Knights Templar hid the Shroud of Turin, says Vatican
Richard Owen - April 6, 2009
Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said yesterday in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic’s missing years.
The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers.
The Shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral, has long been revered as the shroud in which Jesus was buried, although the image only appeared clearly in 1898 when a photographer developed a negative.
Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican Secret Archives, said the Shroud had disappeared in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and did not surface again until the middle of the fourteenth century. Writing in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Dr Frale said its fate in those years had always puzzled historians.
However her study of the trial of the Knights Templar had brought to light a document in which Arnaut Sabbatier, a young Frenchman who entered the order in 1287, testified that as part of his initiation he was taken to “a secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access”. There he was shown “a long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man” and instructed to venerate the image by kissing its feet three times.
Dr Frale said that among other alleged offences such as sodomy, the Knights Templar had been accused of worshipping idols, in particular a “bearded figure”. In reality however the object they had secretly venerated was the Shroud.
Tags: Knights Templar, Shroud of Turin
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April 6th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Personlly, I’ve always doubted all this shroud stuff.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Whatever the ultimate origin, or purpose, it has a lengthy history. That the Templars had possession of it is well-established already. This Vatican scholar merely offers supporting evidence. It seems pretty clear to me that the shroud may indeed be the Baphomet of the Templars.
Check out this link too.
April 9th, 2009 at 1:11 am
Oh, I just meant doubting that it was Christ’s shroud. I think its a stretch what Lomas and Knight say, but yeah, it surely could have been.
April 9th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those shroud freaks, nor do I particularly care about the Templars.
I read that Lomas/Knight book in the 90s when it came out. At that time I was credulous toward a whole range of alternative viewpoints. But I specifically remember how lame their thesis was. The whole book felt like a con-job (even that they were deceiving themselves). It was in fact the poorest conspiracy theory book I had ever read - and I had plowed through hundreds of ‘em by then.
That being said, the shroud is known to have been in the hands of a family that consisted of Templar knights. And if the Sabbatier testimony is believed, Templars were in possession of it before Demolay’s death (rendering meaningless the crux of the Lomas/Knight argument anyway). It only matters that they believed the shroud was worthy of veneration. The Baphomet tales have remained a mystery; that it was in fact the shroud now seems the most plausible explanation.