The Holy Shroud of Turin is one of the most mysterious objects in the world. For many Christians it’s the winding sheet in which Christ’s body was placed when it was removed from the sepulchre in which he was placed after his crucifixion. For others it’s just a fake.
The shroud, or ‘Sacra Sindone’, in Italian has even sprouted a new science called Sindology. A sindologist is a person who carries out research on this arcane object. There have been various tests carried out on the Sindone. One test involves dating the cloth which carries the impression of a tortured being with blood from a supposed crown of thorns, similar blood traces from the centre of his hands – presumably from the nails driven into him to hang him on the cross – and a spear mark between the ribs on the left side. Already here there is much discussion. A recent test dates the cloth from around 1200 AD. Other tests trace the herringbone weave pattern to a period between 500 BC and 200 AD. Other tests analyse vegetation pollen traces and place the cloth in the Middle East in terms of plant species. Then there’s the historical analysis: there’s no mention of the winding sheet before mediaeval times.
(The Sacra Sindone)
So what does the Roman Catholic church think about it all? It neither confirms the sindone’s authenticity nor does it deny it. Instead the church believes that the image of the face upon it is an aid to meditate upon the face of Christ. This is what many popes have confirmed. If the winding sheet helps in concentrating the mind on a being who has evidently suffered and been tortured in the manner of Christ himself then this is good enough.
(The Holy Face on the shroud)
However, a recent study (Casabianca, Tristan (May 2013) “The Shroud of Turin: A Historiographical Approach” – The Heythrop Journal) concludes that “that the probability of the Shroud of Turin being the real shroud of Jesus of Nazareth is very high”.
Actually it wasn’t until 1983 that the Holy Shroud became the property of the Roman Catholic Church when it was gifted to them by its previous owners, the Royal House of Savoy.
In 1997 the chapel in which the shroud was conserved was subject to a fire whose causes are still to this day unknown. Oddly, it was another fire in the Savoy Chapel of Chambéry where the shroud was kept (today the French region of Haute-Savoie once part of the kingdom of Piedmont but ceded to Frace in return for help in unifying Italy in 1861) in the sixteenth century which caused those prominent burn marks on each side of the shroud.
(The Sacra Sindone Chapel still under scaffolding last Thursday)
It has taken already twenty years for the Sacra Sindone chapel, situated behind the cathedral’s apse, to be restored. It is hoped, however, that Guarini’s masterpiece will be re-opened to the public by the end of this year. At the moment the shroud is temporarily kept in a chapel at the end of the cathedral’s left aisle where I saw its chest during my recent visit to Turin.
(Worshippers before the shroud last Thursday)
Occasionally the shroud is unravelled from this chest and ‘exposed’ to the public. This occurred in 2010 and we were keen to see this mysterious relic.
Here are some photos from our visit to see the Sindone seven years ago:
During my recent visit I had a look at the ‘Sacra Sindone’ museum in Turin which obviously does not hold the shroud but documents its history and research completed on it. There is a sculpture showing how the unknown person who many say was Jesus would have been positioned in the tomb with the winding sheet.
There’s the kind of loom the winding sheet would have been weaved on at Christ’s time:
There is the huge plate-camera used by Secondo Pia to take the first photographs of the shroud in 1898.
The museum is well-organised and draws one even further into the enigma of this mysterious object worthy of a Dan Brown thriller.
Like all devotional objects in religion, however, it’s not the object itself which is important but the power it has in making people think, or re-think, their ideas on transcendent experiences. There are so many things beyond our comprehension upon this planet and Turin’s highly shroud ranks high on that list.
If you want to know more there’s the well thought out Sindone Museum at the following site:
http://www.sindone.it/#band_en&LL=en