THE 1532 FIRE THAT DESTROYED THE HOLY SHROUD?

It is not at all clear that the present day Turin Shroud was referred to past the last 400 years.

In 1532, the Shroud was housed in a chapel in Chambery which was gutted by fire. There was no exposition of the Shroud the following year and it was accepted by all that the Shroud had perished in the fire.
 
If the Shroud perished in the fire of 1532. This would mean that our Turin Shroud is not the Shroud that was at Lirey or Chambery but a substitute. Though the carbon dating dates the Turin Shroud back to the time when the Lirey Shroud was known to have existed, it does not prove that the two cloths were one and the same. If the Shroud was made from old linen and was burned, old linen would have had to be used for its replacement. Or perhaps a number of Shrouds were made the same way and the one we have is the last remaining one. There could have been spares made when the Lirey Shroud was made. There could have been spares made any time. Perhaps there were some differences between these shrouds though they were basically the same. If so then the Turin Shroud is certainly a forgery.
 
We believe that the Shroud of Lirey was a painting. If it didn’t get replaced by Leonardo’s Shroud in 1492 then it perished in a fire in 1532. Perhaps it was Leonardo’s Shroud that perished in 1532 and a spare was put in its place. At some point after the fire, another one - perhaps a photographic one forged by someone - appeared and was passed off as the original Shroud.

Two years later, Rabelais wrote that nothing had survived of the Shroud in the 1532 fire (page 347, The Blood and the Shroud).

A story appeared that a blacksmith threw water on the burning Shroud and rescued it from the flames. It is strange that this survival story was not told at the start when everybody believed that the Shroud had perished. It seems to many it did become a pile of ashes and was replaced with a clever forgery using an old linen cloth – the best forgery to date. This forgery even had burn marks in it. It needed repairs to make the scheme look good. The rescue story reads like hearsay. There is nothing to authenticate any of it.

It looks like another Shroud was produced to back up this story as the Chambery Shroud had perished.
 
Wilson claims that the fact that the Shroud was not seen for a while ignited the rumours that it had been destroyed in the flames (page 345, The Blood and the Shroud). that is hardly an explanation for why the tale of the destruction was on everybody's lips. If it was rumour and not fact why was nobody saying anything about the rescue of the Shroud? Wilson tries to make out that the Shroud not being displayed in 1533 started the rumour which is unlikely.
 
In his The Turin Shroud he said that as soon as the fire happened the rumour was out and when the Shroud was put on display again it was suspected and believed to be a copy of the burned one (page 247). The rumour was not dismissed as gossip for Duke Charles III pestered the pope to arrange an investigation into the cloth. This hints that there was evidence for a switch that had to be refuted. It was believed by many reliable folk at the time of the fire that the Shroud had been destroyed and the rumour was still strong in 1533 (page 345, The Blood and the Shroud).
 
The Turin Shroud has water and burn marks to make it fit the story of the blacksmith saviour but these marks under close analysis tell a different story. The marks were contrived.  The cloth was folded into forty-eight and one corner of the folded cloth caught fire from the molten silver casket resulting in the burn holes that the nuns had to fix. He threw water on it right away (page 75, The Blood and the Shroud). But if a cloth is folded into forty-eight it has four corners and if it is burned down one corner then you get fourteen holes. But the Turin Shroud has sixteen holes though the four ones on the back along the arms are met but still a pair. And the water stains that came from the dousing do not cover the holes and only touch some of them. That water couldn’t have put anything out. See for yourself in the diagram of the Shroud damage. Diagram 6&7 of The Blood and the Shroud. It seems very odd that only small and unimportant parts of the image were burned.

The Shroud perished in the fire and was replaced by a new fake.

The 1532 fire might have been a cynical plot to force somebody to allow a substitute Shroud to become the new relic. Maybe the new copy was more convincing than the rest and "deserved" to be passed off as the burial cloth of Jesus!

There is no reason to hold that the Turin Shroud image (not necessarily the cloth) existed before the 1500s.