The Templars and the Shroud of Christ: A Priceless Relic in the Dawn of the Christian Era and the Men Who Swore to Protect It, is the second book written by Barbara Frale that I’ve read. The first being The Templars: The Secret History Revealed. One of the leading scholars and expert in Templar history, the author does an excellent job writing about Templar and crusader history from a purely neutral academic standpoint.

This book can be divided into three sections. First is a general history of The Knights Templar, the second is history and importance of relics in Christianity, and lastly the history of the Shroud of Christ or Shroud of Turin as it’s widely known.

I already have a good firm knowledge on Templar history, so the first section of this book was a mere refresher. I did however, learned a lot starting from the second section of this book. For example, I’ve seen the Madylion of Edessa image a lot throughout eastern Christianity, but I never knew its history, or what was its name. This was something that I learned by reading this book. In addition to this important relic, we read about other important relics, and most importantly the significance of the relics and iconography in Christianity. The third and final section of this book, deals with obscure history of the Shroud of Christ, and how it landed in the Western Europe.