The Letter of Lentulus () is an epistle of mysterious origin that was first widely published in Italy in the fifteenth century. It purports to be written by a Roman official, contemporary of Jesus, and gives a physical and personal description of Jesus. The letter may have influenced how Jesus was later physically depicted in art. Origin It appears in several Florentine publications from around 1460 along with works of such humanists as Petrarch and Boccaccio. The letter was first printed in Germany in the "Life of Christ" by Ludolph the Carthusian (Cologne, 1474), and in the "Introduction to the works of St. Anselm" (Nuremberg, 1491). But it is neither the work of St. Anselm nor of Ludolph. According to the manuscript of Jena, a certain Giacomo of the Colonna family found the letter in 1421 in an ancient Roman document sent to Rome from Constantinople. It must have been of Greek origin, and translated into Latin during the thirteenth or fourteenth century, though it received its present form at the hands of a humanist of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Christopher Mylius, the 18th century librarian of Jena, stated the letter was written in golden letters on red paper and richly bound, but lost. In 1899, Ernst von Dobschütz listed over 75 historical manuscripts from Germany, France, and Italy that include the Letter of Lentulus in variant forms. The 19th-century scholar Friedrich Münter believed he could trace the letter down to the time of Diocletian, but this is generally not accepted by present-day scholars. 1680 English translation The first English translation of the text appears in 1680 and lists the author as “Publius Lentulus”, a Prefect in Judea at the time of Tiberius Caesar. The letter is frequently regarded as apocryphal for several reasons: No Governor of Jerusalem or Procurator of Judea is known to have been called Lentulus, and a Roman governor would not have addressed the Senate in the way represented. However, the Deeds of the Divine Augustus lists a Publius Lentulus as being elected as a Roman Consul during the reign of Augustus (27 BC-14 AD). The Roman writer cited the expressions "prophet of truth", "sons of men" or "Jesus Christ". The former two are Hebrew idioms, and the third is taken from the New Testament. The letter, therefore, gives a description of Jesus such as Christian piety conceived of him. The letter The purported letter