Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Garments & Textiles gathers three venerated cloth relics, and two of the three make the exact same claim about the exact same event, which is the group's most striking feature. The Holy Tunic of Argenteuil, kept near Paris at the Basilica of Saint Denys, and the Holy Robe of Trier, kept at Trier Cathedral in Germany, are both venerated as the seamless garment Jesus wore to the crucifixion, the one the soldiers cast lots for rather than tear, in John's Gospel. The two claims are not compatible with each other: only one garment, at most, can be that one. Trier's tradition that Helena brought the robe there is medieval rather than contemporary with the events it describes, and the relic is securely documented only from the twelfth century, shown so rarely that showings fall decades apart and the 1844 exposition provoked a protest that produced a whole Catholic breakaway movement. Argenteuil's tunic is unfolded for solemn exposition on a similarly rare schedule, roughly once in a generation.

The Blessed Mantle of the Prophet stands apart from that rivalry entirely. Revered in Islam as a garment of the Prophet Muhammad, it is the most important of the Sacred Trusts held in the Chamber of the Sacred Relics at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, brought there after the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk domains in 1517 and guarded since by the sultans, who as caliphs regarded its keeping as a supreme duty. Unlike the two European tunics, its provenance carries no rival claim over the same object, only the ordinary reliance on long tradition and custody every relic in this small group shares. What holds the three together as one category, despite belonging to two different religions, is only that each is a garment kept and venerated as having touched a founding figure's own body.