Page - 65 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

ment and the selection and sequence of the images it contained. Since this ar- ticle has focused on the illustrative practice deployed by Chifflet to position his local shroud within the broader debate on relics of Jesus, it is surely pertinent to look a bit further, in conclusion, at how material sources were treated in various media – that is at their pictorial translation into print and their contextualiza- tion – by pointing to one very particular reception of the Besançon author’s central visual argument. Around one century after its first publication, the key illustration of De lin- teis sepulchralibus Christi was used in an encyclopaedic enterprise of the ear- ly Enlightenment, the Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Several Nations of the Known World), edited by Jean-Frédéric Bernard, a Huguenot man of letters, and published by him between 1723 and 1737 in Amsterdam in seven magnificently illustrated folio volumes.41 The artist responsible for the iconographic program, Bernard Picart, was a French exile, well integrated into the Protestant commu- nity in Amsterdam. He was highly conscious of the function and formal possibil- ities of printed images as instruments of mediation and communication.42 The Cérémonies was a rich compilation on the religious customs of the whole world that included more than 250 plates with illustrations. The work devoted much attention to the ceremonies of Roman Catholics. The selection of texts and im- ages in that section, although essentially based on Catholic sources, clearly was meant as a targeted attack on the Roman Catholic Church. In the first volume of the Cérémonies, within the “Suite de la Dissertation sur les Ceremonies des Catholiques Romains” (“Continuation of the Dissertation upon the Cérémonies of the Roman Catholics”), a brief chapter on the shroud of Jesus followed right after one dedicated to the benediction of images and before one on the ben- ediction of the papal vestments.43 The text informed its readers of the exist- ence of two famous shrouds in Europe that had been discussed extensively by Chifflet.44 The engraving from De linteis sepulchralibus was now integrated into a sequence of plates showing the pompous ceremonies of the Roman Catho- lic Church on special occasions and a seemingly endless array of priestly cere- monies performed regularly, among them the benediction of crosses, altars, church bells and sacred images. The original composition had been modified in various ways, by cutting, turning and reassembling its elements. These made 41 Cf. von Wyss-Giacosa 2006; Hunt/Jacob/Mijnhardt 2010. 42 Cf. von Wyss-Giacosa forthcoming. 43 Cérémonies 1723, 113–115, “Le Saint Suaire”. 44 Cérémonies 1723, 113: “Il y a deux fameux Suaires en Europe, celui de Bezançon & celui de Turin, Chifflet a fait l’Histoire de l’un & de l’autre.” Between Erudition and Faith | 65www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1