Jean Roberti

This article by Jean Roberti examines the question of the origin and identity of images of Christ known as "not made by human hands" in the Christian tradition. Drawing on the history of iconography and patristics, the study mobilizes extensive documentation — liturgical, paraliturgical, and Greek and Syriac source texts — to trace the complex history of the Mandylion of Edessa and the icon of Camuliana. The main argument is that the Orthodox tradition, often absent from Western debates on the Shroud of Turin, has favored the Mandylion as the founding image, obscuring the historically more decisive role of the Camuliana in the formation of the canonical portrait of Christ. The contribution of the article is to show, through a critical analysis of the texts, that the image of Camuliana constitutes the probable model for the acheiropoieta icons, and that the question of the origins of Christological iconography remains historically unresolved.

This article offers two critical readings of the first volume of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's *Two Hundred Years Together*, devoted to relations between Jews and Russians from 1795 to the revolution of 1917. Sister Cécile Rastoin and Father Jean Roberti each provide an independent review of this ambitious historical essay. The former analyzes Solzhenitsyn's approach, which aims to impartially retrace the Jewish presence in Russia — from its origins to the pogroms and the revolution — while identifying the "Great Russian" lens that shapes his interpretation. The latter finds the work disappointing from a historiographical standpoint: an accumulation of quotations, a lack of analytical distance, limited sources, and above all, the near-total absence of the Orthodox Church, whose role in Judeo-Russian relations would have required thorough treatment. The article thus highlights the ecclesiological and methodological shortcomings of a work that, despite its documentary richness, fails to offer a fully satisfactory historical synthesis.

This article by Father Jean Roberti offers a historical and ecclesiological study of the Orthodox presence in France, from the first Russian and Greek emigrations following the First World War to the Serbian and Romanian migratory waves of recent decades. Taking an analytical and critical approach, the author traces the stages of Orthodox settlement in France, marked by persistent jurisdictional divisions, tensions between ethnic communities, and sometimes controversial attempts at inculturation, notably through the experience of the Orthodox Catholic Church of France. The article highlights the considerable theological influence exerted by the Russian emigration — through thinkers such as Berdyaev, Lossky, and Afanasiev — on Western Christian theology. It also underscores the current structural limitations of French Orthodoxy, particularly the absence of a unified local Church, and advocates for a coherent canonical organization capable of overcoming the jurisdictional fragmentation inherited from history.