On the imperfect paper*

Thinking of John and Andrew that afternoon, around 4pm, when they first met Jesus (John 1: 36-40), Irish columnist and author John Waters wonders: what if I were sitting in a café with a friend, a spare chair at our table, and Jesus asked “is the seat taken?” «What would He look like, in this moment now? Would he surprise me? .. Would he be dressed casually or would he have a suit? Would he have a beard and would it be trimmed? Would his hair be long or short?» (J. Waters, Beyond Consolation: Or How We Became Too clever for God and Our Own Good. Continuum, London 2010, p. 206.)

The desire to see God is part of human nature. It is «present throughout the Old Testament, to the extent that the Hebrew term pānîm, which means “face”, recurs 400 times, and refers to God 100 times», and this from a religion which forbids images. The cry cannot be quelled: «Of you my heart has said, “Seek his face!”» (Ps 27, 8)

Christianity claims that God has made himself visible in Jesus. It’s a claim that crosses time and space, and it has been linked since the V-VI century to an acheiropoietos image i.e.,¹ not made by human hands, of Christ himself. This miraculous portrait, whose presence is recorded in literary and historical sources, has unmistakable features: eyes wide open, the beard torn, stains of blood on the forehead, visible teeth. It is impressed on a piece of cloth which seems neither weaved, not painted. The Artist, according to the Church, is Christ Himself.

The earliest known records write of a veil named Kamouliana, after the town in Cappadocia where it was found: it was brought to Constantinople in 574, where it became the imperial palladium, carried into battles and military campaigns. At the Second Council of Nicaea (787), however, the Fathers mentioned a second image, a cloth on which Jesus had imprinted His face in response to a request from Abgarus, king of Edessa, who wanted to be cured of his leprosy. This relic, known as Mandylion (‘towel’) was found in Edessa in 544. It had been put in a niche on the city walls by Abgarus, sealed with a tile at a later stage², and incredibly forgotten there for about four centuries.

In 944 the Mandylion was brought to Constantinople, where it established itself as the model for all icons of Christ. In 1204 the city was besieged, conquered and sacked by the crusaders. After that date, no Eastern Church claimed the possession of an image “not made by human hands”.  Four years later, there existed an acheiropoietos portrait of Christ in Rome. People called it “veronica”.

The Veronica was the most important relic of Christianity during the Middle Ages, its popularity lasting for over four centuries. The name refers to the woman who wiped Christ’s brow, her veil, and any portrait of Jesus on a cloth.  

In 1216 the Church granted an indulgence that could be gained by praying in front of the ‘vera icon’, and copies of the Veronica multiplied: paintings, frescoes, etchings, prints, illuminated books. Every church had a ‘vernicle’: apart from the altar, it was the keystone, or a sculpture, or the Holy Face on a stained glass window.¹

When the first Holy Year was proclaimed in 1300, people from all Europe went to Rome, including women, children and the sick. Chroniclers reported of huge crowds, Dante and Petrarch wrote about it (See Dante: Paradiso, XXXI, 103-108; Vita Nuova, XL. Petrarch: Canzoniere, XVI). Among the pilgrims was Rogier van der Weyden, “Rogeri maximi pictoris”² whose portraits of Christ became a model for all Flemish painters. In Rome there were pictores Veronicae and stalls where people could buy a badge to be sewn on hats together with the shell and the cross, the symbols of Santiago and Jerusalem. Literary examples of pilgrims include Chaucer and Langland (The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 1, 687; Piers Plowman, Passus V, 523.), but even Ophelia in her madness sings of “cockle hat and staff” (Hamlet IV, 5, 25). Veronica is mentioned in the poem The Siege of Jerusalem (The Siege of Jerusalem, anonymous, ca. 1370-1380, lines 165-168 and 209-216) and in many plays³. It was a name for pubs: “The Vernacle” was a tavern in Fleet Street, London, in 1389, and a “Vernicle Inn” existed in Canterbury in Christopher Marlowe’s days.⁴

A few years before the Reformation Thomas More wrote that Jesus «[had] liked to leave the holy vernicle, the express image also of his blessed visage»⁵. However, after the Act of Supremacy (1534) and the dissolution of monasteries, things changed radically: «instead of the little old picture of the Vernacle that he remembered as a child, hung his own sword»⁶. One century later, Milton still made fun of «reliques, beads, / Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls»⁷.

When Rome was sacked in 1527, rumours spread that the Veronica had disappeared. Possibly.¹ It is certainly well present in XX century literature, at least as a nostalgia for a face once cherished: incidentally, mainly from authors who cannot be considered especially pious. In Bert Brecht’s poem Das neue Schweisstuch (1943) the veil is «das Papier.. auf welchem / Nun das Antlitz des Blutenden gebildet war»², while in Cien años de soledad (1967) García Márquez tells of how José Arcadio Buendía demanded «el daguerrotipo de Dios» as evidence of His existence and was given «una reproducción del paño de la Verónica»³. For Roland Barthes «la photographie a quelque chose à voir avec la résurrection: ne peut-on dire d’elle ce que disaient les Byzantins de l’image du Christ.. qu’elle n’était pas faite de main d’homme, acheïropoïetos?»⁴. Though of course the Veronica is more a selfie than a picture. In XX century literature in English many are the authors who had their 4pm, like John and Andrew, and at least three are often part of the fifth-year programme of a liceo: Aldous Huxley, Samuel Beckett, Jack Kerouac. Somehow, they all seemed to be haunted by Christ’s face. Of course the fact that the Holy Face is a portrait means that it can be studied also from another perspective, that of the history of art. Considering that the “Obiettivi specifici di apprendimento” require students to discuss and contrast authors against a cultural background which includes cinema, music, visual arts, current events etc. via the new technologies, this is certainly an incredible advantage. The acheiropoietos image of Christ can become the object of an interdisciplinary approach: literature, art, history, philosophy, religion. Where two or more languages are studied, for example, it is possible to read excerpts from foreign literatures, too; or to analyse the Salve Sancta Facies hymn⁵ with the Latin teacher. Comparing the different expressions of iconoclasm throughout history, then, may be quite a discovery. What follows is a series of resources.

Huxley was living in Tuscany in the Twenties. He witnessed the Palio at Siena, recounting how enchanting it was, with the swallows at full cry, to hear the drums and watch the banners in their green and yellow liveries which «might have been designed by Picasso for the Russian Ballet»¹ (like one of his harlequins?). Of the Holy Face in Lucca he wrote: «At the religious function and the ensuing fair I am, each September, a regular attendant»².

Huxley tells the story of the acheiropoietos wooden crucifix and its miraculous arrival from the Holy Land. He says that William the Conqueror used to swear “on the Holy Face of Lucca”³ and reports the details of the celebration: colours, hymns, garments but mostly the Holy Face,

the most impressive thing of its kind I have ever seen. Imagine a huge wooden Christ, larger than life, not naked, as in later representations of the Crucifixion, but dressed in a long tunic, formally fluted with stiff Byzantine folds. The face is not the face of a dead, or dying, or even suffering man. It is the face of a man still violently alive…⁴

So alive that to avoid that gaze he has to leave the cathedral:

.. there is always a remedy. We can always turn our back on the Face, we can always leave the hollow darkness of the church. Outside, the sunlight pours down out of a flawless sky. [..] There is a crowd, a smell, an unceasing noise-music and shouting…⁵

Amazing how someone so disturbed by the Face should spend «hours in the cathedral watching the crowd before the shrine»⁶. Maybe the streets full of people, the merry-go-rounds, the laughing and whistling, the clang in the market place are not enough. Maybe the frontier of human dignity is that envisaged by John the Savage in Brave New World (1932). «There was a thing.. called Christianity», he is told, but «all crosses had their tops cut and became T’s. There was also a thing called God»⁷. Confronted with the Controller, here’s what he says:

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.” There was a long silence.

“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last⁸.

Beckett was born on Good Friday, 1906¹ and died a couple of days before Christmas, 1989. The date of his birthday is sometimes disputed: it is said that his birth certificate stated May 13^th, and the news of his death was made public after the funeral. As if he wanted somehow to be linked both to the Resurrection and the Incarnation of Christ. Many of his works refer to the Passion of Christ: therefore, often, also to the Veronica episode.

In the poem Enueg II (1935), the vision of a «face grave» in the sky is linked to the Holy Face through the lines «veronica mundi / veronica munda / give us a wipe for the love of Jesus»², while in the opening scene of Endgame (1957, originally Fin de partie, 1955), Hamm has «a large blood-stained handkerchief over his face» and the first words uttered (by Clov), are «finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished»³, which echo Jesus’s last words on the Cross (John 19:30). The play ends with Hamm unfolding his handkerchief in front of the audience and covering his face with it. Another example is the play for television Nacht und Träume (1982), of which Beckett said⁴ that the hands that wiped the brow of the dreamt self were an allusion to the Veil of Veronica.

Perhaps the most impressive case of the Veronica episode is the novel Watt (1953), because it is the narrator, Sam (sic!), who is alluded to as the person who could wipe blood away from Watt’s forehead. Here’s an excerpt:

Continuing my inspection, like one deprived of his senses, I observed, with a distinctness that left no room for doubt, in the adjoining garden whom do you think but Watt, advancing backwards towards me. His progress was slow and devious, on account no doubt of his having no eyes in the back of his head, and painful too, I fancy, for often he struck against the trunks of trees, or in the tangles of underwood caught his foot, and fell to the ground, flat on his back, or into a great clump of brambles, or of briars, or of nettles, or of thistles. But still without murmur he came on, until he lay against the fence, with his hands at arm’s length gasping the wires. Then he turned, with the intention very likely of going back the way he had come, and I saw his face, and the rest of his front. His face was bloody, his hands also, and thorns were in his scalp. (His resemblance, at that moment, to the Christ believed by Bosch, then hanging in Trafalgar Square, was so striking, that I remarked it). And at the same instant suddenly I felt as though I were standing before a great mirror, in which my garden was reflected, and my fence, and I, and the very birds tossing in the wind, so that I looked at my hands, and felt my face, and glossy skull, with an anxiety as real as unfounded. (For if anyone, at that time, could be truly said not to resemble the Christ supposed by Bosch, then hanging in Trafalgar Square, I flatter myself it was I). Why, Watt, I cried, that is a nice state you have got yourself into, to be sure. Not it is, yes, replied Watt. This short phrase caused me, I believe, more alarm, more pain, than if I had received, unexpectedly, at close quarters, a charge of small shot in the ravine. This impression was reinforced by what followed. Wonder I, said Watt, panky-hanky me lend you could, blood away wipe⁵.

Watt, who always carries a «little red sudarium» in his pocket⁶, is described from the point of view of an onlooker who sees him walking painfully and falling to the ground. The reference to Jesus is obvious, not only because, like in the prophecy, he “still without murmur” comes on⁷, or because brambles and briars are plants often mentioned in the Bible, but because Beckett openly says that «his face was bloody, his hands also, and thorns were in his scalp» and that he looked like Christ in the painting by Bosch at the National Gallery. Like Veronica «became an image: an image of truth»⁸ so does Sam, who sees himself as if he were in front of a mirror and is asked: «Wonder I.. panky-hanky me lend you could, blood away wipe». I wonder could you lend me your handkerchief to wipe away the blood. The features of the acheiropoietos portrait of Christ (eyes wide open, signs of sufferance, etc.) can be identified in the reproductions of all those who went to Rome on a pilgrimage to see the Veronica: Fra Angelico, van der Weyden, Memling and many others⁹. The painting by Bosch, for example, portraits the beard torn.

Kerouac described himself as «actually not ‘beat’ but strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic»¹. He «sought God everywhere»,² and his writings reverberate with his infinite desire, from On the Road

the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. ³

to Mexico City Blues:

I must see your face this morning, God, Your Face through dusty window-panes, through steam and furor, I must listen to your voice over these clankings of the city: I am tired, God, I cannot see your face in this history.⁴

In one of the stories of Lonesome Traveler, Kerouac is inside a church in Mexico City, «4 o’clock in the gray afternoon» ⁵ (a coincidence?), praying in front of an ancient wooden crucifix. He sees Jesus on His Way to Calvary:

and as He leans there with the Cross on rocks they goad him on to slide on His knees and He’s worn them out by the time He’s nailed to the cross – I was there. Shows the big rip in His ribs where the sword-tips of lancers were stuck up at Him. – I was not there, had I been there I would have yelled ‘Stop it’ and got crucified too.⁶

Then he adds: «What a Victory, the Victory of Christ!»⁷. In Visions of Cody, Victory is imprinted on Veronica’s cloth:

out of the crowd jumps this lady with a clean handkerchief or scarf and Jesus mops his face with it .. and on the clean rag is left the imprint of his face, including blood features, and the woman runs away not believing it and staring at the rag and bundles it up under her arm like a flag and runs but once in the dark (and now the great thunderstorm and earthquake is forming) she unravels it to see if all the colors, the blood and features ran off into another, but no the face of Jesus is still neatly imprinted on that rag..⁸

The Holy Face has left insistently traces throughout history. Sixty years after the Reformation, Shakespeare still used the name of Romeo, like the medieval pilgrims to Rome, for one of his most popular characters. In Irish literature the Veronica episode is quite frequent, both from Catholic writers (a tiny minority) and complete agnostics. Apart from Beckett, the list includes Joyce, who mentions «old Veronica’s wipers» in Finnegans Wake¹ and Yeats’s Veronica’s Napkin, in which he refers to «a pattern on a napkin dipped in blood».² Denis Devlin and Padraic Colum include Veronica in their poems: the first says women «Will take their last white linen from drawer / And saying:  “God is ours as He is human” / Wipe the blood from the unbearable scar»,³ the second «Down to her face His face He bends: / The helper she, the heartner: /His image in her cloth He leaves»⁴. Patrick Kavanagh tells of a «Tortured Face»⁵ and playwright Frank McGuinness says Veronica «brandished a cloth / To wipe my sore face»⁶. Another play is Veil (2014), by Sean Walsh⁷, featuring Veronica but not Christ. Finally, in a short-story by Seán Ó Faoláin, Of Sanctity and Whiskey, Luke Regan, a famous painter, returns to his old college to make the portrait of Brother Hilary, the Head. As a student he disliked the gloomy atmosphere of the school, its hypocrisy and impositions. The Brother asks him:

Do you know Greek, Luke? A pity! There is a wonderful Greek word, Archiropito. It is the perfect word for that image of Christ. Painted by no human hand. Painted by the angels. The day I became headmaster I bought three dozen copies of that angelic image. I put one in every classroom. I gave one to every brother to hang over his bed.⁸

Luke finishes the painting and brings it to his hotel room.

Regan lay back on his pillow, emptying the bottle gulp for gulp, rejoicing strabismally at the face on the mantelpiece that, like a wavering fire, slowly faded into the veils of the gathering dusk. “Archiropito!” he wheezed joyfully as he drained the bottle on its head, let it fall with a crash on the ground and sank into a stupor.⁹

In front of the portrait of his ignorant teacher, he drinks himself to death muttering “Archiropito”, incorrect as it is. In Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, nihilist Kirillov commits suicide to prove that God doesn’t exist, but lights a candle in front of an icon of Christ.

«I am the spring, the holy ground / The endless seed of mystery / The thorn, the veil, the face of grace».¹⁰