The Turin Shroud Prior to 1357

The Shroud of Turin is a photographic negative, and no scientist can say how such a thing might otherwise have been made- the first photographs made by man do not occur until the nineteenth century. It is not painted, penetrating the surface of the linen, but made by light, on only the surface of the fibers. Pollen grains in the fabric match first century Jerusalem more closely than any other time or place (Wilson and Miller, p. 43-44, citing Swiss criminologist Max Frei). The authenticity of the Shroud is to say the least not refuted, after much effort. A carbon 14 test actually tested a repair, to right about the time that the nuns of St. Clare did the repair in 1532 after the fire which nearly consumed the shroud in 1532.According to What we call "AI," The Shroud of Turin's first documented public appearance was in the 1350s in Lirey, France, when it was displayed by the French knight Geoffroi de Charny. There is no reliable historical record of the shroud's existence prior to this time."

The first reference to the shroud is in scripture (John 20: 5-8), when it was found in the tomb, and it makes sense that it would be preserved. The napkin too may be the cloth of Edessa given to King Abgar, or a separate cloth. When Peter outran John to look inside the empty tomb, ...

"...Stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying and the napkin which had been on his head, not with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture that he must rise from the dead.

Then John and Peter go home, and Mary Magdalene is the first to see the risen Christ.

2) Jerome refers to a statement in a lost Gospel of the Hebrews “But when the Lord had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest, He went and appeared to James.” (The Gospel according to the Hebrews, fragment. (Found in Jerome, Illustrious men, 2 & Lost Scriptures, Ehrman, Page 16). The servant is said to be Malchus, whose ear Peter cut off and Jesus healed. Could this text be a reference to the Shroud of Turin?

3) Wilson and Miller write that in 1978, Dr. Alan Whanger "was so struck by the similarity between the shroud facial image and that of the Christ portrait on a Byzantine gold solidus minted about the year A.d. 695 that he devised a method of making the two commensurable in size and found 170 points of similarity, suggesting that the original may be the shroud. An icon of "Christ Pantocrator," from the Sinai desert monastery of St. Catherine from the sixth century, too shows 170 points of similarity and Justin Roboinson, Byzantine Coins, the Shroud of Turin and the Holy Grail. 2021.

St. Helen- the mother of Constantine, collected many relics at Constantinople, and with the Roman persecution of Christians over in the fourth century, began the medieval collecting of relics. She is herself from York, and Colchester, the daughter of an Old King Cole, in the line of Lucius, the second Christian king. Among her collected relics is said to be a tunic that Jesus wore- likely the seamless garment. But the cloth of Edessa and Shroud may have been transferred to Constantinople from Edessa quite late. The shroud may have been found in a niche with the above the gate of the city of Edessa, safe from the fall of the Christian kingship there after Abgar, in the second century. Robertson writes: "The cloth had arrived in Constantinople amidst much rejoicing on 15th August 944 after being acquired from the city of Edessa (today, Urfa in Southern Turkey). According to local legend, it had been presented to King Abgar of Edessa by Jesus’ disciples when he became the first king to convert to Christianity. However, when the king died, the city reverted to paganism, and the cloth was hidden to protect it.  Workers repairing the city walls in AD 525 stumbled upon it in a niche high above one of the main gates. Wilson and Miller suggest that the shroud may have been the cloth of Edessa folded into four with only the face visible, brought there by the Apostles after the crucifixion, or if the two are different- as these appear each to be what they are thought to be- possibly to join the napkin for safekeeping outside Roman sovereignty. Fold marks on the shroud support the doubled-in-four hypothesis, and pollen may indicate the presence of the cloth at Edessa. They note that while Augustine writes, early in the 5th Century, that the artists have no idea how Jesus or his mother appeared, and so there is much variation, suddenly after the 525 discovery at Edessa, suddenly the artists know what Jesus looked like (p. 127). The Edessa cloth, with the imprint of Jesus prior to crucifixion, was destroyed in the French Revolution.

4) Wilson and Miller write (p. 120) that a knight, Robert de Clari "declared that in 1203, shortly before the sack of Constantinople,, he saw in that city a church...

...which they call My Lady St. Mary of Blachernae, where was kept the sydoine, in which our Lord was wrapped, which stood up straight every Friday so that the [figure] of our Lord could be plainly seen there...No one, either Greek or French, ever knew what became of this sydoine after the city was taken.

A likely possibility would be that the first de Charney, as Grand Master, acquired the shroud or knowledge of its secret place through the century between the 1203 sack of Constantinople and his 1314 execution, and left the shroud when he was about to be executed, and his nephew thus acquired it. He may not have known or fully believed that it is authentic. Scholars say de Charney acquired it on a later expedition, but it does seem likely that the knights took the shroud not from Jerusalem but from Constantinople. In one story, The Empress Mary Margaret is the one most likely to have smuggled the shroud out of Constantinople during the destruction (Wilson and Miller, p. 133-4). Her husband the emperor had been blinded and deposed in 1195, and a stepson persuaded the Knights to overthrow the tyranny, which they did 8 years later, when she was 29. She remarried, and a son William became a member of the Knights But (134)

there are good grounds for believing that by the end of the thirteenth century,the Templars secretly had the shroud, or at lest something like it. At this time, all Europe buzzed with rumors that they were worshiping some form of bearded, reddish- color male head- sometimes referred to as on a plaque- at secret chapter meetings, Such rumors gave Philip the Fair of France the excuse to arrest all Templars and confiscate the wealth of the order.

Ian Wilson and Vernon Miller: The Mysterious Shroud. Ny, Ny: Doubleday, 1988.