According to Vatican Insider:
Over the next four weeks, around a million German Christians will be travelling to Trier to admire the "Heiliger Rock", or the Holy Robe: one of the most important relics in German Christendom, that Jesus supposedly wore before being crucified. Stephan Ackermann, the Bishop of Trier – Karl Marx’s home city – has decided that the robe will be put on display for the eighteenth time in its history, until 13 May.
According to legend, Helena – the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine – brought the seamless garment to Germany, while the first documentary evidence to mention the relic’s presence in Trier dates back to 1196. Meanwhile, Prüm Abbey has the sandals that belonged to Christ. These, together with the Holy Robe and many other relics venerated by the Catholic world, attracted the scorn of Martin Luther, who referred to them as "junk".
Is there somebody who know if this relic was ever analysed seriously by scientists ? Did this tunic was ever dated with the C14 method ? Just curious…
I imagine they haven’t yet been carbon dated. But maybe we don’t do that any more??!! Is there a continuous provenance from the time of Helena?
The Titulus Crucis said to be discovered by Helena in 325 AD, was again “rediscovered” in the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome,in 1492. Arizona University carbon dated it to between 980 and 1146 AD.
My Wellington Dominion Post daily newspaper this morning reports an experiment at Auckland University showing the effects of anaesthesia on honey bees. Apparently anaesthesia disturbs their unusually accurate sense of time. After being anaesthetised for six hours the bees thought it was still early morning even though it was actually midday, and they set off in the wrong direction. The effect is also evident in patients immediately on waking after surgery, a sort of jetlag.
But I suppose it would be stretching the long bow to say that we’ve all actually been asleep for the last 1000 years, and this is the reason why carbon dating of otherwise reliable relics evidently show a time shift when it comes to carbon dating!!??
Beside the Shroud and the Sudarium of Oviedo, I don’t think there is other christic relics that get much chance to be genuine… And even those 2 relics have not been dated correctly (meaning from the 1st century) with the C14 dating !!! Of course, that’s not the end of the world, but that’s sound strange anyway.
Yannick, there is another relic with strong historical credits to be authentic, or at least 2000 years old. It is the Chalice of Valencia, which according to art experts might have well been carved in Middle East 2000 years ago, although that does not necessarily mean that it is the Grial or the cup Jesus used in the Last Supper.
Coming to the C14 again, the whole issue is as simple as this: it is not an appropiate technique for dating cloths like the shroud or the sudarium. We know this now but not in 1988, when C14 was believed to be an universal technique. Now we know it can only be applied in certain cases and in many others is not reliable.
As for the One piece tunic, it has never been scientifically studied in any way. It has no history beyond the 12th century, so far. There are several ‘stories’ to it’s provenance… But worst of all apparently it’s been patched, ripped apart sewn back together and patched somemore lol. I would suspect a c14 dating would give a strange result.
R
I think Ron you mixed up this tunic of Trier with another one named the tunic of Argenteuil in France. The one in Argenteuil would have been the one piece tunic that Jesus wore on his way to the cross and that’s why we found blood traces on it, while this one from Trier doesn’t seem to have blood on it. So, it is said that the tunic of Argenteuil would have been the one that Jesus would have wear on his skin, while the other one in Trier would have been wear by Jesus over the one from Argenteuil. If this one from Trier is authentic (I seriously doubt it but if), then it would mean that Jesus would not have wear it from the moment of the scourging until his death, and that makes sense.
I know that some researchers have studied the tunic of Argenteuil and it’s interesting that they also found AB blood type like the Shroud and the Sudarium and they said that the blood stains on it present a very good match with the blood stains on the back of the man of the Shroud. But I don’t think those studies have been published in a peer-reviewed journal, so we have to be really prudent with those kind of claims. Nevertheless, it’s interesting. What is also interesting is the fact that there was such a tunic in the lot of relics that saint Louis king of France bought from the latin emperor of Constantinople in 1247. But the thing is this : The one from Argenteuil and the one from Trier seems to have been in those places during the 12th century on ! So, would that mean there was a 3rd tunic of Christ in the Sainte Chapelle of Paris ??? You see, all those other relic of Christ have not a great credibility. I have a great doubt about their possible authenticity. Nevermind the fact that I don’t see a Roman soldier giving a price that he won at the foot of the cross (for the one piece tunic) to the new christian community !!! Doesn’t sound logical at all.
For the chalice of Valencia, I’ve heard of it here and there but I never study this one, so I really don’t have a real opinion about it. But what I found strange, is the fact that there is other supposed authentic chalice in other places in Europe and Middle East ! So, again, a great doubt still exist… I’ve heard of one chalice that was found during archaeological excavations at the site of a Church in Antioch. I don’t know much about this one too but the few things I’ve read about it seems interesting. Anyone know more about those 2 supposed authentic chalice of Christ ?
I didn’t mix anything up yannick, this IS a “one-piece” tunic in Trier. Has I said in my post there are several stories to the provenance of Christ’s ROBE, Trier is one and Argenteuil another.
R
Regarding the chalice of valencia there seems to be a consensus of art experts so as to having been manufactured 2000 years ago in a Middle East workshop.
The existing chalice has an original part carved in calcedonia (a type of stone) plus additional parts widely accepted to have been added in medieval times.There is quite a lot of literature (mostly in Spanish) but perhaps you could start from http://www.catedraldevalencia.es/en/index.php where you can find some info.
However, having been manufactured at the time of Jesus and in the area where he lived, does not necessarily mean that the tradition which considers this chalice to be the cup used in the last supper is 100% true. I am afraid that we will never be able to go much further.
It also seems a historical fact that in medieval times, when Spain was mostly under islamic rule, this chalice was safely kept in a remote monastery in the Pyrinees called San juan de la Penia.
Some experts in medieval literature also think that the geographical environments described in the first tales of the grial, for example Parsifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach, can be located in this remote monastery, surrounded by mountains. However, it is fair to say that other experts do not share this opinion, although some link between the chalice of valencia and the grial legends is more commonly accepted.
By the way, I have just discovered that a shroud scholar, Dan Scavone http://www.shroud.com/scavone2.htm supports the idea of a strong connection between the Shroud and the Holy Grail to the point that in his view, they could have been the same object.
I do share Scavone’s view. Actually there is both a strong & very subtle (“optical”) connection between the Shroud and the Holy Grail to the point that they could have been the same object. My own research on the topic led me to identify on the Shroud most if not all the Grail medieval “semblances et avisions”.
On December 30, 2011 at 9:39 pm | #31
I wrote: ” (…) you can see the Grail Chalice of Christ Blood like shape… right in the Shroud bust vertical axis seen upside down. This is just one of the archaeoperceptive shapes that can take up the Grail as positive optical illusion… The likeness is not unlike a primary vision as the Shroud image does “behave” like an oversized Rorschach.”
On December 30, 2011 at 9:39 pm | #31, I aslo wrote:
“I already emailed Dan (Porter) the likeness of the Grail Chalice of Christ Blood on the Shroud but he just censored it…”
But the one that was cut into pieces and rebuilt (with a lot of missing pieces !!!) is the one in Argenteuil… Maybe one day, with the fast development of genetics and DNA, it will be possible to make a side-by-side study of all the supposed relics of Christ (especially those with blood on them) and see if those relics came from the same individual… It’s a dream I have for a long time that the Church will settle the issue of those relics one day (when it will be the right time) once and for all. I think science will be advance enough in a near future to make those kind of comparative DNA studies (even with degraded DNA from very old blood) without a high level of incertainty. When ? That’s the question. For the moment, as I know, we have the Shroud, the Sudarium, the Argenteuil tunic and the Lanciano Eucharistic miracle that all presents an AB blood type, but comparative DNA have never been done so far. I’m pretty sure one day, science will have the chance to do that and then, we’ll be pretty sure which ones are really linked to one single individual, namely Jesus of Nazareth.
For the history : The tunic of Argenteuil was cut into pieces during the french revolution to avoid that it was destroyed by the revolutionnaries.
I should have said : cut into pieces and hide in the ground, then some years later, many pieces were dig out and many others were lost and the clergymen who did this had to rebuild the tunic like a puzzle !!! Hard task that unfortunatelly, he wasn’t able to do completely… This tunic is made of 100% wool.
Hey Gab, incase you didn’t know; check out the Shroud Encounter site, they have a good video with Russ interviewing Scavone and he explains this connection to the grail quite well.
R
Sorry Gab, the video can be found at shrouduniversity.com…look under Library>video.
R
Thanks a lot Ron. This is quite new to me. I have to think a little bit about it. Thanks again.
the real tunic is in georgia shvetitskhoveli!
They are all real tunics ;-) But all authentic? …Who knows? Which of the three was the actual tunic worn by Jesus during the passion, if any of them? Only through intense scientific investigation of each, could we come relatively close to an answer.
R