Turin Shroud kept hidden for 100 years

THE Turin Shroud was hidden by medieval knights after the Crusades, the Vatican claims, apparently solving the riddle of what happened to the relic for more than 100 years.

The linen cloth, which bears the image of a bearded man with long hair and the wounds of a crucifixion, was protected by the Knights Templar, an order suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy.

Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican Secret Archives, said the material - believed to be Christ's burial shroud - had gone missing in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade and did not surface again until the middle of the next century.

She said historians now believed the cloth had been hidden and secretly worshipped by surviving members of the Knights Templar during this period.

A document about Frenchman Arnaut Sabbatier, who entered the order in 1287, has surfaced which claims he was taken to a "secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access" as part of his initiation. There he was shown a "long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man".