Feast of the Holy Winding Sheet of Christ

In 1206 one of the (supposed) Winding Sheets used at the burial of Christ was brought to Besançon by Otto de La Roche, and the feast of its arrival (Susceptio) was ordered to be kept on 11 July. At present it is a double of the first class in the cathedral, and of the second class in the diocese. The Office is very beautiful. Another feast originated about 1495 at Chambéry, in Savoy, to honour the so-called sudario of Christ which came there in 1432 from Lirey in Burgundy, and which since 1578 is venerated in the royal chapel of the cathedral of Turin. This feast is celebrated on 4 May, the day after the Invention of the Cross, and was approved in 1506 by Julius II; it is now kept in Savoy, Piedmont, and Sardinia as the patronal feast of the royal House of Savoy (4 May, double of the first class, with octave). A third feast, the Fourth Sunday in Lent (translation to a new shrine in 1092), was during the Middle Ages kept at Compiègne in France, in honour of a winding sheet brought there from Aachen in 877. The feast which since 1831 is contained in the appendix of the Breviary, on the Friday after the Second Sunday in Lent, is independent of any particular relic, but before 1831 it was rarely found on the diocesan calendars. It has not yet found its way into the Baltimore Ordo. The office is taken from the Proprium of Turin.

NILLES, Kalendarium Manuale (Innsbruck, 1897); ROBAULT DE FLEURY, Instrumens de l Passion (Paris, 1870); CHEVALIER, Le Saint-Suaire de Turin in Analecta Bollandiana (1900).

F. G. HOLWECK