The Templars and the Shroud of Christ (18 page)

III

Against all Heresies

A map of butchery

Because of its unique properties, the Shroud of Turin was an object that could leave an indelible mark on the spirituality of a religious order such as the Templars: and that is exactly what happened.

The cloth’s most singular feature is that on one of its faces can be seen the image and imprint of an individual, corresponding and practically fused together: they return the outline of a man as if he had been wrapped in them. This is an adult but youthful person, drawn up in the rigor mortis that is typical of cadaveric muscle in the first few hours after death, and bears everywhere the marks of several traumas and violence. This man wrapped in the cloth, whoever he was, had been slaughtered. Beside the numerous wounds that cover the whole body surface, we know that his face was struck repeatedly and with great violence: his nose was broken to the extent of showing a discomposed fracture, and streaks of blood flowed from the wound and soaked the linen. The right side of the face is completely swollen.
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The print on the shroud is made mainly of blood, sweat, a mixture of aromatic oils, the traces of earth we already mentioned, and probably also bits of skin torn off during the tortures: all these substances have been left on the sheet by direct contact, that is when the body was shrouded. The blood is human AB group, as shown by a team of forensic medicinal experts led by
Pier Luigi Baima Bollone, the Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Turin; it contains a large amount of bilirubin, as happens in subjects who have suffered a violent death. The blood imprint near the face seems connected to the unusual phenomenon of “sweating blood”; it is a rare process that is found when a person suffers a tremendous emotional shock, which causes the skin’s blood vessels to dilate and cause a kind of haemorrhage in the sweat glands. Near the cranium can be seen the marks of 13 wounds inflicted by sharp objects of the same kind, arranged over the upper part of the head to form a kind of helm or head-cover, which caused several lines of coagulated blood. They are also present in the face area, where a curious flow stands out where the blood has taken; it shows an abundant flow, for it comes from a break in the frontal vein, while the unusual shape results from its coagulation over a forehead already contracted in furrows by atrocious suffering. Several analyses have found that the haemorrhages, which the sheet touched, come in part from wounds inflicted when the man was alive, and in part from when he was already dead. The rivulets of blood described took place mainly while the victim was still in a vertical position. Examination of the blood flow and of its characteristics seems to have proved that the man was placed in the sheet no more than two and a half hours after death.
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When ultra-violet light is shone on the cloth, it shows the person’s entire body covered with a large number of lacerated and contused wounds (save the ones to the face and to the area of the heart) inflict while the subject was naked; these wounds are placed with a certain symmetry in groups of sixes, as if an object with six spikes had been used to strike the man a great many times, possibly 120. In the shoulder-blade area, these wounds, after having been inflicted, have been further expanded and scratched as if a large and rigid object had been viciously rubbed over the back, causing lacerations of the skin near the bone protrusions. All these wounds and excoriations draw many stains of blood, as does the hole in the left wrist, placed to cover the right one which is unseen, and in the feet.

The holes near the wrists and feet, the contracted posture of the chest and of the thigh muscles, the rips left by a large and stiff support on the back, indicate that the man was executed by crucifixion, a form of capital punishment practiced in antiquity by several peoples including Assyrians, Celts and Romans.

It amounted to fastening a man to a pole by various means and waiting for him to die over a long time and after indescribable suffering; the tears on the back suggest that the condemned man had to bear for some time an object shaped like a
patibulum
, a large wooden beam that was anchored to the pole and served to fix the body so as to make it impossible for the victim to move. In the time of the Persian King Darius (522-485 a.C.) people were executed by impaling, but later it became common to nail the condemned man’s hands and feet to the wood: a passage of the book of Isaiah, who lived between VIII and VII centuries BC, and above all a verse in Psalm 22 (“They have pierced my hands and my feet) already seem to point to this practice of nailing, which was later (III century BC – I d.C.) to become a sadly common affair, as shown among other things by fragments from the excavations of Qumran.
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In June 1968, north of Jerusalem in the area called Giv’at ha-Mivtar, a family grave of impressive dimensions was found, holding the bones of nearly twenty persons; an ossuary held the remains of a man crucified at about thirty years of age. A nail was still driven into the bone of the heel, and it had not been possible to draw it out as he was taken down from the cross, because it had bent inwards.
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Under the reign of
King Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 BC) crucifixion became tragically commonplace, falling briefly into disuse in the reign of Herod the Great (39-4 BC) only to then be brought back by the Roman legate Publius Quintilius Varus. Romans practised this kind of execution very early, reserving it for public or solemn executions of persons who did not enjoy the protection of Roman citizenship, major public enemies who had committed extremely serious crimes or had placed public order at risk; the case of the revolt of slaves led by Spartacus had become famous – after the revolt, it had been decided to inflict an exemplary punishment on the rebels, and the crosses on which they had died had lined miles upon miles of Via Appia. According to the Greek historians
Polybius and
Plutarch, it was reserved for those convicted of crimes against the State; Cicero and Livy say that Romans regarded it as the most cruel and disgraceful of penalties. The enormous agonies suffered by the condemned excited the same ugly pleasure that drove the Roman people to gladiator games, and when these public shows also featured some crucifixions, the advertising mentioned it as if it was a special treat to get the public in, no different from distributions of fruit and money. Crucifixion was chosen when political enemies had to be got rid of, because it added appalling suffering to the insult of an infamous death, and the history of the Jewish people includes many cases of this kind, cases in which it was desired to make punishment spectacular by turning it into a ghastly mass display. In 162 BC, high priest
Alkimos had 60 devout Jews who opposed him crucified in a single day, while King Alexander Iannaeus in 88 BC had as many as 800 Pharisees killed. No more than 13 years later, 80 other people suffered the same fate under charges of sorcery.
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In crucifixion by nailing of limbs, the condemned man tended to die by asphyxia, for the body weight pushed the ribcage downward and only allowed him to breathe in, while breathing out demanded motions that caused intolerable pain. The presence of the several secondary wounds informs us that it was a crucifixion carried out in the Roman fashion, that is by having the actual execution follow an additional form of torture, flagellation: the victim was struck with the
flagrum
, a whip with a wooden handle and leather strips at whose ends were sticks of bone or wood with points at both ends. Violently enough handled, these stings were literally able to rip skin off. No known description of Roman usage, on the other hand, can be connected with the two other outrages suffered by this individual: whatever it was that caused the multiple wounds over the cranium, and the wound between the fifth and sixth rib on the right of the chest, was caused by a pointed and cutting weapon. That wound may be connected with the fact that the condemned man did not have his legs broken, a Jewish practice meant to hasten the convict’s death and be able to bury them before the end of the day according to a precept in Deuteronomy. Such alterations to normal practice could be explained by the Gospel account: the trial of Jesus of Nazareth took place in a unique socio-political context, and for that reason his burial too did not follow the usual practice.
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The “belt of blood” and the “sign of Jonas”

The most glaring of all the blood marks can be found on the right side of the chest, near the fifth space between the ribs. It was caused by a large wound, 4.5 cm long and 1.5 cm broad, with straight and slightly spread margins, typical of a wound inflicted by a pointed weapon used for cutting. The big blood flow that followed it and soaked the cloth went down the side and ended up colouring the whole breadth of the back, creating a horizontal stripe; this glaring red-brown streak is even more visible to the eye when the back imprint of the Shroud is looked at; because of its shape and the impression it makes, the specialists called it “the belt of blood”. The abundance of the blood flow suggests that the wound caused a break in the lung or in the upper right ventricle of the heart; furthermore it was found that this blood has broken down into its two components, that is the serum and the blood particles (red globules), which never happens except after death. The wound that ripped the chest open was made when the man was already a corpse.
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Modern historians are in the habit of looking at the Shroud with the eyes of science, that is in the light of the countless chemical and physical analyses carried out more or less ceaselessly on it since the early nineteen hundreds; but we have to take a step back and try to understand how men from the Middle Ages saw it. From the tear in the ribs, just where the spear had struck, Jesus according to the gospel of John, the signs of a huge haemorrhage were visible. The blood had flowed down the side, drenching the cloth all the breadth of the thorax, from side to side. Deep red on the ivory white of the linen, this sign leapt to the eye, glaring, awesome.

To those who used to listen to the story of the Passion, as the Templars did, the belt of blood must have held an immense fascination. Could this “belt”, red with blood, be something which the Templars tried to represent with the little strand they bore on their bodies every day? Their belts had once been consecrated by touching the stone of the Sepulchre that had received the body of Jesus and seen his resurrection. And the shroud, too, according to tradition, had shrouded Jesus’ body and had “experienced” his rise from death, but with something extra: a bit of his blood still rested on the material. For a mediaeval man, this was priceless: later on, the Franciscan theologian Francesco della Rovere, later to be Pope
Sixtus IV (1471-1484), pointed to the Shroud of Turin, in his treatise
De Corpore et Sanguine Christi
, would point exactly to the Shroud of Turin as the relic of the Lord’s true blood.
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As we mentioned, in St.
Bernard’s time the Templars’ belt had a merely symbolic value, representing the vow of chastity; then during the twelve hundreds, this meaning was as though forgotten and replaced with a loftier, almost theological one: the belt is consecrated through contact with relics and material places that have witnessed the earthly life of Jesus, it is therefore impregnated with a special sacred power and gives the monks who wear it a material contact with the human dimension of Christ. I am certain (as I have already said) that the special night ceremonies the Templars carried out by the
Holy Sepulchre were vigils of prayer during which the dignitaries consecrated by contact the linen strands that would then be given to all future order members, a guarantee of protection against the enemies of body and soul. I would not be surprised at all if one day new documents were to show that the great reputation enjoyed by the Templar dignitaries in their time as profound experts in relics also depended on the fact that benefactors of the order often asked them to consecrate certain objects – rings, handkerchiefs and so on – during those same liturgies at the Sepulchre, to make them in turn relics as precious as Templar strands. We know for certain that the King of France,
Louis IX the Saint, had exactly that done, and who knows how many others did.
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By coming into contact with stone that had been present at the resurrection of Christ, the belt somehow absorbed its potency, and was itself a guarantee of resurrection for the Templar willing to live and die according to the spirit of the Order. In 1187 Jerusalem was lost, and we can only guess at what a terrible blow this was to Templar morale. Then, one day, along comes this unbelievable piece of cloth, with the marks of a man who had been literally butchered exactly as Jesus had been, according to the Gospels. The most authoritative tradition describes it as the true winding-sheet of Christ. What can be seen on that sheet is not only terribly realistic, it is even embarrassing: indeed, it forces Christians to reflect.

Mediaeval man interpreted some things in a much clearer way than we can today. The corpse that was wrapped in the Shroud was wholly stiff, its neck collapsed on its chest, the fingers extended, the muscles at full tension. Such rigor mortis occurs between one to three hours following death, and becomes complete by about ten to 12, and fades away after 36 to 48, because natural decomposition begins to set in.
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Mediaeval men were aware of such matters as it was part of their life. The bodies of their beloved dead were often exhibited on a bed in the house and stayed there, surrounded by lit candles, for many hours, under the eyes of relatives who honoured the dead with long vigils of prayer which neighbours also attended. Bodies of Popes and other important figures were exhibited in the churches for several days, so that everyone was able to give them a last farewell. And then there was the sad and ghastly sight of battlefields, where unburied corpses could stay for indeterminate amounts of time, touched by jackal thieves, and by the poor in search of something however useful, before some merciful passer-by saw them somehow buried. Mediaeval man would know at first sight that that man had been inside the Shroud only for a definite time, that is no more than two or three days; for the mark had been made before rigor mortis had begun to pass off and flesh to naturally dissolve. Their minds must have gone straight to the words of the Gospels: “For it is written that the Christ was to suffer first, and be raised from the dead on the third day”.
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