Case file · Apparition / miracle
The image of Edessa saves the city
Evagrius Scholasticus wrote about 593 that in 544 a cloth with a 'divinely made' image of Christ helped Edessa (Şanlıurfa) defeat a Persian siege when its oil set the attackers' works on fire.
544 CE · 37.16, 38.79 · status: legend
The account
Earlier legend (the Doctrine of Addai, c. 400) said King Abgar wrote to Jesus and received a letter, later a portrait. The cloth, the Mandylion, was taken to Constantinople in 944.
The sceptical view
Procopius, a contemporary, describes the siege without the image; it first appears decades later.