In Pierre Barbet’s book, A Doctor at Calvary, appears the following passage:
Saint Vincent of Lérins (Sermo in Parasceve) was to write at a later date: “Coronam de spinis capiti ejus imposuerunt, nam erat ad modum pilei, ita quod undique caput tegeret et tangeret – they placed on His head a crown of thorns; it was in fact in the shape of a pileus, so that it touched and covered His head in every part,” and he affirms that Our Lord’s head received seventy wounds.
A pileus was a helmet-shaped felt hat, common in ancient Greece and Rome.
Why I wondered, should Vincent think that? Almost nothing is known of him except his authorship of a single, but significant, work, the Commonitorium, under the pseudonym Peregrinus. He was, according to Gennadius, a monk of southern Gaul, in the early fifth centruy, and died around 440 AD. Of his sermons, I could find no mention at all.
The point is minor, and few researchers have taken it up, but it would be interesting for someone so early to have described the crown of thorns as a cap shape, before the crucifixion became a popular topic in art – in Gaul – and long before observation of the bloodmarks of the Shroud could give it some evidential support.
It would have been interesting, that is, if Pierre Barbet hadn’t muddled his St Vincents. The author of his quote was not Vincent of Lérins, but Vincent Ferrer, a Spanish friar, who lived almost a thousand years later than Vincent of Lérins, dying in Brittany in 1419.
This St Vincent left us a few hundred sermons, including one centred around John 18 – 19, which was for Good Friday – the Eve of Passover, or Parasceve, as it was called – and it is this that Barbet is quoting. Vincent’s Sermons were published in 1485, under the title ‘Sermones de Tempore et de Sanctis’ (or, on the flyleaf “Sermone sancti Vincentii fratris ordinis predicatorum sacris theologie professoris eximii de tempore per tempus hyemale in hoc libro continentur”) and can be found at the Digitale Sammlungen Darmstadt (tudigit.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/show/inc-iv-489/0001/image). ”In die parasceves Sermo” begins on page 485, and on page 493 are the words:
Et plectentes coronam de spinis marinis qui acutiores et longiores spinas habent ceteris spinis. Et capiti eius imposuerunt, que eum in capite in lxxii locis crudeliter vulneravit. Nam erat ad modum pilei ita quod caput tegeret et tangeret. Ita ut aculei ossa penetrarent. (tudigit.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/show/inc-iv-489/0003/scroll).
Weaving a crown of sea-thorn, which has sharper and longer spines than other thorn-plants, they placed it on his head, where it cruelly wounded him in 72 places. For it was shaped like a cap, so that because it covered the head it could contact it all over, the spines penetrating to the bone.
The specific number of the injuries places this sermon firmly in context, which is the late medieval obsession with mystical numerology that found its ultimate expression in the visions of St Bridget of Sweden (1303 – 1373), who is said to have claimed that Jesus had told her:
that the number of armed soldiers were 150; those who trailed me while I was bound were 23. The number of executioners of justice were 83; the blows received on my head were 150; those on my stomach, 108; kicks on my shoulders, 80. I was led, bound with cords by the hair, 24 times; spits in the face were 180; I was beaten on the body 6666 times; beaten on the head, 110 times. I was roughly pushed, and at 12 o’clock was lifted up by the hair; pricked with thorns and pulled by the beard 23 times; received 20 wounds on the head; thorns of marine junks, 72; pricks of thorns in the head, 110; mortal thorns in the forhead, 3. I was afterwards flogged and dressed as a mocked king; wounds in the body, 1000. The soldiers who led me to the Calvary were 608; those who watched me were 3, and those who mocked me were 1008; the drops of blood which I lost were 28,430.
It is not impossible that Shroud was linked to this devotion, but surely not directly, given than one of the most important wounds is not visible at all. However, the obsession with numerical precision itself emerged from the fairly recent preoccupation with the specific physical sufferings, especially the wounds, that Christ endured, and the significance of the holy blood that flowed from them. In that context the Shroud seems to fit quite neatly.