Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Robert de Clari

Some of the best evidence that ties the Edessan image to a legitimate full length purported burial cloth may be from a history of the Fourth Crusades, the Conquête de Constantinople, written by a knight from Northern France who was on the scene before, during and after the sacking of the city.

Robert de Clari was not a high ranking nobleman but a regular knight. Many historians think this is important, for rather than lauding in glorious accounts and glossing over details, he relates a most usable account. Robert’s account of the crusades was one of the first of a new genre of history written in the vernacular (except for Old English, which had a wide lead on the rest of Europe). It is also free of poetry that sometimes, for the sake of beauty, rhythm and rhyme fails to grasp precise meaning. Leah Shopkow, a historian at Indiana University has described him well:

Robert was neither well educated nor privy to the councils of the mighty; we cannot understand the politics of the crusade from him. His strength is his rendering of ambient rumors and his brilliant descriptions of what ordinary knights experienced, such as the marvels of Constantinople. (25)

Was it not for the fact that the word clarity was derived from the old French word clarté, which was derived from the claritatem which simply means clear, we might be tempted to think that clarity was derived from Clari. The pun nonetheless makes the point.