Face to face

Ecco homo
The monk in his brown habit stops his walk half way down the aisle of a small church deep in the Abruzzi mountains when he sees a hot and sweaty lycra-clothed cyclist enter his church. His face drops. I think I hear a ‘tut’ coming from his pursed lips. I remove my cleats, sunglasses and helmet, and greet him with a ‘buongiorno’ and a smile. He has keys in his hand. He wants to lock up the church for lunch he says by way of reply, although the time for closure is still ten minutes away. Even for a monk, the sacred hour of lunch is sacrosanct. I tell him, I shan’t be long and he bustles away to lock all the other doors and turn out lights.

The face which suffered
Up some marble steps above the altar is a portrait of a man. It is set between two pieces of glass and an ornate walnut wood frame surrounds the whole. Through the glass a brutalised face stares back. A thin moustache has a chunk of hair missing above the lip, and a fist has pulled some beard away from the left cheek. There is bruising around the eyes, blood stains around the nose, which appears to be broken. The mouth, seems to be sucking in air between a line of unbroken upper teeth and the open eyes stare back in a defeated and impassive manner. ‘Do what you will to me’ they seem to convey.

The arrival of the veil
History relates how on a dark and stormy night in 1508, a man entered a tiny church in the isolated Apennine mountain village of Manopello, carrying a package wrapped in cloth. The package was given to a man sitting alone on a front pew, No words of explanation were given. The recipient, a Dr. Giacomo Antonio Leonelli, unwrapped the cloth and instantly recognised the face of Jesus Christ staring back at him. He rushed out of the church to question the stranger, but he was not to be found.
For a century, the cloth remained in the Leonielli family, then it was stolen by a soldier whose wife later sold it to pay a ransom demand. The buyer gave it to the Capuchins, an order of monks who were setting up a small monastery in the village at the time. It has remained with them ever since. 

The sweat-cloth of Christ?
Is this the sudarium or sweat-cloth, which was applied to Christ’s face by Veronica as he stumbled down the Via Dolorosa on his way to Cavalry? Although the Gospels do not make mention of the episode, it is believed that Veronica, stepped out and wiped the sweat and blood from his face as he stumbled under the weight of the cross. Miraculously,  Christ’s face appeared on the veil and the woman travelled to Rome and presented it to the Emperor Tiberius. The veil remained in Rome in the vaults of the Vatican, until its sacking in 1506, when for safe keeping the veil was smuggled out of the city and taken to this remote village. The cloth is said to be made from sea silk, known as byssus, an extremely rare and fine material made from the secretions of a type of bi-valve mussel found in the sea. The image, which has the normal proportions of a man’s face, can be seen clearly from both sides and has been declared to be an archeirpoieta - ‘not made by human hand’.

Urban legends
Inevitably there are doubts over the authenticity of the relic. However, the urban myths surrounding it are no less remarkable. The German Artist, Albert Dürer, was known to have painted water colours on byssus silk and it has been suggested -without evidence - that this portrait was sent as a gift to Raphael. Both Dürer and Raphael were working when the cloth ‘appeared’ in the public domain around the beginning of the 16th century.
Also working at this time, was Leonardo da Vinci who scholars believe was experimenting with the effects of light on cloth soaked in silver nitrate. He was known to have cadavers brought to him, many of them criminals, post-execution. Could it be, that in a dark room, a body of a criminal was hung from a beam in Leonardo’s studio, on which a light was shone, creating an image on a fine piece of cloth soaked in silver nitrate? Could it be that the face staring back at me world’s first photograph?

Plenary indugence
Since 1718, plenary indulgence has been given to all pilgrims who visit the sanctuary and I want to ask the monk who is now jangling his keys at the foot of the steps if my sins have been forgiven, or if indeed he has forgiven me for appearing in his church so racily attired, immediately before lunch. He looks impatiently at me as I descend the slippery marble steps in my socks and I decide that perhaps now is not the time - asking any Italian to delay their arrival at the pasta bowl is beyond any form of forgiveness. The unblinking eyes of the criminal follow us up the aisle. The monk nods by way of goodbye, and I hear the keys turn the lock behind me. 

The horror of it
The face is haunting. Despite having no religious faith, I have seen it many times and it’s an image which I can’t forget. The unblinking stare and its obvious pain is intensely moving even to an arch-sceptic. The passivity of the face and its surrender to homicidal violence is a reminder, if one were ever needed, of human-kind’s timeless ability to unleash perpetual horror upon its own kind. As I ride away, I cannot avoid the thought of the suffering endured by Russia’s aggression upon Ukraine.