Guscin, Mark

Mark Guscin has published articles in both English and Spanish on Carolingian Rhythmical Poetry, Medieval History and the Napoleonic Wars. He lives in La Coruña on the north coast of Spain and works regularly in Greece.

History of the Sudarium of Oviedo: How It Came From Jerusalem to Northern Spain in the Seventh Century A. D.

2004 0-7734-6236-8
The Oviedo Sudarium is a little known object that has been in Spain since the early seventh century. Quite apart from the debate as to whether it could be the sudarium mentioned in the gospel of John, the cloth forms part of the history of Spain and the Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago – Oviedo was a frequent detour on the route to Compostela, precisely so that pilgrims could visit the sudarium (or at least the ark it was kept in) and other articles that had come from Jerusalem at the time of the Persian invasion in AD 614.

This book tells the detailed history of the Sudarium’s movements from Jerusalem to Spain and its history within the peninsula, how it was affected by the invasion of Ad 711 and how it eventually came to form part of the heritage of the city of Oviedo and the principality of Asturias. Many texts are here translated into English for the first time (The Book of Testaments, the corpus pelagianum, the story of the possessed girl) and many texts are edited for the first time (the first critical edition of the story contained in the group of manuscripts Valenciennes 30, Brussels II 2544 and Cambrai B 804, the first comparison of the texts in the Book of Testaments and those in the corpus pelagianum).

Apart from the history of an object that is worthy of study in itself, the book sheds light on the history of the Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago, and the general medieval history of Spain.