What happened to Jesus' clothes?

Question

Are there any legends about what happened to Jesus's clothes after they were distributed? Any legends about the people that received them?

Answer 1

What happened to Jesus' clothes?

1. Legend of the relic of the Holy Diaper or Swaddling Clothes of Jesus has it that there are at the Dubrovnik Cathedral, Croatia.

The Swaddling Clothes

One of the more remarkable relics on display in the Reliquary Treasury of Dubrovnik Cathedral is the “diaper” of Jesus. The relic is displayed in a bulky silver reliquary, profusely ornamented with winged figures, clunky arabesques, and other decorative accents. While most translations into English describe the relic as a “diaper” or “diapers,” it could more accurately be described as the “swaddling cloth” or “swaddling clothes” of Jesus.

Veneration of Jesus’ swaddling clothes is more frequently associated with Aachen, Germany, where a more famous set of swaddling garments has been kept since the 13th century. Housed in the golden Shrine of Saint Mary (Marienshrein) at Aachen Cathedral, the swaddling clothes (Windel Jesu) were rarely put on public display prior to the 14th century. Since then, the relic has been exhibited in Aachen approximately every seven years. In comparison, the swaddling clothes kept at Dubrovnik Cathedral are regularly displayed in the cathedral’s astonishing treasury of saintly relics.

Christmas Stockings

In a paper on Jesus’ swaddling clothes, Sophie Oosterwijk explains that since antiquity, “medical tradition held that the newborn child might develop deformed limbs if left unswaddled; therefore, swaddling clothes were considered absolutely essential not just for ordinary infants but also for the Christ child.”[5] Consequently, until about the 14th century, depictions of the Nativity commonly showed the infant Jesus tightly swaddled, his face serene in a cloth cocoon.

Some paintings of this period, however, show the infant Jesus unswaddled, presumably mere moments after his birth. According to one tradition, Jesus’ struggling parents were forced to reuse Joseph’s hose, the only extra cloth they had at hand, as makeshift swaddling clothes. Paintings inspired by this story frequently portray Joseph removing his shoes and stockings or ripping his hose into strips as Mary waits nearby. “Mary, take my hose and wind your dear baby in them,” Joseph tells Mary in an early 15th century Nativity painting from a church in Lezignan. In another, Joseph seated on the ground with one bare foot extended, carefully cuts his hose into strips with a knife while a recumbent Mary watches from a mattress. Rogier van der Weyden’s famous Columba Altarpiece has also been tied to this tradition, though Joseph’s stockings are portrayed more subtly: two squares of cloth laid in Jesus’ manger have been interpreted as Joseph’s repurposed hose.

As Oosterwijk observes, the tradition of Joseph and his hose “illustrates the medieval need to explain the details of the Virgin’s reported confinement far away from the comfort of a regular nursery . . . , thus emphasizing Christ’s humility. Instead, it is Joseph in his role of the family provider, rather than that of a natural father, who finds the solution for the lack of swaddling clothes by donating his own hose to cover the newborn Christ with in the cold winter night.” - Relic of the Holy Diaper: The Swaddling Clothes of Jesus

2. Legend has it that the Sandals of Jesus Christ are to be found at Prüm Abbey, Germany.

The Sandals of Jesus Christ were among the most important relics of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. They were donated to Prüm Abbey by Pepin the Short who received them from Pope Stephen II (752–757).

The sandals are the remains of an ornate fabric shoe (slipper) allegedly given to the Abbey by Pepin the Short in the Carolingian period (7th to 9th centuries).

They are mentioned by Pepin in the deed of 762, and he is said to have received them from Rome as a gift of Pope Stephen II. Stephen and Pepin first met at Ponthion in 754 on January 6, Epiphany, a feast day that commemorates the Magi presenting gifts to the Christ child. The chronicle of Count Nibelung says that the pope bestowed many gifts on the king and his retinue. Apart from its religious significance, the relic was the physical embodiment of the Frankish king's legitimization by the church.

Pepin managed the expansion of the small Prüm Abbey over 30 years, leaving it as a huge property named Saint Salvador (Holy Saviour), the favourite monastery of the Carolingian dynasty, which was legitimized by the relic. The sandals never became the focus of a formal liturgical cult.

The possession of important relics was a means of sustaining church influence and status. In order to compete with a powerful abbey, it was important to acquire relics of similar provenance and significance. In the 12th Century, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Trier became increasingly powerful and obtained a robe thought to belong to Jesus. Called the Seamless robe of Jesus, it was seen as more significant than the sandals. Over the following four centuries, Trier won the power struggle against Prüm and, by 1524, had become the major pilgrimage destination. In 1574, Prüm became subordinated to Trier. - Sandals of Jesus Christ

3. Seamless robe of Jesus

According to the custom of the time, a Jew - Jesus Christ was a Jew - would wear three garments: an undergarment or underrobe, an undergarment such as a interula - more or less long depending on the economic position of the individual, with short sleeves or half sleeves; a long tunic or tunic, long to the feet; and finally, a cape - a cape called istoga - that was dressed to go out of the house. The tunic could be made of wool, woven in one piece from top to bottom. See: Biblical Clothing

The Seamless Robe of Jesus (also known as the Holy Robe, Holy Tunic, Holy Coat, Honorable Robe, and Chiton of the Lord) is the robe said to have been worn by Jesus during or shortly before his crucifixion. Competing traditions claim that the robe has been preserved to the present day. One tradition places it in the Cathedral of Trier, another places it in Argenteuil's Basilique Saint-Denys, and several traditions claim that it is now in various Eastern Orthodox churches, notably Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, Georgia.

According to the Gospel of John, the soldiers who crucified Jesus did not divide his tunic after crucifying him, but cast lots to determine who would keep it because it was woven in one piece, without seam. A distinction is made in the New Testament Greek between the himatia (literally "over-garments") and the seamless robe, which is chiton, (literally "tunic" or "coat").

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments (ta himatia) and divided them into four parts, to every soldier a part, and the coat (kai ton chitona). Now the coat was without seam, woven whole from the top down. Therefore, they said among themselves, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it will become. Thus the saying in Scripture was fulfilled: they divided My raiment (ta imatia) among them, and upon My vesture (epi ton himatismon) did they cast lots.

— John 19:23–24; quoting the Septuagint version of Psalm 21 [22]:18–19

Trier tradition

According to legend, Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, discovered the seamless robe in the Holy Land in the year 327 or 328 along with several other relics, including the True Cross. According to different versions of the story, she either bequeathed it or sent it to the city of Trier, where Constantine had lived for some years before becoming emperor. The monk Altmann of Hautvillers wrote in the 9th century that Helena was born in that city, though this report is strongly disputed by most modern historians.

The history of the Trier robe is certain only from the 12th century, when Archbishop Johann I of Trier consecrated an altar which contained the seamless robe in early 1196. Although biographies of Johann I state that this was not the first time the robe was displayed, there are no historical dates or events presented which predate 1196. Sections of taffeta and silk have been added to the robe, and it was dipped in a rubber solution in the 19th century in an attempt to preserve it. The few remaining original sections are not suitable for carbon dating. The stigmatist Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth declared that the Trier robe was authentic.

The relic is normally kept folded in a reliquary and cannot be directly viewed by the faithful. In 1512, during an Imperial Diet, Emperor Maximilian I demanded to see the Holy Robe which was kept in the Cathedral. Archbishop Richard von Greiffenklau arranged the opening of the altar that had enshrined the tunic since the building of the Dome and exhibited it. The people of Trier heard about that and demanded to see the Holy Robe. Subsequently, pilgrimages took place at irregular intervals to view the garment: 1513, 1514, 1515, 1516, 1517, 1524, 1531, 1538, 1545, 1655, 1810, 1844, 1891, 1933, 1959, 1981, 1996, and 2012.

The 1844 exhibition of the relic, on the instructions of Wilhelm Arnoldi, Bishop of Trier, led to the formation of the German Catholics (Deutschkatholiken), a schismatic sect formed in December 1844 under the leadership of Johannes Ronge. The 1996 exhibition of the tunic was seen by over one million pilgrims and visitors. Since then, the Bishopric of Trier has conducted an annual ten-day religious festival called the "Heilig-Rock-Tage".

Argenteuil tradition

According to the Argenteuil tradition, the Empress Irene made a gift of the seamless robe to Charlemagne in about the year 800. Charlemagne gave it to his daughter Theocrate, abbess of Argenteuil, where it was preserved in the church of the Benedictines. In 1793, the parish priest, fearing that the robe would be desecrated in the French Revolution, cut the robe into pieces and hid them in separate places. Only four of the pieces remain. They were moved to the present church of Argenteuil in 1895.

The earliest document referring to the robe at Argenteuil dates from 1156, written by Archbishop Hugh of Rouen. He described it, however, as the garment of the child Jesus. A long-running dispute claims that the Argenteuil cloth is actually not the seamless robe worn by Jesus during the crucifixion, but the garments woven for him by the Virgin Mary and worn his entire life. Advocates of the theory that the Argenteuil cloth is the seamless robe claim that the Trier robe is actually Jesus's mantle.

Eastern traditions

The Eastern Orthodox Church has also preserved a tradition regarding the clothing of Jesus which was divided among the soldiers after the crucifixion.

According to the tradition of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the chiton was acquired by a Jewish rabbi from Georgia named Elioz (Elias), who was present in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion and bought the robe from a soldier. He brought it with him when he returned to his native town of Mtskheta, Georgia, where it is preserved to this day beneath a crypt in the Patriarchal Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. The feast day in honor of the "Chiton of the Lord" is celebrated on 1 October.

A portion of the himation was also brought to Georgia, but it was placed in the treasury of the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, where it remained until the seventeenth century. Then the Persian Shah Abbas I, when he invaded Georgia, carried off the robe. At the insistence of the Russian ambassador[5] and Tsar Michael Feodorovich, the Shah sent the robe as a gift to Patriarch Philaret (1619–1633) and Tsar Michael in 1625. The authenticity of the robe was attested by Nectarius, Archbishop of Vologda, by Patriarch Theophanes of Jerusalem and by Joannicius the Greek. Reports also circulated at that time of miraculous signs being worked through the relic.

Later, two portions of the robe were taken to Saint Petersburg: one in the cathedral at the Winter Palace, and the other in Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral. A portion of the Robe was also preserved at the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow, and small portions at Kyiv’s Sophia Cathedral, at the Ipatiev monastery near Kostroma and at certain other old temples.

The Russian Orthodox Church commemorates the Placing of the Honorable Robe of the Lord at Moscow on 10 July (25 July N.S.). At Moscow annually on that day, the robe is solemnly brought out of the chapel of the Apostles Peter and Paul at the Dormition cathedral, and it is placed on a stand for veneration by the faithful during the divine services. After the Divine Liturgy the robe is returned to its former place. Traditionally, on this day the propers chanted are of "the Life-Creating Cross", since the day on which the relic was actually placed was the Sunday of the Cross, during Great Lent of 1625. - Seamless robe of Jesus