The Templars and the Shroud of Christ

by Barbara Frale

  Most recent Templar research add the confirmation that in some regions of southern France a full-figure portrait of a man on a linen sheet was offered to the brethren’s adoration. The characteristics of this image on cloth that the Templars venerated in south France (full-scale life-sized body, reddish colour, ill-defined outline) seem in effect to recall nothing so much as the shape of the Turin Shroud. So many hints furthermore converge to indicate that the Shroud left a very strong imprint in the religious sensitivities of these warrior monks, and this is hardly surprising; according to science, the relic has some decidedly unique features, which it is not exaggerated to call stunning.

  From the amphoras of Qumran to the nuns of Chambéry

  The shroud is a linen artifact that, before the restoration of 2002, was made of pieces of material from cloths of different ages, styles, weaving techniques; to use an effective image, it was a patchwork quilt. As a whole, it is 4.36 metres long and 1.11 metres wide, but this data is in the nature of an average, which can vary by several centimetres if the cloth is stretched: for the linen is very yielding, due to its great age; it is crossed by the marks – never, at this point, to be removed again – of some folds that tell us how it was stored in certain stages of its history, and in time it has grown so thin as to be almost worn through because of the countless manipulations and even misfortunes it has endured. It has been suggested that whoever cut the stuff did so on the basis of a definite and commonly used unit of measurement, so that the cloth must have had a length equal to a multiple of this unit. The only such unit known that gives any sort of result is the Syrian cubit, used in the ancient Middle East, in whose terms the cloth is eight cubits long and two cubits wide.[93]

  During its frequent obstentions to the faithful, the sheet was opened and hanged by pegs; it would hang in this pose for days, remaining stretched, touched by numerous hands, rubbed with many objects that became relics as soon as they touched it, sometimes even kissed. To prevent the linen from tearing under so much mechanical stress, in 1534 the original stuff was sewed on to another cloth of Dutch linen to make it thicker; then the margin was covered by a border in turquoise silk that allowed it to be handled freely without further touching the ancient material. At various times yet to be determined, there have been several minor repairs with fragments of other linen at points where the weave was broken by holes of various sizes; where the cloth was in danger of tearing, it was mended by the kind of artistic mending once used for precious lace, that is sewn with the same kind of thread by hands so expert that the most recent repairs are worked into warp and woof to the point of being almost invisible.

  The ancient cloth is made of linen fibre worked according to a fairly complex technique that demanded the contemporary use of two spools instead of the more common one; as a result, the fibres show a counterclockwise twisting called “Z-shaped torsion”. It was woven on a four-pedal craftsman’s frame, using the so-called chevrons or fishbone technique, and a knot called “3-1” because the thread goes three times under the woof and only once over. Each square centimetre of the Shroud has 40 threads and weighs on average 23 grams. The short sides have no selvage, the strip of cloth that stands at the start and end of every piece and has a special structure designed to prevent the stuff from unweaving itself when manhandled: this shows that it was cut from a longer roll of cloth.

  Z-shaped torsion, fishbone technique and 3-1 knots belong to very ancient techniques of cloth-making and can be found in several artifacts from pre-Roman, Roman and mediaeval origin. The fishbone style is found in middle-eastern weaves from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, highly expensive materials meant for decorative purposes (pillow covers and embroidered borders): for that technique creates a stuff which reflects light differently according to the position from which the eye looks at it. There is a certain innate luminousness in linen cloth, and in the case of this particular work the superimposition of threads creates a design of repeated V-shapes in relief alternating with V-shapes in depression; that is, the weave has a bright-opaque variation effect that reminds us of certain ancient brocades with simple geometric designs. The German scholar Maria Luisa Rigato has recently confirmed the opinion already stated by other experts in ancient cloths, that the Shroud’s stuff belongs to an expensive and not at all commonplace kind.[94]

  It is a curious feature of the Shroud that it contains no trace whatever of wool fibre, a strange fact when you consider that it was by some distance the most widely used thread and that normally frames were used to weave every kind of thread; its fibres however include traces of cotton from the bush variety Gossypium herbaceum, the only one cultivated in the Middle East during antiquity, before the discovery of America allowed us to bring in all from the New World all the other varieties we now know. The cotton fibres are from other weaves woven on the same frame before the cloth of the Shroud was started, and which remained stuck to the machine and eventually ended up woven into the linen cloth. The total lack of wool suggests that that particular frame, for some special reason, had never used wool at all; now, the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament (22, 11) includes a norm that forbids weaving wool and linen together, because the mix of the two would produce ritual impurity, so it has reasonably been concluded that the frame had belonged to members of the Jewish religion, who did not violate the rule and made what their culture designated as a pure cloth.[95]

  Besides the cotton fibre, the oldest weave also contains a large number of diverse materials, traces of objects it must have met in its long story: pollens from various vegetables, spores and the remains of insect bodies caught in the weave as it was left to weather itself in the open, wax, traces of aloe and myrrh, dye particles, red and blue silk once used to wrap it, ink and powders. Traces of pigments found include ochre, Venetian red, and vermilion, along with proteins that once were used to fix and dissolve colour dye powders; they are present on the cloth in trace amounts, due to the fact that painted copies were rested on the Shroud to make them become relics. In 1973, the criminologist Max Frei carried out a study using the forensic science techniques in use among the scientific squad of the Swiss police, and identified traces of pollen belonging to 58 vegetable species originating from the Middle East, of which some were found in the Dead Sea area and in Jerusalem. Traces have also been found of at least 28 species of flowers laid on the body, most of which grow in Palestine and flower in the spring. The humus includes Aragonite, a fairly rare material which can however be found in the soil of caves near Jerusalem; and the presence of natron, used in Palestine and Egypt to preserve dead bodies, also points to a middle eastern origin.[96]

  On one of the long sides, someone has sewn on a narrow strip of cloth that is shorter than 46 cm; some experts feel that it had been part of the larger cloth but that it had been unwoven and woven again. The reason is unknown; it was probably cut from the cloth, which was longer than required, to make a long band that could be used to tie the shroud around the corpse, about the feet, knees and neck, so that it could stay tight. It was only later that the band was retrieved and sewn again along the border from which it had previously been cut; for it was seen as a part of the Shroud, and it was wished to preserve it too. An interesting fact is that the technique by which it was sewn back on to the Shroud, called the false border, demands great expertise, and that it is only found twice in all our knowledge of ancient textiles: the Shroud and a linen fragment found in Masada, the fortress where a few Jewish rebels took refuge in the Jewish War and which the Romans destroyed in 73 AD. It is also interesting that the thread used for the sewing is not of the same kind as those that make up the Shroud, with their complex Z-shaped torsion structure, but belongs to a simpler and more ordinary kind (S-type torsion); it may be that the person who sewed it back was no longer able to obtain the same kind of thread, which were surely of uncommon quality, and had to be satisfied with what she or he found.[97]

  The upper left hand side shows another glaring lacuna: it is the
part that was destroyed in the radio-carbon test. Near this lost rectangle of material we can see clear traces of burning in a double strip, that run through the Shroud for all its length. In fact, these show the position of a fold that was part of the way the cloth was stored in the sixteenth century, when it was kept in Chambéry, then the capital of the Duchy of Savoy, now a French provincial town. In 1532 a fire burst out in the ducal palace’s chapel heated the invaluable silver casing where the Shroud was kept almost to melting point, and a few droplets of metal – or possibly a sharp and heated object – burned the cloth. The Poor Clare nuns then repaired it, adding many patches of linen in those parts where no material had been left at all; the accident also left four holes in a rhomboid shape near the middle of the cloth, as well as a quantity of stains left more or less everywhere and due to the impurities in the large amounts of water used to extinguish the fire. It may however be that someone had accidentally water-stained the Shroud much earlier.

  In April 2008 Aldo Guerreschi and Michele Salcito published in the specialist magazine Arch the results of a research they had carried out on the water-stains left on the Shroud. Until then it had always been thought that they were the result of the water used in Chambéry to extinguish the fire, but analysis showed a different truth. The very shape of the Chambéry scorch marks allows us to reconstruct the way that the Shroud was put away in the 1500s: it was a most careful and precise folding, with the edges accurately lined up with each other, done by first laying the Shroud down on a long table. The water stains, however, speak of a wholly different folding, the kind called concertina, but above all one that was far less precise: the edges did not match, and the central fold did not fall in the exact centre of the cloth. This is more reminiscent of a housewife snatching a sheet from the rain and folding it in a hurry to run back inside before the storm reaches its height; that is, it leaves the feeling of a rushed, provisional arrangement. Turned in on itself in a concertina shape, and then closed, the cloth was not in even tension, but the forward part was sagging under its own weight. By the way it was arranged, it is also possible to deduce the shape of the container where it had been placed: a cylindrical object, narrow, long, and not very large. It was not a case like its Chambéry silver reliquary and it did not, either, resemble the lovely Byzantine container decorated in lozenges which we see from the representations of the mandylion: rather, it was a container designed for other purposes, where the Shroud was perhaps only provisionally housed. The shape of the object is exactly like that of the terra-cotta amphoras found in Qumran, which held the 800 or more manuscripts of the Essene library: in effect, amphoras were very versatile containers where anything could and would be stored, from oil to grain to books. At the very bottom of that container there was some water, a small amount but enough to dampen the lower part of the cloth.[98]

  This reconstruction seems to open a new and promising path of research. No doubt that kind of earthenware container was a highly commonplace object, made all over the Middle East and certainly not only in Qumran: but no doubt the community that lived in isolation on the Dead Sea shore had several features that might make it a safe refuge for the earliest Christians, persecuted by the Jerusalem authorities almost from the time of Jesus’ death. At any rate, if Salcito and Guerreschi’s reconstruction is correct, it argues for a phase in the Shroud’s history in which this object was not exhibited to the veneration of the faithful, but, on the contrary, hidden: whoever raised the lid would not have seen anything but a featureless mass of cloth, too tightly turned in on itself to show even the abundant marks of blood. As is known, Jewish tradition held blood in horror and saw it as necessary to destroy anything that had come into contact with corpses, as being in the highest degree impure and able to pollute people, things and places.[99]

  Between the 12th and 13th centuries, the Templars held dozens of establishments in the Syro-Palestinian territories, but there is no evidence that they ever had any direct contact with Qumran: what archaeology currently tells us is that the Essene citadel was abandoned in 68 AD and never re-opened until almost twenty centuries had passed. On the other hand, that the Shroud may have spent some time in the Qumran over a thousand years before it ended up in the Templars’ hands – this does seem possible.

  [1] Michelet, Le Procès, II, pp. 279, 299, 300, 313, 315-316, 364, 367.

  [2] Ibid., 363.

  [3] Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Reg. Aven. 48, ff. 449-450r.

  [4] Michelet, Le Procès, II, pp. 192-193.

  [5] Tommaso da Celano, San Francesco, pp. 130-138; see also Cardini, Francesco d’Assisi, pp. 231-273.

  [6] 19, 11-12 (Nestle-Aland, p. 1167).

  [7] Schottmüller, II, pp. 375-400, pp. 379-380, 392-398.

  [8] Michelet, Le Procès, I, p. 502; II, p. 218.

  [9] Ibid.; Gugumus, Orsola e compagne, coll. 1252-1267.

  [10] Michelet, Le Procès, II, p. 240.

  [11] Ibid., I, p. 597.

  [12] Du Fresne, Glossarium, p. 447.

  [13] Michelet, Le Procès, I, pp. 190-191; Paris, Archives Nationales, J 413 n. 25, unnumbered folios (f. 9); Finke, II, pp. 323-324.

  [14] Savio, Pellegrinaggio di san Carlo, pp. 447-448.

  [15] Demurger, Vita e morte, pp. 220-221; Frale, L’ultima battaglia dei Templari, pp. 287-293; Brown, La morte del Messia, pp. 1330-1338; Id., Giovanni, pp. 1181-1195.

  [16] Dupuy, Histoire, pp. 26-28.

  [17] See for instance the statements made by the monks questioned at Pont-del’Arche, in Prutz, Entwicklung, pp. 334-335, and Dupuy, Histoire, p. 22.

  [18] Curzon, La Règle, §§ 21, 37.

  [19] Michelet, Le Procès I, p. 419.

  [20] Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Reg. Aven. 48, f. 443r; Schottmüller, II, pp. 64-66.

  [21] Curzon, La Règle, § 40.

  [22] Sève, Le procès, p. 192.

  [23] Michelet, Le Procès, I, p. 502, II, pp. 191, 279; Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Reg. Aven. 48 c. 443v; Schotmüller, II, p. 67.

  [24] Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Reg. Aven 48, f. 444r, lines 15-17.

  [25] These images, which belong to the Byzantine tradition of iconography, have been studied by Wilson, Holy Faces.

  [26] Sterlingova, The New Testament Relics, pp. 88-89. I am grateful to Emanuela Marinelli for informing me about this object.

  [27] Wilson, Le suaire de Turin, pp. 152-253.

  [28] The theology of icons is a particularly fascinating chapter of Christian thought. This study has taken as reference the fine volume by Cardinal Schönborn, L’icona di Cristo.

  [29] Jugie, Iconoclastia, coll. 1538-1542; Schönborn, L’icona di Cristo, pp. 131-158.

  [30] Schönborn, L’icona di Cristo, pp. 15-36; Uspenskij, La teologia dell’icona, pp. 101-132.

  [31] St. Basil the Great, A treatise on the Holy Spirit, 18, 45; PG 32, col. 149; Homily for Gordianuss the martyr, PG 31, col. 490; St. Gregory of, Solemn Encomium for the great martyr Theodore, PG 46, coll. 737-739.

  [32] Mt 28, 20 (edizione Nestle-Aland, p. 285); Schönborn, L’icona di Cristo, pp. 169-175

  [33] St. John Damascene, A treatise on images, I, 19, in PG 94, col. 1249 d: but the idea had already been stated by St. Gregory of Nissa, cfr. Schönborn, L’icona di Cristo, pp. 27-36; Gordillo, Giovanni Damasceno, coll. 547-552; Ozoline, La théologie de l’icône, p. 409.

  [34] Weitzmann, Le icone, pp. 5-6; Kazhdan, Bisanzio e la sua civiltà, p. 96-98; Schönborn, L’icona di Cristo, pp. 194-210.

  [35] Johannet, Un office inédit, pp. 143-155; Auzépy, L’iconodulie, pp. 157-165; Marion, Le prototype de l’image, p. 461; Shalina, The Icon of Christ, pp. 324-328; Cur
zon, La Règle, § 342; Cronaca di Imad ad-Din, in Storici arabi delle crociate, p. 135; statement of Raoul de Gisy, Preceptor of Champagne, Paris Inquiry, Autumn 1307, in Michelet, Le Procès, II, pp. 363-365; Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Reg. Aven. 48, cc. 441r e 443r, edito in Schottmüller, II, pp. 30, 68.

  [36] Icone, pp. 19-21.

  [37] Jugie, Concilio di Efeso, coll. 114-119.

  [38] For instance 1 Ts 2, 15; 3, 11; 3, 13; Col 1, 3; 1 Cor, 1, 2; 2, 9; 6, 14, 9, 5. Légasse, Paolo e l’universalismo cristiano, pp. 106-158; Trocmé, Le prime comunità, pp. 75-105; Jossa, Introduzione, pp. 15-29; Ratzinger-Benedetto XVI, Gesù di Nazareth, pp. 333-352.

  [39] Ostrogorsky, Storia dell’impero bizantino, pp. 139-202; Jugie, Iconoclastia, coll. 1541-1546.

  [40] Riant, Exuviae, ad esempio pp. 216-217, 218-224, 233-234.

  [41] Ostrogorsky, Storia dell’impero bizantino, pp. 97-98; Dubarle, Storia antica, pp. 39-41.