TORINO, ITALY – The small Italian city of Torino will be hosting the display (Ostension) of the Shroud of Turin for 67 days.
The Shroud is an ancient burial sheet in a herringbone weave of ivory color made in a single piece. It reveals a double image, front and back, of a body which shows wounds of torture and beatings. Its scorch marks date to a fire in 1532.
Its image shows two imprints of a body laid on one half of the linen with the other half of the cloth drawn over the head down to the feet which creates two head-to-head images (frontal and dorsal).
A 1988 radiocarbon dating placed the Shroud’s creation between 1260 and 1390 A.D. This announcement only served to increase the mystery of the Shroud. Scientific tests seem to agree that the Shroud is impossible to reproduce and that it truly does possess unique characteristics.
Summarizing information written in the town’s newspaper, La Stampa.
The Shroud (la Sindone) is the cloth believed to have been the wrapping of Jesus’ body after it was removed from the cross. It arrived in Turin from Chambery in 1578. The history of the cloth dates to 1353 when it came into possession of French nobleman Charny, Lord of Lirey. A century later it came to Ludwig I, the second duke of Savoy who placed it in Chambery. In 1506, Pope Julius II authorized its worship and set its celebration day for May 4.
The year 1578 marked the16th anniversary of the date of the transfer of the capital of the Duchy from Chambery to Turin under the Duke of Savoy Emanuele Filiberto. His intention was to bring the shroud to Turin. Fortuitously, the future Saint Borromeo expressed his desire to break a vow he had made during the plague along with his wish to make a pilgrimage to see the Shroud. Filiberto ordered the sacred cloth moved to Turin in order to shorten Borromea’s walking pilgrimage. And on September 14 of that year, the cloth arrived in Turin. This is considered its first Exposition. In 1694, the Shroud was placed in the chapel designed by Guarini located between the Cathedral and the Royal Palace.
The Shroud became even more of an icon of Turin in the 20th century when upon the death of the last King of Italy, Umbert II of Savoy on March 18, 1983, it became the property of the Holy See. Pope John Paul II decided that the custodian of the Shroud will forever be the Archbishop of Turin.
The people of Turin feared for the cloth during the night of the 11-12th of April, 1997 when a fire broke out in the Guarini chapel. The Shroud was safe because due to previous restoration work, it had been temporarily transferred to the center of the Cathedral.
A visit to the Shroud is free; it may be seen daily from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Although the ticket is free, you must book online at www.sindone.org, or in person at the booking center in the Piazza Castello near the Official Bookshop (which we also visited). Mass is celebrated in the Cathedral every morning at 7 a.m.
The route to walk to the Shroud is 850 meters long and is covered by canopies all the way up until you reach the pre-reading halls; there the linen is explained to visitors utilizing a video display to ensure that guests find it easier to identify the traces of blood and the mysterious markings of the body of the man on the Shroud.
No more than 250 people are permitted to view the Shroud at any one time, for a limited period of only three to 15 minutes.
We had arrived for our visit Monday, May 18 almost two hours before the time listed on our ticket print-out, but were allowed to join the other pilgrims upon our arrival at the site at 2:30 p.m.
You may also visit the Holy Shroud Museum nearby which houses significant items such as the box used to carry the Shroud to Turin in 1578 and the silver box that held it from the end of the 16th century until 1998.
There is both mystery and mystique that surrounds this Holy Relic. In 1898, the first photograph of the Shroud surprisingly revealed that the imprint acted like a photographic negative, representing the inversion of lightness and darkness and the inversion of left and right
We visited the Museum Diocesano right next door to the Chapel where the Shroud is kept and viewed the 15th-century painting by Fra Angelico which depicts Christ lying on a cloth that evokes the Shroud. Some experts feel Beato Angelico may have actually seen the Shroud in his lifetime. This painting is currently on loan from the Museum of San Marco In Florence. It was restored by the Turin Council for this specific event and will be on display until June 30 of this year.
