Rarely does a year go by without some media bomb being timed for Easter: either the Gospel of Judas will be published, or a movie about the "lost tomb of Jesus" will be shown. This time it turned out not so sensational, but still exciting. An Italian researcher has unveiled new evidence of a link between the Turin Shroud and the Knights Templar.
Strictly speaking, the fact that the shroud was in the hands of the Templars is not news. Its appearance in the XIV century in the church of the city of Lirey is directly connected with one of the most prominent templars of the last generation - Geoffroy de Charny, prior of the order in Normandy, who was burned at the stake together with the Grand Master Jacques de Molay. The prior's nephew, who bore the same name - Geoffroy de Charny - founded a temple in Lyray, and in 1357 his widow transferred the shroud to it, which had been kept in their house from some unknown time. The Bishop of Troyes tried to challenge the authenticity of the relic, controversy dragged on, but, in the end, Pope Clement VI in 1390 officially allowed to show the shroud.
The life of de Charny Jr. deserves a thick novel. He was a Knight of the Order of the Star and a brave warrior, besides a writer: he owns the "Book of Chivalry", popular in the late Middle Ages. King John II the Good made him his banner-bearer, entrusting oriflamm; de Charny fell during the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. The Cluny Museum houses the pilgrim's medallion, which contains both the de Charny's coat of arms and the symbol of the shroud.
The shroud remained with the descendants of de Charny until the middle of the 15th century, and in 1452 one of them, Marguerite de Charny, widow of Humbert, Comte de la Roche, gave the relic to Louis I of Savoy in exchange for a castle in eastern France. The shroud remained in the possession of the Savoy dynasty until 1983, when it was transferred to the Vatican. The very same relic from 1578 is in the Cathedral of Turin.
Among the many amateur theories associated with the death of the Knights Templar, there is this: the great master Jacques de Molay was hiding in the shroud shortly before the execution. This bold hypothesis belongs to the authors of The Second Messiah - Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas. Against the background of this conspiracy masterpiece, which brings together Jesus, the Templars, Freemasons and Tarot cards, Dan Brown with his Da Vinci Code and Michael Baigent with Richard Lee (Holy Blood and Holy Grail) seem timid schoolchildren.
Thus, with the history of the Shroud from the middle of the XIV century, everything is more or less clear how much anything can be understood with it at all. Much more complicated is the situation with where she was before.
It is believed that the shroud came to Western Europe after the Fourth Crusade, when the Latins took Constantinople by storm and plundered it. It is not known exactly which of the crusaders captured the shrine. One of the assumptions says that it was Otton de la Roche, a Burgundian knight, the first duke of Athens. He briefly held the shroud in Athens, and then ceded it to one of the templars, who took it to France. Two paragraphs above, the surname de la Roche was already mentioned in connection with Marguerite de Charny, a distant relative of Otto, who ceded the shroud to the Duke of Savoy.
Now, finally, you can return to the article by the Vatican historian Barbara Frale, published in L'Osservatore Romano on April 5, concerning the Shroud. This researcher has an interesting discovery made in 2001: she found in one of the archives of the Holy See the so-called Chinon parchment or scroll. It follows from this document that Pope Clement V did not recognize the priors of the Templar order as heretics. Frale, while continuing to work with the templars, discovered the testimony of a knight named Arno Sabbatier about how he was accepted into the order.
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In 1287, having taken vows of poverty, obedience and chastity, he visited a secret refuge with his mentor, where he kissed a long piece of cloth three times with an image of a human body imprinted on it. Frale claims that this was the shroud taken away from Constantinople, which the Templars took care of like the apple of their eye. In the burial shroud of Christ, it turns out, they saw salvation from the heresy of the Cathars.
In fact, there is no consistency in Barbara Frale's reasoning in her article: she refers to her unpublished book on the Templars and the Shroud. However, she points out that the authorship of the hypothesis does not belong to her, but to a British researcher named Ian Wilson, who, back in 1978, suggested that the secret rituals of the templars were associated with the shroud, and it was he who invented the explanation for the mysterious bearded idol, to which the most Christian knights, according to their accusers, for some reason they suddenly began to worship. There was, according to Wilson, no mysterious Satanic Baphomet, there was an imprint of the body of Christ on a burial shroud. Wilson, we note, is not a historian, but a keen journalist, another representative of a cohort of amateur conspiracy theorists.
Regardless of whether Wilson and Frale were right or wrong, most historians are already convinced that King Philip the Handsome wore out the Templars not for religious reasons, but for political and economic reasons: the templar state in the state only hindered him, and the treasury really needed money. But an interesting, although not particularly original "thematic" story on the eve of Easter has never interfered with newspapers.
Julia Shtutina