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The 'Face of Laon' - a glazed panel icon painted at Constantinople
between 1201 and 1204."
History of the Shoud of Turin
The "Face of Laon"
The "Face of Laon" icon in a church in Laon, France "is obviously copied from the Mandylion/Shroud, and its paleo-Slav inscription refers to the source as the 'Image of the Lord on cloth'."
- Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)
"Professor Grabar, one of the leading experts on icons, shows that copies [of the Mandylion] made after about 1260 were of the 'suspended' type, that is to say the head of Christ is shown on a cloth hanging free...Copies made before this time are not only rarer, and date from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, but show the cloth apparently stretched taut, with a fringe, and frequently with a curious trellis pattern as a background. The Sainte Face de Laon belongs to this earlier type of portraiture. The fringe and trellis design as on the Laon icon dates from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and is typical of the period of the Commenus Emperors of Constantinople, namely from about 1150 to 1200."
"A common feature of these early representations is the background color of the cloth, which is consistently ivory white, the natural color of linen..."
The face "ranges from a pale sepia to a rust-brown, sometimes slightly darker in shade than the coloring of the face on the Shroud, but otherwise virtually identical. In the case of the Sainte Face de Laon, a later artist has added small traces of color in certain areas, but Professor Grabar makes it clear that these were absent when the icon was originally painted."
- Noel Currer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail (1987)
"Do not be surprised if you find his [Christ's] face blackened and sunburnt, for those who dwell in temperate and cold climates and who live all the time in pleasant places, have fair, delicate skin, whereas those who are always in the fields have burnt, darkened skin. This is the case with the Sainte Face, bronzed by the heat of the sun, as the Song of Songs has it, Our Lord has worked in the field of this world for our redemption."
- Jacques Pantaléon, in a letter accompanying his gift of the icon to his sister, Abbess Sibylle (1249)
"It would appear that icons, like the Sainte Face de Laon and those at Spas Nereditsa and Gradac, which show the head of Christ against a trelliswork background, were painted from the Shroud, whereas the suspended-towel types were painted from the Mandylion."
- Noel Currer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail (1987)
The Veronica
"...The terms seems to have been a corruption of the words vera icon (true image)."
"Veronica, according to legend, was a pious woman of Jerusalem, who was so moved to pity at witnessing Jesus struggling with his cross to Golgotha that she wiped his face with her veil (or kerchief) and thereby obtained his portrait imprinted with his bloody sweat."
-Joe Nickell, Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1987)
The first reference to the Veronica was in 1011 when Pope Sergius IV consecrated an altar to the Sudarium in St Peter's. There were in fact a number of Veronicas, all of which were painted images.
"The Veronica tradition, which dates from the fourteenth century, derives from the Edessan one, which has been traced to an account (about 325) by Bishop Eusebius."
-Joe Nickell, Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1987)
"...In the Papal Jubilee Year of 1350, pilgrims flocked to Rome to see special expositions of the Veronica, a cloth reputedly imprinted with sweat and blood wiped from Jesus' face as he carried his cross along the Via Dolorosa. During the expositions, a beautiful Byzantine canopy was held over the Veronica. This showed Jesus laid out in death in the identical manner of the Shroud, and could have been the very source of inspiration for the hypothetical artist who created the Shroud image."
- Ian Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud (1986)
The Veronica was stolen by troops of the Emperor Charles V when they sacked Rome in 1527. There it was reportedly last seen when auctioned by drunken soldiers in a Roman pub.
Pope John VII. who reigned from 705 to 707, had an oratory consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. It was decorated with Byzantine mosaics were probably one of the first to show Jesus crucified "in a way that is public and official".
"It is proof that by the beginning of the VIIIth century all trace of repugnance had disappeared: Christ's Passion was solemnly represented by a mosaic for an oratory."
where great crowds of pilgrims would congregate at Christmas time each year.
"John VII`s oratory housed a relic known as the 'Veil of Veronica'. A copy on silk was made of this relic during the pontificate of Gregory XV (1621 - 1623) scarcely twenty years after this sacred relic had been translated to Saint Peter`s Basilica on 21 March 1606. The silk copy is now kept in the sacristy of the Gesu in Rome, and it plainly shows an affinity with the Holy Face on the Holy Shroud making it possible to state that the 'Veil of Veronica' was a copy of this Holy Face. For a thousand years it was the palladium, the aegis of the Holy City. Even up the to the last century it was still an object of devotion in Rome."
- Georges de Nantes, "The Holy Shroud - Evidence of a scientific forgery against The Holy Shroud" (1991)
No consistent picture of the Veronica exists. Earlier versions show a disembodied head resembling the head on the Shroud of Turin. 13th Century copies and descriptions, however, are of the torso of Christ from the waist upwards.
Famous Medieval Shrouds
- Ian Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud (1986)
At Easter Sunday morning priests would play the roles of the angels guarding Jesus' tomb and the three Mary's. The Mary's would emerge from the sepulchre and hold up the shroud to demonstrate that the Lord had risen, then lay the cloth upon the altar.
"...Something very like the Turin Shroud could have been created by an artist without the slightest fraudulent intent, the artist's concern being solely to represent the Passion drama in the cloth's stains in the most graphic and instructive form. Such an intention for the Shroud might even explain the mysterious seamed side strip in the cloth, possibly the vestiges of a strengthening for the displaying the cloth lengthwise from a long pole."
"Circa 1025 'Threnos' or Lamentation scenes appear in art about this time, showing for the first time Christ laid out in death in the attitude visible on the Shroud. Also in these scenes a large cloth is depicted, consistent with the full size of the Shroud - whereas hitherto burials had been depicted with Christ wrapped 'mummy' style."
- Ian Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud (1986)
Some of the more famous medieval shrouds include:
Shroud of Charlemagne: Given by Charles the Bold in 877 to the church of St Cornelius at Compiégne, the shroud was destroyed during the French revolution.
Shroud of Cadouin: First displayed 1115, this napkin was kept at Cistercian abbey at Cadouin in Périgord. It was destroyed in 1933 when it was found to be of 10th century Egyptian manufacture with quotations from the Koran.
Shroud of Besançon: First reported in 1349, it disappeared when the cathedral of Besançon was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. The shroud was a painted copy (on one side only) and was destroyed with the consent of the clergy during the French revolution
Besides the Shroud of Turin, other surviving Shroud relics include the Sudarium Christi of Andechs in Bavaria and the Sudarium Christi at Oviedo in Spain.
"According to the Gospel of John, Jesus left not just his shroud behind in the tomb but also a 'napkin', which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself.' In a silvered cedar chest in the Cathedral of Oviedo, in Spain, there is a cloth, measuring slightly less than 2 ft. by 3 ft., that some believe to be the napkin. Records say the Cloth of Oviedo was spirited out of Jerusalem around 614 when the city was attacked by Persia, then traveled through North Africa to Oviedo, where it has been housed since 1113. No image is visible on the cloth, but researchers Alan and Mary Whanger have concluded that it bears a number of bloodstains that correspond to similar stains on the Shroud of Turin, suggesting the two cloths touched the same head."
- Reported by Andrea Dorfman /New York and Greg Burke and Martin Penner /RomeTime Magazine, April 20, 1998 Vol. 151 No. 15
"...A fragment has been cut off the Turin Shroud, and in 1247, Emperor Baldwin II ceded to King Louis IX 'Partem sudarii quo involutum fuit corpus ejus (scilicet Domini Jesu Christi) in sepulcro'. Baldwin's letter to Louis does not use the usual formula 'de sindone' but the word 'partem', suggesting the he was sending only a portion of the Shroud. In addition to the Pamplona portion, he also gave pieces to Archbishop John of Toledo ('Pretiosa particula de sindone'), and in 1267 he exchanged a portion of the 'sudario salvatoris' for the body of Mary Magdalene with the Abbey of Vézelay. In December 1269, he sent Bishop Guy de la Tour of Clermont a relic of the 'sudarium'."
- Noel Currer-Briggs, Shroud Mafia - The Creation of a Relic? (1995)
Kersten and Gruber, (The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection ) have investigated two additional cloth relics. A Sudarium at Halberstadt cathedral was found to be a cotton crepe sack (probably meant to fit over a bishop's crosier) which bears to similarity to the Shroud of Turin.
"Cloths in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped" rest in a crystal reliquary in Toledo cathedral. It was not said that they were from the tomb of Jesus, however, and no mention is made that they were a gift of St. Louis when he transferred relic treasures from Constantinople to Toledo in 1248.
"Altogether there were more than forty rival claimants for the title of 'Holy Shroud' - and the claims of every one of them have been minutely examined by historians. Yet in only one case - that of an isolated reference dating from 1203 - is there any possibility that it might have been the Litey or Turin Shroud in an earlier guise. In all the other cases, the dimensions are completely different and, most significantly of all, in no instance (except in that 1203 reference) is there any mention of a miraculous image. In other words, alleged shrouds of Jesus may have been relatively thick on the ground, but in almost all cases they were blank pieces of cloth."
- Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled (1994)
Sydoines in Constantinople
In 1171 Almaric, the last Christian King of Jerusalem visited in father-in-law, Emperor Manuel 1 Commenus of Constantinople. William, Archbishop of Tyre was with the party and "tells us that the emperor showed his son-in-law all the most secret parts of the palace, the sanctuaries it contained, the basilicas and their treasures."
- Noel Currer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail (1987)
"Nothing was hidden. Nothing sacred which had been placed in the hidden places of the sacred rooms from the time of the blessed Emperors Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian but was familiarly revealed to the king and his companions."
The relics included the "most precious evidence of the Passion of Our Lord, namely the cross, nails, lance, sponge, reed, crown of thorns, sindon (that is the cloth in which He was wrapped) and the sandals...."
- William of Tyre
"...An illustration of the burial of Jesus in the Hungarian Pray manuscript, firmly dated in the early 1190s, depicts him with hands folded exactly as on the Turin Shroud; on the same page a drawing of the Resurrection clearly bears a configuration of four tiny circles which perfectly reproduce four apparent 'poker holes' on the Turin Shroud. A drawing of the Shroud from the year 1516 (prior to the well documented fire of 1532 which caused the major burn marks still visible on the Shroud) in Lierre, Belgium also bears this very configuration."
- Professor Daniel C. Scavone, "Book Review of The Turin Shroud: In Whose Image?"
"There was another church which was called My Lady Saint Mary of Blachernae, where there was the sydoines in which our Lord had been wrapped, which every [Good?] Friday, raised itself upright, so that one could see the features of our Lord on it, and no one, either Greek or French, ever knew what became of this sydoineswhen the city was taken."
- Robert de Clari in his account of the sack of Constantinople (1203-1204)
"With the minor exception of a mysterious figure-imprinted sydoine mentioned by a crusader in Constantinople in 1203, all early references to preserved shrouds of Jesus make no mention of any (all-important) imprint, and can generally be traced to other, rival relics."
- Ian Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud (1986)
"In April last year a crusading army, having falsely set out to liberate the Holy Land, instead laid waste the city of Constantine. During the sack troops of Venice and France looted even the holy sanctuaries. The Venetians partitioned the treasures of gold, silver and ivory, while the French did the same with the relics of the saints and, 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, in France and in other places, the sacred linen in Athens. So many spoils and sacred objects should not be taken contrary to all human and divine laws, nevertheless in your name in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, albeit against your will, the barbarians of our age have done just that."
- Theodore Ducas Angelos to Pope Innocent III (1 August 1205)
"After the sack of Constantinople the traffic in relics became such a scandal that a formal decree was issued by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 forbidding such transactions as sacrilegious and simoniacal."
- Noel Currer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail (1987)
The Appearance of the Shroud of Turin
"In...1348 the deadly plague broke out....Whether through the operation of the heavenly bodies or because of our own iniquities, which the just wrath of God sought to correct, the plague had arisen in he East some years before, causing the death of countless human beings...Neither knowledge nor human foresight availed against it....Nor did humble supplications serve."
- Giovanni Bocaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (1474?)
"Against this background grew the need to assuage the wrath of God with the help of the veneration of the relics of Christ, of the apostles and of the saints. It is therefore no accident that the Shroud should have come into prominence at precisely this juncture of human affairs."
- Noek Curer-Briggs, Shroud Mafia - The Creation of a Relic
A "source that may have inspired the creation of an image-bearing shroud consisted of liturgical cloths, termed epitaphioi, which were symbolic shrouds. From the thirteenth century (the century before the shroud of Turin's first known appearance), we begin to find these ceremonial shrouds bearing full-length embroidered images of Christ's body in the now-conventional crossed-hands pose."
"In 1350 (a few years prior to the shroud's sudden appearance at Lirey), thousands of pilgrims had been atracted to an exhibition in Rome of the Holy Veronica."
-Joe Nickell, Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1987)
"Artists now showed copious bleeding in their renderings of the crucifixion where previously depiction of Christ's blood was restrained or absent altogether."
"Mystics...attracted much attention by their lurid and graphic visions of how Christ died, a popular preoccupation intensified by the fact that at this time the Black death was sweeping Europe. The climate was therefore exactly right for the appearance of such a macabrely detailed relic of the Passion as the Shroud."
- Ian Wilson, The Shroud of Turin - The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ? (1978)
"The psychologist Emma Jung (1960) has worked out what deep inner effect a blood-relic of Jesus would have had on the people of the middle ages. The 'soul', or the divinity of Christ would have been seen in his blood. Unlimited healing powers would be ascribed to it, and anyone who saw it would have direct knowledge of God. One outcome of this idea was the rapidly-growing veneration of the divine heart of Jesus, the bleeding heart, and also the wounds from which the blood had flowed: a cult which has not changed in the Catholic church even today."
- Johannes and Peter Fiebag, The Discovery of the Grail, translated from the German by George Sassoon
A letter from a bishop to Pope Clement VII in 1389 complained about a scandal uncovered in his diocese at the small collegiate church of Lirey, France (12 miles from Troyes). The church canons had
"...falsely and deceitfully, being consumed with the passion of avarice and not from any motive of devotion but only of gain, procured for their church a certain cloth cunningly painted, upon which by clever sleight of hand was depicted the twofold image of one man, that is to say the back and front, they falsely declaring and pretending that this was the actual Shroud in which our Savior Jesus Christ was enfolded in the tomb."
- Pierre d'Arcis to Pope Clement VII
"In 1389, supposed year of his memo, his Troyes cathedral's roof caved and it had to be closed; expenses demanded a draw to bring in the pilgrims and their donations people accused him of wanting it for himself, as his own memo states."
- Professor Daniel C. Scavone, "Book Review of The Turin Shroud: In Whose Image?"
Evidently the cloth has first been exhibited at Lirey some thirty years early by Bishop Henri de Poitiers.
"Eventually, after diligent inquiry and examination, he [Bishop Henri de Poitiers] discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it, to wit, that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously wrought or bestowed."
- Pierre d'Arcis to Pope Clement VII
"...Three separate papal bulls recite the fact that Geoffrey de Charny placed 'the Shroud of Our Lord Jesus Christ...bearing the effigy of our Savior' in the church of Lirey. Clearly the Shroud was in the church at Lirey before Geoffrey died in September 1356. Some type of ceremony, perhaps a dedicatory service, took place early in 1356, because on May 28, 1356, Henri de Poitiers, bishop of Troyes, sent Geoffrey a letter of praise and approval about the ceremony."
- Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)
"The family who owned the church and the cloth in Lirey were the De Charnys, the most prominent member being Geoffrey de Charny, who founded the Lirey church in 1353 and was killed at the battle of Poitiers three years later. In the nineteenth century was found in the Seine a fourteenth-century pilgrim's amulet which, although damaged, shows an exposition of what certainly looks like the present-day Shroud. Also clearly visible on the amulet are shields with the arms of Geoffrey de Charny and his wife, Jeanne de Vergy, flanking a roundel showing Christ's empty tomb.
"The justice of Bishop d'Arcis' arguments is further reinforced by documents of Geoffrey de Charny's son [Geoffrey II] which consistently refers to the relic not as the real burial cloth of Jesus, but only as a 'likeness or representation', a formula repeated by Geoffrey II's daughter, Margaret de Charny, and her husband Humbert de Villersexel, who, in the early-fifteenth century, kept the Shroud at St. Hippolyte sur Doubs.
The elderly Margaret exhibited the Shroud to vast crowds in Liége, Belgium. On her way, she "took the Shroud to Hainault, arriving at Chimay, according to a contemporary source (Cornelius Zantvliet, a Benedictine monk of Saint-Jacques at Liège, who died in 1462), in the summer of 1449 with a shroud (linteum) in her luggage, on which was marvelously painted (miro artificio depicta) in the form of the body of Christ with the precise outlines (lineamintis) of his limbs, the wounds in his side, hands and feet tinged with blood as if the wounds had been inflicted quite recently."
- Noek Curer-Briggs, Shroud Mafia - The Creation of a Relic
"It was this Margaret who, in 1453, by then widowed and childless, ceded the Shroud to Duke Louis of Savoy, in the hands of whose descendants the Shroud has been preserved ever since, until willed to the Vatican upon the death of Umberto of Savoy in 1983. Intriguingly, only with this change to more illustrious ownership did the Shroud begin to lose its fraudulent associations, and with remarkable rapidity. As early as 1464 the future Pope Sixtus IV, Francesco della Rovere, wrote of it as 'colored with the blood of Christ'. Just over forty years later, Sixtus' nephew"
- Ian Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud (1986)
"The two families that have owned the (or a) Shroud, the de Charny's and Savoys, besides the la Roche and Vergy houses, into which the de Charnys married, had close links before, during and after the time when the Litey Shroud appeared. The most significant link was the fact that the de Charnys were related to the House of Savoy, to which the Shroud was passed."
- Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled (1994)
The Templar/Priory of Sion Connection
Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas theorize that the image on the shroud is that of the tortured body of the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, some months before his execution in 1307.
"The long nose, the hair beyond shoulder length with a center parting, the full beard that forked at its base and the fit-looking six-foot frame all perfectly match the known image of the last Grand Master of the Nights Templar."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
Even if the image on the Shroud was not that of de Molay, Templar connections figure heavily in the story of the Shroud. Both Geoffrey de Charny and his wife, Jeanne de Vergy had grandfathers who were seneschals (sheriffs) who had been ordered by Philip IV to round up Templars within their districts. Of the 16 French knights to escape Philips purge, "most were Burgundians and kinsmen of each other or of the de Charny, de Joinville and de Vergy families."
- Noel Currer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail (1987)
"The same families all had close connections with the leadership of the Templars, especially during the final dramatic years of the Order's official existence. For example, not only was Geoffrey de Charny the nephew of the Preceptor or overseer of Normandy, but was also second cousin to Jacques de Molay's predecessor as Grand Master, Guillaume de Beaujeu, who was one of the Mont St Jean family [other members of the Charnys from a nearby village]."
"A century before the demise of the Templars, and a century and a half before the appearance of the Litey Shroud, the same families had also held key positions in the Fourth crusade, in which the sydoine disappeared."
- Ian Wilson, The Mysterious Shroud (1986)
"The Templars were prominent, if not dominant, in the Fourth Crusade, participating in the looting of Constantinople. In the weeks preceding the breaching of the city's walls, by the crusaders, they had been unwelcome guests roaming the city, and would have been well aware of the great prize, the Shroud, that had been seen by de Clari and doubtless many others, especially the leaders."
- Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)
The de Charnys and two closely related families, the Joinvilles and the Briennes, hail mainly from the regions of Burgundy and Champagne, France. "In the early thirteenth century the House of Brienne had held the title of King of Jerusalem, a title which, according to the Priory of Sion, indicated that they were supposedly of the Merovingian descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and which eventually came down to Anne de Lusignan, wife of Louis, Duke of Savoy."
"Between the supposed transfer of the relic from Margaret de Charny in 1453 and a display by Duchess Bianca of Savoy on Good Friday 1494, there are no records of it having been displayed or even seen - a gap of just over 40 years."
Giovanni Battista Cibo ruled as Pope from 1484 to 1492, "one of the weakest and most ineffectual of all the fifteenth-century popes....Giovanni said that Leonardo [da Vinci] faked the Shroud in 1492...just two years before the Shroud emerged from its forty-year period of obscurity."
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"Leonardo's patrons in later life had dynastic connections with the House of Savoy. During his troubled period in Rome around 1515, when Lorenzo de Medici's son was Pope Leo X, Leonardo's protector and patron was another of Lorenzo's sons, Giuliano, who was, incidentally, obsessed with alchemy. This young man married a daughter of the Duke of Savoy. Leonardo's last patron, Francis I of France, was the son of Louise of Savoy, and he married on of his own daughters to Duke Emmanuel Philibert, who brought the Shroud to Turin."
"We know that at some time in the late 1490's or early 1490s (the exact year is not known) he took a trip to Savoy. His visit is mentioned in his notebooks dating from the later years of the 1490s, in which he reminisces about a waterfall and lake that he saw there. The reason for his trip is not recorded. The lake in question, however, is near Geneva, which is less than 80 km form Chambéry, capital of Savoy, where the Lirey Shroud was - it is believed - then kept."
- Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled (1994)
Leonardo was a meticulous note taker and would probably have recorded details of his work on the Shroud. A third of all Leonardo's known notebooks have been lost, however, and one of them disappeared into the Savoy's private library.
"Within a few months of taking office in 1506" Giuliano della Rovere, Pope Julilus II, "began to promote the Shroud, granting the church at Chambéry [where the Shroud was kept] the title Sainte Chapelle - a rare privilege, as this had only been given once before to St Louis' famous chapel of relics in Paris - and assigning the Shroud its own feast day [4 May]."
"In 1578 the Shroud was transferred to the Cathedral at Turin - which is dedicated to St John the Baptist...Turin was the new capital of the Savoy lands, and the Shroud was to remain there except for the years of World War II..."
- Lynn Picknett & Clive Prince, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image? The Shocking Truth Unveiled (1994)
"...Leonardo as author of the Shroud draws strength from the science of radiocarbon (C14) dating, which in 1988 proclaimed, with 95% certainty, that the Shroud was produced in the late Middle Ages between 1260 and 1390. Sadly for the premise of this book, Leonardo was not born until 1452 (died 1519). The C14 labs, however, also reinforce the message of confidence in their dates by adding that they are 99.9% certain the Shroud was produced between 1000 and 1500, making it chronologically possible for Leonardo to have made
it.
"The Leonardo connection loses virtually its entire scientific underpinning,however, when one notices that the labs are thus only about 5% certain of the extended time span and only 2.5% certain the Shroud could be as late as 1500....Since 1988, the only doubts about these late radiocarbon dates for the Shroud are pointing to a much earlier time, and not in the chronological direction needed by Picknett and Prince."
- Professor Daniel C. Scavone, "Book Review of The Turin Shroud: In Whose Image?"
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