The Sudarium of Oviedo
The Sudarium of Oviedo, a smaller cloth napkin, was placed over the face and about the head of the same man whose blood stains are on the Shroud.
It was customary among Jews to cover the head or face of the dead out of respect while burial preparations were underway, particularly if there was damage or injury. In 1955, the Most Reverend Monsignor Guilio Ricci discovered similarities in the blood stain patterns on the Sudarium and the bloodstains on the Shroud. This suggested that both cloths had been used at some time to cover the same injured head at closely different times. Recent forensic pathology, blood chemistry analysis, and additional studies of congruent patterns in the stains support this supposition.
The
Sudarium has a very different history than the Shroud. The Sudarium has
been
kept in the Cathedral at Oviedo, Spain, since the middle of the eighth
century. Historical documents in the late Roman period and the early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 we can extract core elements of historical
certainty. We are reasonably sure that the Sudarium came
to Oviedo from Jerusalem and that the Sudarium probably dates to the first
century. Its journey to its present location began in 644 CE when Persians, under Chosroes
II, invaded Jerusalem and the Sudarium was moved out of the city
to safety. We are uncertain of its route to Spain. It
may have first been taken to Alexandria along with numerous other relics
(real or otherwise) and from there, in succeeding years, along the coast of North Africa ahead of advancing armies. Or it may have been taken by
a more direct sea route to Spain. We know that for about 75 years after
it arrived in Spain it was
kept in Toledo. Then in 718, to protect it from Moslem
Arab armies, which had invaded Spain only seven years earlier, it was moved northward
with fleeing Christians.
Oviedo became the capital of a northern enclave of the Spanish
peninsula -- what remained of Christian Spain -- in about 761 CE. It
was in Oviedo, that the Sudarium was stored for safe keeping. It has
been there since.
An Important Report
A 1999 report, "Recent Historical Investigations on the Sudarium of Oveido," published by Mark Guscin, a member of the multi-disciplined Investigation Team of the Centro Español de Sindonología and the British Society for the Turin Shroud, summarized the forensic findings to date. Here are some highlights of that report:
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"It seems to be a funeral cloth that was probably placed over the head of the corpse of an adult male of normal constitution. The man whose face the Sudarium covered had a beard, moustache and long hair, tied up at the nape of his neck into a ponytail."
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"The man was dead. The mechanism that formed the stains is incompatible with any kind of breathing movement."
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"the man was wounded before death with something that made his scalp bleed and produced wounds on his neck, shoulders and upper part of the back."
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"The man suffered a pulmonary oedema as a consequence of the terminal process. The main stains are one part blood and six parts fluid from the pulmonary oedema."
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"the only position compatible with the formation of the stains on the Oviedo cloth is both arms outstretched above the head and the feet in such a position as to make breathing very difficult, i.e. a position totally compatible with crucifixion. We can say that the man was wounded first (blood on the head, shoulders and back) and then 'crucified.'"
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"on reaching the destination, the body was placed face up and for unknown reasons, the cloth was taken off the head."
In summarizing the evidence, Guscin wrote:
There are many points of coincidence between all these points and the Shroud of Turin - the blood group, the way the corpse was tortured and died, and the macroscopic overlay of the stains on each cloth. This is especially notable in that the blood on the sudarium shed in life, as opposed to post mortem, corresponds exactly in blood group, blood type and surface area to those stains on the Shroud on the nape of the neck. If it is clear that the two cloths must have covered the same corpse, and this conclusion is inevitable from all the studies carried out up to date, and if the history of the sudarium can be trustworthily extended back beyond the fourteenth century, which is often referred to as the Shroud's first documented historical appearance, then this would take the Shroud back to at least the earliest dates of the sudarium's known history. The ark of relics and the sudarium have without any doubt at all been in Spain since the beginning of the seventh century, and the history recorded in various manuscripts from various times and geographical areas take it all the way back to Jerusalem in the first century. The importance of this for Shroud history cannot be overstressed.
© 2004 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York
