Athens
Historians and the Lack of Evidence
Even so, historians can consider the lack of evidence as meaningful, but only with judicious analysis. For instance, if documents from before 1350, that could be expected to mention the shroud if it existed, do not do so, that is important. But an absence of such documents does not mean the same thing. And if there are ample reasons to suspect that there might have been documents that no longer exist, particularly if there are good reasons why such documents might not exist, then historians must be particularly careful. Some historians now think the shroud may have been in France, in the town of Besançon, in the Castle de Ray manor house, for well over a century before 1350. According to this theory it was brought to France from Constantinople, where it had been for many centuries, by way of Athens. There is ample evidence for this, as we will see. When we open our view wider, we discover only that we have a gap in the historical record.
Athens
The shroud may have been taken to Athens, then under French control. About a year after Constantinople was plundered, Theodore Ducas Anglelos wrote in a letter to Pope Innocent III:
The Venetians partitioned the treasure of gold, silver and ivory, while the French did the same with the relics of saints and the most sacred of all, the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after His death and before the resurrection. We know that the sacred objects are preserved by their predators in Venice and France and in other places.
Quite possibly it was taken to the Acropolis, the most famous outcropping of rock in the world. Atop its flat top sits the Parthenon, once the temple of the Greek patron goddess of Athens, the Virgin Athena. In the 6th century, the Parthenon was converted to a Christian church. Parthenos meant virgin. The Parthenos Athena was easily renamed the Parthenos Maria. The Acropolis, at the time of the Fourth Crusades, was a French citadel. The Parthenon Maria became Notre Dame (Our Lady). On the hilltop, the French built fortifications and converted various buildings into chapels, strongholds and treasuries. Well defended, it was an ideal place to safeguard valuable relics and treasures until they could be moved to France.
Historian Dan Scavone, emeritus professor of history at the University of Indiana-Evansville, is a world renowned scholar of medieval history. He has constructed a convincing argument that the shroud was brought from Athens to Besançon in the Burgundy region of France, and there it remained until it was moved to Lirey, France, from whence its history is meticulously traceable to Turin.
Othon De La Roche
It seems likely, though we don’t know exactly when, Othon De La Roche, the French Duke of Athens, having acquired the shroud in Constantinople in 1204 or possibly after it arrived in Athens, sent the cloth to his home, the chateau de Ray in the Haute-Saone near Besançon. This was sometime between 1206 and 1219. We know very little about it during the years that it was there except that it was kept in the chateau de Ray and sometimes displayed at the cathedral church of St. Etienne.
Later History
From there, the cloth’s history is well documented as it passed from the de Vergy family to the House of Savoy and was moved to Chambéry and then Turin.
In 1983 it was bequeathed to the pope and his successors when Umberto II, the last king of Italy and the last regent of the 980 year-old House of Savoy died in exile. Umberto had only reigned for only 33 days when the monarchy was abolished.
The question we are compelled to evaluate is this: Is the cloth that is today in Turin, the same cloth that was in Athens and before that in Constantinople and before that in Edessa? Did it ultimately come from Jerusalem and is it possibly the burial cloth of Jesus?