Constantinople

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.

Besan

But where are the records for it in Besançon if it was there? The city's Cathedral of Saint Etienne was struck by lightning in 1349 and burned to the ground along with countless records in its archives. That may explain why there are no records before the 1350s. That is not proof, of course. It is not proof of anything. But it does offer an example of why a claim of a lack of any history before the 1350s is not a sound historical argument.

There certainly was a burial shroud relic in Constantinople and there is extensive evidence, both historical and scientific, that this shroud is the same shroud found in Turin. We’ll see that as we proceed. But what about the verdict of the carbon dating from Oxford, Arizona and Zurich, dates “all—within normal margins of error—compatible with each other. . .”? We should not be surprised that the dates seem close. Actually, if we dig a bit deeper, we see that there are some serious statistical problems with the dates the laboratories measured. Dawkins only gives us averages of many tests that the labs performed. He implies this is a final verdict. He is praising carbon dating.

An Unbroken Chain of Evidence

There are no existing records that constitute an unbroken chain of evidence among all the records of the Shroud of Turin that go back beyond the 1350s. This does not rule out earlier evidence if such records might later be found. Might there also be evidence of a cloth that might be the shroud, if a way can be found to identify it as one and the same.

There is now substantial and convincing evidence that a cloth with an image believed to be that of Jesus, moreover believed at times in its history to be the actual burial shroud of Jesus, might have been a treasure of the early church, as Cahill had suggested. It might have been in the ancient city of Antioch for awhile. It was certainly in Edessa for many years. The same cloth that was in Edessa was later in Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine Empire and the center of Greek Christianity.

The historian cannot avoid this and he must therefore concede that there is a possible gap in the records. To simply state that there is no history before the 1350s reveals a lack of knowledge, a contempt for historical integrity and a failure of imagination. It is akin to saying, as some creationists do, that evolution is not real because there are gaps in fossil records.

Apparent Flower Images

If you look very closely between the face and each of the upper corners you may notice two very faint shapes that look something like flowers. One is very distinct. The other is barely visible. They look like small circles with apparent petals about them—like a child’s drawing of flowers. They may be images of real flowers, as some contend, or they may simply be illusions, shapes of flowers caused by anomalies in the weave and coloration of the cloth. For our purposes it is only important to note that they look like flowers.

We will, when we examine the images in fuller detail, explore many other aspects of the images and the cloth, qualities and mysteries that will fascinate and challenge our intelligence. But for now, and to help us with history, we will focus on just these observations.

And so, with an understanding that the shroud that is in Turin is a large oblong three-over-one herringbone twill piece of linen with two life-sized images along with bloodstains, burn holes called poker holes, and persistent folding creases and patterns that look like flowers, we turn our attention to Edessa and then Constantinople.

The Veronicas

There are, in addition to these two icons, four more that have the similar cut-out frames that are claimed to be the true image made when Veronica wiped Jesus brow during his walk to Calgary:  1) The Veronica kept at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. 2) The Holy Face at the The Hofburg Palace in Vienna. 3) The Holy Face at the Monastery of the Holy Face in Alicante, Spain. 4) The Holy Face at the cathedral of Jaén in southern Spain. Just to add to the confusion, there is another famous image that some claim is the authentic Veronica, a facial portrait of a man at a Capuchin monastery in Manoppello, Italy. Unlike the other claimants, it does not have a cut-out frame. Unlike the other images, it seems most like an early Renaissance painting.

Most significantly all of the vera icons, the Veronicas and the cut-out framed images of Edessa are small pieces of cloth just big enough to hold a facial portrait. Our concern is with the tetradiplon image of Edessa.

Early records and the legendary accounts speak only of facial image in Edessa. And the shroud is certainly a cloth large enough to a burial cloth and full body images. But the references to a tetradiplon suggest that the facial image could be the visible part of something more. And, as we will see, the evidence that an image bearing cloth from Edessa that was moved to Constantinople 400 years after the emergence in Edessa of the tetradiplon bearing a facial image is suggestive.

Justinian II and the Golden Pavilion

In 685, Justinian II, at the age of sixteen took the throne. He was the first Byzantine emperor to introduce a likeness of Christ on coinage of the realm. His image was on one side and Christ’s was on the reverse. Some have argued, and it seems quite possible, that the image on the coin was sourced from the Edessa image. It does seem to have many similarities. But the Philip Grierson writing in the Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and Whittemore Collection argued that was derived from an image of Christ in the Chrysotriclinos, The Golden Pavilion in Constantinople. The Golden Pavilion served as a church and a throne room for the emperor. The problem is that don’t know exactly when this was built or  when a Christ image was installed. The original image was replaced later and we don’t know anything about the original image.  It is possible that original pavilion image was created about the time that the St. Catherine icon was painted and we might speculate that it might have been inspired by the Image of Edessa.  The basic historical problem is that we don’t have enough information.

Leontius

Justinian II was only on the throne for ten years when he was overthrown by Leontius. How much the image of Christ on his coin had to do with it is only speculation. He was sent to a monastery in the Crimea, but only after his nose had been slit. The importance of this cannot be overlooked for one of the rules of succession to emperor was that an emperor had to be attractive looking. Justinian appealed to Tervel, the king of Bulgaria for help. He offered him lavish gifts, the title of Caesar of the empire (there were several) and the hand of his daughter Anastasia (meaning she who is perfect in every way) in marriage. Tervel agreed and sent an army of 15,000 horsemen. But this massive force was not enough to prevail against the walls of Constantinople and so Justinian resorted to sneaking into the city through a water conduit following the example of King David almost 2000 years earlier when he conquered Jerusalem. He then gathered his supporters within the city and captured the palace. Justinian Rhinotmetus (the Slit-nosed) was emperor again. He wasn’t succeeding to the thrown this time so the nose was not a problem.

Leontius was already in prison having been overthrown by Tiberius III. So Justinian had both of them executed. He also blinded and exiled Callinicus I, the Patriarch Archbishop of Constantinople, then considered second only to the pope in Rome, for his complicity in Leontius’ coup d’état. 

Justinian’s Ecumenical Council

During Justinian’s first reign he had called an ecumenical council together to promote certain religious policies that were not popular with the papacy. Justinian did not like restriction on the saying "Alleluia" in Lent, depicting Christ as a lamb, and a growing trend towards celibacy for priests. When Pope Sergius I refused to consent to the council’s findings, Justinian ordered him arrested. But the militia, mostly from Rome, Ravenna and elsewhere on the Italian peninsula sided with the pope.  Now, the Rhinotmetus was back in power and he demanded that the new pope, John VII, consent. He refused. This time Justinian sent his own troops to Italy to squash the militia loyal to the pope. A new pope , Constantine (not to be confused with all the emperors who had that name) travelled to Constantinople and consented to some of the emperor's demands in order to improve relations between the church and the state.

Philippicus led a popular revolt against the tyrannical unpopular Justinian and seized the city. Justinian fled but was captured and beheaded. Fearing for his son’s life, being that he was the rightful heir, Justinian’s mother sought sanctuary for him in the church of St. Mary's of Blachernae. Nonetheless the boy was dragged from the church and also beheaded. Thus ended a dynasty.

The Size of a Burial Cloth?

We get a sense that the Image of Edessa—or at least that an image of Jesus in Edessa—is large, perhaps the size of a burial cloth. The words tetradiplon and himation are important clues. The face we are told is unusual. And the face, in some ways, certainly resembles the face on the shroud. It will not be until the cloth arrives in Constantinople in 944 that we get a clear indication that it indeed has a full body image. It won’t be until the advent of modern science that we learn how extraordinary that image of a face and the entire body is or until we discover new evidence that links the Turin shroud to Edessa and even the environs of Jerusalem.

But before we leave the Edessa era and look at these things we need to examine three other accounts that, if not provably linked, tend to strengthen the case that the Shroud of Turin is the Image of Edessa and possibly the burial shroud of Christ.

St. Leander

One possible explanation may have to do with St. Leander, a Benedictine monk and a bishop of Seville. Sometime between 579 and A.D. 582, shortly after the image bearing cloth had been “rediscovered” in Edessa, he visited Constantinople. Was the newly discovered cloth with an image the talk of the town? Edessa, at the time, was part of the Byzantine Empire, less than 200 miles away on a major trade route. Perhaps, on his return to the Iberian Peninsula, Leander influenced the composition of this one illation in the Mozarabic Rite. That is, of course, only speculation. But that there was communications between the East and the West is certain.

Constantinople

Constantinople>To understand the Constantinople era of the shroud’s history, it helps to know something about the Byzantine Empire. This political and religious entity that lasted for over one thousand years and its effects on western civilization is all too often viewed through the western lens clouded with misunderstanding, even bias. In modern usage the word byzantine has come to mean intricate, convoluted and sometime devious. Those definitions are justified. But there is so much more to the Byzantine era and we must be cautious not to let those meanings cloud our perception.

In its millennium it was not called the Byzantine Empire. That is a name that later historians gave it to distinguish it from the Roman Empire of antiquity. But, in fact, it was the old Roman Empire transplanted to a new capital where it would be shaped by culture and religion that in turn would shape the culture and religion of Western Europe.

Small Greek City on the Bosporus

It was Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus, better known simply as Constantine the Great or just Constantine, who moved the capital of Rome to Byzantion, a relatively small Greek city on the Bosporus, a strait of water that connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, a strait with vital strategic and commercial shipping importance.

Byzantion was renamed Nova Roma Constantinopolitana. Even after the city fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the name stuck. It was called Konstantiniye. It wasn’t until after the demise of the Ottoman Empire that the name changed. In 1930, Turkey asked the rest of the world to call it Istanbul (which means essentially “the city.” In one form or another throughout its history, in one language or another, it was often simply called “the city.”  Even today, newspaper editors and authors of books will sometimes inserted Constantinople in parenthesis after the name Istanbul. The change of name was memorialized in a 1953 song performed by the Four Lads. Here is one verse of Istanbul (Not Constaniople):

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks

Hagia Sophia

Constantinople grew quickly. It became the largest city in all of Europe if not all of the medieval world. It was the center of the Roman Empire. It was the Roman Empire. Hagia Sophia (Sancta Sophia in Latin and Holy Wisdom in English) built by the Emperor Justian (483-565) was the largest cathedral in the world until a larger cathedral was built in Seville, Spain in 1520, after Hagia Sophia had been converted into a mosque.

The papacy, struggling then to be the highest episcopal authority in the empire—the world—would remain in old Rome. But the earthly glory and the treasures of Christendom were in Constantinople. It was the seat of government for a vast empire, the center of art and scholarly endeavor. It founded the first school of higher learning that could be called a university. It would remain so for a long time.

The Purple Room

Born out of wedlock made Constantine’s dynastic ascension questionable. Otherwise, he was, by way of the convoluted rules then in place, the legitimate heir to his uncle Alexander. But Zoe, his mother, who would eventually become Leo’s fourth wife, anticipated the problem and devised an ingenious plan. There was a peculiar rule of succession at the time that stipulated that while the eldest legitimate heir was normally first in line to become emperor, if a younger heir was born in a certain purple room of the royal palace and the older heir was not, the younger heir had precedence. Zoe reasoned, before her son was born, before she even knew that the child she carried would be a boy, that if her son was born in the purple room this would confer an important measure of legitimacy. She conspired to arrange it and it worked beautifully. At the age of two Constantine was symbolically crowned emperor. When Alexander died Constantine was elevated to the throne. But he too young to be regent. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Archbishop Nicholas I Mysticus, assumed that role.

Constantine VII, the Untypical Emperor

Constantine VII was somewhat untypical as an emperor. Having been sidelined for so much of his earlier life, he developed an interest in matters that had little to do with running an empire. He enjoyed painting and writing. He wrote several books about the history of the empire and the ceremonial life of court. He was a patron of the arts and educational institutions. He was instigated some land reforms to return lands to peasants who had been reduced to serfdom by debt. Historians tend to look on him kindly.

In 1994, just four months before Romanus was deposed by his sons, the Image of Edessa arrived in Constantinople. Romanus, because he was the regent emperor, is given the credit for bringing it to the Byzantine capital. The real credit should probably go to a general of the army named John Curcuas. Following successful campaigns against Arab forces operating in northern Syria, Curcuas, moved his army into northern Mesopotamia in 943 and began to plunder the cities and towns throughout the region. He successfully captured Amida, Dari and Nisibis, taking whole populations away and collecting vast amounts of booty. By the summer of 944 he reached Edessa and laid siege to the heavily fortified city. Edessa, once part of the empire, had fallen to the Persian Sassanians in 609. It had been briefly retaken by Byzantine forces, but fell to the Muslims in 638.

That the Image of Edessa was in a city that was in Muslim hands during the iconoclasm that was started by Leo III around 726 and ran its course until 787 when the Second Council at Nicaea put an end to the movement with the support of the pope and the emperor Constantine VI and his mother, the empress Irene.

The Image of Edessa in Constantinople

On August 15, 944, the prized relic arrived in Constantinople where it was received with great fanfare. A lengthy document, the Narratio de imagine Edessena, tells us that Constantine VII described the image as “extremely faint, more like a moist secre­tion without pigment or the painter’s art.” That is a poignant clue for us that the Image of Edessa was in this way like the Shroud of Turin. Another document, Symeon Magister’s Chronographia tells us that Constantine could see some image features but his two brothers-in-law, Romanus’ two sons, could barely see anything. Thus we have more evidence that the cloth with its image might be the Shroud of Turin. But there was more to come. On the very next day, Gregory Referendarius, the archdeacon of Constantinople’s great cathedral, Hagia Sophia, gave a sermon in which he described the cloth as having an image formed through sweat and blood. This was the first indication, from known records, that the cloth contained blood. He also mentioned the likeness of a man and a side wound, which implies that the image was a full body image.

Alexios Komnenos to Robert of Flanders

There are many references to it after 944, some more reliable than others. For instance, when you read about the shroud you will sometimes encounter references to a written appeal by the emperor Alexios Komnenos to Robert of Flanders asking for help to protect Constantinople’s valuable relics including the cloth found in the sepulcher after the resurrection. This letter is suspect.

In 1081, Constantinople found itself threatened by Seljuk Turks in the east and the Normans in the west led by Robert Guiscard who had already conquered Palermo in Sicily. Faced with these threats and the political problems of an empire in decline, the army declared one of its own, Alexios Komnenos, the new emperor.  While he did have some successes in reducing threats to the empire, the threats remained very real and he made appeals to Pope Urban II and others in Europe for help. These appeals are generally seen as significant cause for the Crusades.

So, for the love of God and piety of all Greek Christians, we beg you to bring here whatever warriors true to Christ you can find in your lands, the powerful, the less powerful and the insignificant, to help me and the Greek Christians; just as you largely free Galicia and the other kingdoms of the West from pagan rule last year, now let your warriors try to free the kingdom of the Greeks for the salvation of their souls. Although I am Emperor I still do not know how to find any recourse or suitable way forward; I constantly flee the Turks and Petchenegs and stay in each city in turn until I know they are on their way. I would much rather bow down to your Latin shrines that those of pagans.

Therefore, you should make every effort to stop them capturing Constantinople, thus ensuring that you will gain the joy of glorious and ineffable mercy in Heaven. Given the immensely precious relics of the Lord to be found in Constantinople, better that you should have it than the pagans. (24)

“Here is a list,” he then wrote in the letter. The list was long. “The cloth found in the sepulcher after the resurrection,” was one of the items in the letter.

Questions About Authenticity of the Letter

Carol Sweetenham, in her 2005 translation and commentary of Robert the Monk's History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, questions the authenticity of Alexios’ letter to the Count of Flanders, believing that Alexios would not itemize the treasures of Constantinople. It was, she believed, a drummed up propaganda piece written in the West to mobilize support for the crusades. Nothing appealed so much as the lure of wealth attached to the prospects of adventure. But, as Dan Scavone notes:

To dismiss this letter as a spurious piece of Latin propaganda virtually making the Byzantine emperor beg for the Latins’ expropriation of the imperial relics during the Fourth Crusade is to miss its significance as a Byzantine document referring to the presence of Jesus’ burial wrappings in Constantinople. . . . Most historians have agreed that Alexios would not have written such words, but they also concur that this epistula probably “depends on an authentic letter of the basileus” written with another end in mind and that it dates, variously, from 1091 to 1105. 

In other words, though the letter may well have been a propaganda piece, it strongly suggests that the burial cloth of Jesus—real or not—was in Constantinople. And while I agree with Scavone in almost all of historical assessments, I am reminded too that he has counseled me to remember that all history is interpretation. I see it differently.

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.

Constantinople’s Vast Treasury

If there is any truth to be recovered from the list of relics in the purported letter from Alexios I to Robert of Flanders—not that these relics were real deals—then we can at least understand that there was an understanding in this time that Constantinople had a vast treasury, perhaps more than one treasury of relics in the city. Alexios or the author of the propaganda piece gave us at least a taste even if imaginative in its detail. The author said the list was too vast to itemize completely. Robert of Clari, seemingly more reliable, tells us:

And all these marvels which I have related to you, and still many more which we cannot relate to you, did the Franks find in Constantinople when they had conquered it. Nor do I believe, of my own knowledge, that any man, be he never so skilled in accounting, could number all the abbeys of the city, so many were there of them, both of monks and of nuns, to say nothing of the other minsters [=churches] in the city. And they counted, in round numbers, some thirty thousand priests in the city, both monks and others.

Of the other Greeks - the high, the lowly, the poor, the rich; of the greatness of the city, of the palaces, and of the other wonders which are therein - will we forbear to tell you further; for no earthly man, though he abode never so long in that city, could number or relate all this to you. And if he were to describe to you the hundredth part of the riches and the beauty and the magnificence which were to be found in the abbeys and in the minsters and in the palaces and in the city itself, it would seem that he was a liar, nor would ye believe him at all.

It is not hard to picture a city brimming with relics, fake and real. It is not hard to imagine that there might not be a sudarium of the tomb, a sudarium of the Abgar legend distinct and different from the burial cloth, a Veronica and maybe something else as well. Robert provides context. There is no reason to doubt that Robert de Clari did not see what he said he saw.

Hungarian Pray Manuscript

In the Budapest National Library there is an ancient codex, known commonly as the Hungarian Pray Manuscript or Pray Codex, named for György Pray (1723-1801), a Jesuit scholar and important historian who made the first detailed study of it, although we can reasonably suspect, with no realization that it might someday have some bearing on the shroud. The codex is the earliest known text in the ancient Finno-Ugric tribal languages of the people that occupied that region.

This codex was written between 1192 and 1195, within about 30 years of the Nerezi mural. An illustration, one of five in the manuscript, shows Jesus being placed on a burial shroud, a shroud with the identical pattern of burn holes found on the shroud. The artist has drawn the very unusual herringbone weave on the shroud and a number of other graphic characteristics consistent with the shroud. Jesus is shown naked with his arms modestly folded at the wrists, the fingers are unusually long in appearance as they are on the shroud, and there are no visible thumbs. There are no thumbs visible in the images of the man of the shroud either. This seems artistically strange. But forensic pathologists tell us that this makes sense. Why? It was once stated that nails driven through the wrist would likely cause the thumbs to fold into the palms. But Fred Zugibe disagrees.

In the drawing, there is also a clear mark on Jesus’ forehead where the most prominent 3-shaped bloodstain is found on the forehead of the man of the shroud.   There can be little question that this illustrator of the Pray Codex, far removed from France—working at a time before the sacking of Constantinople by French knights, before the earliest date assigned to the shroud by carbon 14 testing—knew something of the details about the shroud, the Holy Mandylion, the Image of Edessa.

The Real Sudarium?

We can imagine that there may have been several cloths: the shroud, the face cloth or sudarium, a chin band, a strip of cloth to tie the wrists together and perhaps a similar strip for the feet. It was, however, the sudarium, the towel that was being mentioned in Constantinople. Was it real, as well?

There is a contender for the real deal, one that has an uncanny and astonishing relationship to the shroud that is in Turin. It is the Sudarium of Oviedo. This piece of cloth was never in Edessa or Constantinople. But if the historical record is correct, it was in Jerusalem. If the shroud is genuine, it was in Jerusalem at the same time as the shroud.

In the city of Oviedo, in northern Spain, in a small chapel attached to the city’s cathedral, there is a small bloodstained dishcloth size piece of linen that some believe is one of the burial cloths mentioned in John’s Gospel. Tradition has it that this cloth was used to cover Jesus’ bloodied face following his death on the cross. Forensic analysis of the bloodstains suggests strongly that both the Sudarium and the shroud covered the same human head at closely different times. Bloodstain patterns show that the Sudarium was placed about a man’s head while he was in a vertical position. If we assume that the man was a crucifixion victim then we can presume that this was while he was still on the cross. It was then removed before the shroud was placed over the man’s face. 

The Sudarium, unquestionably, has been in Oviedo since the eighth century and in Spain since the seventh century.

Documents in the late Roman period and the early middle ages are often sketchy and prone to chronological mistakes, and those pertaining to the Sudarium are no exception. But from a multiplicity of sources, scholars have extracted core elements of historical certainty and plausibility sufficient for a fair degree of historical reconstruction. We can be confident that the Sudarium came to Oviedo from Jerusalem.

Testing History

Part of the task of the historian can be likened to a prospector panning for gold and being able to distinguish between the real stuff and fool’s gold, little bits of pyrite that glitter and shine, that look like gold but are all but worthless. 

We started our journey through the Edessa to Constantinople history by looking at the shroud that is in Turin, in an obvious sort of way, so that we might test the nuggets of history we found and see if they were gold. We have a long ways to go. We need to find a plausible way for the cloth to get from Constantinople to Turin. We need to then look at the history of astonishing discoveries that happened in the 20^th and early part of the 21^st century. The journey gets very exciting.

The divided images looking out of and into the cloth of the shroud and the burial garment of the Hymn of the Pearl, the tetradiplon fold marks, the unusual images that seemed like sweat or fine pigments, seemingly not made by human hands, the poker holes. We took a detour through Spain to look at the Oviedo cloth. At first it looked like we might in this cloth have extraordinary confirmation. Then we were not so sure. How significant is the carbon dating of the Oviedo Sudarium? Not much, as we will see.

Have We Missed Something?

Have we missed something else? Is there something on the shroud that is in Turin that we didn’t notice, or that was so small we could not readily see it, or something so bound up in the cloth’s chemistry that we could not even see it with an ordinary microscope? Might we find in these things something that might corroborate the gold nuggets of history so far? Might we at least find something that shows us that the cloth might indeed be old enough to have been in Constantinople, Edessa before that, and maybe Jerusalem before that?

Scanning Electron Microscope

But, as we now have come to realize, Frei may not have used the scanning electron microscope for identifying any of the pollen on the shroud. He never said that he did but implied it. Captions in photographs contained wording such as “pollen types found on the Shroud.” It is doubtful that there are any SEM photos of pollen actually found on the shroud. We have come to realize that some species that Frei identified, could not be identified with only an ordinary light microscope. It was a rhetorical sleight of hand.

What Frei reported was extraordinary. He identified fifty-eight different plants, many from the environs of Jerusalem and areas in Turkey that coincided nicely with Edessa and Constantinople. Those who were looking for confirmation of the shroud’s authenticity were ecstatic. Skeptics, on the other hand, were looking for holes.

One line of attack was to find fault, not with the science, but the man. Frei, it was reported, had made a mistake, a very embarrassing mistake that had absolutely nothing to do with the shroud or with pollen evidence.

Fluffy Shaped Sponge?

People have seen coins over the eyes; and not just coins but enough details to identify them as specific coins minted by Romans for Jewish use around the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. People have identified flowers and plants that are specific to the environs of Jerusalem. The list of things seen goes on and on. There are, supposedly, a hammer, a nail, a fluffy shaped sponge tied to a reed, a coil of rope, a pair of dice and part of a plaque with enough lettering in Greek, Latin and possibly Hebrew to identify it as saying, “Jesus of Nazareth.” But are these things really imaged on the cloth? Are there criteria for deciding?

Consensus among people who closely study the images is valid so long as that study is as completely objective as possible. Worldview nullification must be avoided at all cost. It is not proper to reject these images because you don’t believe the shroud is real. But it is fair to be skeptical, as in the case of the teeth (and for that matter the nail and lettering and other objects) because there is identifiable noise such as the banding.

It is my general impression that among most shroud researchers, but not all, that:

·         The evidence of scourging seen as various types of wounds is medically accurate and extraordinarily realistic. Those images are certainly there.

·         Many, if not most, and perhaps all objects are unconfirmed, unsubstantiated or suspect images; possibly pareidolia.

In the end, or sometime sooner or later, Frei’s work may be proven right after all, at least enough so to confirm the cloth’s journey from Jerusalem to Constantinople through the Anatolia. For now we must look at other evidence.

Vanillin as a Validation of Carbon Dating

It is not as good a way of dating a piece of linen as carbon dating. But the carbon dating was flubbed. And so for the time being this as good as it gets, scientifically. It really doesn’t tell how old the cloth is, only that it is at least 1300 years old and quite possibly older. It certainly existed when someone illustrated a burial shroud in the Hungarian Pray Manuscript with holes that resemble the poker holes on the Turin cloth. It certainly existed when the Image of Edessa was brought from Edessa to Constantinople. It certainly existed when Leo III was attempting to banish images of Christ and John of Damascus was objecting.

And if all this is so, the shroud that is now in Turin may well have existed when the words, “Peter ran with John to the tomb and saw the recent imprints of the dead and risen man on the linens” were made part of the Mozarabic Rite in Spain. Vanillin testing can’t tell us that. Inference can. It may well have existed when Abgar the Great was baptized. It may have existed at the time that the body of Jesus was buried in a tomb.

The Fourth Crusade

When we read about the history of the shroud we often encounter a brief mentioning of the fact that in 1204, Constantinople was sacked by the French and Venetian soldiers of the 4^th Crusade. That is understated understatement. There is perhaps no better way to describe what happened then to quote Steven Runciman from his monumental three-volume History of the Crusades:

For nine centuries the great city had been the capital of Christian civilisation. It was filled with works of art that had survived from ancient Greece and with the masterpieces of its own exquisite craftsmen. The Venetians wherever they could seized treasures and carried them off. But the Frenchmen and Flemings were filled with a lust for destruction: they rushed in a howling mob down the streets and through the houses, snatching up everything that glittered and destroying whatever they could not carry, pausing only to murder or to rape, or to break open the wine-cellars. Neither monasteries nor churches nor libraries were spared. In St Sophia itself drunken soldiers could be seen tearing down the silken hangings and pulling the silver iconostasis to pieces, while sacred books and icons were trampled under foot. While they drank from the altar-vessels a prostitute sang a ribald French song on the Patriarch’s throne. Nuns were ravished in their convents. Palaces and hovels alike were wrecked. Wounded women and children lay dying in the streets. For three days the ghastly scenes continued until the huge and beautiful city was a shambles. Even after order was restored, citizens were tortured to make them reveal treasures they had hidden. (38)

Inevitable Warfare

That warfare would break out between the West and the East, was probably inevitable. That Constantinople would fall, probably also inevitable. That the city would be sacked when it fell is likely as well. Armed conflict had been a long time coming. 

The original purpose of the Fourth Crusades had been to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims. But in 1203, despite the fact that the pope had explicitly prohibited attacks on Christians, the crusaders changed course and entered Constantinople’s harbor.  

Nicholas Mesarites

In 1207, Nicholas Mesarites, not too long ago the overseer treasures in the Pharos Chapel, who will always be remembered for saying “In this place He rises again,” was in the city. He was there to eulogize his deceased brother.  Scavone describes it well:

In the midst of this speech, Nicholas conjured up for the Greeks then present in Hagia Sophia a reminiscence of the greatness of their city which his brother had served so loyally, and of the atrocities of the looting by the crusaders, which he himself had witnessed.  In this eulogy Mesarites again refers to Constantinople as possessing the burial wrappings of Jesus, and this reference has been used as evidence that the Shroud was still present in the city in 1207.

Was it? Scavone is not convinced. Nicholas Mesarites had been sidelined after Latins took control of the city, as indeed had all Greeks of status in the church. He might not know anything. It is possible that he may have believed it was still there. And, as we will see, there is other evidence, other than the words of Robert de Clari, to suggest that it indeed was not there.

San Nicola of Casole

But, and as Scavone and other historians note, Nicholas d’Orrante may have also suggested that the burial cloth was in Constantinople. He was the abbot of San Nicola of Casole monastery at the bottom of the heel of the boot of southern Italy. Tradition has it that the monastery was founded by the Norman Robert Guiscard, who had defeated the Byzantine forces of Alexios I in the years leading up to the First Crusade. (San Nicola of Casole may be older).

The monastery was a center of learning where manuscripts were copied, translated between Greek and Latin and archived in a vast library. Though not a university, like the first university created in Constantinople in 425 or the Jami'ah universities founded throughout the Muslim world starting in the 9^th century or the universities of Salerno, Paris, Bologna and Oxford, which all were founded before the sacking of Constantinople, it was nonetheless a center of scholarship and learning.

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?

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 6^th 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?