Read The Templars and the Shroud of Christ Online
Authors: Barbara Frale
If the order of the Temple suffered a certain contamination from heretics, it is not strange that it should think of gaining a powerful medicine of faith to fight its war in a quiet, private, invisible way. The Order’s high dignitaries carried out delicate diplomatic missions for the Emperors of Byzantium, they knew well the imperial palace of
Constantinople, with its hall of wonders. Concerned at the spread of
Cathar thought, that had shot through a large part of Christian society and of the Catholic Church, the Order of the Temple thought that the disbelief of some of its own members could be cured in the simple, effective way that had once conquered St. Thomas. The Apostle had declared that he would not believe Jesus had risen from the dead unless he had first seen and touched the open wound in his side; so too Templars fallen into doubt would have been saved by the ability to see with their own eyes the signs of Christ’s humanity imprinted in that amazing relic. To see and also to touch, as we said: according to the sources, the Templars used to worship the Shroud with a liturgy that included kissing the wounds on the feet.
[94]
In the light of these thoughts it no longer seems so strange that the investigators who led the
Languedoc enquiry came down so hard on issues of heresy and sorcery, in such an excessive way as to have no comparison elsewhere: maybe in those territories there had been whispers of scandal, hearsay or even only unorthodox behaviours, which had roused the shadow of suspicion. Even if it had been only one case or two, one or two cases would have been enough in that territory.
It is curious that many modern believers tend to look on the Shroud of Turin as evidence that Jesus actually did rise; the Templars, on the other hand, if they kept it at all as the evidence suggests, sought in it an utterly different truth. That Jesus had risen they had never doubted; what they needed was the evidence that the Christ had indeed died. The Templar leaders’ choice to keep the existence and cult of the Shroud secret proved in time a tragic mistake. Although it is unfair to write history from the point of view of 20-20 hindsight and to start imagining what might have happened if-if-if, some facts are absolutely evident: the Shroud’s identity, and its charisma, were more than enough to protect the Order of the Temple from any attempt to charge them for crimes against religion. Had the world known with certainty what the mysterious Templar idol really was, had they seen it and seen the veneration with which it was treated, the black legend of Baphomet would never have been born and all of
Philip the Fair’s other charges would have shrunk to the level of backstairs courtier chit-chat.
At present the sources we have do not allow us to understand when exactly the Shroud came into the Temple’s possession, and when it left it to pass to other guardians: the one thing we do know is that it stayed
within the order for some time and that it left indelible traces in its spirituality. Some authors, such as
Dubarle,
Zaccone, Raffard de
Brienne and Alessandro
Piana, believe that after the sack of
Constantinople the sheet passed directly into the hands of the house of La Roche, and I also share this idea so far as the available sources are concerned; historian Willy
Müller on the other hand believes that the Shroud was kept in Germany for some time and had something to do with the Emperor Frederick II, and on his side it must be said that the Shroud’s face has left very clear traces in the German Templar tradition, which placed it on the verso of the seal of the Preceptors of Germany. All these reconstructions cannot really be said to contradict each other; they are only the distinct stages in a long journey of which, in the end, we still know very little.
[95]
In fact, the history of the Shroud remains open to hypotheses until the mid-fourteenth century, when it becomes the object of so many written accounts as to leave no space for doubt; for the previous centuries, Ian
Wilson’s reconstruction is indubitably the one that shows the highest degree of likelihood and probability. At any rate, whether or not it was the same as the celebrated
mandylion
, the presence of the Shroud in the imperial collection in
Constantinople is certified by various sources. In 1200/1201 the city was in chaos due to the coup that had overthrown the Emperor
Isaac II Angelos;
a riot shook the imperial palace, and the custodian of relics, the historian Nicholas
Mesarites, had to face down the rioters to prevent their profaning the chapel of Pharos. He managed to calm the soldiers down by appealing to the extreme sacredness of the place: the objects collected within made up a new Jerusalem, something that kept the earth in touch with the heavens, and had to stay outside any political issue. Nicholas describes the Shroud unmistakably, as a funeral sheet where the image of Jesus was outlined as a shape without border lines. “It is made of linen, a humble and simple material, and still has the smell of myrrh. It cannot perish, because it covered the dead body, with ill defined borders, naked, covered with myrrh after the Passion”.
[96]
That the linen could still carry the smell of the funeral perfumes in the 12th century is not as surprising as it sounds: in the 1500s, some excavations in Rome opened up imperial age graves, more than a thousand years old, and found several mummified corpses. The excavators’ accounts remark on the clearly perceivable smell of funeral perfumes.
[97]
That was the last description of the Shroud in the imperial chapel at Byzantium.
[
1
] Baima Bollone,
Sindone e scienza
, p. 99.
[
2
] Baima Bollone and Gaglio,
Applicazioni di tecniche
, pp. 169-174; Baima Bollone, Jorio and Massaro,
La determinazione del gruppo
, pp. 175-178 e Id.,
Ulteriori ricerche
, pp. 9-13; Id.,
Gli ultimi giorni
, pp. 95-97; Heller and Adler,
Blood on the Shroud
, pp. 2742-2744; Adler,
Aspetti chimico-fisici
, pp. 165-184.
[
3
] Ps. 22, 17-19; Puech,
Notes
, pp. 103-124.
[
4
] Naveh,
The Ossuary Inscriptions
, pp. 33-37; Tzaferis,
Jewish Tombs
, pp. 18-32; Puech,
Notes
, p. 120 e nota 33.
[
5
] Radermakers,
Croce
, pp. 378-379; de Fraine e Haudebert,
Crocifissione
, col. 379; Sabbatini Tumolesi,
Gladiatorum Paria
, for instance p.107, nota 79.
[
6
] Blinzler,
Il processo di Gesù
; Brown,
La morte del Messia
, pp.1354-1357; Martini,
La condanna a morte di Gesù
, pp. 543-557; Miglietta,
Il processo a Gesù
, pp. 767-784; Id.,
Riflessioni
, pp. 147-184; Fabbrini,
La deposizione di Gesù
, pp. 97-178.
[
7
] Baima Bollone,
Sindone e scienza
, pp. 99-100.
[
8
] Savio,
Pellegrinaggio di san Carlo
, p. 436.
[
9
] Tommasi,
I Templari e il culto delle reliquie
, p. 202.
[
10
] Baima Bollone,
Sindone e scienza
, pp. 101-103.
[
11
] Luke 24, 46 (Nestle-Aland, p. 753).
[
12
] John 2, 1-11; Mt 12, 38-42; Dulaey, I simboli cristiani, pp. 70-91.
[
13
] Schottmüller, II, p. 156.
[
14
] Villanueva,
Viage literario
, V, pp. 207-221
[
15
] Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Reg. Aven. 48, c. 441v, edited by Schottmüller, II, pp. 57-58; Curzon,
Règle
, § 469; Tréffort,
L’Eglise carolingienne et la mort
, pp. 67-70, 74.
[
16
] Barber,
The New Knighthood
, pp. 244-245.
[
17
] Berkovits,
Illuminierte Handschriften
, pp. 19-20; Bazelaire, Alonso and Castex,
Nouvelle interpretation
, pp. 8-23.
[
18
] Pellicori and Evans,
The Shroud
, pp. 34-43.
[
19
] Brandys,
Via Crucis
, coll. 1348-1350; Berre,
Via Crucis
, pp. 1310-1311.
[
20
] Baima Bollone,
Sindone e scienza
, pp. 94-96.
[
21
] I chose not to quote by name this sort of book, because their science-fiction taste is out of keeping with the guiding principles of this text. Broad and scholarly treatments of the issue include Baima Bollone,
Sindone e scienza
; Barberis-Savarino,
Sindone, radiodatazione
; Marinelli and Petrosillo,
La sindone, storia di un enigma
; Zaccone,
Sulle tracce della sindone.
[
22
] Demurger,
Jacques de Molay
, pp. 19-24.
[
23
] Marion e Courage,
La sacra sindone
, pp. 104-108.
[
24
] Ibid. pp. 108-123.
[
25
] Among the most up to date are Emanuela Marinelli,
La Sindone
, and Marco Tosatti,
Inchiesta sulla sindone
, both published in 2009.
[
26
] Adler,
Updating
, pp. 223-228; Gove et al.,
A Problematic Source
, pp. 504-507.
[
27
]
Papini Stati Silvae, recensuit Aldus Marastoni.
[
28
] See for instance Teodorsson,
The Phonology
, pp. 197-199; Milani, pp. 221-229.
[
29
] Baima Bollone,
Sindone e scienza
, pp. 132-137.
[
30
] Tamburelli,
La sindone e l’informatica
, pp. 240-254; Id.,
Studio della sindone
, pp. 1135-1149; Marastoni,
Le scritte
, fig. 4.
[
31
] Schaeder, Nazarhnóς, coll. 833-848; Eusebio di Cesarea,
Onomasticon
, 138, 24 ss..
[
32
] Marion and Courage,
Nouvelles découvertes,
foreword by Christian Imbert (Director in chief, Institut d’Optique e dell’École Superieure d’Optique d’Orsay), pp. 7-10.
[
33
] Marion,
Discovery of Inscriptions
, pp. 2308-2313; Marion and Courage,
Nouvelles découvertes
, pp. 218-226.
[
34
] Marion and Courage,
Nouvelles découvertes
, pp. 11-12.
[
35
] I am grateful to Émile Puech and to Simone Venturini for helping me with this reading. To be correct, I wish to underline that both scholars received photographs of simple Hebraic writings and identified them without having any idea that they were signs found on the Turin shroud. This procedure was required to receive unpolluted views, free from any conditioning that might arise from the history of this famous object: for during my research, I found out personally that the radio-carbon affair has had a disastrously polluting effect on the cultural landscape, creating a prejudice so powerful as to darken the finest, most objective scholarly minds
[
36
] Messina and Orecchia,
La scritta in caratteri ebraici
, pp. 83-88.
[
37
] Kaplan,
Le Linceul de Turin
, pp. 19-22.
[
38
] Simonsohn,
The Apostolic
See, pp. 39-40.
[
39
] Ibid, pp. 48-50.
[
40
] Ibid., pp. 51-60.
[
41
] Vauchez,
Contestazioni
, pp. 442-455, at pp. 447-448.
[
42
] Second letter of Peter, 1, 20-3, 17.
[
43
] Simonetti, Note di cristologia gnostica, pp. 529-553; si veda estesamente
Testi gnostici in lingua greca e latina.
[
44
] Clemente Alessandrino,
Stromata
, II 114, 3-6.
[
45
] Luke 8, 2-3; At 6, 1-6; Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Christians of Smyrna, VI, 1-2
[
46
] Dubois,
Valentin
, coll. 146-156; Mercati,
Anthimi Nicomediensis
, pp. 87-98; Janssens,
Héracléon
, pp. 101-151; Blanc,
Le Commentaire d’Héracléon
, pp. 81-124; Brown,
Giovanni
, pp. LXVII-LXXI; Peretto,
L’inno cristologico
, pp. 257-274.
[
47
] Grossi,
Lo gnosticismo e i Padri della Chiesa
, pp. 69-80; Segalla,
Vangeli canonici e vangeli gnostici
, pp. 47-68; Gianotto,
Gli scritti di Nag Hammadi
, pp. 36-46; Filoramo,
La gnosi ieri e oggi,
pp. 21-35.
[
48
] Mayer,
Pauliciani
, coll. 996-997; Di Fonzo, Bogomili, coll. 1759-1760; Carile,
Potere e simbologia
, pp. 432-433; Kazhdan,
Bisanzio e la sua civiltà
, pp. 97-99; Patlagean,
Contestazioni
, pp. 434-442.
[
49
] Patlagean,
Contestazioni
, p. 436; Vauchez,
Contestazioni
, pp.449-450.
[
50
] Further reading on these tendencies: Brown,
Giovanni
, pp. XXII-XLIII; Segalla,
La verità storica dei Vangeli
, pp. 195-234.
[
51
] Mattheu Paris,
Historia maior
, c. 290, in Potthast,
Regesta Pontificum
, I, p. 450; Spadafora, Veronica, coll. 1044-1048; Pfeiffer,
Le voile de sainte Véronique
, pp. 127-131; Paschalis Schlömer,
Le «sindon» et la «Véronique»
, pp. 151-164.
[
52
] Pesci,
Bolsena
, coll. 1817-1819.
[
53
] Meschini,
Note sull’assegnazione della viscontea
, pp. 635-655 (with a rich and well up to date bibliography).
[
54
] Chiffoleau,
Vie et mort de l’hérésie
, pp. 73-99; Griffe,
Le catharisme
, pp. 215-236; Becamel,
Le catharisme
, pp. 237-251.
[
55
] Da Milano,
Albigesi
, coll. 708-712; D’Amato,
Sacconi, Raniero,
coll. 1530-1531; Duvernoy,
Le catharisme en Languedoc
, pp. 27-56; Henriet,
Du nouveau sur l’Inquisition,
pp. 159-173; Dossat,
Les cathares d’après les documents
, pp. 72-77.
[
56
] Curzon,
La Règle,
§ 226.
[
57
] Frale,
La quarta crociata e il ruolo dei Templari
, pp. 447-484.
[
58
] Defremery,
Mémoires d’Histoire Orientale
, pp. 363-364;
Riant, Études sur les derniers temps
, pp. 388-389; Barber,
The Templars and the Turin Shroud
, p. 222.
[
59
] Among the earliest mentions, it appears in Saint-Gilles in 1266, in Valence in 1268, in Richarenches in 1272, in Albon in 1278, in Avignon in 1280, and so on; cf. Frale,
L’interrogatorio ai Templari
, pp. 250, 251, 255, ecc.
[
60
] In Germany in 1271, on the German preceptors’ seals, in Bulst-Thiele,
Sacrae Domus
, pp. 272-274; in Portugal in 1274 and in Puglia nel 1292 (Frale,
L’interrogatorio ai Templari
, pp. 256 e 254).
[
61
] In Gastina (Frale,
L’interrogatorio ai Templari
, p. 259) and in Limassol (Michelet,
Le Procès
II, 290).
[
62
] Michelet,
Procès
, II, pp. 398-400.
[
63
] Ripert du Puy: 1290 e 1291 (Frale,
L’interrogatorio ai Templari
, pp. 246 e 249).
[
64
] In 1266 (ibid. p. 250) and 1271 (p. 1251); before 1268 (p.262); undated (Finke, II, p. 324).
[
65
] 1288: Schottmüller, II, p. 29, and Frale,
L’interrogatorio ai Templari
, p. 270; 1289: Finke, II, p. 321; undated, Finke, II, p. 319 e Schottmüller, II, p. 50; 1290 or 1291: Schottmüller, II, p. 67.
[
66
] 1288 (Schottmüller, II, p. 28); 1298 (Schottmüller, II, p. 70); 1300 or 1301 (Frale,
L’interrogatorio ai Templari
, p. 245); undated (Finke, II, p. 323); 1300 (Frale,
L’interrogatorio ai Templari
, p. 253).
[
67
] 1291: Frale,
L’interrogatorio ai Templari
, p. 265; 1305: ibid. p. 247.
[
68
] Bulst-Thiele,
Sacrae domus
, p. 235, nota 11.
[
69
] Delaville Le Roulx,
Documents concernant les Templiers
, pp. 26-30: the source suggests that the bond between the two de Fos and the Grand Master was close (
frere Recelins de Fox, frere Jofroiz de Foz compagnon dou Maistre
).
[
70
] Curzon,
La Règle
, § 82.
[
71
] Ibid., §§ 86, 152, 368..
[
72
] Finke, II, p. 319.
[
73
] Michelet,
Le Procès
, II, 191.
[
74
] Olivier de La Roche (1226-1227): Paris, Archives Nationales,
Layettes du Trésor des Chartes
, II, p. 117, n. 1914, quoted in Trudon des Ormes,
Liste des maisons
, p. 57. I thank Luigi Boneschi for the suggestions and materials he has offered me on the subject of this dignitary.
[
75
] Platelle,
Luigi IX
, coll. 320-338; Curzon,
Le Régle
, §§ 77-119; Bulst-Thiele,
Sacrae domus
, p. 245, act of May 31, 1261; Delaville Le Roulx,
Documents concernant les Templiers
, p. 34.
[
76
] Guiraud,
Registres d’Urbain IV
, t. II, nn. 760, 761, 773;
Registres de Clément IV
, nn. 855, 1253, 1263; Runciman,
Storia delle crociate,
II, pp. 902-933.
[
77
] Servois,
Emprunts de Saint Louis
, pp. 290-293.
[
78
] Duchesne,
Historiae Francorum scriptores coaetanei
, V, pp. 390-391.
[
79
] Michelet,
Les Procès
II, pp. 401.
[
80
] Riant,
Exuviae
, pp. 22-23, 52. .
[
81
] Rinaldi,
Un documento
, pp. 109-113.
[
82
] Pieralli,
La corrispondenza diplomatica
, for instance pp. 41, 43, 45-46. It must be borne in mind that this is a private letter, and thus much freer in form than one would expect from an official document of the imperial chancellery.