DOCUMENT XVI. BALDWIN II:  GOLDEN BULL 1247

The final document in this series has been used by some historians to place Jesus’ shroud in Constantinople as late as 1247.⁵²   Here is its background.  The Latin Empire of Constantinople was destined to end in 1261 when the Greek Lascarids expelled the crusaders.  But by 1238 Bulgars and Greeks were closing in on the capital, and the last Latin Byzantine Emperor, Baldwin II, was sorely in need of funds to maintain his armies.  In order to raise these funds he was driven to the extremity of pawning the treasured objects expropriated from the Byzantine monarchs and also their precious relic collection, most notably among which was an object purporting to be the Crown of Thorns, which he mortgaged to the bankers of Venice in 1238 (Riant, Exuviae II, 118-128).  In the following year this supposedly authentic relic was redeemed by King St. Louis IX of France and duly transferred to Paris (St. Denis).  Soon afterwards, Louis had the extraordinary Sainte Chapelle constructed as a housing for the Crown of Thorns and other relics arriving in Paris by various routes and hands from Constantinople.

     In 1241 two other shipments of relics were sent by Baldwin to Louis as surety for another loan.  A cutting from the Shroud figured among these latter relics.  Finally our document, a Golden Bull of Baldwin II, ceded all these relics, which are enumerated, to the French King in perpetuity, in consideration for still another loan.  In view of the letter of Theodore of Epirus which complained that the shroud had been removed to Athens by 1205, it is important to examine this Bull carefully.   And in fact when this is done, it can be seen that the Bull does not assert the shroud’s presence in Constantinople in 1241.  Rather, it merely lists among the relics ceded to Louis “part of the sudarium (pars sudarii) in which Christ’s body was wrapped in the tomb.”⁵³  Far from stating that Baldwin cut a section from the cloth still in his possession, it  suggests a corroboration of what is known from numerous other sources, that portions of relics were often removed in order to be shared with other churches and that what Baldwin had to send to Louis in 1241 was more likely a portion cut off before the shroud departed for Athens.⁵⁴  Indeed, if Baldwin was willing to part with the entire Crown of Thorns, which he might easily have retained, parting only with individual thorns that might be and were easily removed, each thorn of infinite monetary value, why should we suppose he would hesitate to part with the entire Shroud, if he had had it?

The Bull of 1247 also cedes to King Louis IX the “holy towel inserted in a frame” (sanctam  toellam tabule insertam), and so it seems also to document the departure from the imperial Pharos treasury of the Byzantine emperors of that object to which Nicholas Mesarites and Robert of Clari referred in 1201 and 1203 as the encased Edessa cloth bearing the face of Jesus.  It is indeed likely that by 1200 the object to which these texts refer might have been a mere copy of the face on the Edessa cloth.  This point was made in the most illuminating history of the Turin Shroud by Ian Wilson (1978).  Recall that although the imperial letter of 958 (Doc. IV) named a burial cloth, it was not until 1095 (Doc. VI) that the documents began to attest more regularly to a recognition of the burial cloth in the capital.  Both Mesarites and Clari appear to corroborate what the cumulative documents from the 6th to the 12th c. suggest: that the Edessa cloth was eventually unframed and discovered to hold an impression of the entire and bloodied body of Jesus.⁵⁵  That which came to known as the toella in tabula inserta would then and logically be a copy of Edessa’s Mandylion as it had appeared—i.e., the face only of Jesus—upon its arrival in Constantinople.