page_title: History of the Shroud of Turin
section_title: Prior to the 14th century
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Shroud of Turin / Prior to the 14th century
caption_attribution_description: English: The surrender of the Holy Mandylion (the "Image of Edessa"), bearing the face of Christ, by the inhabitants of Edessa in Mesopotamia to the Byzantines in 944. Ελληνικά: Η παράδοση του Ιερού Μανδυλίου από τους κατοίκους της Εδέσσης της Μεσοποταμίας στους Βυζαντινούς, το 944.
context_page_description: The historical records for the Shroud of Turin can be separated into two time periods: before 1390 and from 1390 to the present. The period until 1390 is subject to debate and controversy among historians. Prior to the 14th century there are some allegedly congruent but controversial references such as the Pray Codex. It is often mentioned that the first certain historical record dates from 1353 or 1357. However the presence of the Turin Shroud in Lirey, France, is only undoubtedly attested in 1390 when Bishop Pierre d'Arcis wrote a memorandum where he charged that the Shroud was a forgery. The history from the 15th century to the present is well documented. In 1453 Margaret de Charny deeded the Shroud to the House of Savoy. As of the 17th century the shroud has been displayed and in the 19th century it was first photographed during a public exhibition.
  There are little definite historical records concerning the shroud prior to the 14th century.
context_section_description: The Gospel of the Hebrews, a 2nd-century manuscript extant in about 20 lines states 'and after He had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest he appeared to James'
  Although there are numerous reports of Jesus' burial shroud, or an image of his head, of unknown origin, being venerated in various locations before the fourteenth century, there is no historical evidence that these refer to the shroud currently at Turin Cathedral.
  The Gospel of John states that: "Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes [othonia] lie, and the napkin [soudarion], that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself" (John 20:6–7, KJV). The Gospels of Matthew (27:59), Mark (15:46), and Luke (23:53) all refer to a singular "sindon" (fine linen cloth) which was wrapped (entulisso) around Jesus' body. In other Greek usage the word "sindon" refers to a wrapping such as a toga (Mark 14:51–52) or a mummy wrapping (Herodotus 2, 86).
  The Image of Edessa was reported to contain the image of the face of Jesus, and its existence is reported since the sixth century. Some have suggested a connection between the Shroud of Turin and the Image of Edessa. No legend connected with that image suggests that it contained the image of a beaten and bloody Jesus. It was said to be an image transferred by Jesus to the cloth in life. This image is generally described as depicting only the face of Jesus, not the entire body. Proponents of the theory that the Edessa image was actually the shroud, led by Ian Wilson, theorize that it was always folded in such a way as to show only the face, as recorded in the apocryphical Acts of Thaddeus from around that time, which say it was tradiplon – folded into four pieces.
  Ian Wilson, under 'Reconstructed Chronology of the Turin Shroud' recounts that the 'Doctrine of Addai' mentions a 'mysterious portrait' in connection with the healing of Abgar V. A similar story is recorded in Eusebius' History of the Church bk 1, ch 13, which does not mention the portrait.
  Three principal pieces of evidence are cited in favor of the identification with the shroud. Saint John of Damascus mentions the image in his anti-iconoclastic work On Holy Images, describing the Edessa image as being a "strip", or oblong cloth, rather than a square, as other accounts of the Edessa cloth hold. However, in his description, St. John still speaks of the image of Jesus' face when he was alive.
  In several articles, Daniel Scavone, professor Emeritus of history at the University of southern Indiana, puts forward a hypothesis which identifies the Shroud of Turin as the real object that inspires the romances of the Holy Grail.
  To the contrary, Averil Cameron, expert of Late Antique and Byzantine History at the University of Oxford, denies the possibility of the Turin shroud being identified with the Image of Edessa. Among the reasons are too big differences in the historical descriptions of the Image of Edessa compared to the shroud. The Image of Edessa has according to her its origin in the resistance to the Byzantine iconoclasm.
  On the occasion of the transfer of the cloth to Constantinople in 944, Gregory Referendarius, archdeacon of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, preached a sermon about the artifact. This sermon had been lost but was rediscovered in the Vatican Archives and translated by Mark Guscin  in 2004. This sermon says that this Edessa cloth contained not only the face, but a full-length image, which was believed to be of Jesus. The sermon also mentions bloodstains from a wound in the side. Other documents have since been found in the Vatican library and the University of Leiden, Netherlands, confirming this impression. "Non tantum faciei figuram sed totius corporis figuram cernere poteris" (You can see not only the figure of a face, but [also] the figure of the whole body). (In Italian) (Cf. Codex Vossianus Latinus Q69 and Vatican Library Codex 5696, p. 35.)
  An illustration of what appears to some to be the Shroud of Turin complete with the dis
caption: The surrender of the Image of Edessa to the Byzantine parakoimomenos Theophanes by the Edessenes, from the Madrid Skylitzes.
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