Here I am with this perfect story rattling around in my
otherwise empty skull, and in an instant everything is changed. I don’t know
about you, but when this happens to me, it’s a little troubling. I had been
researching the Shroud of Turin for a new novel and suddenly my story takes a
one-hundred-eighty degree turn, and I have the plot for an entirely new novel.
If you’ve ever thought you knew a subject well enough to write a story about it,
and then been confronted with additional knowledge that causes you to rethink
your story, you know what I mean. In tracing Jesus’ burial shroud, from its earliest
accounts to its present resting place in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of
Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, one line of history caused me to ask the
question. What happened to the threads of the shroud? You see, in the year
1532, the burial shroud of Jesus was in the possession of a royal family, the
Duke of Savoy, and housed on the castle complex, in the Chapelle de Chambéry.
In December of that year the church was devastated by a fire and the shroud
came perilously close to being destroyed. It was repaired by Poor Clare Nuns,
and to this day, when you look at the shroud, you can see the triangular
patches from the repair, a grim reminder of that terrible fire. History tells
us, the nuns trimmed the burned areas of the cloth and repaired them, and the
story of the repair ends. I could not find a record of what happened to the
threads that were trimmed from the burned areas. Threads of the Shroud is a contemporary
mystery that revolves around this central mystery. What happened to the threads of
the shroud?
Click on the link below. Threads of the Shroud is available on:
