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Scavone Summary of Several Documents
Scavone Summary of Several Documents
To sum up the points made in this paper: a linen cloth or cloths described as the burial wrappings of Jesus are attested in many Constantinople documents from 944 to 1203, twice with his image if one counts Mesarites (Doc. XI), and several times described as bloodied. No record exists of the arrival of Jesus burial cloth in the capital, and no celebration such as accompanied the Edessa cloth in 944. Yet it was there. Judging from copious documents and artistic representations made in Constantinople and elsewhere from 944 to 1150, the Edessa towel always with the image of Jesus face may be identical with Jesus Shroud in folded form, enclosed in a case with face exposed. Before that, from at latest 544 to 944, this cloth was certainly in Edessa. If the Edessa cloth and Jesus purported shroud are indeed one and the same object, that assumed burial cloth may have a pedigree back at least to 544, and if the Abgar legend has any historical worth, to the 4th c. and even, accepting the descriptive evidence, to the very time of Christ. If the pieces of this elaborate puzzle truly fit as they seem to, the blood-stained burial cloth with faint unpainted image would have a documented history back to palaeochristianity and may in fact be the actual tomb wrapping of Jesus. The three documents which have been customarily adduced to prove the burial cloth to have been in Constantinople after the crusaders sack in 1204 are seen on examination of their contents and context not to do so. And in fact, one of them, the treatise of Nicholas of Otranto, supports its presence in Athens with Othon de La Roche, where the letter of Theodore of Epirus also places it in 1205. Scavone Introduction to Several Documents Narratio De Imagine Edessena 944 Symeon Magister 944 Gregory Referendarius 944 Letter Of Constantine VII 958 Liturgical Tractate CA. 960 Alexius I Comnenus English Pilgrim 1150 Nicholas Soemundarson 1157 William Of Tyre Nicholas Mesarites 1201 Antonius Of Novgorod Robert Of Clari 1203 Nicholas Mesarites 1207 Nicholas Of Otranto 1207 Theodore Angelus Letter 1205 Baldwin II: Golden Bull 1247 "
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