Authenticity and Scholarship

The devotional case identifies the Argenteuil tunic with the seamless robe of the Gospel, supported by its seamless weave and a documented history reaching back, through the Charlemagne tradition, to the early Middle Ages. Investigators have reported that its bloodstains are type AB, the same grouping claimed for the Shroud of Turin, and that pollen grains on it are consistent with the region of Palestine, arguing for a common origin with the Shroud.

Against this, radiocarbon testing carried out in the twentieth century produced results that were disputed and are not accepted as settling the question, no undisputed scientific date places the wool in the first century, and the competing seamless robe at Trier means that at most one of the two can be the garment of John 19. With a suggestive but contested body of evidence and an unresolved rivalry, the tunic is classed as debated, its tradition and the scientific claims set side by side.