Edessa was a cosmopolitan city in JesusÂ’ day and one of the cities were Christian communities developed early as they did in Antioch. Edessa, located once where the modern Turkish city Urfa lies, is situated about 400 miles north of Jerusalem.
The earliest role for Edessa, as it relates to the Shroud of Turin, pertains to a legend that an image-bearing cloth was brought to King Abgar V Ouchama of Edessa sometime during his reign (13 0 50 CE) by one of JesusÂ’ disciples known to us as Thaddeus Jude (Addai) or by the apostle Thomas. Abgar V of Edessa
What is not legend, nor speculation, is that the cloth, with an image of what was in the sixth century believed to be a true and miraculous facial image of Jesus, was found in the walls of the city in the sixth century. During repairs of the city walls in 525 CE, or more likely, during a Persian invasion of the city in 544 CE, the cloth was discovered where it had been concealed above one of the city gates. At the time, a church was built especially for it. It was, to the people of Edessa, the lost cloth of the legend.
In the late sixth century, Evagrius ScholasticusÂ’ Ecclesiastical History mentions that Edessa was protected by a 'divinely wrought portrait' (acheiropoietis) sent by Jesus to Abgar.
In 730 CE, St. John Damascene in On Holy Images describes the cloth as a himation, which is translated as an oblong cloth or grave cloth. This may be the first mention, among extant documents, of it being a grave cloth.
