Quella imagine benedetta la quale Iesu Cristo lasciò a noi per essemplo de la sua bellissima figura. The Acheiropoieton from the Roman-Byzantine Context to the Vita Nova
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Abstract
In a passage in Chapter XL of the Vita Nova, Dante alludes to the miraculous icon of Christ kept in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This is the so-called Veronica, the famous Acheropita of the Vatican, i.e. one of those images ‘not made by human hand’ that have been attested since the 6th century. The article aims to give an overview of the main stages of its cult tradition in the Eastern Roman context, as well as its reflection in the Christianity of the medieval West. The lexicon used by Dante, in particular the words essemplo and figura, emphasises the ambivalent nature of the acheropite images, both relics and portraits, according to the principles of the Christian theology of the image, the result of a historical process that has its roots in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean.
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