The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [115]
“Most importantly,” Middagh added, just to make sure nobody missed the key point, “the various images we have of the Cloth of Edessa, the Mandylion, the gold coins of Justinian II, and the Pray Manuscript all predate the carbon-14 dating that places the creation of the Shroud of Turin at around 1260 to 1390 A.D.”
Coretti nodded in agreement. “We also have the memoirs of French Crusader Robert de Clari, who documents that he personally witnessed a ritual in Constantinople where a cloth depicting the crucified Christ was raised by a mechanism the Byzantines designed to make it appear as if the Shroud was rising from a casket. Various Byzantine sculptures and paintings from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries show a Christ looking almost identical to the man in the Shroud—same beard, same crossed arms, same missing thumbs—rising from a casket. As bizarre as it may sound today, the Byzantine church in Constantinople before 1200 A.D. appears to have used the Shroud of Turin in some sort of a ritual ceremony reenacting Christ’s resurrection. Again, the early Church believed the Shroud contained not just the true image of Christ but a lost mystery about the ancient secrets at the heart of the resurrection itself.”
Then, sorting through the piles of books on the table, she found one in particular. “This is the book I published ten years ago on the Shroud of Turin and the Knights Templar,” she said. “It was titled The Secret History of the Knights Templar.”
Gabrielli laughed, particularly pleased to learn of this. Any ancient artifact he could tie in with the Crusades and the Knights Templar immediately increased its value dramatically. Gabrielli was well-known for saying, “Every good medieval conspiracy theory needs a connection to the Knights Templar and the Crusaders in Jerusalem.”
“The Knights Templar were accused of worshipping a bearded head they brought back from Jerusalem as a relic from the Crusades,” Coretti said. “The accusation was that the bearded head was Baphomet, a grotesque representation of the devil, typically seen as a goat-man, that the Knights Templar used in their worship of Satan. I disagree. I think the bearded head the Knights Templar venerated was the framed Shroud of Turin looking like it did when it was displayed as the Cloth of Edessa or the Mandylion in Byzantine Constantinople. A panel of wood found during World War II at a Knights Templar site in Templecombe, England, had been above a plastered ceiling. The panel contained a painting with a distinctly Shroud-like face. Carbon-14 tests placed the wood panel in the Templar period, around 1280 A.D. So there is good evidence the Knights Templar possessed the Shroud and that they venerated it, much as the early Byzantine Church in Constantinople venerated it.”
“There is another strong connection between the Knights Templar and the Shroud of Turin.” Middagh joined in, supporting Coretti’s argument. “We know that the Shroud of Turin was brought to Lirey, France, in the 1350s, by a descendant of Geoffrey de Charney, the Knight Templar who was burned at the stake in 1314 with Jacques de Molay, the famous last Grand Master of the Knights Templar. French and Venetian knights of the Fourth Crusade besieged Constantinople, along with the Knights Templar. Then, on April 13, 1204, they entered the city and looted it. Geoffrey de Charney was married to one of the leaders of the Fourth Crusade. So it is entirely possible that the Knights Templar were responsible for getting the Shroud of Turin from Constantinople to France. From Lirey, France, we know the Shroud traveled to Turin, where it has remained ever since.”
Gabrielli made detailed notes about Geoffrey de Charney and the Knights Templar, deciding not to challenge any of this history.
“Then there is the pollen analysis,” Coretti said.