St. Thaddeus of Edessa

Thaddeus, called Addai in Syriac, was a Jew of Edessa by origin who came to Jerusalem for a feast, heard the preaching of John the Forerunner, was baptized, and afterward followed Christ and was numbered among the seventy whom the Lord sent out two by two ahead of Him.

Eusebius of Caesarea, writing early in the fourth century, says he found in the public record office of Edessa, in Syriac, a letter from King Abgar the Fifth to Jesus and a reply, and translated them. The king has heard of the healings, believes the healer to be God or the Son of God, and offers Him the shelter of a small city out of reach of the Jerusalem authorities. The reply blesses him for believing without seeing, says the mission must first be finished, and promises that a disciple will be sent afterward.

After the Ascension, Eusebius continues, Thomas sent Thaddeus to Edessa. He lodged with a man named Tobias, began to heal, and was brought to the king, who understood at once who had sent him. Abgar was healed, the city heard the preaching, and Edessa is remembered as the first state whose ruler professed the faith, generations before Armenia and long before Rome.

The later Syriac Doctrine of Addai adds what the Eastern tradition has kept: that a court painter could not make a portrait of Christ, and that Christ pressed a cloth to His face and sent the image instead. That image is the subject of the feast on the sixteenth of August, the translation of the Image Not Made by Hands from Edessa to Constantinople in 944.

Historians treat the Abgar correspondence as a document of the church of Edessa rather than a transcript, and generally date the conversion of the royal house to Abgar the Eighth around the year 200. What is not in dispute is that Edessa was Christian very early and held Thaddeus for its apostle from the beginning. The tradition sends him on into Mesopotamia and Syria and finally to Beirut, where he reposed, and the Church keeps his memory on the twenty first of August.