The Shroud of Turin?

Robert de Clari, a knight from Picardy, was a member of the Fourth Crusade, and wrote an account [link] of what he saw. Although his knowledge of the motivations of the Crusade's leaders is scant, he offers a "ground level" view of what life was like among the rank and file.

Constantinople was an amazing experience for him, and he writes about several of the marvels he saw there:

And now in yet another part of the city was another marvel. There were two images, cast in copper, in the shape of women, most cunningly wrought and naturally, and exceeding beautiful. And neither of the two was less than twenty feet high. And the one of these images was stretching out her hand toward the West, and there were letters written upon her which said, “From out of the West will come they who shall conquer Constantinople.”

And the other image was stretching out her hand toward an unseemly place and saying, “Thither” (so spoke the image) “shall they be thrust forth again.”

This seems prophetic, since the city was about to be attacked by the Westerners of the Crusade. 

In the northwest part of the city was a suburb called Blachernae. When the Crusaders attacked, they first breached the walls near there and made Blachernae their base. Clari talks about the Church of St. Mary and an object of veneration that was displayed:

But among the rest, there was also another of the minsters, which was called the Church of my Lady Saint Mary of Blachernae, within which was the shroud wherein Our Lord was wrapped. And on every Friday that shroud did raise itself upright, so that the form of Our Lord could clearly be seen. And none knows – neither Greek nor Frank – what became of that shroud when the city was taken.

The italics are mine. Other translations say "was raised upright"; that is, by a human, not elevating itself. Some like to assume that this was the Shroud of Turin, which would make Robert de Clari the only documented witness prior to 1354, when the Shroud was known to be exhibited in a church in Lirey in north-central France. Some historians think it more likely that Clari heard about (he never says that he saw  the weekly raising himself) the sudarium (Latin: "sweat cloth") of Veronica, the cloth she used to wipe Jesus' face as he trudged to Calvary.

Clari wrote in 120 short chapters, and signs off with a very honest statement:

...Robert of Clari, Knight, hath also caused the truth to be put down in writing, how the city was conquered; and albeit he may not have recounted the conquest in as fair a fashion as many a good chronicler would have recounted it, yet hath he at all times recounted the strict truth; and many true things hath he left untold, because, in sooth, he cannot remember them all.

I've never written about the Shroud of Turin. Perhaps I did not want to tackle the question of its "authenticity." At the very least we can look at its journey through history. See you tomorrow.