Saint Abgar V

Abgar V (c. 1st century BC – c. AD 50), called Ukkāmā (meaning "the Black" in Syriac and other dialects of Aramaic), was the King of Osroene with his capital at Edessa. Abgar was described as "king of the Arabs" by the Roman historian Tacitus, a near-contemporary source. The 5th-century Armenian historian Moses of Chorene depicted Abgar as an Armenian, but modern scholarly consensus agree that the Abgarids were in fact an Arab dynasty. Moses of Chorene notes that Abgar V's chief wife was Queen Helena of Adiabene, but according to the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus she was the wife of King Monobaz I of Adiabene. Abgar V is said to be one of the first Christian kings, having been converted to the faith by Thaddeus of Edessa, one of the seventy disciples. The church historian Eusebius recorded that the Edessan archives contained a copy of a correspondence exchanged between Abgar of Edessa and Jesus. The correspondence consisted of Abgar's letter and the answer dictated by Jesus. On 15 August 944, the Church of St. Mary of Blachernae in Constantinople received the letter and the Mandylion. Both relics were then moved to the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos. This account enjoyed great popularity in the East and in the West during the Middle Ages. Jesus' letter was copied on parchment, inscribed in marble and metal, and used as a talisman or an amulet. Of this correspondence, there survives not only a Syriac text, but an Armenian translation as well, two independent Greek versions, shorter than the Syriac, and several inscriptions on stone. Scholars have disputed many aspects of this account such as whether Abgar suffered from gout or from leprosy, or whether the correspondence was on parchment or papyrus. The text of the letter was: Jesus gave the messenger the reply to return to Abgar: Egeria wrote of the letter in her account of her pilgrimage in Edessa.