Interpreting a Holy Trace: The Shroud of Turin and the Long History of Regimes of Proof (Review Article)

Résumé 0

While the Shroud of Turin and the question of its authenticity attract much attention in the media, its place in academic history has long remained limited. It has mainly been the subject of a parascientific literature known as sindonology, the self-proclaimed “science of the shroud,” which has sought to write a “prehistory” of the relic before its first appearance in the sources in the fourteenth century. These texts show little interest in the rich trajectory of the object as it moved from the status of an image in Lirey, Champagne, to that of a Passion relic in Chambéry and then in Turin. Several recent works have helped to fill this gap. In particular, a monograph by Andrea Nicolotti, professor at the University of Turin, aims to respond to the fanciful theories surrounding the object and to trace its long history. Among the questions illuminated by this longue-durée history is the evolution of the regimes of proof mobilized: the burial linens left in Christ’s tomb were treated by exegesis as proof of the resurrection, and the Shroud of Turin adds visible evidence of the presence of a body. From the Middle Ages to the present, the reception of this relic has been guided by the desire to interpret these traces as proof of the holy history, even documenting certain details not mentioned in the Gospels. It thus highlights an ecclesiastical genealogy, still too little considered, of the paradigm of proof by trace.