In 1418, when the Hundred Years’ War threatened to spill over into Lirey, Geoffroi de Charny’s granddaughter Margaret de Charny and her husband offered to store the cloth in their castle. De Charny’s granddaughter was excommunicated for selling it to Italian royals. Still, he said the Lirey church could continue to display it if it acknowledged the cloth was a man-made religious “icon,” not a historic “relic.” Today, Pope Francis still describes it as an “icon.” 3. In response, the pope declared the shroud wasn’t the true burial cloth of Christ. Furthermore, d’Arcis claimed the dean of the Lirey church knew it was a fake and had used it to raise money anyway. However, many prominent members of the church remained skeptical of its authenticity.Īround 1389, Pierre d’Arcis-the bishop of Troyes, France-sent a report to Pope Clement VII claiming an artist had confessed to forging the shroud. The pope soon declared it was not an actual historic relic.Īfter the church of Lirey put the shroud on display, the church began to draw a lot of pilgrims, and also a lot of money. WATCH: Jesus: His Life on HISTORY Vault 2. There’s no record of how de Charny got his hands on the shroud, nor where it was during the 1300 intervening years since Christ’s burial outside Jerusalem. A French knight named Geoffroi de Charny allegedly presented it to the dean of the church in Lirey as Jesus’ authentic burial shroud. The earliest historical records of the Shroud of Turin place it in Lirey, France during the 1350s. The shroud first surfaced in medieval France.

More than 600 years after it first appeared in historical records, the Shroud of Turin remains an important religious symbol for Christians around the world.

For others, it is a religious icon reflecting the story of the Christ, not necessarily the original shroud. For some, it is the authentic burial shroud of Jesus Christ. The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot linen cloth bearing an image of a crucified man that has become a popular Catholic icon.

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