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The discerning skeptical inquirer wonders . . .
When was the Edessa Cloth removed from Constantinople?
We know that in April of 1204, the French and Venetian crusaders looted the treasures of Constantinople and carried away many riches and relics. The Edessa Cloth disappeared along with other priceless treasures.
There is some evidence that suggests that the Edessa Cloth, then known as the
Holy Mandylion, was taken to Athens. About a year after Constantinople was plundered,
Theodore Ducas Anglelos wrote in a letter to Pope Innocent III:
The Venetians partitioned the treasure of gold, silver and ivory, while the French did the same with the relics of saints and the most sacred of all, the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after His death and before the resurrection. We know that the sacred objects are preserved by their predators in Venice and France and in other places.
In 1207, Nicholas d’Orrante, Abbott of Casole and the Papal Legate in Athens, wrote about relics taken from Constantinople by French knights. Referring specifically to
burial cloths, he mentions seeing them “with our own eyes” in Athens.
See: What is the Image of Edessa? When was the Edessa Cloth removed from Edessa?
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Shroud of Turin and the Skeptical Inquirer
Fact:
The 1988 carbon 14 dating used invalid samples snipped from a
discrete medieval repair. Furthermore, kinetics constants for the
loss of vanillin from lignin indicates that the cloth is at least
twice as old as the dates determined by the carbon 14 dating with
the faulty samples.
By some estimates, from
examination of documenting photographs, there is sufficient new
thread (about 60%) to allow adjusting the cloth's date to
approximately the first century.
Fact :
The images are formed by a brownish, complex conjugated carbon
substance within a carbohydrate layer of starch fractions no thicker
than 1/100 the diameter of a human hair.
The images are probably the
product of an amino/carbonyl reaction.
Fact :
The bloodstains are real blood. The blood is unusually red for
old blood.
The blood probably stayed red and
did not turn black as blood normally does because trace chemicals
found in the starch fractions are hemolytic. Also, the blood is rich
in bilirubin, a bile pigment produced when a human body is under
severe traumatic stress. Bilirubin is bright red and stays red.
Fact :
There is a faint, superficial face image on the back of the cloth.
This supports the hypothesis of an
amino/carbonyl reaction.
Fact :
There are sufficient descriptive historical records to suggest that
the Shroud of Turin is the Edessa cloth (ca. before 544 to 944 CE)
and the Bucoleon Palace grave cloth of Constantinople (ca. 944 -
1204).
Fragmentary evidence suggests that
the Edessa Cloth originated in Jerusalem in the 1st century and that
it is the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth.
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