1453

The cloth enters Savoy custody

The Shroud passes into the possession of the House of Savoy.

The House of Savoy acquired the cloth in the fifteenth century and kept it within its territories. This begins a better documented phase of its later history.

In 1453 Margaret de Charny transferred the Shroud to Duke Louis I of Savoy. The transaction is associated with a formal agreement and compensation, after a long dispute between Margaret and the canons of Lirey. Under the Savoy, the cloth became a dynastic relic and was kept within the family’s political and devotional world.¹

What the surviving source says

The legal transfer is an important documentary anchor, but the object’s earlier route remains unknown. The Savoy record gives the cloth a clearer institutional custodian from the mid-fifteenth century onward. It does not validate the medieval family’s claim that it was the burial cloth of Jesus.¹²

Historical significance and limits

The transaction is a pivotal point in the documented history: it changes the custody context from a local collegiate church and family dispute to a ruling house’s relic collection.²³

Sources and further reading

1. Read about the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. Consult the cited passage in the full source and its transmission context; the article distinguishes the source’s wording from later interpretation.
2. Otangelo Grasso, The Image That Should Not Exist: A Scientific Investigation of the Shroud of Turin (2026), ch. 2, “Origins and Historical Record,” pp. 23–31. Author synthesis; not an independent witness.
3. Otangelo Grasso, From Forensics to Faith (2026), ch. 3, “6th to 14th Century History,” pp. 126–194. The book advances an interpretation; this article separates that interpretation from the underlying document or measurement.
4. Otangelo Grasso, The Shroud of Turin: A Forensic Summary, 3rd ed. (2026), ch. 16, “The Hidden Thread,” pp. 276–294. The author’s proposed reconstruction is cited as interpretation, not corroboration.
5. Alan Friedlander, “On the Provenance of the Holy Shroud of Lirey/Turin”. Further reading or contextual source retained from this event’s earlier bibliography.
6. Andrea Nicolotti, The Shroud of Turin: The History and Legends of the World’s Most Famous Relic. Further reading or contextual source retained from this event’s earlier bibliography.