Word: shroud
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During the 7th Century two early churchmen, Saints Braulionis and Adamnan of lona, referred to the existence of a cloth venerated as the shroud in which the body of Christ was wrapped when it was laid in the tomb. In 1171 William, Archbishop of Tyre, mentioned such a shroud in Constantinople. In 1204 a member of the Fourth Crusade, which sacked the city, sent the shroud to his father in France. But in 1349 the Church of St. Stephen in Besançon, where it was kept, caught fire, and the shroud seemed to have vanished...
...following year, King Philippe de Valois of France presented to one of his lords a cloth purporting to be the same shroud. Two bishops forbade veneration of it, presumably because it was a fraud; and in 1390 Pope Clement VII issued a special bull ordering that it should be treated only as "a painted representation of the original, authentic Holy Shroud, whose whereabouts are unknown." Since 1452 the cloth has been the property of the Italian House of Savoy. On special occasions it was exhibited to the faithful, but in the 19th Century, at least, it seems to have appeared...
Ever since, the argument has raged: Does the 14 ft. 3 in.-long cloth really bear the front & back imprint of Christ's naked body, as though it had enveloped Him lengthwise, or is it the work of a clever forger? Points mentioned in favor of the shroud's authenticity...
...figure on the shroud is like a photographic negative (light areas appear dark), which would seem to indicate that it is the result of an impression rather than a painting (though an impression might still be a forgery). According to a letter read at the Congress by Roman Catholic Professor Rudolf Kynek of Czechoslovakia, "We have treated corpses with myrrh and aloes, and when we placed them in linen an impression of the corpse could afterwards be plainly seen on the linen when we exposed it to light. As time went by ... when humidity covered it with invisible fine molds...
...Medieval tradition held that nails were driven through Christ's palms. The shroud shows wounds near the middle of the wrists. After hammering nails in 35 freshly amputated hands, Surgeon Pierre Barbet of Paris declared that the palms would tear too easily to support the weight of a man, and Christ's wrists must indeed have been pierced. Believers in the shroud's authenticity doubt that this fact would be known to anyone forging the relic...