Importance of the Shroud (Shroud of Turin)

In most Christian temples there is a relic of great value, whether symbolic, historical or of any other nature. However, there is one emblem in particular that is considered the greatest treasure of the Christian faith. We are talking about the famous Shroud.

It is a cloth canvas found in the church of San Juan Bautista in Turin. It measures about four meters by one meter and on it appears the image of a man who has marked the history of humanity, Jesus of Nazareth.

This canvas has a unique value, since it is believed that the body of Christ was covered with it after dying on the cross.

What exactly is in the Shroud?

In this relic appears the silhouette of a man with a full body and blood stains that very predictably belonged to Jesus. This canvas has been examined with scientific tests on many occasions and forensic doctors have drawn some conclusions: the blood is type AB positive, the human silhouette that appears on the cloth was produced by the effect of coagulated blood and the low presence of ph in the blood indicates that the person who was covered with it suffered torture during his agony.

On the other hand, specialists affirm that the blood stains indicate that a strange phenomenon has occurred, hematidrosis (consists of sweating blood, a circumstance that occurs very exceptionally when someone is the victim of some form of extreme terror and small hemorrhages occur under the fur).

The first analyzes with scientific techniques were carried out in 1898 through a photographic study.

At that time, the relic ceased to be an object of devotion to become an object that had to be studied with scientific parameters. Throughout the years, different forensic doctors have analyzed the images that appeared.

From a historical point of view, the image revealed by the Shroud coincides with the type of torture physical used by the Romans and, on the other hand, the information on the shroud is in line with the description of the death of Jesus narrated in the Gospel.

Not all the scientific community accepts the authenticity of the relic

The cloth that wrapped the corpse of Jesus was known for the first time in the fourteenth century in France, but the French gentleman who made it known never revealed its provenance. The shroud of Christ remained in the church of Nuestra Señora de Lirey and shortly time it became a center of pilgrimage.

At the end of the fourteenth century, the Catholic Church opened a investigation on the authenticity of the cloth and concluded that it had been painted. The shroud was moved around various churches and finally reached the Turin Cathedral in the 17th century.

For three hundred years no news about the relic was disseminated, but with the first images from the photographic negatives the history began again. debate on the authenticity of the Shroud.