The oft-mentioned Arculf gave us an accurate rendering also of a
true story about an ikon of the holy Mary, mother of the Lord, which
he learned from some well-informed witnesses in the city of Constantinople.
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On the wall of a house in the metropolitan city, he said, a picture
of the blessed Mary used to hang, painted on a short wooden tablet. A
stupid and hardhearted man asked whose picture it was, and was told by
someone that it was a likeness of the holy Mary ever virgin. When he
heard this that Jewish unbeliever became very angry and, at the instigation
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of the devil, seized the picture from the wall and ran to a building
near by, where it is customary to dispose of the soil from human bodies
by means of openings in long planks whereon people sit. There, in order
to dishonour Christ, who was born of Mary, he cast the picture of His
mother through the opening on the nuisance lying beneath. Then in his
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stupid folly he sat above himself and evacuated through the opening, is
pouring the nuisance of his own person on the ikon of the holy Mary
which he had just deposited there. After that disgraceful action the hapless
creature went away, and what he did subsequently, how he lived, or
what sort of end he had, is unknown. After the scoundrel had gone, one
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of the Christian community came upon the scene, a fortunate man,
zealous for the things of the Lord. Knowing what had happened, he
searched for the picture of the holy Mary, found it hidden in the refuse
and took it up. He wiped it carefully and cleaned it by washing it in the
clearest water, and then set it up in honour by him in his house. Wonderful
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to relate, there is always an issue of genuine oil from the tablet with as
the picture of the blessed Mary, which Arculf, as he is wont to tell, saw
with his own eyes. This wondrous oil proclaims the honour of Mary, the
mother of the Lord Jesus of whom the Father says: ‘With my oil I have
anointed him.’ Likewise the psalmist addresses the Son of God himself
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when he says: ‘God thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of joy
beyond thy companions.’
The matter given above concerning the site and foundation of
Constantinople, and concerning the round church too in which the
salutary wood is stored, and the rest, we diligently learned from the
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lips of the holy priest Arculf, who stayed in the principal city of the
Roman empire from Easter until the Lord's nativity, and subsequently
took ship from there for Rome.