CHRONOLOGY OF THE SHROUD
50 AD
Shroud taken from the Holy Land to Edessa (eastern Turkey) a place of religious learning for the Eastern church. Edessa housed many copies of texts now called the Egyptian Nag Hammadi New Testament texts and commentaries. (Unconfirmed)
944-1204 AD
Shroud carried from Edessa and kept with the early Church in Constantinople (according to Ian Wilson and Rex Morgan) (Unconfirmed)
1204-1307 AD
According to Ian Wilson and Rex Morgan, Knights Templar rescue the Shroud from the downfall of Constantinople and hide it (possibly in Acre, the Templar stronghold) in the Holy Land possibly until its demise in 1291. Others, such as Barbara Frale and John Thavis, both Vatican researchers, believe the Shroud was brought later to France and used as part of high rituals with the Knights Templar. Wilson and Morgan believe it resided after 1307 in Templecome, England.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901551.htm (Unconfirmed)
1353 AD
Shroud deposited at the Church of Lirey in the area of Troyes in France (southeast of Paris) by Geoffroi I de Charney, a French knight. A medal was struck in commemoration of the holy Shroud. It was exhibited in 1357 showed by his wife Jeanne de Vergy. Geoffroi I is thought to have died in battle in 1356 without revealing the source of the Shroud. (Geoffroi de Charney was the nephew of the famous Templar Geoffrey de Charney who was burned at the stake along with Grand Master Jacques de Molay in 1314 and may have passed on the Shroud to his nephew at that time.)
1359 AD
Geoffroi II de Charney, son of Geoffroi I, held another exhibition of the Lirey Shroud.
He died in 1396 and his daughter Margaret became the Shroud’s owner.
1453 AD
Around this time the Shroud, passed from Margaret to the House of Savoy.
1502 AD
The Shroud was moved to the chapel of a Savoy and church in Chambery, France.
1532 AD
Fire broke out in the sacristy of the Chambery church and molten gouts of silver burned through the Shroud.
1532- 1534 AD
Poor Clare nuns cut away charred cloth around the burn holes and covered them with triangular pieces of cloth. They also applied a backing cloth to the Shroud and from what we know now used a technique called French reweaving to repair the edges of the cloth.
1578 AD
On September 14 the Holy Shroud was transferred to Turin from Chambéry to shorten the trip of Carlo Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan, who had made a vow to go worship the Sacred Linen. This was the first modern Turin exposition. The Shroud was then on display in many occasions in the following centuries, in the Cathedral and in piazza Castello, to celebrate liturgical feasts or the Home of Savoy dynastic anniversaries.
1898 AD
An eight day exposition of the Shroud was held in Turin. Secondo Pia took the first photograph of the Shroud and discovered that the full size dorsal and frontal images of a crucified man on it were negatives showing striking details.
1939 – 1946 AD
At the outbreak of World War II the Shroud was moved to the Benedictine monastery of Montegergine in the mountains of southern Italy. It was returned to Turin in 1946.
1969 AD
The Shroud was shown to members of a special scientific commission. New photographs in both color and black and white were taken.
1973 AD
Max Frei, a Zurich forensic expert, removed pollen samples and two small pieces were cut from the main body of the Shroud (5 square centimeters) and from the side strip (3 square centimeters) for study by Prof. Gilbert Raes, director of the Ghent University’s textile laboratory. At a public exhibition the Shroud was shown for the first time on television.
1978 AD
Plans began to have the Shroud carbon dated and a team of scientists called STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) visited the cloth from 27 August to 8 October and during this time an intensive five days of non-destructive tests were done.
1979 AD
A meeting was held in Santa Barbara, California to discuss the preliminary analysis of data obtained by STURP in October, 1978. At the meeting Walter McCrone claimed his studies of the Shroud image suggested it was painted by an artist. In this same year, Piero Ugolotti
noticed faint writing on the Shroud.
1983-1987 AD
Michael Tite of the British Museum’s Research Laboratory established dialog with the laboratories in Arizona, Zurich, and Oxford as well as four other laboratories to see if they would accept samples of the Shroud for Carbon dating. All six agreed. Other discussions continue with the Holy See Mission to the United Nations in New York to discuss the Turin workshop on carbon dating the Shroud which was deemed a preliminary step to be done prior to the actual carbon dating. The Turin workshop on carbon dating the Turin Shroud chaired by Carlos Chagas, President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, was held in a seminary in Turin from 29 September to 1 October 1986. The three radiocarbon laboratories were selected to date the Turin Shroud and a letter was sent to each by the archbishop of Turin in 1987.
1988 AD
On 22 January, representatives of the three laboratories meet in London with representatives of the British Museum and Prof. Gonella, (science advisor to the archbishop) to agree upon the archbishops conditions. On 21 April, samples were removed from the Turin Shroud and were given to the three laboratories. On 13 October 1988, Cardinal Ballestrero announced the medieval date 1325 plus or minus 33 AD for the Shroud of Turin on the basis of reports from the ‘three’ labs. (Final results were printed in the 16 February 1989 issue of Nature entitled “Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin.”
1997 AD
Ugolotti’s findings of faint writings on the face of the Shroud were further studied in 1997 by the late Andre Marion, director of the Institut d’Optique Theorique et Appliquee d’Orsay, France and his student Anne Laure Courage.
2003-2005 AD
New material surfaces from Sue Benford and Joe Marino that the “samples” taken from the Shroud were, in fact, cotton fibers woven into the Shroud by the Clare nuns. Ronald Hatfield of the radiocarbon dating firm Beta Analytic developed simultaneously the same understanding. Renowned scientist from Los Alamos National Lab, Dr. Raymond Rogers, under the prodding of Barrie Schwortz, changes his mind on the Shroud studies in a scientific paper and in a national television documentary where he admits that the carbon dating is flawed. See: www.shroud.it/ROGERS-3.PDF
2009-2010 AD
Barbara Frale publishes her interpretation of the linguistic document of the faint writing on the Shroud’s surface as brought out by optical and computer image enhancement. This new material is highlighted in European reports (e.g. Der Stern, March 2010) suggesting to specialists that a “death certificate” was fixed to the Shroud by Roman witnesses. See: http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/big-pic-shroud-turin-claim.html