The Symbolic Restraint

Why the Image on the Shroud was not mentioned by the apostles

“Just as the uttered sound which makes audible the thought has its existence in the silence of understanding, is not the same as that thought, so the visible form in which God — who exists in his invisible substance — became visible was not identical with God himself. For all that, he was seen in that material form, just as the thought in the sound of the voice”.

St.Augustine.

The Word was made flesh, but was His image transferred to his burial cloth?
One of the main historical objections throughout the centuries to the authenticity of the Shroud is that the apostles did not describe an image being present on the cloth and and make no mention of it both in their witness and the gospels.

The history of the Shroud is one of its most problematic areas. Whilst there are many references to a cloth bearing the image of Christ throughout the centuries and of its possible route through Edessa to Constantinople or via Antioch to Constantinople, (The Icon of the Saviour, Image Not- Made-By-Hands, also Acheiropoieta) for various reasons it seems to have been kept apart and secret for the first 500 years. The actual cloth itself though seems to provide the most compelling evidence as to its authenticity.

The Symbolic Restraint

I would like to look at a possibility that the Shroud was not used for the same reasons that the cross was not used: ‘The Symbolic Restraint’. The cross was not used by Christians as a symbol for centuries. It first appeared as a Christian symbol in the 3rd century and it was not until the 6th century with the appearance of the crucifix as seen in the Crux Gemmata, a jewel encrusted crucifix (transforming shame to triumph) that its appearance and acceptance as a symbol of victory was fully used. For the first two hundred years it was not used at all.

I suggest that the Shroud was not used or revealed by Christians for the same reasons and that it was not until the Act of Milan and Constantine that things began to change.

John Calvin

John Calvin, a well known iconoclast, thought it was a painting: “It is almost unnecessary to add, that the imposture may be completely detected merely by inspecting the impression which is exhibited. It is perfectly clear that it was painted by a human hand. I cannot cease wondering how those who framed the imposture were so dull of understanding as not to use more craft in the doing of it; and, still more, how others were so silly as to allow themselves to be blindfolded, and thereby unfitted to see through a matter so very transparent. Nay, it appears that they have painters at hand. For one napkin happening to be burned, another was forthwith produced. No doubt, it was affirmed to be the same that was shown before, but the picture was so fresh that there would have been no room for the falsehood, had not eyes been altogether wanting to perceive it”.

From his description It does make you wonder if he was actually looking at the Shroud as we know it today, as it is accepted that many painted copies were made, some before and some after the 1532 Chambéry fire. These are very clearly copies.

His views on the Shroud were part of his larger work, A Treatise on Relics (1543), in which he systematically critiqued the widespread veneration of holy relics in the Catholic Church. He argued that the Gospels, which “carefully related all the miracles that took place at Christ’s death,” would not have failed to mention “one so remarkable as the likeness of the body of our Lord remaining on its wrapping sheet.” He pointed out that the Gospel of John notes Peter saw the linen cloths, but makes no mention of a miraculous, full-body image.

So the question is: If the Shroud is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus and the full body image is His and the blood is His, why then is there no mention of it by the Apostles and disciples?

I think there are many reasons but recently a new line of enquiry appeared to me. I read an article on how, prior to the cross becoming Christianity’s primary emblem, believers frequently utilised the Good Shepherd imagery to convey their faith. For the first few hundred years, artistic works within Christianity did not portray the cross at all and paintings focused instead on Jesus’ person and His ministry. The cross was an object of shame and likewise the Shroud was a portrayal of this shame. Of Roman brutality. The paintings too were often in secret places like the catacombs because of persecution.

Reasons for initial avoidance

• Shameful death: Crucifixion was associated with low-status criminals, so early believers were hesitant to glorify it.
• Persecution: Early Christians needed discreet symbols to identify themselves without attracting Roman attention, leading to symbols like the fish and the anchor.
• Focus on Resurrection: The resurrection, not the death, was the central message; early art focused on biblical scenes or symbols of new life, not the crucifixion itself.

Symbolic restraint is “The assertion that early Christians avoided using the cross symbol for approximately 200 years and it addresses a critical phase in Christian iconographic history. This question, however, requires careful nuance. The symbolic restraint exercised by early Christian communities was not a rejection of the theology of the cross, which was central to the nascent faith, but rather a pragmatic and strategic choice regarding its public iconographic display”. When looking at the early history of the Shroud we often overlook the cultural conditions at the time. Christians were heavily persecuted. All of the apostles apart from John were put to death often in terrible ways. King Herod Agrippa put to death James to please the Jewish religious authorities. Peter escaped a similar death at the same time but was later crucified in Rome.

Constraints on use of images

There are many paintings in early centuries which portray Jesus as a young short haired Romanesque figure in a toga type garment. The Good Shepherd is a main theme but other illustrations of his ministry are also used. These paintings would have been made by gentile Christians as Jewish Christians were constrained by their tradition and faith not to create images of themselves or their leaders. Even Herod the Great did not have paintings made of himself so as not to upset Jewish tradition. It is interesting to read that there were no images or illustrations of Herod the Great in Judea until hundreds of years after his death. It was noted that the reason was that Jewish law prohibited depictions of living beings. Herod followed this law in order to appease his Jewish subjects, with the result that there is no indication of any portrait of King Herod in Judea. In Searching for portraits of King Herod, Ralf Krumeich and Achim Lichtenberger attempt to discover what can be known about Herod’s appearance from the scant evidence that remains.

Pontius Pilate created riots by bringing images into Jerusalem. We know of the furore caused by him when, at the beginning of his office, he brought images of the Emperor into Jerusalem. The Roman military standards contained images of the emperor and therefore the Jews felt that their Holy city had been desecrated by these idolatrous symbols.

Caligula was persuaded at the last minute by Herod Agrippa not to have his images placed in the Jerusalem Temple, delegations telling the Governor of Syria that he must first ‘sacrifice the entire Jewish nation’ before they would tolerate such a sacrilege [1]. You only need to read Jerusalem a biography by the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore to see how inflammatory images were in Jerusalem, in fact how inflammatory most things were.

The earliest known depiction of a cross, was in fact insulting. Dated sometime around the late second century, the Alexamenos graffiti was a crude inscription on a wall on the Palatine hill overlooking the Coliseum, depicting a man with a donkeys head on a cross. The writing says ‘Alexamenos worships his god’. The graffiti wasn’t just a cultural one off. Both Tertullian and Tacitus mention this reoccurring insult against Christians. The donkey-headed god insult was indeed widespread.

The Roman historian Tacitus had no love of Christianity. His characterization of “Christian abominations” may have been based on the rumours in Rome that during the Eucharist rituals, Christians ate the body and drank the blood of their God, interpreting the ritual as cannibalism.

External critics, such as Minucius Felix in his Octavius (late 2nd or early 3rd century), cited anti- Christian arguments that specifically labeled believers as “crucis religiosi” (adorers of the gibbet). This polemical recognition demonstrates that while Christians were not broadcasting the symbol publicly, their belief in the crucified Messiah was well-known to their opponents.

Roman critics seized upon the crucifixion to delegitimise Christianity by associating the faith with vulgarity and superstition. Tertullian, writing in 204 AD in De Corona, recognised this sociological pressure and wrote in defence of Christians, rejecting the accusation that they were “adorers of the gibbet”. The fact that this defence was required highlights the severity of the public relations crisis caused by the symbol. So again, if the symbol of the cross caused these severe problems, it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see the problems that would have been caused by the Shroud.

The most significant barrier to the early adoption of the cross was its association with the ultimate disgrace and imperial terror. In the Roman Empire, crucifixion (supplicium servile) was not merely a form of execution; it was a carefully constructed spectacle of agony, reserved for non-citizens, slaves, and political rebels. It served as a potent display of Roman dominance and the absolute infamia (shame) of the condemned. For an emerging religious movement seeking legitimacy and converts, publicly celebrating the execution device used on state enemies posed an existential risk. Let’s not forget the mass crucifixions of the Spartacus rebels not that long before Christ. Or the external wall erected around Jerusalem during its siege in AD70 by Titus, when those caught trying to escape were crucified in the sight of the residents .

To display the cross openly would therefore have been interpreted by the Roman authorities as sympathizing with a treasonous act and mocking the state’s judicial power. Early Christian symbols, consequently, had to be innocuous or obscure enough to avoid provoking the authorities or alienating potential converts. The need for concealment fundamentally shaped the visual vocabulary of the Early Church. Early symbols such as the fish and the anchor being used.

The problem of the Shroud

It’s worth looking at the Shroud in this context. If indeed the image was created whilst Jesus was wrapped in it in the Sepulchre, we can can potentially see the immediate problems it would create. Firstly, it is an image and whilst it was an image not made by human hands, to those outside of the small Christian community and to the Jewish authorities it would have been an abomination.

It is the image of a very heavily scourged, beaten and crucified man. The cloth is covered in the blood of this man. In fact everything that is offensive to the Jewish faith and the gentile population too. It is more than highly likely therefore that the Shroud would have been revered and kept secret by the apostles bearing in mind the whole context of the time and place it was kept. To the apostles it would be highly revered and prized as it was a mirror of the passion itself. However it is impossible to think they would have shown it publicly. Their Lord had revealed his resurrected self to them and up to 500 people at one time. They were witnesses to this turning point in history so why would they need the Shroud to proclaim that which had already been physically witnessed? They were not proclaiming a gospel of a dead man in a cloth but the resurrection of the Lord. Unlike ourselves today they weren’t concerned scientifically with how the image was formed.

In his paper Antioch and the Shroud, historian Jack Markwardt shows that persecution extended right up until Constantine and describes how the Passion relics would have been kept concealed due to the danger of being confiscated and destroyed by Imperial agents. It is well known that Christians observed ‘The Discipline of the Secret’.

Likewise the severe social and political burden carried by the cross made it a strategic liability. To gain converts and deflect persecution, early Christian symbols required discretion. The symbol of the cross, being overtly political and violent, was deemed too dangerous to feature in the visible public identity of the Church until that identity was secured by imperial protection and the same would apply to the Shroud image.

Consequently, the earliest extant Christian art (dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries, often found in the catacombs of Rome) heavily favours allegorical representations of divine deliverance and resurrection, explicitly avoiding the execution device itself. These symbols communicated salvation and security using coded language easily understood by the initiated but often ambiguous to outsiders.

The consistent choice to utilise allegories of salvation and the triumphant Christ in catacomb art demonstrates that the symbolic focus was placed squarely on the result of the cross — resurrection and victory — providing the internal theological justification for delaying the public display of the instrument of suffering.

Removal of social and political constraints

The historical change for the symbol of the cross came with Constantine. The legalisation of Christianity following the Edict of Milan in 313 AD removed the necessary social and political constraints that had necessitated symbolic concealment. With imperial protection secured, the symbol rapidly entered the mainstream of Roman life, appearing on state infrastructure. However, secrecy was still uppermost with the important relics such as the Shroud, even though the cross was now to be used. Iconoclasm has (as it does today) always existed with the church.

The appearance of Christ’s features are theorised to appear in artworks mainly starting at this time. A crucial observation regarding the symbolic evolution is the distinction between the cross shape and the image of Christ’s suffering body. Although the cross shape itself was adopted publicly in the 4th century, the crucifix — a cross bearing a corpus (a representation of Christ’s body) — remained absent from Christian art for another two centuries with the oldest extant crucifixes not known to have been used until the 6th century AD. This significant chronological lag reinforces the prevailing theological preference of the time.

The staggered adoption timeline — Staurogram (2nd C.), bare cross (4th C.), crucifix (6th C.) — demonstrates that the shame and liability associated with the symbol were resolved in gradual, chronological stages driven by both external politics and evolving internal doctrine.

The definitive end to this symbolic restraint occurred in 313 AD with Constantine’s imperial endorsement of the cross and the subsequent legalisation of Christianity. This political mandate fundamentally redefined the symbol, transforming the instrument of Roman judicial terror into a triumphant icon of military and divine favour. Furthermore, the immediate glorification of the cross through the Crux Gemmata ensured that the symbol’s public representation visually emphasised Christ’s victory and resurrection, a theological consensus that delayed the widespread use of the suffering Crucifix until the 6th century AD. The symbolic history of the cross thus provides a profound case study in how political context and doctrinal preference converge to shape religious iconography.

The intention of this article is mainly to show the parallels between the restraint in the cross as a Christian symbol and the secrecy surrounding the Shroud, especially during the earliest period when it would have been held by the apostles themselves and why it would not have been written about in the gospels and letters. Some scholars have said that there are actually allusions to the Shroud in Paul’s letters and elsewhere e.g. Galatians 3:1 hinting that it may have been used for a specific purpose, however this is purely conjecture.

There are also other descriptions [2], writings and allusions to the Shroud in early literature. 6th century Mozarabic Rite states that “on the morning of Jesus’ resurrection, Peter and John ran to his tomb and saw the recent imprints of the dead and risen one on the cloths”. This was established by Bishop Leander of Seville who spent these years 579-582 in Constantinople under the tutelage of the future Pope Gregory the Great. This inclusion in the liturgy might suggest that he had access to the Shroud whilst in Constantinople. Bishop Leander was also well known as the first person to include the Nicene creed into the liturgy and is considered a Saint in the Catholic Church.

The Sudarium of Oviedo

The Shroud was not the only relic however that would have been kept apart secretly for good reason. The Sudarium of Oviedo, the facecloth mentioned in John 20:6-7 was another piece of linen, the facecloth, covered mainly in post-mortem blood which was kept within Palestine until the 7th century, separately from the Shroud. It’s history is more straightforward than the Shroud and according to Pelagius, the 12th century Bishop of Oviedo, it was moved to Alexandria shortly before 614AD after the Siege of Jerusalem by Chosroes II and later was taken via North Africa when Chosroes took Alexandria in 616. It entered Spain through Cartegena with the fleeing population. The Bishop Ecija Fulgentia welcomed the refugees and the relics which then spent some time in Seville.

It surely seems clear by now as to why these relics would have been protected and kept secret. If the two cloths kept in Turin and Oviedo are indeed the two cloths from Christ’s tomb, they were taken out of the tomb by his followers and kept. Two eastern traditions state that the Sudarium was taken and kept at first by Peter: this is affirmed by the author of the Life of St Nino of Georgia and by Ishodad of Merv in his commentaries on the Gospels.

Many church fathers speak of the two cloths, but for the most part they are just paraphrasing John’s gospel. There is one text however, that documents the presence of the Sudarium in Jerusalem before the year 614 when according to Pelayo it was taken out of the city. Whilst attributed to the saint and martyr Antonius of Piacenza, it was more likely written by pilgrims from Piacenza after they returned to Italy and associated with the Saint himself. [3]

Anti-relic sentiment

Later history shows how the Protestant movement became very anti-relic for good reason. There were very many supposed relics of Christ especially in France where many were taken after the sack of Constantinople in 1204. The French knights were mainly interested in religious relics whereas the Venetian knights plundered the city of material objects of value such as the bronze horses shown in Venice. However it could be equally true that out of the hundreds of supposed relics claimed as authentic, a very small number may have been.

Calvin was very influential with the Huguenots and the Protestant movement in France. Fanatically opposed to the Catholic Church, the Huguenots killed priests, monks, and nuns, attacked monasticism, and destroyed sacred images, relics, and church buildings. Most of the cities in which the Huguenots gained a hold saw iconoclast riots in which altars and images in churches, and sometimes the buildings themselves torn down. Ancient relics and texts were destroyed; the bodies of saints exhumed and burned. The cities of Bourges, Montauban and Orléans saw substantial activity in this regard.

The Protestant evangelist Charles Spurgeon was also opposed to the Shroud’s authenticity, mainly because he was opposed to the Catholic Church. Modern day opponents are often more atheistic in their approach such as Italian historian Andrea Nicolotti and French historian Nicolas Sarzeaud.

Sarzeaud has recently produced a paper on medieval relics which refers to a letter by academic Nicolas Oresme that denounces superstition and relics. Written at the the period in history when the Shroud was being exhibited in Lirey, France and the Black Death was prevalent, he speaks against relics and false hope and specifically mentions the Shroud at Lirey. As part of his study, Sarzeaud produced maps showing the vast extent of relics throughout France such as the one shown below. The big shields mark the wanderings of the Shroud of Turin, blue and violet dots mark actual intact burial cloths, black dots are fragments, yellow are copies and green are paintings of the Shroud. Prof. Sarzeaud notes that no doubt it will be “a gold mine for all sorts of far-fetched theories from our sindonologist friends,” but thinks it can’t do any harm.

In the draft letter of the D’Arcis memorandum, the Bishop objects to the Shroud being shown, probably by Geoffroi II, as he says that 34 years prior the artist had been found. In reality people were flocking to see the Shroud and accepted it as the genuine article. This widespread acceptance and pilgrimage can be seen through the discovery of pilgrim medals such a one found in the Seine in Paris.

The Shroud itself continues to be a mystery and the cloth itself is its own main support of authenticity. Its history is either from the tomb of Jesus or the medieval town of Lirey France around 1350.

Symbolic restraint might be a good reason why the Shroud was kept hidden but there may be additional reasons purely because it wasn’t viewed as an important witness at that time but was revered because it belonged to Him. It is likely that any image wasn’t viewed as being made through the resurrection. The burial cloths would have been carefully folded, wrapped and hidden by the apostles because it contained Jesus’ blood and to prevent it being destroyed. It may not have been opened in full until much later, so the marks we interpret as an image may have either been much fainter at that stage prior to aging or been misconstrued as stains from sweat and oil if only small sections of cloth were visible. It’s a huge cloth and so once wrapped, the image may not have been noticeable And the cultural sensibilities around the cloth containing His blood would probably have meant that once wrapped, it wouldn’t have needed to be unwrapped by those who loved Him.

As can be seen by Sarzeaud’s map, relics were exceptionally widespread and duplications manifold and often ridiculous. The Protestant antipathy towards relics, inspired by the Reformation, was to some extent understandable as there were valid reasons to be concerned about the state of superstition and relic cult worship during the medieval period. Unfortunately, because of this view, genuine relics were overlooked and the baby was thrown out with the bath water.

This view still pervades to this day especially amongst Protestant Christians who perceive the Shroud to be a purely ‘Catholic’ thing, even though it did not become a possession of the Catholic Church until 1983 when the House of Savoy gifted it to the Pope upon the death of Umberto.

It is highly likely that as with the symbol of the cross, Symbolic Restraint would have applied until the time of Constantine and even then, because of its status and the fact that the Shroud was not held in Constantinople possibly until 944AD, it was not used for public exhibition as indeed it rarely is today.

References

1. Some early historical references to the Shroud by Russ Breault
2. Jerusalem the Biography, S.S. Montefiore, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2011) p. 135
3. Recent Historical Investigations on the Sudarium of Oviedo by Mark Guscin