Posted on 06/14/2017 4:09:22 AM PDT by NYer
I always thought shroud cloths would be specially made for that purpose but it makes sense that families would repurpose tablecloths as shrouds.
Oh, no, shrouds were not something that was purpose made for burial cloths during the period. Often an old sail was repurposed for such use.
Until the industrial revolution, cloth represented a large amount of human economic effort to make, especially long cloths. For example, the Shroud of Turin is estimated to represent between two to three weeks of a master weavers effort AFTER the flax fiber was spun into the linen threads to make the cloth an effort which likely took up to a month of work, and after the flax was grown probably taking an acre or so of flax plants being planted, harvested, retted, beaten into usable fibers, etc., all of which represent months of labor. The cloth used in the Shroud, had the same investment in human labor been made today, would cost over $3,000 in today's dollars, if not more!
If you recall, even in the time of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Ebenezer Scrooge's servants were stealing his LINENS after his body was discovered. . . that was because a household's linens represented a huge portion of the value of the estate. Bed linens, wall hangings, draperies, etc., were all accounted for in the last wills and testaments of the period because they were valuable. They were also part of a bride's trousseau (which actually has the same root as "treasure") a bride collects to take to her groom's house as part of what the family of the bride gives to a man willing to take her as part of the marriage contract. It would take years to amass a small trunk of household linens to accompany the bride. These days, such linens are cheap and we give them little thought because they are machine made and easily replaced.
Today, we are unlikely to embellish them as they did during the medieval period, because they are not the works of artisans who wanted to put something on them that would distinguish their work from other artisans to make them recognizably theirs. Brand names did not exist prior to the Industrial Revolution and mass manufacture, but specific weave or color stripe patterns could indelibly mark, say a table cloth, as being made by a specific weaver. That way someone seeing a table cloth of a quality they like could find that pattern in the market and buy one from the same weaver.
Very informative. Thank you! So shrouding Him in a tablecloth was actually a very expensive burial garment. Perhaps more evidence that Joseph of Arimanthea was the owner of the room where the Last Supper was held...
As I recall, I read somewhere that Mary herself made Christ’s seamless garment (the one the soldiers gambled for) and it was doubly meaningful because only priests wore seamless garments.
Thank you so much for your response.
I don't know that Mary made the seamless garment. It does, however, mean that it also represents a very skilled artisan's time and effort were spent on making a garment to fit him personally, or at least someone of his stature and build. It would have been woven (read knitted) in one continuous piece. . . again, representing many hours of work.
There is a very good description of it in Anne Catherine Emmerich’s “The Life of Jesus Christ”, vol 1. It pretty much matches what they have at Valencia, except that the simple brown stone cup and cover was converted to a chalice by making the cover the base and adding a silver/gold stem.
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