The Sudarium of Oviedo

The Sudarium is a small, plain linen cloth, roughly 84 by 53 centimetres, without any image but marked by stains of blood and pulmonary fluid arranged as if it had been wrapped around a wounded head. Devotion identifies it with the sudarium mentioned in John 20:7, the separate face-cloth that Peter and John saw folded in the empty tomb.

Unlike the Shroud of Turin it bears no picture, and its interest is forensic rather than pictorial: investigators such as the Spanish Centre for Sindonology have argued that its stain pattern, blood group and the placement of the wounds correspond to those on the Shroud, suggesting the two cloths covered the same head. Sceptics answer that the correspondences are loose and that the cloth's traceable history begins only with the medieval Asturian record, not in first-century Palestine. The Church venerates the Sudarium without ruling on its authenticity. It is shown to the public only three times a year, on Good Friday and on the feast of the Triumph of the Cross (14 September) and its octave, when it is carried in procession through the cathedral.