According to an ancient tradition coming from the early Church, the apostle Peter kept the cloth in which the body of Jesus was wrapped, after he had been taken down from the cross, and which Peter himself found in the empty tomb on Easter Sunday. (Luke 24:12).

Let us get to know this blessed relic that has amazed the world.

I. HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem and Saint Gregory Nazianzen, of the third century; John, patriarch of Constantinople, and Saint Germanus, bishop of Paris, of the fourth century; Saint Leander of Seville, of the sixth century; or Bede, of the eighth century, related that the “cloth of Christ” existed.

The first city where it was displayed was Edessa (today Urfa), built between Anatolia and Persia.In a sixth-century manuscript it is recounted that King Ukhamm (9–46 A.D.), on learning that a great prophet had been crucified in Jerusalem, managed to obtain the “effigy” of the holy one, miraculously imprinted on a linen cloth.

Edessa was, moreover, the first state in the world to adopt Christianity.Next, the relic was taken to Constantinople (today Istanbul) in Turkey, capital of the new Roman empire, in the year 994; and it was exhibited in the basilica of Saint Mary of the Pharos. There it remained until the Fourth Crusade, when the city was sacked by the French, in the year 1203.

In Europe the cloth was first in the possession of the Templars, until 1307; then it passed into the hands of Duke Geoffroy de Charny, who displayed it in the church of Lirey. Afterward it was taken to Turin in 1578, to the House of Savoy; since then it has remained under the custody of the Archdiocese of Turin, in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist.

II. THE HOLY SHROUD AND MODERN SCIENCE

In the year 1898, the Turinese lawyer Secondo Pia revealed a series of photographic plates of the cloth, in whose negatives the image of a man covered with wounds is reflected, with the very features attributed to the Son of God. In different periods of the twentieth century studies were made of the Holy Shroud; in total, more than 32,000 photographs and more than 1,000 scientific examinations have been carried out.

In July of 2002 the linen was subjected to a rigorous cleaning to remove the dust accumulated over centuries; the shroud was sewn onto a new sterilized cloth, the removed remnants were classified and stored; images were also taken by means of a scanner and a complete digital map of the relic was produced.

In 1988, the universities of Arizona, Oxford and Zurich subjected the linen to the radiocarbon-14 test to determine its age, which was placed between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of our era. It was believed that the piece was a medieval forgery; however, in 1992 the Russian scholar Dimitri Kouznetsov showed that the Shroud of Turin is much older. He argued that the fire of 1532 caused a kind of rejuvenation, owing to the high temperatures the linen underwent while it was kept in a silver reliquary, in the French cathedral of Chambéry.

The damage to the fabric was mended by the Poor Clare nuns of this church in 1534. Even the results obtained by X-rays have shown that this rectangular cloth, four meters long by one meter wide, corresponds to a hand-woven fabric of the “herringbone” type, used in Egypt and Palestine from the third century B.C. Its material was cotton thread of the “herbaceum” type, cultivated only in the Near East. Another proof to demonstrate its authenticity lies in the inscriptions in capital letters, which cannot be seen with the naked eye, found in various parts of the cloth. The words were written in Greek, Latin and Hebrew; one of them reads IN NECEM, which could mean “you are going to die”; other texts are: IHEOY, “Jesus” in Greek, and NAZAPHNO, a term that can be translated as “Nazarene.”

By computer, a three-dimensional image of the man was obtained; had the cloth been a mere painting, it would have produced a flat, distorted and unaesthetic imprint. On the sheet only two colors can be distinguished: a soft sepia in the shape of the body and a dark brown coming from the bloodstains.

The figure that appears on both sides of the linen is a combination of dark and light shadows. Some penetrate slightly into the piece, while others were not even touched. Samples were taken from 37 different places on the fabric, but no kind of artificial dye could be extracted; on the contrary, the bloodstains are fluorescent, as are the mendings of the burns. Fragments of dust, fungi, spores, and pollen from 28 different species were also collected, some corresponding to 20 kinds of very ancient plants, out of the 59 found in all. Some came from wild pines that flowered only on the plains of Syria and Palestine, others were from the region of the Black Sea, and some more recent ones from France and Italy.

From the dust found on the shroud, comparative samples were made with those found in the archaeological museum of Turin, and samples were extracted of particles of mummy dust and funerary fabric from the Valley of the Kings, dating from the year 1100 B.C. It was verified that both fabrics contained a significant quantity of refined salt of excellent quality, coming from the Nile delta.

III. THE MARKS OF THE CRUCIFIXION

The Holy Shroud has been called the “fifth Gospel,” owing to the great amount of information it contains about the Lord’s Passion. The scientists deduced that the man of the cloth must have measured 1.80 meters in height and weighed 80 kilograms; his hair is long and gathered in a braid. The face reflects a serene countenance full of dignity, despite showing visible signs of torture. He has his eyes closed, his nose fractured, his right cheekbone and upper lip swollen from strong blows dealt with a rod.

On the forehead and around the head there are 30 wounds; these were made by a crown of long, sharp thorns, coming from shrubs that flower in the Mediterranean. On the body remained the marks of some 120 lashes produced by a Roman scourge of two thongs with lead tips, from which blood and serum flowed.

Comparative studies were also made by means of infrared photographs with the “Holy Tunic,” or white garment preserved in the French church of Argenteuil, believed to be the one Jesus wore on the way to the cross; bloodstains were discovered in the same places as the wounds of the man executed in the shroud. Other wounds on the left shoulder blade and the right shoulder were produced by a great weight.

Bloodstains were found made by a nail that pierced his left wrist, and an injury on the left knee as a result of several falls. Marks of a rope that bound his legs, and in the center of the right foot a wound from the nail that was used to fix both feet. There is a similarity according to the trajectory that the crucifixion nails would produce, brought to Rome in the year 325 by the Empress Saint Helena, and which are in the Basilica of the Holy Cross. The wound in the right side was caused by a sharp-bladed lance, which penetrated between the fifth and sixth ribs and made blood and fluid from the pericardium flow. The “spectrum” identified that the human blood of the linen was very old and belonged to type AB.

IV. COMPARISON WITH OTHER RELICS

From the face on the sheet several discoveries were made, for it was compared with the Veil of Veronica—the cloth with which the Messiah’s face was wiped on the way to Calvary, preserved in Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican—and the two are identical. Likewise, 130 bloodstains were found identical to those of the sudarium preserved in Oviedo (Spain), which is a small cloth that covered the Lord’s face and was also found by Saint Peter in the empty tomb (John 20:7).

The cloth has been in the Cathedral of Oviedo since the twelfth century and, according to the chronicles, it was taken out of Jerusalem in the year 614, when the Holy City was destroyed by the Persians.In photographs taken on a large scale over the victim’s eyes, the marks of two coins on the eyelids were found, which agrees with the ancient Hebrew custom. The coin on the right side belongs to the procurator Pontius Pilate, minted between the years 22 and 32 A.D. The one on the left is of the emperor Tiberius Caesar, of the year 29 A.D.

V. ASTONISHING DISCOVERY

The forensic doctors explained that the death of that condemned man must have come after a terrible agony of several hours. The corpse was covered with a great quantity of myrrh and aloe, substances used in the Jewish funeral rite; these components have been identified throughout the cloth.The experts have concluded that the image could have been formed by a strong flash of energy, a product of the heat of Christ’s body at the moment of the resurrection.

Author: Guido Rojas

Source: Defiendetufe.com