Authenticity and Scholarship

Devotional tradition holds the Sudarium to be the very cloth of John 20:7, and since 1989 the EDICES investigators led from Oviedo have argued that its pattern of stains matches blood flowing from a crowned, upright then reclined head, that the blood is type AB, and that points of the pattern align with the face of the Shroud of Turin. Critics note that type-AB findings on aged relics are difficult to confirm, that claimed alignments with the Shroud are subjective, and above all that radiocarbon testing reported by Baima Bollone gave a date around the 7th century, centuries after the crucifixion. The laboratory itself cautioned that oils and handling could have skewed the result, and defenders lean on that caveat. As with the Shroud, the scientific dating points away from the 1st century while the tradition maintains an origin at the tomb; the honest classification is therefore debated.

Tradition holds the Sudarium wrapped the head of Jesus separately from the larger burial Shroud, per the account in John 20:7 of a face cloth found apart from the other linens in the empty tomb, and proponents of a link between the two relics argue that bloodstain patterns on the Sudarium correspond to those on the Shroud of Turin's own face image closely enough to indicate the same person. This claim originates chiefly with Spain's Centro Espanol de Sindologia, an advocacy body dedicated to relic research rather than an independent forensic authority, and it has not been corroborated by forensic scientists outside that circle.