Category: Sudarium of Oviedo
Sudarium of Oviedo
The Sudarium of Oviedo, or Shroud of Oviedo, is a bloodstained piece of cloth measuring c. 84 x 53 cm (33 x 21 inches) kept in the Camara Santa of the Cathedral of San Salvador, Oviedo, Spain. The Sudarium (Latin for sweat cloth) is thought to be the cloth that was wrapped around the head of Jesus Christ after he died as described in John 20:6-7.
The cloth has been dated to around 700 AD by radiocarbon dating. However, at the same conference at which this information was presented, it was noted that in actuality the cloth has a definite history extending back to approximately 570 AD. The laboratory noted that later oil contamination could have resulted in the late dating.
The small chapel housing it was built specifically for the cloth by King Alfonso II of Asturias in AD 840; the Arca Santa is an elaborate reliquary chest with a Romanesque metal frontal for the storage of the Sudarium and other relics. The Sudarium is displayed to the public three times a year: Good Friday, the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross on 14 September, and its octave on 21 September.
The Sudarium shows signs of advanced deterioration, with dark flecks that are symmetrically arranged but form no image, unlike the markings on the Shroud of Turin. The face cloth is mentioned as having been present in the empty tomb in John 20:6-7. Outside of the Bible the Sudarium is first mentioned in 570 AD by Antoninus of Piacenza, who writes that the Sudarium was being cared for in the vicinity of Jerusalem in a cave near the monastery of Saint Mark.
The Sudarium is presumed to have been taken from Palestine in 614 AD, after the invasion of the Byzantine provinces by the Sassanid Persian King Khosrau II. In order to avoid destruction in the invasion, it was taken away first to Alexandria by the presbyter Philip, then carried through northern Africa when Khosrau II conquered Alexandria in 616 AD and arrived in Spain shortly thereafter. The Sudarium entered Spain at Cartagena, along with people who were fleeing from the Persians. Fulgentius, bishop of Ecija, welcomed the refugees and the relics, and gave the chest containing the Sudarium to Leandro, bishop of Seville. He took it to Seville, where it spent some years.
In 657 it was moved to Toledo, then in 718 on to northern Spain to escape the advancing Moors. The Sudarium was hidden in the mountains of Asturias in a cave known as Montesacro until king Alfonso II, having battled back the Moors, built a chapel in Oviedo to house it in 840 AD.
On 14 March 1075, King Alfonso VI, his sister and Rodrigo Diaz Vivar (El Cid) opened the chest after days of fasting. The event was recorded on a document preserved in the Capitular Archives at the Cathedral of San Salvador in Oviedo. The king had the oak chest covered in silver with an inscription which reads, “The Sacred Sudarium of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
New coincidence between Shroud of Turin and Sudarium of Oviedo
New coincidence between Shroud of Turin and Sudarium of Oviedo
1 Research Team of Spanish Center of Sindonology (EDICES), Madrid, Spain
2 EDICES, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain
3 EDICES, Murcia, Spain
a Corresponding author: cbartagi@cofis.es
The Sudarium of Oviedo and the Shroud of Turin are two relics attributed to Jesus Christ that show a series of amazing coincidences announced in the past. In this contribution, we describe the X-ray fluorescence analysis carried out on the Sudarium. Among the chemical elements detected, calcium shows a statistically significant higher presence in the areas with bloody stains. This fact allows correlating its distribution with the anatomical features of the corpse. A large excess of calcium is observed close to the tip of the nose. It is atypical to find soil dirt in this zone of the anatomy, but it is just the same zone where a particular presence of dust was found in the Shroud. The very low concentration of strontium traces in the Sudarium matches also well with the type of limestone characteristic of the rock of Calvary in Jerusalem. This new finding adds to others recently released and it strengthens the tradition that both cloths have wrapped the body of Jesus of Nazareth.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2015
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Click here for the original article:
Commonalities between the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo
Commonalities between the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo
Medical Examiner, EDICES Director (Spanish Sindonology Researh Centre Team), Spain
Abstract
In 1989 EDICES (Spanish Sindonology Research Centre Team) started researching about the Sudarium of Oviedo, developing the pioneer research started in the sixties by Monsignor Giulio Ricci, who was a member of the Papal Curia and President of the “Roman Centre of Sindonology”aa
Ricci, G. L’Uomo Della Sindone é Gesú, 2a Edición, 1969.
, furthermore, he was a scholar of the Gospel of Saint John, the reading of chapter 20, Bible verses 4-8: “4 They were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and was the first to arrive at the tomb.5Bending down to take a look, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn’t go in.6Following him, Simon Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there.7He also saw the face cloth that had been on Jesus’ head. It wasn’t with the other clothes but was folded up in its own place.8Then the other disciple, the one who arrived at the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.” This made him look for a second funerary linen used to wrap the corpse of Jesus of Nazareth. This seek led him to the Sudarium of Oviedo. The similarity of the shape of the stains and its size with the Shroud of Turin made him think that he had really found the relic which Saint Joan mentions. From the Forensic Anthropology and Forensic Medicine point of view, all the information discovered by the scientific research is compatible with the hypothesis that the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo covered the corpse of the same person.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2015
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Link here.
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