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

Nicholas of Otranto

It should come as no surprise that the abbot of Casole should have been appointed the Papal Legate at this catastrophic time when, in effect, the western church had captured the eastern church. He was a learned man who knew both Greek and Latin. Scavone relates:

One of the interpreters at these meetings, a man fluent in both Latin and Greek, was Nicholas of Otranto, abbot of Casole monastery in southern Italy.  In 1205 he greeted the new papal legate, Benedict of St. Susanna, then on his way to Constantinople via Brindisi, and accompanied him through Greece to the capital.  There he served as Benedict’s personal interpreter and translator.  The literary legacy of this little‑known scholar includes some poetry and at least three reports of the disputations in which he served as interpreter.  These were written both in Greek and in his own Latin translations.

His reference to the shroud of Jesus comes in the midst of his discussion in 1207 of the use of yeast in the Eucharistic meal of the Last Supper.  A portion of that very bread had been present, the Byzantines had asserted, in the imperial relic collection.  Among the relics of the Passion, which he now enumerated, were a portion of that bread and Jesus’ spargana, Greek for “linens.”  This word normally renders infant’s swaddling clothes, and the fascia of his Nicholas’ Latin translation does not help.  Since, however, Nicholas was listing relics of the Passion, he must mean burial linens. . . .

Nicholas of Otranto writes of the shroud that he “saw with our own eyes.” But where? He had not been in Constantinople in 1204. Was it still there, now in 1207? Or had he seen it elsewhere?