Acheiropoietos means divinely wrought portrait; a portrait not made with human hands.
In the late 6th century, Evagrius Scholasticus Ecclesiastical History mentions that Edessa was protected by an Acheiropoietos sent by Jesus to Abgar.
In 730 CE, St. John Damascene in his anti-iconoclastic movement thesis, On Holy Images, describes the cloth as an himation, which is translated as an oblong cloth or grave cloth. This may be the first mention, among extant manuscripts, of it being a grave cloth.
Existing known manuscripts do not suggest why the cloth was hidden away above one of the gates. If it was in Edessa very early, then perhaps it was hidden to protect it during times of Christian persecutions. There is evidence of local persecutions in this early Christian community in the latter part of the 1st century and of Roman persecutions that persisted until the time of Emperor Constantine.
Or perhaps it was hidden to protect it from Persian invaders. If, in fact, the cloth was taken to Edessa in the 1st century, it might have been concealed for protection as early as the reign of Manu VI, Abgars son, who may have reverted to paganism.
Gregory Referendarius, the archdeacon of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, on the occasion of the transfer of the cloth to the Byzantine capital, preached a sermon that provides an important clue. The sermon, which was recently rediscovered in the Vatican Archives and translated from the classical Greek by Mark Guscin, reveals that the Edessa Cloth contained a full-length image, one believed to be of Jesus. It had bloodstains from a side wound according to Gregory Referendarius.
