Dossier sindrone 6
It was 1578 when Cardinal Carlo Borromeo considered that the time had come to dissolve the vow made during the great plague and to leave, on foot, to Chambéry to venerate the Holy Shroud. Emanuele Filiberto takes the opportunity on the fly. It is in his designs, in fact, to transfer the capital of the duchy to Turin and, according to the family tradition, he is concerned that the Shroud is moved to where the Savoy family reside. It does not matter that the Telo has a home in Chambéry, the question is almost political. The duke quickly moved the Shroud to Turin in order, at least so he officially declares, to shorten the tiring pilgrimage to Cardinal Borromeo.
The cloth arrives at the castle of Lucento on 9 September 1578 and on the 15th it is carried in a solemn procession to Turin in the church of San Lorenzo, then S. Maria del Presepe now atrium of S. Lorenzo.
Carlo Borromeo will arrive on October 9th.
He started from Milan on 6 October
says Don Luigi Fossati after having celebrated Mass and solemnly blessed the following faithful and their pilgrimage sticks. The caravan stops in Sedriano and then spends the night in Trecate. The next day, October 7, the cardinal, after having confessed and communicated the crowd for almost the whole night, holds a great celebration in the Cathedral at the end of which, at around 2 pm, the chronicles of the time say, the pilgrimage resumes under a pouring rain. As the evening approaches, he arrives in Vercelli, where he spends the night. The third day, that of October 8, is the most exhausting and when the caravan arrives in Cigliano in the evening, the cardinal is in bad condition. But the following is the big day. Early in the morning and completely recovered, the cardinal resumes the journey at the head of all.
The destination, Turin, is now a few hours away.
A few hundred meters from the city gates, Emanuele Filiberto and the prince Carlo Emanuele welcome Carlo Borromeo. A long bow followed by a fraternal embrace, amidst the firing thunder of the artillery coming from the castle, marks the meeting of the Savoy with the Saint and the end of the latter's long pilgrimage.
Evening falls quickly over the Savoyard city and the cardinal, before accepting Emanuele Filiberto's invitation to be a guest in the palace, wants to venerate the Shroud.
In the days to come there will be private ostensions, reserved for the cardinal and a small group of his pilgrims, the public ones in the current Piazza Castello, and the rite, in the Cathedral, of the 40 hours of uninterrupted adoration of the Shroud, in memory of those of the burial of Christ wrapped in the Cloth.
Thus began a new historical phase for the Shroud, which is identified with the city of Turin.
The Shroud has left a house in Chambéry built specifically for its reposition and Emanuele Filiberto believes he must assign a new, definitive residence to it in the Savoy capital.
It will be Carlo Emanuele II who will keep his promise.
The greatest architects of the time will intervene in the design of the large chapel between the royal palace and the cathedral: Carlo di Castellamonte, Bernardino Quadri, Amedeo di Castellamonte and Guarino Guarini, whose project was the definitive one.
The use of the annual ostensions, on May 4, is maintained while the extraordinary ones intensify. The Savoy, who consider the Shroud "the image" of their family, almost the symbol of a sacred investiture and make it the usual instrument to solemnize great moments, starting with happy events.
Giuseppe Maria Pugno, one of the main authors to deal with the Shroud, was able to reconstruct over a century of extraordinary expositions, from 1578 to 1706. In 1582, once again Cardinal Borromeo was present, there was a solemn exposition during which, for the first time , the plenary indulgence granted by the pontiff was imparted to all present.
In 1585, the exposition of the Shroud solemnized the marriage of Duke Carlo Emanuele I with Catherine of Austria. The Shroud will then be exhibited in "1587 on the occasion of the baptism of the firstborn of Carlo Emanuele I, the Prince of Piedmont Filippo Emanuele, born the year before; an event so postponed in its official celebration that, during the relative celebrations, it was born and was The second son Vittorio Amedeo was also baptized. On this occasion the relic was brought from the Church of San Lorenzo to the round chapel on the ground floor of the Palazzo Vecchio adorned with six Ionic columns in red marble and commissioned by Duke Carlo Emanuele I. Following the exposition in 1620, on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Vittorio Amedeo I with Christina of France, the first Royal Madam; that of 1642 to thank God for the peace reached, called family peace, between the royal Madam Cristina, her son Carlo Emanuele II, on the one hand, and the princes Maurizio and Tommaso on the other, an ostension celebrating a particularly important event for the State; in 1663 on the occasion of the marriage of Duke Carlo Emanuele II with Francesca d'Orléans; in 1665 for the marriage of the same duke with his second wife, Maria Giovanna Battista di Nemours; in 1685 in honor of the marriage celebrated the year before between Duke Vittorio Amedeo II and Anna d'Orléans; that of 1694 on the occasion of the transport of the Holy Shroud to the new Guarini Chapel built specifically for her deposition ". But the list is not complete:" we should remember the exhibition of 1613 due, it is not well known whether the passage through Turin of the already famous bishop of Geneva Francesco di Sales "and other more or less royal reasons;" that of 1639 called, perhaps, for the passage to Turin of Santa Giovanna Francesca Frémyot baroness of Chantal; that of 1664 on the occasion of the passage through Turin of Father Domenico da S.Tommaso, son of Sultan Ibrahim, who converted to Christianity and then entered the Order of Preachers; that of 1692 ordered for June 1 of that year by Duke Vittorio Amedeo II without prior notice for "the noises of war", and implemented by the gallery located on that of Beaumont, corresponding to the current Royal Armory.
In 1632 the exposition, inside the cathedral, is marked by the liberation from the plague of 1630 with the delivery of the votive plaque by the civil authorities in the name of all citizens.
There are countless so-called private expositions, lasting a few hours and reserved for special guests of the House of Savoy, such as ambassadors, sovereigns, distinguished religious. In 1694, finally, the Shroud, preserved on alternate periods in the church of San Lorenzo or in the Chapel of the Royal Palace, was placed in its new majestic Turin house, the Guarini chapel.
The winds of war blow again on the Savoy house in the summer of 1706. The French besiege Turin. Vittorio Amedeo II removes the family and with it the Shroud. Along the way, from Turin to the refuge in Genoa, she is exhibited several times, perhaps as an invocation for the salvation of the capital.
_This is one of the most fully documented paths of the Shroud - says Don Fossati. - At dawn on June 16, the royal family with the Shroud leaves Turin for Cherasco, where it stops for seven days. On 24 June the journey to Mondovì resumes and, in the town, the royal family spends the night in the palace of the Bishop, Giovanni Battista Isnardi del Castello. The next day, in the afternoon, the transfer to Ceva takes place. On June 26, the royals head to Garessio and, late at night, at one o'clock, they arrive at Ormea, where they rest at the home of the lawyer Bologna. On June 28th they arrive in Canavonica, near Oneglia, where they will remain until July 16th due to the bad weather that is raging. The royal family finally manages to embark and reach Savona. From here he leaves again on 19 July for Genoa. He arrives the next day and, in the Ligurian city, of the presence of the Telo, everything is hidden until after his departure, at the end of September of the same year.
The return, on 5 October, to Turin marks the end of the long pilgrimage of the Shroud which will temporarily leave the city only during the last world war.
With the beginning of the eighteenth century the number of ostensions progressively decreased, both for the ordinary ones on May 4th and for the extraordinary ones, the most solemn of which is certainly the last of the century, in 1775.
In 1798, due to the occupation of Piedmont by the French troops, King Carlo Emanuele IV is forced to flee to Sardinia. This time, however, the Shroud does not follow the Savoy, it is left in Turin entrusted to the care of the Archbishop and to the "citizen" Brillada, who was the Canon Custos.
In 1814, the return to the city of King Vittorio Emanuele I, in favor of whom Carlo Emanuele II had abdicated years earlier, is solemnly celebrated with the most sumptuous exhibition, since 1775.
The following year, on May 2, 1815, the Shroud was again exhibited in honor of Pope Pius VII, finally free after the imprisonment of Fontainebleau, and for whom a private exhibition had already been organized in 1804.
In the middle of the Christmas period, on January 4, in 1822, a solemn ostension celebrates the beginning of the reign of Carlo Felice after the abdication of Vittorio Emanuele I. This is followed by the expositions of 1842 and 1868, the one that somehow closes the first period of the Shroud in Turin. _Last 4 days
says Don Fossati
from 24 to 27 April, and marked a new way of presenting the Shroud to the faithful: for the duration first of all and then because it was exhibited in a painting placed on the main altar of the cathedral. Another reason of particular importance was the replacement, by the hand of Princess Clotilde of Savoy, of the veils within which the Shroud was kept. The black silk was removed, applied by Valfrè, and put on a crimson taffeta.
1898 is certainly not a happy year for Italy. Discontent and political unrest spread throughout the country. Motions of revolt are registered in Lombardy in particular, popular protests against the dear life agitate the government and the court. Annoying intemperance of the people pierce the walls of the royal palace and reach the sovereign, mixed and confused in the ferment of the new century on the horizon, with cities that change face, fascinating technological innovations and a radically different way of life. Umberto I thinks of exorcising the discontent with initiatives capable of attracting international attention to Turin and that can restore the image of an avant-garde and festive country. It is the 50th anniversary of the Albertine Statute, an anniversary that the Savoy family intend to celebrate with great pomp. The crown prince, Vittorio Emanuele, is about to marry Elena of Montenegro. The Turin church marks the fourth centenary of the cathedral of San Giovanni Battista and the third of the two most important brotherhoods in the city, that of the Holy Shroud and that of San Rocco. The king decides for a great exhibition and the exposition of the Shroud which has not appeared in public since 1868, exactly thirty years.
In this climate dangerously poised between the turmoil and the anxiety of the new century that agitates the Savoyard city, among its little more than three hundred thousand inhabitants, there is a certain Secondo Pia. Lawyer, of Asti origins, he abandoned the toga for historical research and for a passion, a great passion: photography. One of those inventions that open the new century viewed with much skepticism in the extremely conservative Savoyard environment. Pia is an intelligent pioneer.
On May 1st, the sovereign inaugurates the Exhibition. Pia is appointed member of the commission that realizes the exhibition of sacred art. His obsession is to photograph the Shroud. Before him, the Salesian Fr Natale Noguier De Malijay, a great lover of the Shroud, had asked for permission to photograph the cloth, but the king had refused. Pia therefore knows she has very little hope. In the commission for the preparation of the exhibition of sacred art he works in collaboration with the baron Antonio Manno, esteemed adviser to the king, President of the Executive Committee for the realization of the exhibition of sacred art, the same who had already pleaded the cause in favor of don De Malijay.
The importance of photography is very great, in fact it marks the beginning of the scientific approach to the Shroud.
The appointment must be postponed because the crowd of devotees is already pressing at the doors of the Cathedral. That day 22,000 people parade in front of the relic. Pia goes home more than ever, determined to repeat the experiment. "He decides to mount" two frosted glass panes a meter and a half away in front of each lighthouse. Order the plates that must be in place for the evening of Saturday 28 ". In the meantime, Princess Clotilde, worried that the intensity of the headlights could damage the cloth, gets to have the relic shielded with a crystal, which certainly does not help. work for the poor lawyer. On the evening of May 28 Pia gets to work "at the appointed time". Everything is ready again, the Shroud set to <<fire>>, when problems with the lighting system, determined by voltage drops, they block the work for the umpteenth time. Eventually, late at night, Pia manages to take two photographs. In a hurry she reaches her studio in via San Secondo and sets to work to develop them. "Suddenly Pia has a thud in his heart," Baima Bollone writes in his reconstruction "his temples begin to hammer under the thrust of a deep emotion. In the small dark room, in the dim light of the lamp screened in red, he sees the delineation on the negative a stern face and, even more surprisingly, the image is a positive. " This is the revelation from which scientific research on the Shroud starts: "if the image fixed on the plate is a positive, it means that there is a negative imprint on the canvas." There's more: "The behavior of the stains, which tradition refers to as blood, and which appear transferred to the fabric, does not follow this rule but is the usual one: at this level the prints appear negative on the photographic negative and positive on the positive." Naturally Pia "informs Baron Manno of the amazing results obtained and the admirers immediately flock to admire the plates: the photographic laboratory is filled with people"
L'Osservatore Romano will report the amazing result only a little less than a month later, in the issue of 14-15 June.
Soon "curiosity is replaced by jealousies and the poisonous suspicion that Pia has obtained the photographic impression with some tricks." Suspicions that will last for over two years, animating the debate on the Shroud, clearly expressed by the press of the time, which in front of Pia's photographs often expresses himself with deliberate indifference and even putting the author's professional honesty into question. In the reconstruction Baima Bollone will speak of a "truly defamatory press campaign".
It will take years, during which the photographs are scientifically studied by experts in photography and by the first scholars of the Shroud, for the Pia to be given due credit.
The fact remains that the results of Pia's photographs
says Don Luigi Fossati _ were immediately confirmed in the unofficial photographs, of which few speak because few know of their existence. They are those of Lieutenant Felice Fino, of the Jesuit Gianmaria Sanna Solaro, who published them in 1901, and of Fr Natale Noguier De Malijay, the Salesian who before Pia had asked the king for authorization to officially photograph the Shroud and had received an answer. negative, after already together with other Salesians he had made preparations for the operation, as unofficially it seemed that Umberto was willing to entrust the delicate task to the Salesians. Photograph, the latter, taken before May 28, the day of Pia's official one. Certainly, although not justified, the allegations against Pia are understandable in the face of the importance of admitting the authenticity of those photographs. A century is coming to an end in which materialism, skepticism, anti-clericalism have torn apart the Church, the Gospel and the figure of Christ. In this climate suddenly nothing less than the photograph of Jesus bursts. The photograph of him after nineteen centuries - and it appears truly extraordinary that even the portrait of him has left us - the proven proof that the Cloth is not a painting. To say it with Pia himself << If the figure that appears on the photographic plate, that is on the negative, is a perfect positive, it means that the imprint on the sheet is an equally perfect negative, similar to the photographic one, because the inversion of chiaroscuro takes place flawlessly by the work of light and chemicals >>. '98 is a turning point. If until then the Shroud was an object of devotion, with Pia's photographs it also began to be an object of scientific study, and scholars began to evaluate it under various aspects, from the historical, to the archaeological, up to the medical one. It is the beginning of the second phase of the "life" of the Shroud, the modern one.
At the first bombings of 1918 the serious question of the safety of the Telo arose. It was decided to take the Shroud from the altar of the Chapel where it was stored, closed in its box, and hide it in the Royal Palace, on the south-east side, two floors below ground. The environment, a room of four meters by two, is fortified with a layer of dried sand on the ceiling of about one meter, so as to significantly reduce the height of the room, and the floor covered with wooden panels. A safe is built, also of wood. The box with the Shroud is placed in a second large tin-plated iron box and the lid closed with welding. The chest is then taken to the prepared chamber and locked in the safe with a complicated secret combination.
Giuseppe Enrie is a well-known Turin photographer, owner of a large city photographic studio, frequented by the society of the time, and director of a magazine specialized in photography, one of the greatest admirers of Pia and her work on the Shroud. "In 1931" Baima Bollone writes "the wedding of the crown prince Umberto of Savoy is celebrated with Maria José" (of Belgium) princess of Brabant. "In keeping with tradition, an exhibition is arranged" from 4 to 24 May. The new archbishop of Turin, Maurilio Fossati, has just taken office and, before taking the official decision, considering also the many who advise against him, he consults directly with the Pope, Pius XI, who reassures him with a sentence that will remain in the history of relations between the Vatican and the Shroud: << Don't worry: we are speaking at this moment as a scholar and not as a Pope. We have personally followed the studies on the Holy Shroud and we are persuaded of the authenticity . There have been some oppositions, but they don't hold up. >>. Fossati, reassured, takes a step further and "decides to proceed with new photographic investigations entrusting them to a professional. It is from 1898, a good thirty-three years, that there has been a single photograph of the Shroud. All the images and enlargements, of which the world is full, they have been drawn from it and, what is most important, all the heated discussions on the authenticity of the object revolve around it. Giuseppe Enrie is chosen for his undisputed professional ability. "
At the solemn function during which the Shroud is extracted from the reliquary in the presence of the august spouses participate as many as 16 princes, some dozen bishops, all the city authorities, the representatives of the fascist power, and, of course, an immense crowd of faithful - it was calculated that in twenty days of exposition more than 1.5 million pilgrims paraded in front of the Cloth.
So, on May 3, when the Duomo is finally emptied, Enrie can get to work. Next to him is Pia and the great scholar of the Shroud Paul Vignon of the Catholic University of Paris. "Enrie develops the first test plate in the Cathedral and the subsequent ones in her own laboratory in the presence of the Salesian Fr Antonio Tonelli, a great scholar of the Shroud. They are all perfectly successful. It is a real success. The following evening Enrie is able to deliver a complete series of positive and negative copies to the archbishop who personally telephones his satisfaction to the prince. Copies are sent to the king who wants to see them. Enrie is authorized to take other photos on the evening of the 19th (with crystal) and more on the evening of 22, also in May. The result represents full and peremptory confirmation of the validity of Pia's first photograph. The news goes around the world and provokes new enthusiasm since it seems intuitive that if the Shroud, known for more than five hundred years, really contains a phenomenon like that of the negative, discovered only in the nineteenth century, it is certainly authentic and the image it contains is really that of Jesus. "In reality this, which would seem an elementary equation, so that even the last doubt about the authenticity of the negative detected by Pia has disappeared, the extraordinariness and therefore the authenticity of the image should be evident. of human hand >>, it is not so obvious. "Taking note that on the sheet there is really a negative image" continues Baima Bollone, the detractors " they argue that in reality it is a painting that encountered a phenomenon of <<negativization>> "and in support of their affirmation they give the example of a phenomenon of negativization that occurred on some parts of the frescoes by Cimabue in the upper church of the Basilica of Assisi . "In other words, the images of the Shroud would be the banal expression of the well-known phenomenon of color inversion". All this even if the technical examinations of the period already exclude that it could be a pictorial work. Furthermore, Baima Bollone writes "on Shroud there is no trace of white lead and even before that of oils or glue materials necessary to make it adhere to the canvas. And then, if it "were" really an inverted painting by alteration of the colors.
This is the period in which the great studies begin. After the first photograph, in 1898, and the discovery of the negative, the Shroud began to be the object of scientific study but until 1931 nothing particularly important was done. The most important medical studies in fact start in this period. A great impulse to studies came from the I National Congress of Studies on the Shroud of '39 and, in particular, from the publication of the Acts, which took place in '41, even if in the middle of the war
says Don Fossati.
The studies of Pierre Barbet, surgeon at the San Giuseppe hospital in Paris, and those of Paul Vignon mark the dawn of studies on the Shroud. And from this work, begun precisely in the Thirties, we will then arrive in 1950 at the great I International Study Congress on the Holy Shroud, held in Rome and Turin. The same situation applies to publications, so on the one hand the two exhibitions, that of '31 and that of '33, and the release of the Conference Proceedings, give way to a rich flow of publications on the Shroud of every gender
1933, nineteenth centenary of the Redemption. Pius XI had announced an Extraordinary Jubilee for that year and on that occasion he had asked the Sovereign, Vittorio Emanuele III, to grant the exposition of the Shroud. Cardinal Fossati will program it from 24 September to 15 October.
The climate of the Holy Year provokes the exposition, first of all Cardinal Fossati himself, who three years later, in 1936, will support the creation of a permanent exhibition-museum of relics concerning the Shroud in the headquarters of the Confraternity of the Holy Shroud.
