Background and History
The Sudarium is severely soiled and crumpled, with dark flecks that are symmetrically arranged but form no image, unlike the markings on the Shroud of Turin. It is not mentioned in accounts of the actual burial of Christ, but is mentioned as having been present in the empty tomb later (John 20:7).
According to believers, the Sudarium and the Shroud took different routes. There is no reference of the Sudarium for the first several hundred years after the Crucifixion of Jesus, until its mention in 570 in an account by Antoninus of Piacenza, who writes that the Sudarium is being cared for in a cave near the monastery of Saint Mark, in the vicinity of Jerusalem.
The Sudarium was apparently taken from Palestine in 614, after the invasion of the Byzantine provinces by the Sassanid Persian King Khosrau II, was carried through northern Africa in 616 and arrived in Spain shortly thereafter.
The cloth was at one point dated to the 7th century by the radio carbon method. However, it has been argued that the determination was quite unreliable and other indications must be considered as well.
Read more about this topic: Sudarium Of Oviedo
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