DOCUMENT XII.  ROBERT OF CLARI 1203: CLARITY AT LAST

           A burial sydoines certainly bearing the figure of the Lord is described in the Church of Our Lady of Blachernae by Robert of Clari, knight of the Fourth Crusade on tour in Constantinople in 1203‑04.  This passage has long been regarded by scholars of the Turin Shroud as the locus classicus attesting the presence in the Eastern capital of that famous Shroud: 

There was another of the churches which they called My Lady Saint Mary of Blachernae, where was kept the sydoines in which Our Lord had been wrapped, which stood up straight every Friday so that the features of Our Lord could be plainly seen there.  And no one, either Greek or French, ever knew what became of this sydoines after the city was taken.³⁷ 

Clari also saw elsewhere, in the relic treasury of the Pharos Church of the imperial palace (that treasury in Mesarites’ care two years prior), the two tabulae or cases which supposedly contained the famous Edessa towel (touaile) and the imaged tile (tiule).³⁸   Importantly, Clari never said he had seen the contents of these tabulae.  Taken with the previous document of Mesarites, the words of Clari are refreshingly supportive.  The imaged burial wrapping in Blachernae chapel seems to be identifiable with that which Mesarites protected in the Pharos treasury.  Mesarites’ words “He rises again” seem paralleled by Clari’s “stood straight up,” and may refer to its being displayed by being gradually pulled up from its case until one could see the naked and blood-stained body of Christ.  The resonance with the Edessa scrinium ritual is strong.  Assuming the Byzantines were not foolish enough to make the claim of actual burial wrapping about two objects, it is possible to believe that the same cloth was moved up the coast and displayed every Friday or that during the extreme vulnerability of the city while the European knights were present, the cloth was kept in the Blachernae palace (current residence of the emperors) and displayed in its ancient Edessan role as talisman to protect its new city from her enemies.  It must be urged that the situation in the capital in 1203, when the Crusaders were present, was much changed from that of 1201 when Mesarites wrote the words of Document XI.  Objects might well have been moved for reasons unknown to us.³⁹ 

The last four documents bear upon the vexing question of the departure from Constantinople of the miraculously imaged cloths (acheiropoietoi) and their subsequent fortunes.  Three of them have seemed to point to their continued presence in the capital as late as 1207 and possibly (Doc. XVI) until 124l.  The present paper urges that upon examination these documents do not prove this at all, and in fact one of them (Doc. XIV) strongly suggests that the burial wrappings were present in Athens already by 1206.  Document XV asserts that the sindon was indeed in Athens in 1205.