In the late Middle Ages a piece of linen purporting to be the burial garment of Jesus Christ emerged. It showed two faint images of the front and back of a crucified man bearing the same marks as Jesus did at the time of his death and it became known as the Turin Shroud.
Clement VII, one of the rival popes of the fourteenth century, after first trying to hush up those who would expose the shroud of Turin, signed papers declaring it a fraud. Supposedly, the artist who painted it acknowledged it as a forgery. According to contemporary documents, certain men, for hire, had pretended the "relic" cured them, giving it a reputation, because the forgers desired to make money off it.
In 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Thirty years later radiocarbon dating tests simultaneously carried out by laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and Tucson, Arizona dated a corner piece of the shroud as having been made between the years 1260 and 1390. Though they concluded it was a medieval fake, no one has ever been able to give an explanation how it came to be made.
In a carefully worded statement Pope Francis urged the faithful in 2013 to contemplate the shroud with awe, without asserting its authenticity.
The shroud is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.
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| The Shroud of Turin: modern photo of the face, positive left, digitally processed image right. By Dianelos Georgoudis |
Clement VII, one of the rival popes of the fourteenth century, after first trying to hush up those who would expose the shroud of Turin, signed papers declaring it a fraud. Supposedly, the artist who painted it acknowledged it as a forgery. According to contemporary documents, certain men, for hire, had pretended the "relic" cured them, giving it a reputation, because the forgers desired to make money off it.
In 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Thirty years later radiocarbon dating tests simultaneously carried out by laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and Tucson, Arizona dated a corner piece of the shroud as having been made between the years 1260 and 1390. Though they concluded it was a medieval fake, no one has ever been able to give an explanation how it came to be made.
In a carefully worded statement Pope Francis urged the faithful in 2013 to contemplate the shroud with awe, without asserting its authenticity.
The shroud is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.
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