From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Shroud of Turin is a centuries-old linen cloth with the image of an apparently crucified man. Many people believe it to be the cloth that covered Jesus of Nazareth when he was placed in his tomb; others contend it is a medieval hoax, or something else altogether. Its true origin remains uncertain.
The shroud is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin.
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Reports of Jesus's burial shroud have been circulating since the early Middle Ages, but none have been substantiated, nor can any of the objects be identified as the modern Shroud of Turin.
According to Eusebius of Caesarea, King Abgarus of Edessa wrote to Jesus in 30 AD, asking him to come cure him of an illness. Instead, the apostle Thaddaeus is said to have come, bearing a cloth with the image of Jesus (the "Image of Edessa", or Mandylion), at which time the king was miraculously healed. After the king's death, the cloth might have been hidden in the city walls for protection as early as the reign of Manu VI, Abgar´s second son, who is thought to have reverted to paganism.
The cloth is said to have surfaced in 525, during a flood of the Daisan, a tributary stream of the Euphrates, flooding the city of Edessa. This flood is mentioned in the writings of Procopius of Caesarea. In the course of the reconstruction work at Edessa, a cloth is discovered which had been hidden above one of the gates of the town. It shows the face of a man. Evagrius Scholasticus mentioned in his Ecclesiastical History the image of Edessa as "created by God, and not produced by the hands of man". He dates this discovery at 544. The Persian King Chosrau I Anuschirwan (the large one) besieges the Roman Edessa. Other documents from the 6th century - it is said - are in the Vatican Library and the University of Leiden, Netherlands. These documents quote a man called Smera in Constantinople in 950: "King Abgar received a cloth on which one can see not only a face but the whole body" (Faciei figuram sed totius corporis figuram cernere poteris). The Mandylion disappeared again after the Persians conquered Edessa in 609 and the Arabs in 639. In 944 - for the liberation of Muslim prisoners - it was taken from Edessa to Constantinople under the direction of the Byzantine emperor Romanus I, remaining there until the Crusaders sacked the city in 1204 and carried its treasures to western Europe.
The first documented appearance of the cloth now stored in Turin was in 1357, when the widow of French knight Geoffroy de Charny had it displayed in a church in Lirey. Both coats of arms are to be seen in a pilgrim medallion (Museum Cluny, Paris) which shows accurately the Shroud of Turin.
During these years, the Shroud was publicly exposed, even if not continuously, given that the bishop of Troyes prohibited this cult. But after 32 years the cult started again. Its property was contested by the King Charles VI of France, who vainly ordered his sheriffs to obtain it and bring it to Troyes. In end of 1389, the bishop of Troyes asked for silence on the matter, in order to calm down the faithfuls' excitement. But in the following month, antipope Clement VII prescribed indulgences for those who celebrated the Shroud, and the cult continued.
In 1418, Humbert of Villersexel, Count de la Roche, Lord of Saint-Hippolyte-sur-Doubs, who had married the grand-daughter of Geoffroy de Charny, moved the Shroud to his castle at Montfort, officially to protect it from criminal bands.
It was later moved again, to Saint-Hippolyte-sur-Doubs. After the death of Humbert, a judicial battle was fought by Lirey canons, who wanted the widow to return the cloth, but the parlement of Dole first, and the Court of Besançon later, left it to the widow. She travelled with the Shroud, for several expositions (like in Liege and in Geneva).
In 1453 the widow sold it (for a castle in Varambon) to Ludwig Duke of Savoy, who stored it in the castle of Chambery (capital town of the Duchy), in a new-built Sainte-Chapelle, which pope Paul II soon after elevated to the dignity of collegiate church. In 1464, the duke had to recognize an annual rent to the Lirey canons, and on their side these formally recognized his property on the cloth.
In 1471 the Shroud was moved to Vercelli, and in the following years it was in Turin, Ivrea, Susa, Chambery, Avigliano, Rivoli, and Pinerolo. In 1483 the cloth was described by two sacrists of the Sainte-Chapelle as "enveloped in a red silk drape, and kept in a case covered with crimson velours, decorated with silver-gilt nails, and locked with a golden key".
In 1532, a fire broke out in the chapel. The folded shroud was damaged by a drop of molten silver from the reliquary it was stored in, and by water used to douse the fire. It was rewoven and patched by the Poor Clare Nuns.
The shroud was moved in 1578 to Turin, where it remains today. It remained the property of the House of Savoy until it was bequeathed to the Holy See in 1983.
In 1988, a sliver was cut from the shroud for analysis.
In 1997, the shroud was again threatened by fire, perhaps due to arson. Fireman Mario Trematore smashed its display case and saved it from harm.
The shroud was restored in 2002, repairing the fire damage of 1532. Thirty patches were removed.
The study of the Shroud is called Sindonology (from Greek sindón, the word used for the Shroud and also for a cloth worn by someone in the Gospel of Mark).
The shroud is a rectangle measuring 4.4 m by 1.1 m. The material is woven in a herringbone twill, composed of flax fibrils entwisted with cotton fibrils.
It bears a double image of a man, a front and back view that meet at the top of the head in the middle of the cloth. What appear to be bloodstains are found on the cloth, indicating that the man was wounded:
The physical stature of the man is quite large -- both for the time it is purported to be from and for the Middle Ages, the time of its supposed fabrication.
On May 28, 1898 an amateur Italian photographer, Secondo Pia, photographed the shroud and was startled by the resulting undeveloped negative. The negative gave the appearance of a positive image, seemingly indicating that the shroud image itself was a negative (perhaps, wondered the faithful, produced upon the cloth by some sort of radiation event at the moment of resurrection?). The detail and heft of the man on the shroud was greatly enhanced in the photographic negative, leading to renewed speculation on its miraculous origin. The realistically rendered three-dimensionality of the man as well as his anatomically perfect depiction has inspired believers and fascinated critics, for no known artist of ancient or medieval times approached this degree of fidelity to life, with the possible exception of a handful of ancient Greek and Italian renaissance sculptors. Even then, the transference of the image of a masterwork sculpture onto a flat surface while retaining its three-dimensional characteristics seems beyond any pre-20th-century process.
In 1988 the Shroud was independently examined by Oxford University, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Through radiocarbon dating, they all agreed that the cloth dated from the 14th century.
However, some argue that the results may have been distorted by such factors as the fire of 1532, bacteria and bacterial residue that would not have been cleaned by the testing team's methods, or even neutrons released at the time of the Resurrection. The bacterial "bioplastic" coating argument is the strongest, as there have been cases in which ancient textiles have yielded a radiocarbon date much younger than other artifacts in the same site-- most notably in the instance of mummy 1770 in the British Museum, whose bones dated 800 to 1,000 years older, according to the radiocarbon tests, than the textile in which they were wrapped. Bacteria and bacterial residue carry additional carbon and would skew the radiocarbon date toward the present.
Reports are contradictory. Chemist Walter McCrone identified the substance as vermilion paint; others have specifically identified it as type AB blood. There is no doubt to give to be able to differentiate color from blood! Only fibrils lifted from the shroud on sticky tape were tested for blood.
Only a Walter McCrone claimed to have identified red ochre paint in the image. All others say there is no pigment there whatsoever, just a discoloration on the fibrils' surface (and no deeper).
Avinoam Danin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem claimed to have identified pollen grains originating around Jerusalem. Danin also compared the Shroud with the Sudarium of Oviedo, determining from the pattern of bloodstains that they could both cover the same head.
A recent BBC documentary proposed that the shroud is perhaps the first photography ever, showing the portrait of its maker Leonardo da Vinci who as a little boy only five years old (!) -according to this theory (!) - produced the image with the aid of a Laterna Magica, a simple projecting apparatus, and light-sensitive silver compounds that were known at the time.
The piercing of the wrists, rather than the palms, unusually accurate for a medieval depiction of the crucifixion. Even the casting of a timber beam is to be recognized by the back.
The weaving pattern and size of the cloth are consistent with 1st century Syrian design.
Even more remarkable features are said to be noticeable when the image is digitally processed (although such claims are highly criticized):
 The Shroud of Turin: The Most Up-To-Date Analysis of All the Facts Regarding the Church's Controversial Relic |
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 Sacred Blood, Sacred Image : The Sudarium of Oviedo, New Evidence for the Authenticity of the Shroud of Turin |
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 The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence |
 The Shroud of Turin: A Case of Authenticity |
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 Report on the Shroud of Turin |
