In the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in the Italian city of Turin, one of the most famous Christian relics has been kept for several centuries - the shroud, in which, according to legend, the body of Jesus was wrapped from the cross. On the left half of the piece of cloth, there is clearly an image of a man with his arms folded on his chest, on the right - the same body from the back. The canvas has preserved traces of bloody wounds; their location corresponds to the biblical texts.
Templar booty
The gospels mention that Joseph of Arimathea, one of Jesus' followers, begged Pilate for the body of the crucified, wrapped it in a shroud and placed it in a crypt carved into the rock.
After the Resurrection of Christ, this piece of cloth measuring 4.36 by 1.09 meters was given to the Apostle Peter, and then secretly passed from disciple to disciple because of the persecution of Christians. Only after the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine I, who in 337, before his death, was baptized and approved Christianity as the state religion, in written sources can you find fragmentary information about the shroud. It is known that Pulcheria, the sister of Emperor Theodosius II, in 436 placed the relic in the Basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Blachernae, near Constantinople. Arnulf, Bishop of Gaul, visited Jerusalem in 640 and in describing his pilgrimage tells about the shroud. At the end of the 11th century, the Byzantine emperor Alexei I Komnenos, in his letter to the Count of Flanders, mentions the funeral canvas he kept in which the body of Jesus was wrapped.
It is not known whether it is about the same relic, and whether it is now kept in Turin. The chronicler of the IV Crusade (1204) Robert de Clari reported that after the defeat of Constantinople, the shroud, which was in the monastery of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Blachernae, disappeared. According to the assumptions of some historians, the Templars could take it and hide it.
Meeting at the cathedral
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The relic was discovered only in 1355, when the French knight Geoffroy de Charny handed it to the church of the Lyray parish near Paris - for display to parishioners. By the way, one of the knight's ancestors bore the title of Prior of the Order of the Knights Templar and in 1312 was burned at the stake together with the last Grand Master Jacques de Molay.
Almost 100 years after the unveiling of the relic, in 1453, Geoffroy's granddaughter, Margaret de Charny, sold the funerary blanket to Duke Louis I of Savoy, the ruler of a historical region in southeastern France near Italy. The duke built a special temple for the shroud in the city of Chambery. Margaret de Charney received as many as two castles for the historic funerary cover. But the Catholic Church considered her actions inappropriate for a Christian and punished the woman with excommunication.
In 1578, the aged Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo, canonized by the Catholic Church, decided to walk from Milan to Chambery to worship the Shroud. To save the old man from the road through the winter Alps, the relic was carried out to meet him. The meeting took place in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in the city of Turin, which by that time had become the capital of the Duchy of Savoy. Since then, the shrine has never changed its place of residence.
Pigtail at the back of the head
It should be noted that many researchers do not believe in the authenticity of the Turin Shroud, considering it a medieval fake. In this case, scientists refer to the surviving documents. For example, the French bishop Pierre d ~ Arcy back in 1389, in a letter to Pope Clement VII, asked to ban the public display of the funeral veil - since the priest had testimony from a certain unnamed artist who admitted that he had made the relic. As a result, a year later Clement VII issued a decree according to which the shroud was recognized as just an artistic reproduction of the veil in which the body of Jesus was wrapped.
Since then, the position of the church has not changed: the relic is considered priceless, but this is not about the authenticity of the artifact, but about its significance as the most important religious symbol (in 1958, Pope Pius XII approved the worship of the shroud as an icon of Christ).
Another document is a receipt from Margaret de Charny's husband. In 1418, he temporarily took the relic from the temple and, in his commitment to return it, wrote that it was a fake.
True, people have always believed that the images on the Turin Shroud cannot be man-made. It is known that in 1508 the relic was taken to the square for verification, where it was publicly washed and boiled in oil - but the prints did not disappear.
In 1898, at the international exhibition of religious art held in Paris, the shroud brought from Turin was presented as a creation of ancient Christian artists. Then the archaeologist Sekondo Pia first photographed her. The plate made it possible to draw a sensational conclusion: the image on the shroud is a negative - and since before the invention of photography the artists did not know what it was, then these prints on the burial cover are not made by hand!
A series of other photographs taken in 1931 gave experts the opportunity to argue that the shroud was not a drawing, but an imprint of a real body. At the same time, it turned out that a person, once wrapped in this fabric, had a pigtail at the back of his head. This was a discovery for historians, since there is no braid on any known image of Christ.
The analysis was inaccurate
To remove all questions about the authenticity of the relic, in 1988 a radiocarbon analysis of its fragment was made. The procedure was carried out in three different laboratories (Switzerland, UK and USA). The experts announced: the age of the shroud is from 600 to 700 years, that is, it cannot in any way correlate with the death and resurrection of Jesus.
But later, many scientists, including the American chemist Raymond Rogers, who took part in the studies in 1988, changed their point of view, admitting that the analysis carried out could allow errors of up to a thousand years or more, and that the dating of the shroud can well be attributed to the time of the crucifixion of Christ …
It was also noted that the fabric of the relic, a cloth made of Mediterranean linen with an admixture of Egyptian cotton, is of Middle Eastern origin and was made according to the technology adopted in the 1st century AD - and not at all during the Middle Ages.
The ancient age of the shroud is also evidenced by the imprints of coins that covered the eyes of the deceased (at the beginning of our era, the Greek rite of putting coins on the eyes of the deceased to pay Charon was widespread among some Jews). One of them is very rare, it was minted in small quantities in about 30 AD, on it the inscription "Emperor Tiberius" (TIBEPIOY KAICAPOC) was made with a mistake - CAICAPOC. Currently, there are only five such coins in the world, it is hard to believe that medieval counterfeiters could use such a rare one for forgery.
Some other details of the image also testify to the authenticity of the shroud. For example, the traces of nails on the wrists of the deceased (during the Middle Ages it was believed that the crucified were nailed by the palms - and Jesus was painted that way).
Short hair and dark skin
In the fall of 1978, to the 400th anniversary of the appearance of the Shroud in Turin, the relic was put on public display and scientists were allowed to examine it in detail. The image was photographed many times from different angles, which made it possible to reconstruct a three-dimensional body model.
What was Jesus of Nazareth like? Here is an excerpt from the description made by the researchers: “Hair sprawling randomly on the cloth, small beard and mustache. The right eye is closed, the left is slightly open. A drop of blood above the left eyebrow. The nasal bone was broken from a blow on the left side. On the left side, the face above the cheekbone is broken, there are traces of edema. There is a blood stain to the right of the mouth."
Christ's height was 170 centimeters, he was thin and wiry, with black short curly hair, a short beard, a rounded face, brown eyes, a large nose and a dark, rough skin (probably due to long wanderings under the scorching sun). An examination of the wound marks showed that Jesus had blood type IV.
There are no details of the appearance of the Son of God in the Gospel. According to the established tradition, he is portrayed as a person with thin facial features, fair skin and long hair - which, as it turned out, does not correspond to the truth.
In the XX century, the shroud was exhibited for public viewing two more times: in 1998 and 2000. To protect the relic, heightened security measures are used; it is protected by a four-layer bullet-proof glass. By the way, this circumstance almost led to the destruction of the priceless artifact: in 1997 a fire broke out in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, and in order to save the historical burial cover, the fire-fighters had to break through the bulletproof glass - fortunately, they managed to do this.
The next public demonstration of the Shroud is planned for 2025. Scientists expect that they will be allowed new studies of the relics - which means that it is possible that we will become witnesses of the next historical discoveries.