries of the face are very pronounced and different.