In a previous post we mentioned Pope Francis's prayer service held in March for the end of the Coronavirus pandemic in an empty St. Peter's Square. During this event the Pope prayed in front of the wooden crucifix from the church of San Marcello al Corso in Rome. According to tradition, the wooden crucifix was taken around the streets of the Italian capital during the plague that hit Rome in the 1500s.
Another prayer has been arranged for today, Holy Saturday, this time in front of the Shroud of Turin. Presided by Archbishop Nosiglia of Turin, the prayer is going to be live-streamed and broadcast on TV.
The linen cloth - bearing the negative image of a bearded man, his arms crossed and with several stains of what appears to be blood around the wrists, feet and side - is believed to be Jesus' burial shroud in which he was wrapped after crucifixion. The artifact is preserved in a climate-controlled vault in the city's cathedral and it is rarely shown because of its extremely fragile state.
Could we make a comparison between the Shroud of Turin and a wearable garment? Maybe yes. Think about a Japanese garment, the Oizuru - and in particular to the one featured in this post and currently available on the Tatami Antiques site, an independent online marketplace for Japanese antiquities. This garment is donned by pilgrims during the Shikoku Pilgrimage (Shikoku Henro - "henro" means pilgrim in Japanese) to the 88 sacred temples.
The pilgrim's attire comprises a white shirt (with or without sleeves; Hakui and Oizuru), a conical sedge hat and walking stick. The white shirt hints at purity and innocence, but also calls to mind the shroud and the fact that a pilgrim is prepared to die at any time.
Some people receive the stamp of the temple they visit on their shirt that is elevated to a family treasure once the pilgrimage is completed and, when the person who took the pilgrimage dies, it is also put on the deceased before cremation, turning into a proper shroud.
While the Shikoku Pilgrimage is associated with the Buddhist monk Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi) and the Shroud of Turin with Jesus and Christianity, there could be a parallelism between the pilgrim's vestment and the shroud: both the artifacts symbolise life and death, and, colour-wise in the case of the Oizuru available on the Tatami site, the rusty red stamps end up evoking the stains of blood on the Shroud of Turin. In different ways, both the artifacts are testaments of faith, something we need in the dark times e are living in.
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