The Shroud

by Harold Robbins

  The most important thing in the world to this man seemed to be events that occurred two thousand years ago in the Holy Land. Everything that had happened since the birth of Christ was anticlimactic.

  “It must be tough being a tiny Christian minority in a large Islamic country,” I said.

  “Not as much as you might think. The Turks have traditionally been more tolerant of other religions. Often more tolerant than one Christian sect is to another.” He gave a grave look. “But tolerance changes directions like the wind. And the government’s tolerance does not extend to fanatics who offer bombs instead of prayers. Such people should be in asylums for the criminally insane rather than burdening the rest of the world with their murderous delusions and madness.”

  Amen to that.

  “Now tell me, what exactly do you need to know to write your story?”

  “Everything about the Mandylion. I know very little, just that it’s a painting of Jesus and was brought to Constantinople nearly a thousand years ago. Obviously, something happened to it or it would still be here. Can you tell me the history of it?”

  “Of course. But to understand the history of the Mandylion, you have to know the relationship between the church of the East and the church of the West.”

  Ismet had said something similar—only he said I needed to understand the relationship between Muslims and Christians.

  “You mean the Catholic Church in Rome and the Eastern Orthodox in Constantinople?”

  “Yes. For the first seven hundred years, the two churches were united as one church, but it was never a comfortable relationship, two great establishments so far apart physically and, finally, doctrinally. It was inevitable that they would split.”

  “The Great Schism.”

  “Yes, although some of us call it ripping the beating heart of Christianity into pieces. But the Schism became something even greater than a difference between faiths when the rape of Constantinople occurred in 1204.”

  “That was eight hundred years ago.”

  “Eight centuries,” he said, “but we of the church do not count time as others do. Our main traditions go back two thousand years. The rape of the city is an open sore for many reasons. You are familiar with the incident?”

  “A little. That’s when Christian knights attacked the city.”

  “It wasn’t just an attack, it was a treachery and betrayal of the worst sort. Crusader armies from the Catholic countries of Western Europe had been formed to take back the Christian Holy Land from the infidel Muslims. Instead, they attacked and sacked Constantinople, a Christian city.

  “The attack came at the urging and machinations of the doge of Venice, the head of Christendom’s greatest sea power. The sins they committed were of the most egregious imaginable. Thousands of men, women, and children were murdered in an orgy of looting and rape. Did you know that the drunken knights put a prostitute on the throne of the patriarch?”

  I shook my head. “I live in a world where people blow themselves up on crowded streets in order to kill as many men, women, and children as they can. These maniacs believe they will be rewarded eternally in heaven for these beastly acts of murder. Your own people know this sad state of affairs well, having been attacked by a bomber at your Phanar. Frankly, not many of man’s inhumanities to man surprise me anymore.”

  He mumbled something under his breath in his own language.

  I imagined it to be a prayer for all of us.

  “Does the Mandylion figure in any way in the rape of the city?” I asked.

  “Of course. It was carried off by the attackers.”

  “Ah … so was that the last time it was seen? Nearly eight hundred years ago?”

  He gave me a puzzled look. “You came all the way to Istanbul for your magazine, and you know almost nothing about the subject you are to write about?”

  “Actually, I was already here when I got the assignment. On vacation to see the antiquity sites in the Sultanahmet.”

  As usual, a lie rolled easily off my tongue.

  “I have to admit my ignorance. I do know a little bit about antiquities, especially those of the Mediterranean region. If you want to know something about a Greek, Roman, Egyptian, or Mesopotamian artifact, I can answer your question. But not religious pieces. It’s an entirely different field and I didn’t have a chance to prepare, but I did speak to another scholar briefly about the Mandylion. He called it by its other name, the Image of Edessa.”

  “Then you are unaware that the Mandylion is part of the storm of debate surrounding the most controversial religious icon in Christendom.”

  “What are you referring to?”

  “The Shroud of Turin, of course.”

  The Holy Shroud

  Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body.

  Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph.

  So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

  —MARK 15:43–46

  32

  The priest’s statement smacked me in the face and took my breath away.

  I turned my head so he couldn’t see my emotions. I instantly realized what a fool I was.

  The Shroud of Turin.

  Like everyone else on the planet, at least the Christian part of it, I knew the Shroud was a cloth kept in a church in Turin, Italy, that the image appeared to be that of a man who had been crucified, presumably an imprint of the dead body of Jesus of Nazareth.

  It also occurred to me that the Shroud was the only physical object I could think of that had a direct connection to Jesus Christ.

  I should have seen it coming.

  The Shroud was the most venerated and controversial object in the Christian world. I didn’t know how it fit into the scheme Lipton had roped me into, since I was still missing most of the pieces to the puzzle, but I knew that I had just stepped on a land mine.

  “You appear disturbed,” Father Dimitrios said.

  Disturbed was an understatement.

  I was flustered and confounded, too. And angry. The connection blindsided me because I had had my nose to the ground like a bloodhound sniffing out the trail of the Image of Edessa and I hadn’t seen the forest for the trees.

  I gave the priest what I hoped was a smile of complete innocence.

  “Not disturbed, just irked at myself. My editor gave me an assignment and even though I didn’t have much time, I could have done some research.”

  He shrugged. “Today people have the whole world before them just by going to an Internet café. I am surprised that your editor didn’t tell you more, but perhaps like you, your editor also knows more about secular antiquities than religious artifacts.”

  “Oh, I have to admit, my editor is one of those people who knows everything. I realize now that he was just testing me.”

  That bastard Lipton had duped me and played me as a fool from the very beginning. But I had to control my consternation—the priest might get suspicious and decide I was something more than a journalist.

  He led me to a sidewalk café where we sat at a table and ordered cheese and bread and wine.

  We kept our silence until the food and drink were on the table and we each had eaten a bit. Father Dimitrios’s “bit” was several times larger than mine. The man had an appetite for food and wine.

  Finally he wiped his mouth on a paper napkin and said, “You say you know antiquities. Most artifacts of antiquity predate the Christian era and were created for religious purposes by pagans. I find it interesting that you know so much about the heathen religions of ancient times and little about your own.”

  I smiled wryly and shook my head. “I was raised bad.”

  He nodde
d and took another long quaff of wine.

  My statement appeared to satisfy him completely. Perhaps it confirmed what he had already suspected about me.

  He put his leather bag on an empty chair and rummaged in it, coming out with vellum-bound books that looked as old and venerable as the Church of Saint George.

  As he leafed through a book, I asked a question that I was reasonably certain I knew the answer to but needed confirmation of:

  “You mentioned the Shroud of Turin—”

  “It’s the holy cloth that keeps the wound open between the churches of East and West,” he said.

  “Yes, but what is the connection between the Image of Edessa and the Shroud of Turin?”

  “They are the same thing.”

  That was the conclusion I had reached a moment ago, the one that had hit me in the face.

  I spread my hands on the table. “I have been told that the Image is a painting of Jesus done for an ancient king. My recollection is that the Shroud is said to be a cloth with an impression of Jesus on it. How can they be the same thing?”

  “Going back over two thousand years since the birth of our Savior, many traditions about him have arisen. For those two millenniums, there was probably no time in which a war between religions or even sects of the same religion wasn’t being fought.”

  “Right to today.”

  “For a certainty. A religious prize identified with our Savior would be the most valuable single object on earth.”

  “Yes. I understand that the Image—the Mandylion—was hidden for centuries; first to keep the Romans from destroying it, then to keep other Christian sects from taking it, and finally to keep it from the hands of Islamic invaders.”

  “That is certainly true. Now, you say the Mandylion is a painted picture of Jesus.”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.“

  “You have been told the truth. But that is just one tradition about the Mandylion. Because of the belief that it was a painting of Jesus, many such paintings were reproduced over the centuries to be carried by armies into battle. Some of them are in cathedrals today and are venerated as holy relics, as they should be because they have great religious significance. There is also a tradition that the image of the Lord’s face was not painted on the cloth, but appeared when the cloth touched his body.”

  “An image like the Shroud of Turin.”

  “In a sense, but what we call an acheiropoieton, an image that appeared miraculously and was not made by human hands. You understand, we have traditions rather than documentary proof because not only was the cloth stolen by Crusaders when they sacked the city, but the city was later taken by the forces of Islam and most of the religious and other records of the conquered city were destroyed.

  “That left us with the task of deciphering our own history from records held by others. Two of the most significant historical records about the Mandylion are found in the Vatican library archives.”

  “Is the Mandylion mentioned in the Bible?”

  “There is no mention of the Mandylion as a painting in the Bible. It is mentioned in other historical records. However, the Gospel of Mark says that Joseph was given the body of our Lord after the crucifixion. And that he wrapped the body in linen and placed it in a tomb.”

  “I know that the cloth a body is wrapped in for burial is called a shroud. So the Gospel is talking about an object like the Shroud of Turin, not a painting. Is that your interpretation?”

  He nodded as he brushed bread crumbs off his beard. “Of course. That is the only interpretation.”

  “A shroud is mentioned in the Bible. The Mandylion isn’t. But is there any painting of Jesus ever mentioned in the Bible?”

  “No. But a painting is mentioned in Christian writing several centuries after the death of our Lord. The writings state that a painting of Jesus was done for King Abgar of Edessa.”

  “I know some of the story. The leper king wanted Jesus to heal him, so he sent his court painter to the Holy Land to paint Jesus’ image. So are you saying that there is both a painting and a shroud?”

  “There are traditions for both. But while the Mandylion as a painting has been a long tradition in the East, it is well known in my church that the only true image of Christ is that on the Shroud.”

  “I’m confused. Is the Mandylion a shroud or a painting?”

  “Both. They are two different things … but are the same.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  He sighed.

  It was no doubt a burden to explain to someone so totally ignorant of the subject as I was.

  “The Shroud was removed from the tomb after the Resurrection,” he said. “But as an object that had touched the body of our Lord, that in fact bore the image of our Lord and his suffering, it had to be kept secret from the Romans and the—”

  “Yes, I know, they would have destroyed it because people calling themselves Christians revered it.”

  “It was smuggled to Edessa because the king there was sympathetic to the Christian cause.”

  “Ah…” I got it. “The sacred cloth that had covered the body of Jesus, the Shroud, was taken to Edessa. But to hide its identity, it was given a cover story that it was a painting commissioned by the king. But people must have seen it. How could the king or whoever claim it was a painting when it was an image on a linen shroud?”

  “You can’t assume ordinary people saw it. It was part of a king’s treasure. However, there are records that indicate the Shroud was folded to give the appearance it was only the size of a painting. After it was folded, it was placed in a box of precious metals and jewels and hidden in a wall above one of the main gates of the city of Edessa. Ultimately, it was given to a Byzantine emperor as ransom for the city.”

  “And brought to Constantinople,” I said.

  “Yes, but the tradition of it being a painting had spread and imitations of what it was thought Jesus looked like were painted on wooden plaques and cloth. These were carried into battle by armies under the belief that what they believed to be a holy relic would give them victory in battle.”

  Obviously, the belief by soldiers that God was on their side was promoted by the kings and generals leading them. In turn, the soldiers on the opposing side would need something that guaranteed God was on their side.

  “So the icon called the Mandylion or Image of Edessa is actually not a painting but the burial shroud mentioned in the Bible. The one that is in the Italian city of Turin today?”

  “Yes. The Shroud, the most holy and revered relic in all Christendom, journeyed from the Holy Land to Edessa, Constantinople, and finally, to the Turin cathedral in Italy.”

  He ate in silence for a moment while I wrestled with my thoughts. It wasn’t all together yet.

  “What happened to the Shroud after it got to Constantinople?”

  More potent table wine and sharp cheese went into his mouth and he smacked his lips before answering.

  “The sacred linen was stolen by the Crusaders who sacked the city. It was of immense value, more treasured than all the gold and jewels that were taken. The Crusaders took the cloth first to Venice because the Venetians were providing the ships and money for the Crusaders. Eventually it made its way to France before coming back to Italy.”

  “Is there any historical record of that?”

  “Absolutely. Writings made by the thieves themselves, not to mention the authorities here.” He opened the book to a page he had marked with a red ribbon. “A year after the sack of Constantinople, Theodore Ducas Angelos, attached to the Fourth Crusade as a Vatican legate, reported in writing to Pope Innocent III that Crusaders had stolen the holy cloth. He wrote that the Venetians partitioned the treasure of gold, silver, and ivory, while the French did the same with the relics of saints…”

  Father Dimitrios read from the book: “And the most sacred of all, the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death and before the Resurrection.”

  No question about it—the
historical reference was obviously not to a painting, but to the burial cloth mentioned in the Gospel of Mark as being from the tomb of Jesus.

  “Did the church of the West, the Vatican, know that the Shroud was being stored in Constantinople?”

  “The Vatican was well aware of the existence of the Mandylion. And that it was a full-length burial impression of our Savior, not a painting. That it was the burial cloth of Jesus was common knowledge in Constantinople and Rome at a time when the two churches were one. The church in Rome was jealous that the patriarch here held so many of the holiest relics of our faith. But you must remember, it was natural for our church to possess the icons because it was here that Christianity became an officially sanctioned religion, not Rome.”

  “Are there other writings that state the Edessa Image was a full-length shroud rather than a painting?”

  “Yes. One is a tenth-century codex, Codex Vossianus Latinus Q 69, found in the Vatican library. The codex states that an image of Jesus’ entire body was left on a shroud that is kept at a church in Edessa. It states that King Abgar had received a cloth on which is shown not only the face of our Lord, but the whole body.”

  My head was swirling, thoughts colliding.

  Father Dimitrios asked, “Do you realize that when early paintings were done of Jesus, they have consistently maintained the same general appearance of our Lord?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The reason the facial features are the same is because they started with the same source. The image on the Shroud was used to create the first of the painted portraits of our Lord. Afterwards, artists simply followed what had been drawn before. It’s been shown that even the Romans portrayed Christ in the manner that is familiar to us now.”

  “So you’re saying that the image of Jesus that’s been commonly drawn over the centuries, that of a man in his thirties with long hair, with an expression of both serenity and suffering, is actually what Jesus looked like?”

  “Yes. The features given our Lord were not accidentally conceived by thousands of different painters over the centuries. The features are similar because the source is that found on the sacred cloth—the Image of Edessa, the Mandylion, the Shroud, whatever you wish to call it.”