September 6, 2018

Excerpt from the first page of the manuscript "Pour Scavoir la Verite". Manuscript L 746/2/1, Archives nationales de France (AnF).

A new section was added to the French web site at the following link Linceul.org, about an important historical document: "Pour Scavoir la Vérité". It was written around 1525 and most probably by the dean of the collegiate at Lirey. He declares that the Shroud was given to Geoffroy de Charny by King Philip VI, for his attempt to regain the city of Calais. When analyzed carefully, this is the most probable route of the Shroud. Philip VI had exclusive access to the most important relics in the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris and one of them was a Holy Cloth. That Holy Cloth was most likely the Mandylion of Constantinople, but the King, and the clerics at the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, were unaware of the preciousness of that relic.

The manuscript is in French, but as usual you can use Google to translate the web page and read the transcription and a modern French version of that transcription. The Google translation of the manuscript in English is very far from being perfect, but the comments I wrote about it is understandable. Note that Dorothy Crispino published in 1988 a translation of that document in English. I give a pointer to that text on that French web page. For anybody interested in the history of the Shroud, that document is a must read.