Mark Oxley, author of the excellent book, The Challenge of the Shroud, has provided a good perspective on the earlier posting, Piece of the Shroud of Turin for $4,250 on eBay:
There are two questions that require answers:
Is the item on sale genuine in the sense that it was originally the property of a close confidante of King Louis XV of France? I have registered on eBay and sent a message to the seller requesting further information on the history of the item.
If the item was indeed the property of a member of the French court, I believe we can assume that the owner believed that the relics in it, including the purported Shroud relic, were genuine. We should therefore keep an open mind and accept that there is a possibility that his belief was correct. If, as the seller suggests, the item may have been a gift from the King, then the likelihood of the relics being genuine becomes much higher.
The purported Shroud relic is described as "Sainte Suaire". While there were indeed a number of shroud copies in France, I would think that only one item would be definitively described as "Holy Shroud". Other researchers may wish to comment on that.With regard to price, I have no doubt the seller has set the price on the basis of what he believes the historical and artistic value of the item to be. The relics themselves would have little or no monetary value. While we as Shroud researchers might consider a piece of the Shroud to have great value, I would suggest that a dealer in 18th century art might take a very different and less exalted view.
Mark Oxley
Thanks, Mark.
Why not to buy the relic and submit it to radiocarbon dating? I don’t have enough money for this
Hello M. Oxley and everyone else.
Do you think that this piece of cloth could have come originally from Saint Louis IX king of France ? Is it possible that it came from the “part of the Shroud” he get in 1247 from Baldwin II, emperor of Constantinople ? This relic came with many other relics and his part of several lists of relics that were kept in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. The official lists said “part of the Shroud”. Some years ago, a researchers, Cesar Barta, made some research about this particular relic that was lost during the French revolution of 1789. There’s a piece of this relic that still exist today in the Cathedral of Toledo, Spain. M. Barta wrote a very interesting article on the British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter about his analysis of this relic. You can find the paper on Shroud.com : http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n56part5.pdf
From this textile analysis, M. Barta conclude that the “part of the Shroud” that Saint Louis get in 1247 wasn’t originally a part of the Shroud of Turin like many Shroudies thought (because of the 2 missing corners we see on the Shroud). The textile structure of the piece of cloth kept in Toledo isn’t the same than the Shroud.
Personally, I think there’s a fair possibility that this linen cloth which was purchased by Saint Louis was originally found in the tomb ALONG with the Shroud. There’s some lists of relics from Constantinople in the 12th century that mentionned specifically “the linen cloths found in the tomb” instead of just a single shroud. Maybe those others linen cloths were linen strips used to tied up the body ? That could also be some linen cloth that contain aloes and myhrr and that were put around to the body in the Shroud or beside the shrouded body in the tomb…
I don’t think the item on Ebay have great chances to be genuine but if it is, I think there is more probability that this came from the “part of the Shroud” that Saint Louis get with other relics in 1247 than from the actual Shroud of Turin. But, as people say : We never know !!! To be sure, it would need a serious textile comparative analysis of this item and the textile of both the Shroud of Turin and the relic kept in Toledo, Spain.