In 544 AD, in the city of Edessa, a folded burial
cloth bearing an image, believed to be of Jesus, was found above a gate
in the city's walls. We know from various
that the cloth was a
burial shroud with a faint full-body image of Jesus and bloodstains
positioned on the image. The image was variously described as a
reflection, produced by sweat and divinely wrought. There is even some
indication that the image was thought to be negative.
On August 15, 944 AD, the
was
forcibly transferred from Edessa to the Byzantine capital city of
Constantinople. It clearly was a burial cloth with a full image and
bloodstains. The following records are particularly useful in
developing an accurate picture of the cloth:
a sermon by Gregory, archdeacon and
referendarius of Hagia Sophia Cathedral given August 16, 944
a Greek ceremonial text written in 960
a text by Nicholas Mesarites, the overseer of
the imperial relic treasury in Constantinople in 1201
a letter by the crusader knight Robert de Clari
in 1203
Other documents have since been found in the
Vatican library and the University of Leiden, Netherlands, confirming
this impression. (The Codex Vossianus Latinus Q69 and Vatican Library
Codex 5696, p. 35.):
[Non tantum] faciei figuram sed
totius corporis figuram cernere poteris.
You can see [not only] the figure of
a face, but [also] the figure of the whole body.
Illustrations in an 1192 a codex, known as the
, show Jesus being prepared for burial and the
scene of the empty tomb. The drawing depicts several features consistent
with the Shroud of Turin: the unique herringbone twill, a specific
pattern of burn holes that antedate the much later fire in 1532 which
nearly destroyed the Shroud, Jesus depicted naked with his hands crossed
before him, hands with no visible thumbs.
In 1204, French and Venetian knights of the Fourth
Crusade besieged the city and on April 13 entered and looted the city.
The Edessa Image certainly seems to have been among the treasures taken
by the looters.
About a year after Constantinople was plundered,
Theodore Ducas Anglelos, in a letter to Pope Innocent III wrote: "The
Venetians partitioned the treasure of gold, silver and ivory, while the
French did the same with the relics of saints and the most sacred of
all, the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after His
death and before the resurrection."
Many sacred objects were preserved in
Venice, in France and elsewhere. In 1207, Nicholas d'Orrante, the abbot
of Casole and the Papal legate in Athens, wrote about relics taken from
Constantinople by French knights. Referring specifically to burial
cloths, he mentions seeing them "with our own eyes" in Athens.
After that time, the trail runs cold on the Image of
Edessa. In 1356, Geoffrey de Charny, a French knight and descendent of a
prominent knight of the Fourth Crusade, displayed a burial shroud that he
claims is the burial shroud of Christ. That shroud is now the Shroud of
Turin. It they are one in the same, if the Shroud of Turin is the Image
of Edessa -- and there is good reason to think so -- then no records
have been found to empirically link it to 1204. But there is some
evidence that the cloth may have been in Besancon, France prior to 1356.
