The Origins and History of the Shroud of Turin

The history of the Shroud of Turin begins in the middle of the 14^th century. In 1357 it was first put on display in the church of Lirey, France, in the Diocese of Troeys, by the widow of French knight Geoffrei de Charnay. How the Shroud came into the hands of de Charnay is not known: it is reported to have first come into his possession somewhere between 1354-55, only a year or two before his death.

Shortly after the Shroud first came to be publicly displayed in Lirey, Henri de Poitiers, the Bishop of Troyes, prohibited veneration of the Shroud claiming it to be a fake. According to his successor, Pierre D'Arcis, Bishop Henri de Poitiers had done his own investigation of the Shroud and had gone so far as to gain a confession from the artist responsible for the creation of the artifact.

After the prohibition of its public display, the Shroud went into hiding for a little over 30 years before it began to be once more displayed in 1389. Following in the footsteps of his predecessor, the new Bishop of Troyes Pierre D'Arcis attempted to stop the public display and veneration of the Shroud but was unsuccessful. In 1389 he wrote a memorandum to the Avignon Pope Clement VII, detailing the situation.

In his response, Clement VII did not ban veneration of the Shroud, but rather stated that it could be displayed publicly as an object of devotion so long as those displaying the Shroud did not make any claims that it was the True Shroud of Christ, but informed those viewing the image that it was only a man-made representation, not a true holy relic.

The skepticism of the first Bishops of Troyes to view the Shroud, as well as Pope Clement VII, recognizing the Shroud as a forgery, would not last forever. Despite early attempts to suppress it, the longer the Shroud remained as an object of the people, the more its claims to legitimacy stuck in the minds not only in those viewing the Shroud but in the Catholic hierarchy. By 1506, Pope Julius II took its authenticity for granted, declaring May 4^th as the Feast Day of the Shroud.

In between the time of Clement VII's pronouncement that the Shroud was not genuine and Julius II's claim that it was, the Shroud had changed hands. In 1453 the Charney family, who had been the original owners of the relic, sold the Shroud to the House of Savoy. The Shroud moved from Lirey to the cathedral at Chambery, France. In 1532, a fire at the cathedral damaged the Shroud but it was rescued by Franciscan monks.

The final move for the Shroud came in 1578, when it was placed at the royal chapel in Turin, Italy. From this move it takes the name by which it is known today: the Shroud of Turin. It remained the property of the House of Savoy until 1983, when it was willed to the Holy See in the Vatican upon the death of Umberto II, the last King of Italy.

While the Papacy over the centuries essentially took the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin for granted, little move was made on the popular front to push for its genuineness until 1898, when the first photograph of the Shroud was taken. The negative of the photograph appeared more lifelike than the image on the Shroud itself, given rise to the theory that the image on the Shroud is itself a negative (and thus the photographic negative the real positive of the image).

Despite this new photographic evidence, many remained skeptical that the Shroud truly was the True Shroud of Christ. In the Catholic Encyclopedia published in 1913, for example, the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin is strongly denied.

The major push for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin came in the 1970's when the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), examined the Shroud of Turin for a period of 5 days in 1978. In their final report published in 1981, they claimed that the Shroud could not have been the creation of a medieval forger, that no paint was found on the Shroud (only blood) and concluded that the Shroud must have once contained the body of a blood, crucified man.

One of the original members of STURP, Walter McCrone, disagreed with these basic assessments, claiming that in fact the color on the Shroud of Turin was paint and not blood. He resigned from STURP but up until his death in 2002 spoke often of his work examining the Shroud and remained a skeptic of the Shroud's authenticity.

In a surprising decision in 1988, the Vatican allowed three separate, independent teams to perform radio-carbon dating on three separate, postage stamp sized pieces of the Shroud. The results of all three tests claimed that the cloth originated somewhere between 1260-1390, declaring it a medieval creation and not a genuine relic from the 1^st century. This timeline matches perfectly that described by the Bishop Henri de Poitiers, the man originally to claim that it was the creation of an artist back in the 14^th century.

Those who continue to testify to the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin maintain that the samples tested by the three independent teams did not come from the original Shroud but rather from patches added to the Shroud after the fire in 1532. In a 2005 paper Ray Rogers attempted to prove this by studying vanillin levels in the samples as well as the body of the Shroud, although his findings remain controversial.

In the meantime many researchers have recreated similar images to those found on the Shroud of Turin using methods available to medieval artists. These tests have repeatedly shown that the image on the Shroud could very easily have been created by an artist using rather simple methods.

Pulling back from the Catholic Church's long history of claiming the Shroud's authenticity, but making no statement to the fact it is a forgery, Pope John Paul II said in 1998: "Since we're not dealing with a matter of faith, the church can't pronounce itself on such questions. It entrusts to scientists the tasks of continuing to investigate, to reach adequate answers to the questions connected to this shroud." This remains the official position of the Catholic Church. Meanwhile debate continues to rage over the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin.