NOTES      

48  The fact of this shipment encouraged Riant Dépouilles (n. 2) 43 and 39f, to think that Benedict might even have been a successor to Garnier de Trainel, Bishop of Troyes, and Nivelon de Cherisy, Bishop of Soissons, as officially designated overseer of the relics of the imperial treasury.  The documents, however, which Riant cites for Garnier (37, n. 5) and for Nivelon (38, n. 2) are definitive by comparison.  Many other individuals shipped consignments of relics to Europe, but it was the function of the official overseers to receive requests, mete out fragments of relics, and authenticate them.

49  N. 46.

50  See n. 46.  The present interpretation takes his neuter plural relative pronoun que / ?τιvα to refer only to fascia /σπάργαvα.                                     

51  (Engl. transl. by the present writer.)  Pasquale Rinaldi, "Un documento probante sulla localizzazione in Atene della Santa Sindone dopo il sacheggio de Costantinopoli," in Coppini (supra n. 30) 109‑113.  The letter was rediscovered in the archive of the Abbey of St. Caterina a Formiello, Naples: folio CXXVI of the Chartularium Culisanense, originating in 1290, a copy of which came to the Naples as a result of close political ties with the imperial Angelus-Comnenus family from 1481 on.  The Greek original had been lost, but a Latin translation was available to Rinaldi.  There the wording was linteum quo post mortem et ante Resurrectionem noster Dominus J. C. involutus est).  A question remains as to the identification of Nicholas of Otranto's plural fascia/spargana and Theodore's singular linteum.

            In a personal correspondence, Karlheinz Dietz of the Universität Würzburg has doubted the authenticity of this letter on the basis of the use of the name Angelos by the despots of Epirus, and it is true that Doukas was the more frequent name associated with this family. Dietz wonders also, and quite properly, what other evidence exists for Theodore's presence in Rome in 1205.  It may be replied that the name may have helped Theodore gain an entrée to the concerned pope in order to deliver personally his complaint about the abuses of his country by the Latin knights. Two of the Greek emperors displaced during the Fourth Crusade in 1203-1204 were Isaac II Angelos and Alexius III Angelos.  Thus this name would be recognized and respected by the pope.  We know from Greek writers such as Nicetas Choniates and Crusader Gunther of Alsatian Pairis, and even from the letters of Innocent III that the men of the Fourth Crusade were ruthless pillagers of gold and relics.  See Robert Lee Wolfe, “The Organization of the Latin Patriarchate or Constantinople, 1204-1261.” Traditio 6 (1948), 34 and n. 2).  Wolfe and Hazard (op. cit.) have indexed Theodore “Ducas” as Theodore Angelus Comnenus and the rulers of Epirus as Angelus Comnenus (865 and 816 respectively).  As Mesarites (n. 40 above), so this Theodore also became an ally of Theodore Lascaris, Byzantine ruler-in-exile of Nicaea (ibid. 210).

52  Rev. Paul de Gail, S.J., Histoire religieuse du linceul du Christ de Jérusalem á Turin(Paris:ÉditionsFrance‑Empire1973)100‑11.

53  Riant, Exuviae (n. 2) II. 133‑35:  partem sudarii quo involutum fuit corpus eius in sepulchro. Note the vagueness of terminology that continues to haunt this investigation: here sudarium is made synonymous with sindon.

54  Riant. Exuviae, I.20 and II.67‑227 passim.

55  Wilson (n. 9) 133‑35.

56  For the Templars, see Wilson (supra, n. 9); for Besançon, see Rinaldi (n. 51) and Daniel C. Scavone, "The Shroud of Turin from 1204 to 1355," in Alpha and Omega: Scholarship in Honor of George Szemler (Chicago: Ares Press 1993);  for the Sainte Chapelle, see Rev. A. M. Dubarle, "La Premiere Captivitè de Geoffroy de Charny & l'Acquisition du Linceul," Montre-nous ton Visage 8, 1992, 6-18 and Hilda Lehnen, "A propos du Mandilion," Soudarion (Bruges, 1991).