A towel claimed to be used by Jesus Christ to dry his face - and
which now bears his image - will be one of the star attractions at an
exhibition of Christian relics to be held in the UK this summer.
The
Holy Towel Of Jesus - otherwise known as the Mandylion Of Edessa - is
normally kept at the Pope's private chapel in the Vatican.
But the
British Museum has acquired the relic as the centrepiece of its
Treasures From The Vatican display, which opens in London in June.
There is some scholarly dispute over the provenance of the towel.
Some experts claim that it is a copy of the original made in about
400AD.
Nevertheless, British Museum bosses have described the acquisition as 'extraordinary'.
Museum curator James Robinson told the Independent: 'In the
Middle Ages it [the towel] would have been greeted in the same way that
David Beckham's sweaty shirt would be greeted today.
'It is an ordinary object made extraordinary by the person claimed to have come into contact with it.'
Legend has it that the towel was created after an artist commissioned
to paint Jesus by the Turkish King Agbar of Edessa, was too dazzled by
his subject's brilliance to complete the portrait.
As a
result, Jesus wiped his face on a piece of cloth and handed it to the
artist - with his image miraculously recorded on the material.
When the
artist returned to his patron in Turkey with the magical cloth, it cured
the king of leprosy.
Other treasures to feature in the exhibition
include an object once believed to contain Jesus's umbilical cord,
pendants containing thorns said at the time to come from the Crown of
Thorns, and a shrine said to have contained the Virgin Mary's breast
milk.
The body parts of Christian figures were thought to work
miracles and were housed in precious metal reliquaries during the
Medieval age.
Relics of Jesus, such as a reliquary said to contain splinters from
the cross he was crucified on, were the most highly prized artefacts.
One
of the earliest pieces in the show - the first major exhibition in
Britain on relics - will be a Roman sarcophagus dating from around 250
to 350AD from the Vatican.
Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe runs from June 23 to October 9.