It is well established that a cloth with a purported image of Jesus existed in Edessa (now Urfa, Turkey) prior to 5th century CE. This was documented by Eusebius of Caesarea in the early 4th century. According to Eusebius (and this part of the record should be treated as legend for it has many such qualities) the cloth was brought to Edessa by the apostle Thomas or the disciple Thadeus (of the biblical 70).
What is reliable history is that in 544, a cloth with an image thought to be of Jesus was found concealed above a gate in the city walls of Edessa. That cloth was transferred to Constantinople on August 14, 944. At that time, it was described by Gregory Referendarius as a full-length burial cloth with an image of Jesus (purportedly) and bloodstains in the vicinity of a side wound.
Following the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, that cloth became the property of Othon de la Roche, the French Lord of Athens and Thebes (Athens was in French hands). He sent it to his castle home in the town of Besançon, France, likely in 1207. At Eastertide, it was removed from castle and displayed in the Besançon Cathedral. We don’t know when that practice started but it ended when the cathedral was destroyed by fire in March of 1349.
Any records that might have existed may have been burned in that fire as all church records were destroyed. In that same year, Geoffroy de Charny, a French knight married Jeanne de Vergy, a grand-niece of Othon de la Roche, and delivered the shroud (or a shroud) to the canons of Lirey, thereby creating the earliest extant record in Western Europe.
Thank you. One has to suffer a lot of idiots to get to one scholar.
Ahh. I knew I had seen more to the story somewhere. Since Constantinople didn’t rise for a few hundred years after the Crucifixion, it didn’t make any sense for it to have gone straight there. Thanks.
ping