[The Markwardt Hypotheses is the new name for a series previously called The Antioch Hypothesis, as we have left Antioch far behind, and Jack Markwardt has more than one hypothesis to explain how the shroud of Christ became the Shroud of Turin.]
In another remarkable four hour tour-de-force,1 Jack Markwardt has reviewed every possible flawed explanation of how the Shroud could have travelled from Constantinople to Lirey, culminating in his own idea, which involves a secret transfer of relics from Baldwin II of Constantinople to Philip VI of France, his close advisor Jean de Joinville, and thence to Jean’s grandson Geoffrey de Charny.
Markwardt’s earlier podcasts have traced his preferred path from Jerusalem to Constantinople, so he does not consider the routes favoured by medieval clerics, placing the true shroud in Compiègne, Toulouse or Kornelimünster after being taken directly to France from Jerusalem in the time of Charlemagne, or other alternatives such as it being taken first to Rome rather than Constantinople.
There are, it seems, two popular routes out of Constantinople. Either the Shroud was spirited away in 1204 or very shortly afterwards by an unknown crusader; or it stayed there until about 1230, when it formed part of Baldwin II’s relic treasury, which he pawned in stages to raise money. The earlier version often involves either Othon de la Roche, a senior general with the army of the fourth crusade, who was made Lord of Athens by Boniface of Montferrat, one of the commanders-in-chief, or the knights Templar, who weren’t at Constantinople at all.
To link either of these pathways to Lirey, intermediates have to be found, mostly from de Charny’s relatives or military connections. Jean de Joinville, Geoffrey de Charny’s maternal grandfather, was a close confidante of both King Louis IX and his successors, and Narjot de Toucy, regent of the Latin Byzantine Empire while Baldwin II was a minor, may have been related to de Charny’s first wife, Jeanne de Toucy. Or not. Agnes de Charpigny, who married de Charny’s brother Dreux, was the grand-daughter of Hugh de Charpigny, a crusader general who was given the barony of Vostitza, a town on the north coast of the Peloponnese. Edward de Beaujeu was de Charny’s commanding officer during the Smyrna campaign of 1346. A Hugh de Brienne married the last of the de la Roches, and his descendants claimed the Duchy of Athens from 1308. His grandson served alongside and died with de Charny at the battle of Poitiers. Were any of these involved in bringing the Shroud to Lirey? In a word, no.
If the Shroud was looted in 1204, it made its way to Athens, Vostitza, Jerusalem, Cyprus or Serbia and thence to Besançon or Ray-sur-Saône or somewhere else, depending who you read; and Markwardt has read them all. They all have serious flaws.
For example, the earliest speculation Markwardt has come across is from Francois Chamard, writing in 1902.2 Chamard wrote that in 1208 the Latin Emperor Henry of Flanders visited Othon de la Roche, with his treasurer Ponce de Lyon, who later departed for France with a load of relics and a “golden bull” from the emperor to the archbishop of Lyons. Pursuing an idea by Paul Riant, in Exuviæ sacræ Constantinopolitanæ‘ (‘The Sacred Relics of Constantinople’),3 Chamard decided that Ponce de Lyon was Henry’s disposal agent (“les engager ou de les aliener, pour subvenir aux besoins du trésor impérial”) of these relics (not that they are identified), and was probably also responsible for disposing of the Holy Bit4 of Carpentras and the Holy Shroud of Besançon. In typical authenticist style, Chamard quickly upgrades this speculation to a “certitude morale” and then a “fait historiquement prouvé” without pausing for breath. When Besançon’s church of Sainte Étienne was destroyed by fire in 1349, either Geoffroi de Charny himself, or his wife, or one of his retainers, had sequestrated (“soustrait”) it for Lirey.
Markwardt derives his account of all this from Dorothy Crispino’s ‘Doubts along the Doubs,’5 but it would take longer than I’m prepared to devote to the subject to track down all the primary sources for all these speculative routes from the sack of Constantinople to Lirey. I’m happy to agree that speculation is all they are, and that none of the sources actually mentions a shroud at all.
But then neither do the sources for the second major possible route out of Constantinople. Baldwin II was not a great success as its third Latin Emperor, and spend his whole life desperately trying to raise funds for an army powerful enough to sustain the empire, which had dwindled to the boundaries of the city itself. He sold his French county, Namur, in 1236, and then pawned the Crown of Thorns to the Venetians two years later. Next he sold twenty-one more relics to Louis IX, and finally, in around 1248, sent his son and heir, Philip, to the Venetians as security against another loan. Although all these deals raised considerable sums, they were not enough to defend the city with, and in 1261, the old Byzantine empire reclaimed its capital.
The relics are, of course, Markwardt’s focus, and the possibility that the Shroud was for some reason held back from the two most well known transactions, and brought secretly to France at a later date. In order to circumvent the sin, and crime, of simony, which strictly prohibited the buying and selling of relics unless to save them from the possibility of sacrilege, Baldwin first pawned them to some very rich but not necessarily Christian money lenders, which was not strictly speaking selling them, and then, unable to redeem them, arranged for Louis IX to redeem the pledge, in case they were subsequently misused. According to Markwardt they began with a single relic, the crown of thorns, and then, when that raised no ecclesiastical objections, went on to the big collection of twenty-one. Finally, he used the Shroud as a bargaining tool to persuade Louis to redeem his son Philip. For reasons Markwardt does not make clear, this transaction was not covered by the ‘rescue from desecration’ clause, and would have been considered simony, so Louis gave the Shroud to his confidante Jean de Joinville for secret safekeeping, from whom, many years later, when such considerations had been forgotten and the protagonists had died, it devolved to his grandson Geoffrey de Charny.
It’s quite an ingenious idea, but suffers, as do all the other hypotheses, from too many ‘grey areas’ to be considered any more probable. Perhaps the greatest objection is the fact that the sixteenth of the twenty-one relics sent to Louis in 1247 was specifically labelled “partem sudarii quo involutem fuit corpus eius in sepulchro.”6 This was not the same as item eight, “sanctam toellam, tablulae insertam,” which was the old Image of Edessa. A piece of the “partem sudarii” and other relics were donated by Louis to the cathedral in Toledo, Spain, but a description of the reliquary in which it was kept in Paris in 1740 says:
“Un autre reliquaire de forme presque quarrée, de neuf à dix pouce de long et de large, le dessus fermé par quatre cristaux de roche, avec des enchássures et certissures d’or, les costez et le derrière de vermeil doré, ornés de bas reliefs émaillez, et sur le derrière est representé en reliefs le tombeau de Notre Seigneur; dans lequel reliquaire sont des reliques, avec cette inscription: De Sindone Domini.”
“Another reliquary of almost square shape, nine to ten inches long and wide, the top closed by four rock crystals, with gold insets and settings, the sides and back of gilt silver, decorated with enameled bas-reliefs, and on the back is represented in relief the tomb of Our Lord; in which reliquary are relics, with this inscription: De Sindone Domini.”
That’s about 25-30cm square. The same is shown in a 1790 engraving by Sauveur-Jérôme Morand, still readily available on eBay! The shroud reliquary is Number 17, the right hand of two squarish boxes, at the back behind a huge mounted crown and two crosses.
Being only a part of the Shroud enabled this cloth to take its place among all the other fragments dotted around France at the time, but with them, refuted the possibility that any one could claim to possess the whole thing. This makes the probability that the Shroud as we know it was retained by Baldwin for one last throw very small.
Finally Markwardt mentions what he will cover in the next episode, especially the reason why it was not possible for Clement VII to admit the Shroud was genuine, as the knowledge might have upset the delicate negotiations with Byzantine Emperor John V Palaiologos, regarding the healing of the Great Schism. I have already discussed why I think Markwardt has exaggerated the importance of this: there were no delicate negotiations, only desperate pleading by the Emperor’s mother Anna of Savoy (regent during his minority), who although born a Catholic had converted to Orthodoxy in 1326, and who pawned the imperial Crown Jewels in an unsuccessful attempt to raise cash, and then the Emperor himself, who even converted to Roman Catholicism in his willingness to stop at nothing to obtain aid, to no avail.
1). ‘Shroud Wars Panel Review (Part 21) – Shroud History 1201-1355 A.D.,’ Real Seekers, at youtube.com/watch?v=NnGoLZdytac.
2). François Chamard, Le Linceul du Christ: étude critique et historique, 1902, at books.google.com
3). Paul Riant, Exuviæ sacræ Constantinopolitanæ, 1877
4). Not just a fragment, but a horse’s bit, made from two of the crucifixion nails discovered by Queen Helena in about 327 AD.
5). Dorothy Crispino, ‘Doubts along the Doubs,’ Shroud Spectrum International, Vol 14, 1985
6). See, for example, Karen Gould, ‘The Sequences in De Sanctis Reliquiis as Sainte-Chapelle Inventories,’ Medieval Studies, Vol 43, 1981
7). Alexandre Vidier, ‘Le Trésor de la Sainte-Chapelle,’ Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris et de l’Île-de-France, Vol 35, 1908
Oops, another spellcheck-induced error: Christians were seen as “Dhimmis,” not “Shimmies.”
Looks like spellcheck keeps altering my spelling of acheiropoieta.
Hi, Hugh,
I would like to emphasize a few highlights from Gregory Referendarius’ sermon concerning the Image of Edessa the very next day after it arrived in Constantinople. Gregory refers to the image on the cloth as something “by which what cannot be made is said to have been made[.]” So, he is referring to the image as an acheiropoieta. He then asks: “For how can something be incredible if it can be understood?” This points to how a miracle is going to break the laws of nature and, obviously, breaking the laws of nature is not going to be understood by mere man but for just accepting that it is an Act of God that is being our understanding and that it is done for some sort of divine purpose.
Most importantly, as I have both privately and publicly emphasized before, Gregory states that with regard to the Image of Edessa that “[i]t is therefore enough to WORSHIP what it is and not for somebody to think it can be subjected to reason as if it were not so” [Emphasis added.] I think that it is commonly understood that mere relics cannot be worshipped—only venerated. Worship is reserved for God, alone. Therefore, is Gregory Referendarius just an idiot and/or a heretic in saying such a thing? I don’t think this archdeacon was any such thing, Instead, the reason why what is on this cloth is worthy of worship is because the BLOOD OF CHRIST is on it. Jesus’ blood is a part of God Incarnate. As such, Jesus’ blood can receive the highest form of respect in terms of being worshipped—and not merely venerated. Gregory even distinguished the Image of Edessa from other relics that were said to be acheiropoita as well as other Passion relics. This Image of Edessa is different. Why? Because, it is a vessel that contains the Blood of Christ, it displays the glorious image of God Incarnate, AND it is evidence of Jesus’ rising from the dead (which provides evidence that His truth claims about doing so occurred. Additionally, other relics (such as Passion relics) are not miracles and while other acheiropoita might be argued to be miracles, they do not contain the blood and body images of God Incarnate.
Another thing—Gregory refers to the Image of Edessa as “God’s Glory.” What can reasonably be meant by this other than its containing His blood, frontal and dorsal body images and evidence of Jesus’ resurrection?
Additionally, Gregory specifies that these images are not paintings and he surmises that they were made by sweat. And, well, this is a great guess—as sweat can cause yellowing on linen. Gregory didn’t have the benefit of Heller and Adler’s countless chemical and physics-based testing.
And, while people like to claim that the Image of Edessa was only of a face, how can this be when Gregory references the side wound on the cloth?
Also, regarding the political situation, you are making it sound as if the Muslims bought off the Byzantines–but from what I’ve read, it was the other way around (in that the emperor made this a mission and was wanting to sweeten the deal for the Muslims to give the Byzantines the Image of Edessa without war lest the sacred cloth get damaged in the process.
I think that we would agree that Muslims would not worship an image of a prophet–but, from what I’ve read, Islamic tradition holds that relics of prophets carry Barakah (spiritual blessing.) Additionally, I have read that under Islamic law, Christians were “Shimmies” (protected people) and so their holy sites and relics were to (I guess at least theoretically) receive protection. It has been argued that to surrender the Image of Edessa–which the Muslims would have recognized as being a Christian relic–would have been a failure to protect said relic since the Byzantines were seen as being their enemy and not representative of all Christians.
So, from all that I understand, the Byzantines purposefully set out to “liberate” the Image of Edessa from Muslim control and get it into their hot little hands.
All the best,
Teddi
All the best,
Teddi
Hi Teddi,
I’d sorry to say that the Sermon of Gregory Referendarius does not whisper the same things to me as it does to you. Gregory very clearly supposes that the Image of Edessa was created while Jesus was still alive, up a “mountain,” probably the Garden of Gethsamane, “by the simple touching to the face of Christ,” and by sweat, not blood.
As for the recovery of the Image from Edessa, I’m afraid you misunderstand the political situation. The siege of Edessa occurred as part of a continuous war between the Byzantines and Moslems which had been going on for 20 years. In 943 General Kourkouas undertook a long campaign against the Moslem frontier, and approached Edessa from the East, on his way back to Constantinople, besieging it for months without success. His army was tired, at the end of its supply lines, and Edessa stood between them and home. A deal was inevitable, and eventually the Moslems bought him off, exchanging an icon which meant nothing more than a bargaining tool for them, for some of the prisoners Kourkouas had captured during his campaign, a huge amount of money, and a guarantee of non-aggression that lasted seven years. Kourkouas and the army were delighted with the excuse to return home with honour. Certainly the achievement of the Image was a great success, but the idea that Kourkouas’s campaigns had that as their principal aim is very wide of the mark.
Best wishes,
Hugh
Hi, Everybody,
More and more, I find that we try to over-complicate certain things that do not require over-complication. Additionally, there are matters that are extremely complicated that seem to habitually be treated too simplistically and without any deep thought, and research/investigation. Instead, the same information keeps getting repeated–and there are a lot of things that really are not quite so accurate as we might think (this is not just limited to Shroud matters but theological matters, scientific matters, forensic matters, etc.)
One thing that gets over-complicated is trying to track down the places that Jesus’ burial cloth has been taken to. First, I ask, is this really necessary when dealing with a singular object such as the Shroud of Turin which continues to remain unreproducible and which has so many elements to it that defy natural and/or artistic creation? I think not. In the law, there is the expression, “res ipsa loquitur” which means “the thing speaks for itself.” Additionally, trying to figure out where in all of the world Jesus’ burial cloth has been is an impossible task since there is no known tightly documented chain-of-custody (as there is with evidence that the police seize at crime scenes) that gives us a blow-by-blow description of where His burial cloth has been taken. So, let us realize that we can never really know everywhere that it has been–or even come close to knowing.
But, does this leave us in the dark? I think not.
The description that Gregory Referenadarius gives in his sermon in Hagia Sophia concerning the Image of Edessa the day after that it was brought with monumental fanfare to the city of Constantinople tells us–no, it strangely whispers to us (but with an intensity behind the whisper that evokes a soprano singing “Queen of the Night”)–that the Image of Edessa and the Shroud of Turin are one and the same.
While I’m not one of those people who claim that “there are no coincidences”–because, I have seen some amazing coincidences–but I submit that there are no coincidences in terms of two cloths that match Gregory’s description and which very precisely describe the strangeness of both the blood and body images that are on the Shroud of Turin. I don’t believe in those kinds of coincidences. Why? Why is this one different? Because other coincidences tend to just have the happenstance of timing matching up or they follow the Law of Truly Large Numbers. But, the combination of both reason and CONTEXT tell us that this does not apply in this situation with the Image of Edessa. Let us not forget what it took for the Byzantines to acquire the Image of Edessa from the Muslims: a large army was sent by Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos to besiege Edessa in order to acquire the Image of Edessa. Moreover, the Byzantines surrendered 200 high-ranking Muslim prisoners and gave 12,000 pieces of silver to the Muslims. We must ask: WHY? With the Byzantines in an apparent position to win a war in Edessa and just take the Image of Edessa, why did they, also, surrender all of those Muslim prisoners and give the Muslims 12,000 pieces of silver, also? Why not just threaten them with force? Perhaps the reason was to sweeten the deal–because the Muslims knew with confidence what treasure they had with this cloth called the “Image of Edessa” and the Muslims might have very likely been willing to go to war to retain it–but, receiving all of that silver along with the return of so many prisoners was, in the words of the Godfather, an offer too good to refuse–particularly for a cloth that was “only” of (in their opinion) a prophet and not a cloth that wrapped God Incarnate with His frontal and dorsal body images on it and His blood on it.
But, that’s a lot money and effort and risk of many lives to get some run-of-the-mill relic. And, the Byzantines spent all of that money and released all of those dangerous Muslim prisoners and risked their own lives to get the most important relic that there is–the one which has God Incarnate’s body images and blood on it (although whether or not they realized how the image came about–from the life-giving energy of Jesus’ resurrection—is unclear.
Best regards,
Teddi
Hi John,
No worries about the digression. I admire your tenacity if you managed to make head or tail of Otangelo’s latest Markwardt-v-Wilson tract. I’m afraid I decided life was too short!
Best wishes,
Hugh
Otangelo Grasso and his co-author A.I. (or vice-versa) have written some odd things about the Turin Shroud over the past year or so.
In formal terms, the results have often been overly frequent, extremely long, and full of pompous, multisyllabic words. If this is the robotic, sci-fi future of Shroud “research,” who wants it?
He-they have also made mistakes. Hugh recently and rightly pointed out (Dec. 12, 2025 blogpost) that Grasso mistitled one paper as a critique of A. Nicolotti when it barely touched on points in Nicolotti’s paper, instead raising other points, especially about the Sudarium.
Here now, in their-his comment on Hugh’s “Markwardt Hypotheses (5)” blogpost, the same odd mistake is made. Hugh had specifically announced that he was moving on from the narrow confines of Markwardt’s Antioch early history claims in order to treat the Constantinople Shroud scenarios instead. And what does A.I. Grasso then do in his “comment” on that blogpost? Carries on about Antioch.
Anyway, since he/it raised the subject, I’ll offer a few comments on his/its critique of Markwardt’s Antioch theory. I don’t necessarily believe Markwardt’s case, being also partly open to the Edessa theory or any other plausible theory out there for the Shroud’s route in the early centuries. But I must say that Antioch makes some good geographical and political sense. It was relatively close to Jerusalem; it was known to be the main refuge of many Christians in the 30s and 40s who fled there from Jerusalem; it was the Roman capital of the East (until Constantinople arose in the 4th century); the early Christians were said to have taken certain relics of Jesus there, which also makes a-priori sense; and the Athanasius document does refer to an image of Jesus (or so I seem to recall; I’m writing this from memory). In other words, there is some plausibility to the Antioch claim. Besides, envisioning the Shroud in Edessa already in the mid-1st century seems quite a stretch.
Markwardt goes too far, I think, with his claims that the Shroud was briefly in Beirut and Galatia (both closer to Antioch than to Edessa) in the 1st century. But assuming those two claims are untrue, the Antioch theory still has some credibility to it. If the Turin Shroud is authentic, it must have gone somewhere after leaving Jerusalem in the 1st century, and there is zero reason to believe it went south or east or west. Maybe it went to Antioch for a couple of centuries before being taken to Edessa for several more centuries. Would that make a plausible synthesis, with Abgar VIII, the first Christian king anywhere, as the linchpin?
Apologies for the digression, Hugh.
John L.
Hey Hugh
So I’ve been trying to debunk the sudarium for the longest time, and nobody seems to be debunking it other than you
I’ve already debunked it being the same as the shroud (it already has an absurd amount of problems) but I haven’t been able to debunk the sudarium itself, only discover the sindologist arguments to be flawed
Can you go into detail on the carbon dating please?
Not to mention that these people did an “updated” pollen discovery, but turns out they got the species of a synonym wrong (basically misrepresented it) and said that two different genus were the same species, and from the same place) I don’t really count it due to how flawed it was. Along with the fact that the other arguments were flawed too
Get back to me as soon as you can please
Email me your findings or make a post please?
Hey Hugh
I’m not here to debunk you, far from it. But I want your help
I’ve been using your information to debunk the sudarium and the shroud, but I don’t have enough info to disprove the sudarium itself
Only that the sindologist findings were flawed as well
(And they recently tried to update the pollen thing, but turns out that they heavily misrepresented their findings. And even though the same plants were found in Spain too, I couldn’t find enough info on WHERE the plants were, all the botanical resources I had contradicted themselves)
all that I got is the carbon dating, and lack of serums found by the 07 guys, but people say my serum findings are flawed too
Can you make another post on the sudarium and debunk it please
(I’m worried about the carbon dating being flawed) but there’s also the fact that the sindologists rarely ever say WHO did the carbon dating
Hi Franz,
I am indeed interested. Please email me your evidence to hughfarey@hotmail.com.
Best wishes,
Hugh
I reject the Markwardt hypothesis because it requires a chain of undocumented assumptions where the evidence most strongly demands documentation. Markwardt posits a prolonged Antiochene custody of the Shroud (c. 1st–6th century) followed by a hypothetical transfer to Constantinople around 540 CE, yet no surviving external sources—pilgrim accounts, correspondence, inventories, or theological writings—attest to such a relic in Antioch. This silence is especially problematic because Antioch was a major theological center actively engaged in Christological controversies, where a full-body acheiropoietos image would have been polemically invaluable. By contrast, Wilson’s Edessa–Constantinople model is anchored to a documented transfer in 944 CE and coherently integrates philological data (himation and the unique folding term tetradiplon), material evidence (pre-1532 crease patterns consistent with long-term folded display), and geopolitical context (Edessa’s isolation under Muslim rule explaining silence during Iconoclasm). Markwardt’s appeal to centuries-long concealment functions as an unfalsifiable ad hoc explanation, whereas Wilson’s model achieves convergent explanatory power across independent evidentiary domains
More on this:
Pre-1350 Shroud Trajectories: Wilson vs. Markwardt -A Comparative Historical Analysis
By Otangelo Grasso
https://www.academia.edu/144442512/Pre_1350_Shroud_Trajectories_Wilson_vs_Markwardt_A_Comparative_Historical_Analysis
or on my virtual library:
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3505-the-shroud-of-turin-christ-s-evidence-of-the-resurrection-part-2
Re para 3 – I confirm it was taken by the Templars as I have seen wooden carvings obviously copied from it and found in a Templar chapel near me! Now flanking the entrance door! I can email pix of them if interested.