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:
I first visited Turin many years ago and fell in love with a city which, in so many ways, breaks the mould of the traveller’s idea of what an Italian town is supposed to look like. Here are some photos from that distant past that I took on my ‘Brownie’ camera:
There is no tangle of mediaeval streets here, there are no steep hill-top castles and there is no outstanding renaissance church or palace. There are no special flag-twirling festivals or pageants for tourists. Instead, the visitor is presented with a city that is essentially the creation of the age of the enlightenment. The wonderfully restrained eighteenth century houses, the miles of porticoes to protect one not only from the rain but from the often scorching summer sun, the glamour of its fine baroque churches, not run wild like they are in Rome but built according to highly rational principles by such great architects as Guarini and Juvarra (who also designed Lucca’s own town hall in Piazza Napoleone) – and all set in a grid street system ranging in width from narrow streets to tree-lined boulevards wider and finer than even those that grace Paris – are seductive and makes one want to live here.
This is what greeted me on my way from the station to my hotel room (it was actually a flat..).
My flat was situated in an attractive little street (Sant’Agostino) minutes from Turin’s great sights like the Royal Palace, Palazzo Madama (the Lady’s palace) and the cathedral. It dated from the seventeenth century and like the majority of apartments in Turin had a sweet little inner courtyard adorned with greenery.
The food and drink in this city are superlative: Turin is the birthplace of the ubiquitous aperitivo, the inventor of the Gianduiotto chocolate, the maker of some of the best ice-creams in Italy, the home of amaretti and Savoyard biscuits, grissini, those long bread-sticks now even gracing the shelves of UK supermarkets, marrons glacé, and zabaglione. As for main courses who could depart from Turin without tasting its fritto misto alla piedmontese which is an amazing combination of a variety of meats, offal, fruit and sweets cooked in olive oil?
Since making Italy my home I’ve been to Turin three times, all for largely religious reasons. For Turin, besides, being a major centre of enlightened philosophy and political thought, (after all it was from Turin that the idea of a unified Italy first took flight), is also a focus of nineteenth century pietism and especially of ‘social saints.’ These are saints who are famous not just for their miracles but for having a mission of improving the living conditions of people in an age when welfare, hospitals and rehabilitation centres were rarely encountered.
Among these saints the most noted are:
Saint Giuseppe Benedetto Cottolengo (1786 – 1842) founder of the ‘Piccola casa Della Divina Provvidenza’, for the terminally ill and which, still today relies entirely on voluntary contributions.
Saint Giovanni Bosco (1815 – 1888) founder of the Salesian order which is dedicated to the education and work-placement of young people.
The ideas of these ‘modern’ saints have spread wide and far. For example, at the college I used to work in London I had a colleague who was particularly involved in voluntary activities with the Salesians.
The concept of a social saint has, of course, continued to this day. Mother of Teresa of Calcutta, who was made a saint, last year, is a prime example of this. These people made others rethink their universe of ideas, were truly charismatic in the positive sense of the word and rightly left their area of the world a better place.
In 2010 we visited Turin to view the ‘Sacra Sindone’ or holy shroud which was unravelled from its chest and placed on view for all faithful (or faithless) to view.
(Worshippers at the Holy Shroud in the cathedral yesterday)
In 2011 we returned to see probably the world’s finest Egyptian museum with its new displays. Since ancient Egypt was centrered on the cult of Isis and Osiris, which several people say has become transmuted into Christianity, that visit could also be said to be religious.
The most recent visit, which was spread over the past couple of days, was definitely for a religious occasion. It was, in fact, the funeral of an acquired cousin, Paolo Osiride Ferrero, the son of the brother of my Italian grandmother. (Note the amalgam of Christian and Egyptian names and the surname Ferrero also given to the manufacturer of some of the most exquisite chocolates in the world. Who hasn’t tasted a Ferrero-Rocher?)
I remember my great uncle (who was a Ferrero sales representative) praising his son to one of his clients: the son’s intelligence, musical qualities, firm Christian convictions, generosity and personality. ‘Why hasn’t Paolo found a wife then?’ asked the client. ‘There is just one snag’, replied the great uncle. ‘He was struck down by polio while still in the cradle and can only move around with callipers and crutches.’ ‘Ah well’, replied the client, ‘that makes all the difference, doesn’t it?’
For Paolo there was no difference. Or if there was it was in the eye of the beholder. Italy at that time had very few provisions for disabled people or, as is better put, people in difficulties. Persons like Paolo were brought up in special institutions, made to feel as if they were somehow separate from others, almost made to feel guilty for their difference. Accessibility or, as the Italians like to phrase, ‘architecture without barriers’, was not even considered in the design of new buildings. Paolo changed all that. He did not merely campaign for greater ease of access for all the inhabitants of Turin, no matter whether they had difficulties in walking, seeing or any other of the impedimenta which we all, of the human race, suffer from in varying degrees. He changed people’s minds about the whole area of human difficulties. As we are all, metaphorically for some, religiously for others, ‘sons of God’, such prejudices as racism, and sexism once used to spread to disability. The key word here is integration and where I worked in the UK I too helped to integrate ‘special needs’ students within the wider social framework of a college of further education.
Although the work is far from being completed in Italy many visitors to this country will have noticed such features as newer trains and buses with platform level opening doors (here, too, I have a friend, John Wagstaff, who has been instrumental in improving disabled access to London’s public transport), special tactile paving for those whose sight is poor or doesn’t even exist, lifts wide enough to take wheel chairs and generally better accessibility to the wonders of Italy (often difficult because so many of its buildings are historic and have particular conservation rules to follow) and many other examples of breaking down architectural barriers. Indeed, one of the things our last mayor, Massimo Betti, did in this area was to provide access for all to Bagni di Lucca’s town hall. (See my post on that at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/bagni-di-luccas-town-hall-is-now-open-to-all/ )
Apart from being a forthright and tough campaigner for equal rights in accessibility to all Paolo was a gifted musician on the piano and the accordion. He was a fine tenor and part of RAI Turin’s choir for many years and also taught music in the city’s secondary schools. As for his physical disability, that did not stop him from marrying a lovely lady and becoming father and grandfather to a growing family.
As befitted the funeral service in celebration of the life of Paolo, Turin’s cathedral (the only renaissance building in the city, incidentally) was packed with family, friends and representatives from the voluntary organisations, in particular the red-cross service the city mayor and presiding over the ceremony all the archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia.
A group of musicians playing flute, viola, cello, guitar and keyboard and with a gorgeous soprano provided some melting music, Paolo’s great love:
Rete sette TV station was also there. You can see their feature on the funeral at
Truly Paolo was one of the same league as Turin’s social saints as his brother stated in his farewell speech. It was a very dignified send-off from an energetic campaigner for equal rights and I was glad to have made it there to meet up with relatives I’d either not met for a long time or never met at all. And all this in a most beautiful city with so much to offer in the way of elegance, hospitality and culture.
After the service I took the opportunity to climb to the top of the Duomo’s bell tower completed largely by Juvarra in the 1720’s.
It was truly worth climbing up the two hundred odd rather steep and rather vertigo-inducing steps to enjoy the wonderful views of this magnificent Turin cradled between the snowy alps, the hills of Asti and traversed by that longest of Italian rivers, the Po.
