The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth bearing the faint front and back image of a man. It is preserved in Turin and venerated by many Christians as the burial cloth of Jesus, while its historical origin remains disputed.
Documented history
The first widely accepted documentary record places the cloth at Lirey in France during the mid-fourteenth century. It later passed to the House of Savoy, was damaged in a fire at Chambéry in 1532, and was transferred to Turin in 1578. Proposed histories before Lirey have not been demonstrated through an unbroken chain of records.
The image and marks on the linen have prompted studies in textile history, chemistry, photography, medicine, and archaeology. These investigations do not all use the same methods, and some samples have uncertain histories, making broad claims based on one test inappropriate.
Radiocarbon evidence and belief
In 1988, laboratories in Arizona, Oxford, and Zurich tested a sample of the cloth. Their published result placed the linen between 1260 and 1390 CE with high confidence. Critics have challenged the sample and interpretation, but no later peer-reviewed test has replaced that result with an accepted first-century date.
Scientific dating and religious veneration answer different questions. The cloth can hold devotional importance without its identity as the historical burial cloth being treated as proven.