Читать книгу Sindòn The Mysterious Shroud Of Turin - Guido Pagliarino - Страница 22

In 1204 A.D. a tragedy took place: the Byzantine Empire was sacked by the army of the Fourth Crusade, which was called by Pope Innocent III to reclaim Holy Land from Muslims, without achieving such purpose. On April 12th, Constantinople was conquered, with horrible massacres and awful looting of treasures and holy relics. If it's true that only the First Crusade had strong idealistic motivations, besides the usual economic and power reasons, before the 1204 events the Christians never reached a such level of cynical and bloody profiteering. Count Baldwin IX of Flanders was in charge of the abject expedition, and under his command the French knights William of Champlitte, Geoffrey of Villehardouin, Othon de La Roche (Duchy of Burgundy) and the Italian commanders Boniface of Montferrat and Enrico Dandolo (Doge of Venice) participated to the crusade. When the Latin Empire was finally established, the Byzantine's territories were apportioned between the winners, except for the Doge of Venice who was ninety years old and very ill. Count Baldwin of Flanders was crowned as Emperor Baldwin I in the cathedral of Constantinople, Hagia Sofia, with a lavish ceremony. William of Champlitte became Prince of Achaea; Geoffrey of Villehardouin Prince of Morea; Boniface of Montferrat King of Thessalonica. Finally, but his figure is the most important in our history, Othon de La Roche became Duke of Athens and Thebes. Meanwhile, the mandylion (or the Shroud?) was stolen during the looting from the church annexed to the imperial palace of Blachernae by unknowns. Was it hidden in Athens? We can presume it by reading the copy of a letter dated August 1st 1205, just after the sack of Constantinople, which was originally sent by Theodore Komnenos, related to the imperial family, to the Pope Innocent III (but we have no certain evidence on the existence of the original)²⁴ ; in this paper, Theodore blamed crusaders to be predators of relics, and asked the Supreme Pontiff for the return of the Constantinople cloth, which he claimed to be kept in Athens by the Duke Othon de La Roche. Later, in A.D. 1208, the Duke of Athens and Thebes probably would have sent the shroud (again, the Shroud of Turin?) in his possession to his father Ponce II de La Roche-sur- Ognon and Ray; hence, from that year the cloth would have been in France guarded by the de La Roche family.