The Historical Facts on the Holy Shroud
1. The
33 A.D. : The fact that the body of Jesus after his death by crucifixion was
wrapped in a shroud and laid in a tomb is
recounted in all four gospels of the New Testament [1], with the account
by John being the most detailed.
Matthew 27: 57-61 “
So Joseph of Arimathaea took the body, wrapped it in a clean shroud and put it
in his own tomb”.
Mark
Luke 23: 50-56: “…Joseph
asked for the body of Jesus. He then took it down, wrapped it in a shroud and
put it in a tomb which was hewn in stone.”
John 19: 40-42; 20:3-10: “
They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths
following the Jewish burial custom. At
the place… a new tomb…They laid Jesus there.”
“
So Peter set out with the other disciple ( John) to go to the tomb. They ran
together but the other disciple running faster than Peter reached the tomb
first; he bent down and saw the linen cloths lying on the ground, but did no go
in. Simon Peter who was following now
came up, went right into the tomb, saw the linen cloths on the ground, and also
the cloth that had been over his head, this was not with the linen cloths but
rolled up in a place by itself. Then the
other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in; he saw and he
believed. Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of
Scripture that he must rise from the dead.”
The account of
John mentions ‘linen cloths’ in the plural.
These include the Shroud ( latin sindon);
‘ the cloth that had been over his
head’ (latin sudarium), and various binding strips of cloth for
the chin, hands and ankles. The French equivalent words are le Sainte Suaire or le linceul,and sudarium. In Italian the terms are: la
sindone or la santa sindone, and sudarium.
1. The Period in
Tradition in the
Eastern or Byzantine church relates that
the burial linens (shroud, head cloth,
bindings, etc.) came into the possession of Claudia Procula, the wife of the Roman Governor of
“ Now as he ( Pilate) was seated in the
chair of judgment, his wife sent him a message ‘ Have nothing to do with that
man. I have been upset all day by a
dream I had about him’ ”.
(Matthew: 27:19).
The Eastern Church tradition, comes to us via St. Nino from the fourth
century [2,3] who had lived in
2. Circa 35 A.D. -944 A.D. : King Abgar of
This
extraordinary story, vouched for by the historian Eusebius ( 325 A.D.) [4, 5] and then in great detail by an
Briefly put, King Abgar V of
This miraculous
image-bearing cloth eventually became known as the Mandylion ( the ‘napkin’ or ‘little cloth’), more commonly known as The Image of Edessa Not Made by Human Hands. After the death of King Abgar the kingdom reverted to paganism and
the Mandylion disappears from any record.
Even when the city again became a flourishing Christian centre a couple
of centuries later, the cloth did not
appear to be known, since visiting travelers
such as Egaria of Aquitaine,
a tourist in 343, made no mention of it,
although she was apparently a very thorough sightseer. The local bishop
showed her the gate through which the letter from Christ
had reportedly been delivered by Addai,
but there is no mention in her account
of having been shown the Mandylion cloth and its image [7].
The image-bearing
cloth reappeared in the records of
Eventually, in
944 A.D., it was obtained by the Eastern
Emperor Romanus , who had sent an army from
3. The Shroud in
From
944 to 1204 A.D. the Shroud (and/or Mandylion) remained in
At this point we
must face the natural question: Were the
Shroud and the Mandylion the same thing or were they different cloths?
However, Wilson’s
theory does not account for the fact that artist’s representations of the
Mandylion all show it as being only about the size of a large napkin, and
moreover that they all painted it as having fringes on its edges ( never, curiously, fringed on all four edges, the fringes being depicted
by different artists only on two or
sometimes on three sides) . More
importantly, the Mandylion face has no
marks of the Passion of Christ. Unlike the Shroud, there are no blood streaks,
no head wounds from the “crown of thorns”, no facial bruises and so on.
Most
obviously, on the Mandylion copies there is also missing the large bloodstain in the shape of the numeral
3, or the reversed Greek letter epsilon
ε on the Man in the Shroud’s forehead, as is so evident on the
Shroud photographs of the face. So, if the Mandylion and the Shroud were the
same object, why did the artists not see
or copy this striking Shroud feature?
There is also the fact that over a period of many years a folded cloth will show different ageing
colouration on the part exposed to light as opposed to the concealed parts. This
is not observed; the Shroud’s linen in
the non-image areas is the same pale yellow or ivory colour all over. Wilson argues here that the light in the
various churches or chapels of exposition might simply have been too dim for the blood marks to show
up for the copyists to see, and also
might have been too dim for the natural
photosynthetic ageing to an ivory colour to take place more noticeably on the
facial area than on the rest of the cloth. It would appear that this matter of
the relationship of the Mandylion to the Shroud is not fully explained yet.
But so far as the
Shroud history is concerned, a cloth that arrived in
In addition
Dubarle cites a recent book by W.K. Muller
describing a miniature painting from
[For
completeness, we mention also the
existence of a small, blood-stained linen cloth kept at
The last mention
of the Shroud in
“
.. there was another of the churches which they called My Lady St. Mary of
Blachernae, where was kept the sydoine in which Our Lord had been wrapped,
which stood up straight every Friday so that the figure of Our Lord could be
plainly seen there…”
The sack
of
“ And no one, either Greek or French, ever
knew what became of this sydoine after the city was taken”
4.
1205-1353 A.D.: The Shroud eventually ends up in
Ian Wilson’s
theory as to what happened to the Shroud
after 1204 is that it was taken by the Knights Templar from
Another point in
Other accounts of the Shroud’s journey from
In any case by 1239, Beaudoin, the Latin Emperor, was in
possession of a large number of relics from the East and he transferred many to St. Louis, King of
France, who moved them to his reliquary in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. Finally, in 1353 or thereabouts, King
Philippe VI of
Dubarle, however,
does support the other theory of
5.
1353-1460 A.D. : In the possession of the de Charny family,
During this
period the Shroud was continuously in the
possession of the de Charny family at
There is still a
question as to how such a relatively minor personage merited the gift of such a
momentous relic as the Shroud of Christ.
Dubarle [10] has a very interesting analysis of this, where he points out that the relic which was by far of
greatest interest to the Court and populace of the day in
Geoffrey de
Charny II gave several expositions of the Shroud, one of which provoked the ire
of the local bishop of Troyes, Pierre
d’Arcis, who in 1389 A.D. wrote a
scathing letter of accusation to Pope Clement VII in Avignon, asserting that it
was a clever forgery and fraud. This
letter was unearthed by Ulysse Chevalier in France around 1900 and re-studied by Herbert
Thurston S.J. around 1903, together with the associated events and Papal
correspondence. The conclusion of both
Chevalier and Thurston was to accept the unsupported assertion of d’Arcis that
the Holy Shroud was a cleverly forged
painting by an unnamed artist.
Pope Clement, for
his part, refused to suppress the expositions, and only required that the de Charnys and the canons at their
church in Lirey claim it as a “representation” of the Shroud of Christ. He also
ordered d’Arcis to henceforth adopt “perpetual silence” on the matter. Clement’s prudence, or caution, or whatever
else motivated his decision, has
certainly been vindicated by events, since
the Shroud, following Secundo
Pio’s photographs of 1898, has become the most enigmatic object in scientific
history.
In 1459 Margaret de Charny negotiated transfer of the
Shroud to the Royal House of Savoy. She died in 1460, and in 1464 Duke Louis of
Savoy granted 50 gold francs to the
canons at Lirey to complete the legal transfer of the Shoud to him.
6.
1460 A.D. to present day: (
Ex-king Umberto of Italy bequeathed the Shroud to the Vatican in 1983. It remains in Turin)
During
this period the Shroud was continuously in the possession of the House of Savoy. It was kept first in the Sainte Chapelle at their castle at Chambery in the French
Alps, and then in 1578 it was moved to their Royal Palace Chapel adjoining the
Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, where it still is
today.
In 1983 on the death of ex- King Umberto II of Italy, the Shroud was bequeathed by him to
His Holiness, Pope John Paul II and his successors, with the proviso that it
was to remain in Turin. The Cardinal Archbishop of Turin is today the
official Apostolic Custodian of the
Shroud.
The principal events
that will concern us in this final five and a half centuries of the Shroud’s
history are:
1532. The Shroud damaged by fire at Chambery. Repairs made by
Poor Clare Nuns.
1898. The Exposition of 1898 when Secundo Pia took his momentous
first photograph which started the
modern period of intense
scientific and scholarly research.
1902. The 1902 paper by agnostic Yvon Delage before the Academy
of Science in Paris upholding the authenticity of the Shroud as that of Jesus
Christ on medical and chemical grounds;
followed immediately by the demand of
Berthelet, of the physical section, that
the paper be written up for publication solely as a treatise on vapography of
zinc with no mention of the Shroud!
1931.
The
definitive photographs of the Shroud taken by Enrie.
1935.
The publication of
Dr. Pierre Barbet’s booklet on the wounds of Christ; publication of Paul Vignon’s book on the Shroud giving his famous
vapograph theory of image formation.
1972. The arson attempt to destroy the Shroud.
1973. The showing of the Shroud on television for the first time,
the textile sampling by Prof. Gilbert Raes, new photographs by
Judicia-Cordiglia; Dr. Max Frei’s dust
and pollen sampling; which show that the
Shroud must have at one time been in Palestine and Turkey.
1977. First U.S. Conference of Research on the Shroud, New Mexico.
1978. The STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) team examines
the Shroud scientifically in Turin.
1988. The radiocarbon samples are taken, and the results of the
tests appear in Nature in 1989; the authors declare that the Shroud is mediaeval in origin.
1993. STURP officially
dissolves.
1997. Major fire at the Royal Chapel with the Holy Shroud rescued
unscathed by the heroic efforts of Turin
firemen.
1998. Exposition of the Holy Shroud to commemorate the 100th
anniversary of Secundo Pia’s first photograph of the relic;
Shroud Websites are opened: (
see Other Shroud Sites).
2000. The Worldwide
Congress Sindone 2000, held at
Orvieto, Italy..
2002. First major repairs
are made to the Shroud since the Chambery fire of 1532.
7.
Conclusions on the Holy
Shroud’s History
The main lines
are fairly clear. The Shroud passed from the Apostles in Jerusalem to the court
of King Abgar V of Edessa, probably via Pilate’s wife Claudia Procula and St.
Luke, the Evangelist, ( who was a gentile and so could ritually handle the burial cloths, was also was a physician, and was probably born in Antioch,
only a hundred miles or so from Edessa).
There it soon became walled up over a city gate until around 524
A.D., when it was re-discovered, and was
thenceforth know as the Image of Edessa
or Mandylion, and understood across Christendom to be a
face-and-head-only image on cloth.
In 944 it was
taken by the Imperial army to Constantinople where it was then realized that
the famous Image was in reality a folded
full-length, image-imprinted shroud. From Constantinople it was stolen in 1204
during the sack of the city by the Venetian and French soldiers and went to the West, probably via Athens, to
eventually end up in the hands of Geoffrey de Charny in Lirey, France, either
as the gift of, or with the consent of, King Philippe VI of France. It passed
legally from the de Charny family to the House of Savoy in 1460, and has been
in their Royal Chapel in Turin since
1538.
(It is worth
mentioning that, if the Shroud and the Mandylion are in fact the same object, as proposed by Ian Wilson, then the history in the period 525 to 944
A.D. is now fairly clear. If, however,
they are different objects, then
various interesting problems arise for the history of the Mandylion right from
the Apostolic days in Jerusalem on down
through the centuries. This would, however, not affect the essentials of the
history of the Shroud as presented, although it would alter some of the
details.)
A detailed
chronological account of the Shroud in English
is given in Ian Wilson’s The Shroud of Turin, and The Blood and the Shroud [1]. Numerous
other historical books, papers and references are to be found on the main
websites (Other Shroud Sites). The
largest library collection on the Shroud in North America is the Father
Wuenschel Library at the Holy Shroud Guild, Esopus, N.Y. which can be consulted
on the Guild’s website (http://www.shroud.org/).
It should also be
kept in mind that in historical matters
a major portion of the sources,
literature and scholarly analysis is in European journals, publications and
libraries, much of which is not available in English, but which must be consulted in any definitive
study.
References
1. The Jerusalem Bible. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City,
N.Y. 1966.
2. Wilson, Ian, The Shroud of Turin, Doubleday &
Company, Inc. New York. 1978; The
Mysterious Shroud, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y., 1986; The Blood and the Shroud, Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, London, 1998.
3. M and J.O.
Wardrop and E.C. Conybear, “The Life of St. Nino” in Studia biblica et ecclesiastia.
Vol V. Oxford, 1900.
4. Eusebius, History of the Church, transl. G.A. Williamson. Penguin Books, London, 1965.
5. Cureton,
W., “ The Doctrine of Addai”, in Ancient
Syriac Documents Relative to the Earliest Establishment of Christianity in
Edessa, 1864.
6. Court of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, “ Narratio de imagine edessena” in Migne, Patrologia graeca, Vol 113. 12-13.
7. Wilkinson, J., Egeria’s
Travels. SPCK , London, 1972.
8. Wilson, Ian, The Shroud of Turin [2], Ch. XIV, pp
115-125.
9. Robert de Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople, trans. E.H.
McNeal. Columbia Univ. Press, New York, 1936.
10. P̀ere A.M. Dubarle, O.P,
“Histoire ancienne du Linceuil de Turin”
and “Histoire du Linceuil de
Turin” on Website Montre-nous Ton Visage
(www.mntv.asspc.fr).
11. Scavone, Daniel, “ The
Shroud in Constantinople: The Documentary Evidence,” in Daidalikon: Studies in Memory of Raymond V. Shoder, S.J., Bolchazy-Carducci Pub., Wauconda, Illinois, 1989.
12. Chevalier, Ulysse, Etude critique sur l’origine de Sainte
Suaire de Lirey-Chambery-Turin. A. Picard Paris, 1900.
13. Thurston, Herbert, S.J., “ The Holy Shroud and the Verdict of
History’, The Month, 1903; “ The Holy
Shroud”, The Catholic Encyclopedia,
Vol. XIII, The Encyclopedia Press,
Inc., New York, 1912.
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A. Power