The Holy Shroud and Four Visions

Rev. Fr. Patrick O'Connell

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781505102574
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

A fascinating study of the Winding Sheet Our Lord was wrapped in (now in Turin, Italy) with a comparison from the visions of four famous mystics: St. Bridget of Sweden, Ven. Mary of Agreda, Ven. Anne Catherine Emmerich and Therese Neumann. Most moving.

History of the Holy Shroud

The following is the combined account of the Four Evangelists and the Holy Shroud; Joseph of Arimathea bought a length of linen sufficient to make the shroud mentioned by the Synoptics and to furnish the linen cloths mentioned by St. John. He then cut off about fourteen feet and a half for the Shroud that was to cover the body from head to foot, front and back, and divided the remainder into two or three lengths to go around the body outside the Shroud. He next stretched the fourteen and a half feet length on the ground, sprinkled the myrrh and aloes over it and laid the body of Our Lord upon it with the Head towards the middle and the feet about a foot and a half from one end. He turned this foot and a half over Our Lord’s feet and legs halfway up to the knees. (We know that this was done because there is no image of the front of the feet on the Shroud. This foot and a half has disappeared having probably been given away by the Emperor of Constantinople as a relic). He then drew the other end over the head and covered the front of the body including the feet. (On this front portion there is only the mark of blood which flowed from the feet). Both from St. John and from the Shroud itself we infer that the Shroud was not left loose: St. John says that they bound the body of Jesus in linen cloths, and the image on the Shroud shows that it was in close contact with the body except in a few places—the neck and the front of the shoulders. These bands or pieces of linen have disappeared.

In his account of the burial, St. John does not refer expressly to the Shroud, but in his account of the linens found in the tomb after the Resurrection he refers to two kinds. He says that the Beloved Disciple and St. Peter saw the linen cloths (which had been around the body) lying (this, we may presume, means that they had not been untied); but the Sudarium that had been about His head (or drawn over the head) not lying with the other cloths but apart, wrapped up in one place. It is highly probable that this piece of linen which St. John singles out for mention, and which Our Lord Himself detached from the other linens, folded up and laid apart, was the Holy Shroud.

St. John says that the burial of Our Lord was carried out according to the manner of the Jews, but this does not mean that the Jewish manner of burial was absolutely uniform, or that everything done at a Jewish burial was carried out. The Shroud shows that the Jewish custom of passing a cloth under the chin and tying it on top of the head was carried out, for there is a gap in the image of the head on the Shroud where it passed over the knot; the Jewish custom of stretching out the fingers and turning the thumbs into the palm of the hand was also observed. The use of the shroud itself and the way it was tied was also a Jewish custom except among the poor who were buried in their clothes. The body of Our Lord was not anointed, Mary Magdalen had anointed it for His burial, nor was the body washed.

Brief History of the Holy Shroud

No reference to the Holy Shroud has so far been found in early Christian literature during the first three centuries of persecution. There were many reasons for the silence. Any reference to it might lead to its discovery by the enemies of Christianity. Besides, during these three centuries of persecution while the cross was still used as an instrument for the execution of slaves and criminals, it was forbidden by the Ecclesiastical authorities to paint or display an image of Christ on the Cross. This prohibition would virtually extend to the exhibition of the Holy Shroud which gives a vivid representation of the whole Passion with its most terrible and humiliating details. It was not until 692 A.D. that the Council of Constantinople decreed that the image of Christ Himself represented alive on the Cross should replace the image of the Lamb. It was not until the tenth century that permission was given to represent Him dead on the Cross.

We have conclusive evidence that the Holy Shroud of Turin is the same as that exhibited at Constantinople for hundreds of years; and as the scientific evidence in favor of the Shroud is now accepted as sufficient to prove that it was the Shroud in which the body of Our Lord was wrapped, we can say the same of the Shroud of Constantinople. The Byzantine historian of the fourteenth century, Nicephorus Callista, gives the following account of how the Holy Shroud came to Constantinople: “Pulcheria the Empress of the East (399-453) having built a Basilica at Blachernes (outside Constantinople), in 436 A.D., piously deposited there the burial linens of the Blessed Virgin and the linens of Our Saviour which had just been re-discovered, and which the Empress Eudoxia had sent to her.”

Mgr. Barnes in his book on the Shroud contributes an interesting proof that the Shroud of Turin and the Shroud of Constantinople are identical and that both are genuine. It is the following:

There was a tradition in the East before the time of the Crusades that Christ was lame, which tradition is embodied in the Byzantine Cross. Due to the fact that the left foot of Our Lord was nailed over the right, thus causing the left leg to be bent, and the fact that the Rigor Mortis (as appears evident from the Shroud) had set in before Our Lord was taken down from the Cross, and left the leg bent up, the leg on the Shroud appears to be two inches shorter than the right. Those missionaries who saw the Shroud in Constantinople and went to preach the Gospel in the East, not having the aid of photography, failed to see the reason why one leg appears to be shorter than the other on the image on the Shroud and incidentally provide us with evidence that the Shroud that was kept at Blachernes outside Constantinople for hundreds of years is the same Shroud which is now in Turin.

The Byzantine Cross consists of one upright and three cross-bars. The upper cross-bar represents the board on which the title was written, the middle one, which is the longest, the cross-beam to which Our Lord’s hands were nailed and the lower one, which is slanting, the board which was thought to have been placed under Our Lord’s feet. This is placed slanting at an angle, because those who designed the Byzantine Cross, through a mistaken interpretation of the imprint of Our Lord’s feet on the Holy Shroud, imagined that the left leg was shorter than the right. Though there was probably a small piece of wood between Our Lord’s feet and the Cross, it was not as a support for the feet but to fill up the vacant space under the heel. This is proved by the fact that the feet are stretched down so that Our Lord’s body appears to be six inches longer than it really is.

There is historic evidence that the Emperors of Constantinople showed the Shroud to many distinguished visitors between 1171 and 1203 A.D. Among these were Bishop William of Tyre and King Amaury of Jerusalem. It was exposed for veneration every Friday at the time of the Crusades. The fact that there had been a prohibition to depict Christ dead upon the Cross would explain why it had not been exposed for veneration at an earlier date, but this would not prevent priests and other important people from seeing it privately.

How the Holy Shroud Came to France

At the time of the fourth Crusade, Otho de la Roche, Duke of Athens and Sparta, who was in command of the district of Blachernes where the Shroud was kept, received it as part of his recompense. He sent it to his father in 1204 A.D. and his father gave it to the Bishop of Besancon who placed it in the Cathedral. It was exposed for veneration each year on Easter Sunday up till 1349. In that year a fire broke out in the Cathedral which caused slight damage to the Holy Shroud. To save it from further damage it was removed from the Cathedral and in the confusion it was stolen and given to King Philip of France. King Philip gave it to his friend Geoffrey Count of Charney and Lord of Liry. It was natural that the Bishop of Besancon should try to recover the Shroud, but as the King of France had given it to his friend, it was impossible for him to do so. Two years later a painted copy began to be exhibited in the Cathedral of Besancon to satisfy the devotion of those who had been accustomed to venerate the real Shroud; about the same time, probably a little earlier, Geoffrey of Liry employed a painter to paint a copy. Dom Chamard found conclusive evidence that the Shroud exhibited at Besancon after 1352 was only a painting—but a painting which had been copied from the real Shroud. He adds, “Dunod in his History of the Church of Besancon speaks of the Shroud preserved in the Cathedral of St. Etienne (Besancon) in the thirteenth century, and proceeds thus: ‘In March, 1349, the church was destroyed by fire, and the box in which the Holy Shroud was kept, seemingly without much formality, was lost. Some years afterwards the relic was found again by happy chance, and to make sure that it was the same as was formerly venerated in the church of St. Etienne, it was laid upon a dead man, who immediately revived. The fact of this miracle is established not only by the records of the church of Besancon but also by a manuscript preserved up to the present time in the church of St. James, at Rheims, where it has been placed by Richard la Pie, senior priest of Besancon, in the year 1375, who had been himself an eye-witness.’ ”

Mgr. Barnes relates that in the church of St. Gomaire, in Belgium, there is a copy of the Shroud which was made in 1516 and consequently had not the marks of the fire of 1532 at Chambery. In this copy there are to be seen traces of an earlier fire in 1349 at Besancon. This evidence identifies the Shroud with the one that was in Besancon as early as 1208.

How the Shroud Came into the Possession of the House of Savoy

During the Hundred Years War Margaret, the granddaughter of Geoffrey, took the Shroud from the Canons of Liry for safekeeping to her husband’s castle. When later on in 1452, the Canons wanted to get it back, she refused to give it to them but instead sent it to her cousin, Anna, the daughter of the King of Cyprus, who was then living at Chambery with her husband, Duke Louis I of Savoy. Two years later, Pope Sixtus IV authorized Louis I to build a sanctuary at his residence at Chambery to house the Shroud. His successor, Julius II, in the Bull Romanus Pontifex, issued in 1506, formally approved an Office and Mass of the Holy Shroud of Turin.

At the beginning of the following century, on Good Friday 1503, the Shroud was brought to the neighboring town of Bourg-en-Bresse for the convenience of Archduke Philip of Austria who passed that way. On that occasion, in order to show that the image on the Shroud was truly the image of Christ, the Shroud was submitted to an ordeal: it was first plunged into boiling oil, then it was put in water and boiled over a fire and finally washed several times. It was believed that if the Shroud was genuine the image of Our Lord would not be effaced.

Troubled times followed and the Shroud was moved from one place to another in France. It was brought back to Chambery again and there, on the night of December 3rd 1532, it nearly perished in another fire. Four men: two Franciscan Fathers, the Duke’s butler and a blacksmith broke the locks, the other three poured water on the Shroud. In spite of their efforts the Shroud, which was folded upon itself twelve times, got burned at the two ends of the folds by hot molten silver. When it was opened out to full length it showed sixteen holes of considerable size and twelve smaller ones. Fortunately not much damage was done to the image of Our Lord. The holes were repaired by the Poor Clare Nuns of Chambery.

As we have already seen, without the aid of Divine Providence we would not have this image of Christ in His sufferings, and we can say with equal truth that without the protection of Divine Providence it could not have survived during the early persecutions, subsequent wars and revolutions, and dangers from fire and water. The ordeal to which it was submitted in 1503, which has recently been brought to light, not only proves that it is not the painting that was made in 1351, but that Providence used this very ordeal to make the image clearer and more distinct.

In 1578 the Shroud was brought to Turin in order to save the aged St. Charles Borromeo the trouble of journeying to Chambery to venerate it. It has remained in Turin since then, having been kept in the chapel of the castle until 1694 when it was transferred to the black marble chapel built specially for it behind the Cathedral, where it is still kept.

It was venerated by St. Francis de Sales in 1613 and by St. Jane Frances de Chantal in 1639. Up to the year 1800, it was exposed for veneration each year on the feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross. From 1800 to 1900, it was exposed only six times, the last of which was in 1898 when it was photographed for the first time. Since then it has been exposed only twice: in 1931 and 1933, on each of which occasions the fullest opportunity was given to experts to examine it carefully and photograph it.

The Two Images on the Holy Shroud

When the Holy Shroud was photographed for the first time in 1898, it was discovered with amazement that the plate when developed contained a true positive image much clearer than that on the Shroud, and, in addition, the usual negative indications in white of the dark stains made by the precious blood on the Shroud. Those who saw it were astonished above all at the marvellous image of the Holy Face revealing a majesty and beauty such as no artist has ever been able to depict. The image, then, which can be seen on the Shroud itself, and which appears blurred and indistinct, is really a perfect negative and contains in addition a positive image of all the wounds of Our Lord. We can therefore say that there are two double images; one on the Shroud, the other on the negative. A negative image invisible to the eye and a positive image made by the precious blood are found on the Shroud itself, and a positive image of Our Lord and a negative image of the traces of the precious blood on the developed negative.

How the Images Were Formed

It was taken for granted up to 1898, when the Shroud was photographed, that the image on it was formed in the ordinary way by contact of the Shroud with the body of Our Divine Lord covered with wounds and blood. It was not, however, till a number of scientists began to make experiments to find out how the wonderful image that appeared on the negative was formed, that it was discovered that were it not for the myrrh and aloes and the sweat of the Passion that remained on the body, the blood which had dried on the sacred body would not have been transferred to the Shroud, and that we would have had no image on it, only the marks of the blood that flowed from the hands and feet when the nails were removed, and from the deep wound on the side that was reopened by the moving of the body.

The scientists have learned from their experiments that the image on the Shroud could not have been produced by painting, that it contained so many unexpected details—the place of the nails in the hands and feet, the thumbs turned in on the palms of the hands, the wound of the lance on the right side, the feet turned in, the left leg seemingly shorter than the right, the distinctive marks on the Holy Face, the unsuspected hidden image—that no forger could have possibly thought of half of them. They discovered that nothing less than the complete set of circumstances surrounding the burial and resurrection of Our Lord would be sufficient to account for the image. In the first place there would be required the dead body covered with sweat of a person who had been scourged from head to foot, crowned with thorns, crucified, pierced with a lance on the right side and left on the cross after death until the Rigor Mortis had set in. There would be required in addition a linen shroud of unusual thickness, not lying loose but carefully bound around so as to be in close contact with the body, and sprinkled over with a rich mixture of myrrh and aloes. Finally there would be required that the body remain in the tomb not much less and not much more than a day and a half, and that some one should come just at the right time and detach the Shroud with more t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• History of the Holy Shroud
• APPENDIX