The Sudarium of Oviedo, also called the Shroud of Oviedo, is a piece of cloth about 84 cm long and 53 cm wide (33 by 21 inches). It is kept in the Cámara Santa, a special room inside the Cathedral of San Salvador in Oviedo, Spain. The Sudarium, which means "sweat cloth" in Latin, is connected to a story in the Bible (John 20:6–7) about a cloth used to cover the head of Jesus Christ after his death.
Scientists tested the cloth using a method called radiocarbon dating and found it is about 700 years old. This date does not match a history that claims the cloth existed as early as around 570 AD, possibly mentioned by an unnamed traveler from Piacenza. The testing lab said later oil stains might have affected the results.
A small chapel was built in AD 840 by King Alfonso II of Asturias specifically to house the Sudarium. The Arca Santa is a decorated chest with a metal front from the Romanesque period, used to store the Sudarium and other religious items. The cloth is shown to the public three times a year: on Good Friday, on 14 September during the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and again on 21 September, which is the octave of that feast.
Background and history
The Sudarium shows signs of serious damage, with dark spots that are evenly placed but do not form a picture, unlike the patterns on the Shroud of Turin. The Sudarium is connected to a face cloth mentioned in the Bible, specifically in John 20:6–7, which describes a cloth found in an empty tomb. Outside the Bible, an unnamed traveler named the Pilgrim of Piacenza wrote in 570 AD that he visited a cave near the Jordan River, which was said to hold the face cloth described in John’s account.
Pelagius of Oviedo, a bishop in medieval Spain, described the Sudarium’s journey from the Holy Land to Spain in two historical writings: the Liber testamentorum and the Chronica ad Sebastianum in the Liber chronicorum. However, this account is questioned because Pelagius was criticized for creating many false records, leading to his nickname, "The Prince of Falsifiers."
According to this account, the Sudarium was taken from Israel in 614 AD after the Sassanid Persian King Khosrau II invaded the Byzantine provinces. To protect it from destruction, it was first taken to Alexandria by a man named Philip, a presbyter. When Khosrau II conquered Alexandria in 616 AD, Philip carried the Sudarium through northern Africa and later brought it to Spain. The Sudarium arrived in Spain at Cartagena with people fleeing the Persians. Fulgentius, the bishop of Ecija, welcomed the refugees and the relic, giving the chest holding the Sudarium to Leandro, the bishop of Seville. Leandro took it to Seville, where it remained for several years.
In 657 AD, the Sudarium was moved to Toledo. In 718 AD, it was taken to northern Spain to escape the Moors. The Sudarium was hidden in the mountains of Asturias in a cave called Montesacro until King Alfonso II, after defeating the Moors, built a chapel in Oviedo in 840 AD to protect it.
On March 14, 1075, King Alfonso VI, his sister, and Rodrigo Diaz Vivar (El Cid) opened the chest after several days of fasting. This event was recorded in a document kept in the Capitular Archives at the Cathedral of San Salvador in Oviedo. The king had the wooden chest covered with silver, and the inscription on it read, "The Sacred Sudarium of Our Lord Jesus Christ."