During the Middle Ages, one of the most important and revered relics in all of Europe was located in Lucca. The Holy Face, kept in the Cathedral of San Martino, was no ordinary wooden crucifix for the faithful. According to tradition, it was in fact an acheiropoieta, not made by human hand but generated by divine intervention. The Holy Face of Lucca, now placed inside a Renaissance temple built by Matteo Civitali in 1484, would show the true Vultus of Christ on the cross. The relic was object of pilgrimages, especially because it was located along one of the Via Francigena main routes. Not by chance it was the Via del Volto Santo (Holy Face Route).
The Legenda leboiniana
The presence of a miraculous Holy Face in Lucca is attested since the 11th century. The sacred relic appears in some written oaths of the King of England William the Red, who ruled between 1087 and 1100, “per Sanctum Vultum de Luca”2. This is a precious testimony revealing that, already at that time, in Lucca there was a Holy Face famous and venerated throughout Europe. The word of mouth of pilgrims travelling to Rome on the Via Francigena probably contributed to this.
The work of the canons of the cathedral was responsible for the written form of a Legenda leboiniana. It revealed the supernatural origins of the relic. A 12th century Relatio de revelatione sive inventione ac translatione sacratissimi vultus reported the testimony of a deacon named Leboinus about the events of the Holy Face3. According to the legend, it was Nicodemus, an evangelical figure of the Jewish Sanhedrin, who “having diligently surveyed the form of Christ’s body in size and appearance, and having even fixed its features in his mind, sculpted the most holy face by means not of his own art, but of divine art”4.
The text then reported that “at the time of Charlemagne and his son Pippin” it was loaded onto a boat without oars in Jaffa and left adrift, to prevent it from being destroyed by the iconoclasts5. The raft reached the coast of Luni, in Liguria, but there was no way to board it. The Holy Face could finally be recovered only thanks to the intervention of the bishop of Lucca, John I. The inhabitants of the two cities disputed the relic until they reached an agreement. The Lunesi got an ampulla containing the Blood of Christ, while Lucca took the Vultus.
The Holy Face of Lucca, a discussed relic
For a long time, one wondered why Medieval chronicles only ever referred to the Lucca relic as the Holy Face. The sacred relic now kept in the Cathedral of San Martino is in fact a full-length wooden crucifix. Christ is larger than life-size, has long arms and wears a wavy tunic. The head is turned slightly downwards; the eyes are wide open and “terrible” as Gervasius of Tilbury called them in his 13th century Otia Imperialia6. It was suggested that the Holy Face of the sources and the Crucifix are two different objects, of which the older may have been lost. Again, according to some, the Christ of the Cathedral is only a copy, made around the 12th century, of the original mentioned in the Relatio7. However, scientific tests have refuted these conjectures.
In our opinion, the hagiographic texts themselves reveal the most plausible explanation. Since it is the face that constitutes the most sacred part of the sculpture. As no human hands made it, the sources refer to the whole as its miraculous part. Only in this way could its nature as an “authentic portrait of Christ” be emphasised. The legend of Leobinus could not express this synecdoche better: just as one recognises the person in its entirety from the face, so the Vultus indicated the Saviour’s entire body8.
The acheiropoieta Vultus
On the other hand, such a crucifix was not unique in art, except for the legend of its miraculous genesis. Similar artefacts were all over Europe. The legend of the Holy Face allowed to distinguish Lucca effigy from the other Cross statues of Medieval churches. This primarily responded to the desire of many Christians who, in this way, could get to know the image of the Saviour even before contemplating it in Paradise. The relic also represented a great source of wealth for Lucca Cathedral, attracting pilgrims and donations from the faithful.
It is interesting to ask why tradition insists on the acheiropoieta nature of the Holy Face. Hagiographic sources attest that it arrived in Italy in the 8th century from the East. It is not by chance that this period followed the iconoclastic censures ordered by Emperor Leo III the Isaurian. Thus the image of the Lucca Vultus, not being a human-made icon but a true relic, a gift from God to Nicodemus, held a special status that prevented its destruction. The Vultus came to the West where there was a more tolerant religiosity towards sacred representations.
An extraordinary scientific revelation on the origins of the Holy Face of Lucca
In June 2020, in occasion of the 950th anniversary of Lucca Cathedral construction, the Opera del Duomo promoted a radiocarbon survey on the Holy Face. The aim was to put an end to the long diatribe over its dating. The diagnostic examination was entrusted to the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Florence, which analysed three distinct wooden fragments and a portion of canvas from the relic9. The tests returned a surprising and extraordinary result. All the samples are in fact referable to the 8th-9th century. Hence, they prove that the Holy Face is not a 12th-century copy, confirming the dating of the Legenda Leboiniana. This reveals that Lucca sacred effigy is the oldest wooden sculpture from the West which survived to the present day.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- Photo by Joanbanjo, CC BY-SA, image. ↩︎
- Eadmerus, Historia novorum, about 1111; William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, IV, 1120, in R. M. Thomson, M. Winterbottom, R.A.B. Mynors, Oxford 1998. ↩︎
- Racconto della realizzazione, scoperta e traslazione del santissimo volto. The legend is reported in many later manuscripts, including the Descriptio qualiter Vultus Domini de Iherosolimi ad civitatem Lucanam sit delatu, ms 110 of the 14th century preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Lucca. ↩︎
- G. Concioni, Contributi alla storia del Volto Santo, Pisa, 2005. ↩︎
- The text gives the date 742 but this is a transcription error; more likely it is 782. ↩︎
- Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, 1210-1214. ↩︎
- C. Frugoni, Una proposta per il Volto Santo, in C. Baracchini, M. T. Filieri, Il Volto Santo, storia e culto, Maria Pacini Fazzi, Lucca, 1983. ↩︎
- BCLu, ms 626, c. 2v. ↩︎
- Radiocarbon test results on the INFN site. ↩︎
