April 6, 2009 -- The Knights Templar secretly guarded the Shroud of Turin -- an ancient linen cloth believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus -- for more than 100 years, according to the Vatican's in-house newspaper.
Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, Barbara Frale, a scholar at the Vatican Secret Archives, said new archival documents reveal "missing clues" to the fate of the Shroud between 1204 A.D. and 1351, a period during which it cannot otherwise be accounted for.
"These unpublished documents appear to solve the puzzle of the shroud's missing years from a purely historic angle," Frale told Discovery News. "Indeed, a linen cloth extremely similar to the shroud of Turin is clearly described in those records."
Believers contend that the shroud, now kept in a silver casket in Turin's Cathedral, is the "cloth with an image on it" reported by the early Christian historian Eusebius to have been given to the Christian King Abgar V of Edessa in 30 A.D.
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The linen, known then as the Mandylion of Edessa, was taken to Constantinople in 944. It disappeared in the sack of the city in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and did not surface until 1357, when the widow of a French knight had it displayed in a church in Lirey, France.
According to Frale, the newly discovered documents support a theory first put forward by the British historian Ian Wilson in 1978. He argued that the shroud and the Mandylion of Edessa were one and the same, and that the Templars were the custodians of the Shroud.
"The new evidence comes from the account of a Templar initiation rite in 1287 of a young Frenchman, Arnaut Sabbatier. He testified that 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 was told to kiss the feet of the image three times," Frale said.
The account was given during the Templars' famous trial, which ended in 1314.
A powerful, wealthy and secretive medieval order originally formed to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, the Knights Templar were accused of heresy, blasphemy, sodomy and the worshipping of idols, particularly a mysterious bearded figure.
"The Templars had powerful reasons to guard and venerate the shroud. They needed it as an antidote to the heresies that had arisen in Europe at that time," Frale said.
According to Frale, who will publish a book on her findings in June, the Knights Templar were afraid of becoming a refuge for heretics who denied the existence of Jesus. In particular, they feared the Cathars, heretics who rejected the Resurrection, the very core of Catholic belief, by saying that Christ never had a human form.
"Obviously, the shroud, with the dramatic, detailed depiction of a man who was scourged and crucified, strongly countered the Cathars' belief," Frale said.
However, the shroud didn't do the Templars much good. The order, whose secret rituals and lost treasures have long fascinated conspiracy theorists, was brutally dissolved after the 1314 trial. Several knights, including the Grand Mater Jacques de Molay, were burned at the stake.
Two years ago, Frale discovered that at the end of the trial, Pope Clement V found the disgraced order not guilty of heresy. However, he succumbed to the pressure of King Philip IV of France, who coveted the Templars' wealth.
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