AN IMPENETRABLE MYSTERY

There is a real treasure unknown to many, kept in the "Basilica of the Holy Face", belonging to the Capuchin order, in a case always visible to the public, one of the most important relics of the Christian world the "mandylion (= handkerchief in Syriac) of Edessa".

 This relic is considered the true image of Jesus and would be, with the Shroud of Turin, the only known example of "acheropita", meaning an object not made by human hands. The veil is known as the "Veronica", a Roman word for the term true icon, that is true image.

(I Thesis)

     One of the theses on how the veil arrived in Manoppello, dates back to May 6, 1527, and is written and documented in the original manuscript “Relatione Historica” where the sack of Roma,  done by the imperial army, under the command of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, Count of Auvergne and Montpensier and the siege of Naples by Odetto de Foix lord of Lautrec, is documented also describing how it was set on fire by the German lansquenets and Spanish tercieros, mercenary soldiers at the service of Charles V of Habsburg, who besieged Pope Clement VII and forced him to barricade himself in the Castel Sant'Angelo and then flee to Orvieto, where he remained until he accepted to crown Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and to pay a large sum of money for his ransom.

     Therefore, during the looting, some scholars presume the sacred Veil was stolen, along with many other relics, from the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome. The hypothesis on the theft was made by Hernando de Alarcón, or some soldier at his dependences, which he entrusted the command of the Spanish garrison in Castel Sant'Angelo, and the garrison that controlled Rome until February 1528,  that at the end of the Franco-Spanish conflict,  stole the veil and brought it into the territory of which he was a Marquis. Afterwards, realizing the importance of the Veil, and not wanting to risk any compromise by being found in its possession, he got rid of the relic making it fall in the hands of the Capuchin fathers.

 (II Thesis)

     The authoritative scholar Father P. Heinrich Pfeiffer, professor of  art history and Christian icon history at the history faculty and  Cultural Heritage of the Gregorian Pontifical University of Rome, is convinced that the Veronica was stolen from the Vatican during the reconstruction of Constantine’s  church that was wanted by Pope Julius II, also known as the Pope Warrior or The Fearsome Pope,  in the first months of 1506 when the pontiff made his decision. As written in the “Relatione Historica” and further on found in other researches of the Monk Donato da Bomba in 1640, all reported after in a notary deed of 1646, that in Manoppello a pilgrim approached a certain Giacomantonio Leonelli, a notary of Manoppello, astrologist, doctor in Physics  and other liberal arts, who was standing in front of Saint Nicolas church, leaving him  a packet containing the relic. The fabric was left in Leonelli’s hands and his heirs for years until one of Leonelli descendents, Marzia, having her inheritance rights on the veil denied, induced her husband, the man of arms Pancratio Petrucci, to steel it in 1608.  Henceforth the legends become history: everything is credibly reported, even the legal issues brought by the notary Donato Antonio De Fabritiis for acquiring from Marzia the sacred image in 1618 (for 4 shields) to redeem her husband, in prison in the city of Chieti. Later he donated the relic to the Capuchin Friars of Manoppello in 1638: however, it became clear, that the first part of the report in the manuscript could be considered false, since the Holy Face could not have been in Manoppello for a hundred years. In other words, one should think that the manuscript had the function of constructing an alibi, such as to justify the legitimate possession of the relic by the Capuchin Fathers and that certified the donation of the Veil to the Capuchin fathers by Dr. Antonio de Fabritiis.

(III Thesis)

     When the sack of Rome took place in 1527, some writers reported that the veil had been destroyed: a Roman ambassador of the Duchess of Urbino, Messer Urbano, said that the Veronica was stolen and passed through the taverns of Rome. Being in Vatican at the time of the looting his letters report statements that have a good reliability. Pope Clement VII didn’t have time to put the relic in a safe place because his escape to the Castle of Sant'Angelo was precipitous.

In the following years (about 90 years), to dissimulate the veil theft, Pope Paul V had a substitute painting done and Pope Urban VIII decreed the destruction of all reproductions.

(IV Thesis)

     On the other hand, other writers, witness the continuity of the Veil presence in the Vatican: a witness of the looting said that the Veronica was not found by the looters, as shown by the underlying image still present today in St. Peter's Basilica.

         After this, the veil almost totally disappeared from public view, and its history after that date is no longer documented. The possibility exists that it might have remained in St. Peter's until today; this would be coherent  with the limited information that the Vatican has provided in recent centuries.

         Yet Pope Paul V secretly had made copies. In the Hofburg palace, in Vienna, there is a copy of the Veronica with the signature of Pieter Strozzi in the right corner of the internal frame in order to prove the validity of Pope Paul V’s  will. Strozzi was the secretary of Pope Paul V. The Vatican notary Jacopo Grimaldi reports how he had made a series of at least six meticulous copies of the veil, around 1617. We find another copy of the Veronica, made by Canon P. Strozzi dated 1622, in the Church of Jesus in Rome.

         Concluding the Veil of Manoppello, according to this thesis, could only be a copy and a copy would also be the one in the Vatican.

(V Thesis)

         In some fanciful popular versions the veil, had been kept at St. Peter's in Rome until the seventeenth century, when it disappeared only to reappear in Manoppello after many adventures. Brought there by an angelic traveler who delivered the precious relic in the hands of an authoritative inhabitant of the place precisely Donato Antonio de Fabritiis.

Giuseppe Libero

Giuseppe ABRUSCA SALVATORI

giuseppe.abrusca@gmail.com