Sudarium

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A sudarium (Latin) was a "sweat cloth", used for wiping the face clean. Small cloths of various sorts, for which sudarium is a general term, played a role in Ancient Roman formal manners and court ceremonial, and many such uses transferred to Christian liturgical usage and art. In Jewish usage, it is the cloth-like habit worn by Jewish men after a wedding, wrapped around the head and usually worn with a central hat.

The term was borrowed into Jewish languages as sud[a]ra. In the Babylonian Talmud, Moed Katan 15a and Eruvin 84b describe wearing the כּוּמְתָא וְסוּדָרָאkuməṯā wisuḏārā "skullcap (kumetha) and sudarium", and Kiddushin 29b, it mentions a rabbi named Hamnuna who refused to wear the sudarium on his head until he was married, meaning his head was only covered by a kumetha. [a]

Sudarium often refers to two relics of the Passion of Jesus, the Sudarium of Oviedo and the Veil of Veronica. Another sudarium is found in the Old Monastery of Mainz, and was supposedly given to the Frankish noblewoman Bilihildis of Altmünster of Frankish Mainz; it is locally venerated since the 15th century. [1]

In the Roman Catholic and other Western churches, the term sudarium has been used for several ornamental textile objects:

References and Notes

  1. Smith, J. Payne (1903). A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (in Syriac). Oxford: University of Oxford., p. 364, s.v. sudarium.