The Robe

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.

--John 19: 23-24

In Germany's Romanesque-Gothic city of Trier, on the Moselle River near the Luxembourg border, thousands of pilgrims crowded to look at a tunic which many believed to be the one Christ wore. Whether "The Robe" (as readers of Lloyd Douglas' bestseller know it) is authentic or not, the 13th Holy Tunic pilgrimage is Roman Catholicism's biggest pilgrimage of this year.

Cotton Cloth. The tunic tradition goes back to Flavia Helena, wife of Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus (he is said to have picked her up in a Balkan tavern during one of his campaigns) and mother of Constantine the Great. Converted to Christianity about 312, Helena later journeyed to the Holy Land, went to Calvary, and (wrote St. Ambrose 70 years later) "had excavations made, the debris cleared away and unearthed three crucifixion trees huddled together and covered with mud . . . She also set out to look for the nails which had pinned the Lord to the Cross and found them." Chronicler Ambrose did not mention the tunic, but tradition has it that she gave it to the city of Trier (Augusta Treverorum to the Romans), along with one nail and a piece of the Cross.

Little was heard of the tunic for centuries, but in 1196 a seamless piece of cloth was discovered inside the altar of the Trier Cathedral's west choir; it was walled up again until Easter 1512, when German Emperor Maximilian demanded that it be shown. What he saw was a simple, loose silk shirt about five feet long. But on closer look, a woven cotton cloth, believed to be the tunic itself, was found enfolded between layers of silk.

Metal Badge. Amazed by the tunic's power to draw pilgrims, Pope Leo X and the Archbishop of Trier agreed to display it every seven years. Although wars, revolutions and the Reformation stopped its regular appearance, Tunica Domini never lost its appeal. In 1810 about 250,000 pilgrims went to see it, and at the last showing, in 1933, the tally was 2,000,000. Since Cologne's Joseph Cardinal Frings unveiled the tunic for the 1959 pilgrimage last month, almost a million Roman Catholics have visited the cathedral.

Led by their priests, the pilgrims arrive by special train or bus (twelve to 19 trains, 2,000 buses daily), stay usually only a day, are moved through the cathedral with military precision. For the Deutsche mark (24-c-) entrance fee, each visitor gets a devotional book, a metal lapel badge, and a tiny card that has been touched to the tunic (the garment itself is kept under glass, and most pilgrims get no closer to it than about ten feet). Priests acting as guides keep lines moving by walkie-talkies. Whatever the tunic's real origin, says Trier's Bishop Matthias Wehr, "it has been sanctified by the prayers of centuries."

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