Historians and the Lack of Evidence

Even so, historians can consider the lack of evidence as meaningful, but only with judicious analysis. For instance, if documents from before 1350, that could be expected to mention the shroud if it existed, do not do so, that is important. But an absence of such documents does not mean the same thing. And if there are ample reasons to suspect that there might have been documents that no longer exist, particularly if there are good reasons why such documents might not exist, then historians must be particularly careful. Some historians now think the shroud may have been in France, in the town of Besançon, in the Castle de Ray manor house, for well over a century before 1350. According to this theory it was brought to France from Constantinople, where it had been for many centuries, by way of Athens. There is ample evidence for this, as we will see. When we open our view wider, we discover only that we have a gap in the historical record.