c. 600

The Mozarabic liturgy speaks of imprints

A Western liturgical text elaborates on Peter seeing marks on the linens.

This rendering of John 20 is preserved in later manuscripts. It reflects theological interpretation, not an eyewitness record of the Turin cloth.

The Mozarabic rite is the historic Latin liturgy of Christian communities in Iberia. In a prayer related to John 20, a version of the text elaborates on the Gospel scene in which Peter sees linen cloths in the empty tomb. Modern Shroud writers often translate the added phrase as the “imprints” of the dead and risen Christ. That wording belongs to liturgical interpretation, not to John’s canonical text.¹

What the surviving source says

The rite is preserved in medieval manuscripts, so its composition, use and copying history must be distinguished. The prayer’s theological purpose is to proclaim resurrection; it is not a report by Peter or an Iberian witness who inspected a first-century relic. Before claiming that the wording means a visible body image, the exact Latin text and its manuscript context must be cited.¹²

Historical significance and limits

The text documents western liturgical imagination about the burial linens. It may be relevant to the history of imprint language, but it cannot identify those linens with the Turin Shroud or establish that an image-bearing relic was present in Iberia.²³

Sources and further reading

1. Mark Guscin, The Tradition of the Image of Edessa (source study). 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, and ch. 17, “The Mandylion, Art, and the Historical Record,” pp. 232–243. Author synthesis; not an independent witness.
3. Otangelo Grasso, From Forensics to Faith (2026), ch. 2, “Pre-1355 History,” pp. 32–125, and ch. 3, “6th to 14th Century History,” pp. 126–194. The book advances a proposed reconstruction; claims are assessed here against the primary texts.
4. Otangelo Grasso, Chronological List of Pre-1356 Literature Mentioning the Shroud and Christ’s Burial Cloth (20 July 2025), pp. 1–9. Prepared with AI assistance and used as a research checklist; its identifications and confidence labels are not treated as verified facts.
5. Andrea Nicolotti, From the Mandylion of Edessa to the Shroud of Turin (critical study). Further reading or contextual source retained from this event’s earlier bibliography.