Exhibiting the Shroud of Turin virtually during a global pandemic finds neat points of synchronicity with its history, rooted in a 16th-century plague.
On Saturday, the archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia, responded to calls for spiritual solace in these unprecedented days by announcing plans for an extraordinary showing of the Shroud of Turin on the day before Easter.
The Shroud of Turin’s modern fame as an object of religious faith derives from a deadly contagion that defined its own era as much as the current one threatens to define ours. In 1578 the cardinal and archbishop of Milan, Charles Borromeo, wrote to the shroud’s custodian, Duke Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy. Borromeo wanted to venerate the holy sheet as a way to give thanks for surviving the plague that had ravaged northern Italy the previous two years.
Fast-forward to 2020 and we arrive at a new age of viewing and experiencing that shapes even how we are able to see the shroud—at least for the time being. The televised live “virtuality” of the Shroud of Turin during a global pandemic makes me wonder what the medium of a digital screen actually does for the experience of witnessing the original.
However, modern suspicions about copies generally demote many of these replicas to dormant roles as museum pieces or forgotten liturgical artifacts stuffed in church closets. They only faintly remind us of the prominence they once enjoyed as the primary means by which most worshippers had access to the Turin original. Some are brought out around Easter, where they often give off the air of antique curiosity as much as they spur religious contemplation.
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