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Manoppello

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Zbigniew Treppa
University of Gdansk, Poland

A small town in Italy, situated between the Gran Sasso and Maiella mountain ranges in the Abruzzo region, in the province of Pescara, where a relic identified with the object described by western iconographic tradition as Veronica has been kept since 1638 in the local Capuchin church. Supposedly stolen from St Peter’s Basilica in Rome in 1506, the relic is now (after its current place of storage) called the Veil of Manoppello. It was supposed to have been given to the Capuchins by the previous owner of the relic, Donato Antonio de Fabritiisa, who came into possession of it under mysterious circumstances, as described in Relatione historica, written in 1645 by the Capuchin Donato da Bomba to authenticate the possession of the relic by the Capuchins of Manoppello (→Veil of Manoppello).

Since 6 April 1644, the Veil has been exhibited in Manoppello as a relic, and since 1690, in conjunction with the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ, the feast of the Holy Face has been celebrated there. Pope Clement XI granted a plenary indulgence on this feast to pilgrims visiting the church in Manoppello to venerate the relic. Special veneration is paid to the image by its peregrination through the streets of the village on the third Sunday in May 11 and on 6 August, the Feast of the Transfiguration. Since Paul Badde spread a lot of information about the Veil of Manoppello, resulting from his research on the fate of the relic, and after the visit to the Sanctuary of the Holy Face by Pope Benedict XVI (1 September 2006), interest in the sanctuary has increased considerably, and it has since become an important place on the pilgrimage route alongside such places as Loreto, Lanciano and San Giovanni Rotondo.

Sister Blandina Paschalis Schlömer, a Trappist nun who was the first to undertake comparative studies of the Veil of Manoppello with the Shroud of Turin and in the 1980s proved the identity of the faces in both images (→Veil of Manoppello), has her hermitage nearby.

1 We are talking about the local feast of the Holy Face, which was introduced here by the Capuchin fathers in 1750.

References

Badde P., Boskie Oblicze. Całun z Manoppello, przeł. A.W. Kuć, Radom 2006.

Donato da Bomba, Relatione historica d’una miracolosa immagine del volto di Christo, a cura di E. Colombo e M. Colombo, Bologna 2016.

Gaeta S., Drugi Całun. Prawdziwa historia Oblicza Jezusa, przeł. W. Lisowski, Radom 2007.

Gaeta S., L’enigma del volto di Gesù. L’avventurosa storia della Sindone segreta, [Milano] 2010.

Resch A., Oblicze Chrystusa. Od Całunu turyńskiego do Chusty z Manoppello, przeł. A. Kuć, Radom 2006.

Schlömer B.P., Der Schleier von Manoppello und das Grabtuch von Turin, Innsbruck 1999.

Source of Image

1. Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Manoppello.gif, (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Zbigniew Treppa

Full professor at the Institute of Media, Journalism and Visual Communication, University of Gdańsk, Head of the Department of Image Anthropology, Associate of the Polish Syndonological Centre in Krakow, Member of the Syndonological Section of the Polish Theological Society. In his research work he undertakes issues of visual theology, using the tools of image semiotics, he analyses artefacts of religious cult and structural properties of non-human-hand-made images (Greek: acheiropoietos). He has recently published The Phenomenon of the Image of Incarnate Mercy (Gdansk 2021).

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