The Shroud of Turin

[DoctorMirabilis]

In 1988, the Carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin identified the most famous relic in Christendom as a fake. But since then, despite many attempts, no one has been able to determine who the forger was or how it might have been done. Rageh Omaar sets out to find out exactly what it is about the image that has defied imitation and explores new evidence that challenges the verdict on the Shroud. With unique access to the Shroud itself and those closest to it, Rageh goes on his own journey of discovery. He also visits the leader of the 1978 US investigation that was given access to the cloth for a week, Dr John Jackson, who reveals the results from the data collected and a lifetime of research.
Two other Shrouds of Christ have existed at different times down the centuries. One is the Shroud of Constantinople, described as having an image of Christ and stolen by the Crusaders in 1204. The Turin Shroud appeared 150 years later in the family of one of those Crusaders. The other is the Shroud of Jerusalem that wrapped Jesus’ body. With the help of a team of international scholars Rageh explores new evidence that links the Turin Shroud to both locations and times. Could they be one and the same? But if they are, where does that leave the Carbon 14 test?
New information about the behaviour of C14 in the atmosphere exists which was unknown 20 years ago when the Shroud was dated. A new hypothesis has come forward that could explain how genuinely old linen could produce a much younger date in certain conditions.

Enjoy this terrific documentary!

youtube.com/watch?v=qfUE9AkIPTI

 

[petra22]

Hmmm! Always interested in this topic!

 

[JimG]

I have always thought that if the Shroud is in fact an artifact of the resurrection–that is, if the image was produced by the resurrection event itself, it may have been the result of a brief radiation burst emanating from the body of Jesus. What effect might that have had on the C-14 content of the linen? I have no idea; it is just a thought.

 

[petra22]

I have always thought that if the Shroud is in fact an artifact of the resurrection–that is, if the image was produced by the resurrection event itself, it may have been the result of a brief radiation burst emanating from the body of Jesus. What effect might that have had on the C-14 content of the linen? I have no idea; it is just a thought.

 

[Angel_Bradford]

In 1988, the Carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin identified the most famous relic in Christendom as a fake. But since then, despite many attempts, no one has been able to determine who the forger was or how it might have been done. Rageh Omaar sets out to find out exactly what it is about the image that has defied imitation and explores new evidence that challenges the verdict on the Shroud. With unique access to the Shroud itself and those closest to it, Rageh goes on his own journey of discovery. He also visits the leader of the 1978 US investigation that was given access to the cloth for a week, Dr John Jackson, who reveals the results from the data collected and a lifetime of research.
Two other Shrouds of Christ have existed at different times down the centuries. One is the Shroud of Constantinople, described as having an image of Christ and stolen by the Crusaders in 1204. The Turin Shroud appeared 150 years later in the family of one of those Crusaders. The other is the Shroud of Jerusalem that wrapped Jesus’ body. With the help of a team of international scholars Rageh explores new evidence that links the Turin Shroud to both locations and times. Could they be one and the same? But if they are, where does that leave the Carbon 14 test?
New information about the behaviour of C14 in the atmosphere exists which was unknown 20 years ago when the Shroud was dated. A new hypothesis has come forward that could explain how genuinely old linen could produce a much younger date in certain conditions.

Enjoy this terrific documentary!

youtube.com/watch?v=qfUE9AkIPTI

They have since found that the C14 dating was conducted on the part of the shroud which had been repaired with a patch. .

 

[Evan]

The shroud was also in a fire. Any of the smoke that remained on the shroud would have ‘new’ Carbon 14. So a Carbon 14 test identifies the NEWEST an item can be.

Also, the testing protocols were not followed and they were using a new Carbon 14 test. Usually the tests are done on a large piece of material. Here they were trying the test on a very small piece as the test destroys the material tested.

The test was not definitive. I don’t know if any later tests have been allowed.

 

[cornbread_r2]

Why didn’t anyone object to the C14 sample site on the grounds of contamination and/or patches until after the results were released?

If the C14 tests were so unreliable, why hasn’t the shroud’s official curator ever formally rejected them?

 

[Marie5890]

Can someone fill in the historical claim that there was an artist who claim he was the creator and that the bishop of the time accepted that??

Was there ever such a claim made and was there ever a bishop who accepted that confession??

 

[JimG]

There are a large amount of sources of Shroud information both on and offline. One can start here:
shroud.com/

Another good starting point on the history of the shroud is Ian Wilson’s first book on the shroud, titled “The Shroud.”

 

[cornbread_r2]

Can someone fill in the historical claim that there was an artist who claim he was the creator and that the bishop of the time accepted that??

Was there ever such a claim made and was there ever a bishop who accepted that confession??

From the Catholic Online Encyclopedia:

Plausible as this contention appeared, a most serious historical difficulty had meanwhile been brought to light. Owing mainly to the researches of Canon Ulysse Chevalier a series of documents was discovered which clearly proved that in 1389 the Bishop of Troyes appealed to Clement VII, the Avignon Pope then recognized in France, to put a stop to the scandals connected to the Shroud preserved at Lirey. It was, the Bishop declared, the work of an artist who some years before had confessed to having painted it but it was then being exhibited by the Canons of Lirey in such a way that the populace believed that it was the authentic shroud of Jesus Christ. The pope, without absolutely prohibiting the exhibition of the Shroud, decided after full examination that in the future when it was shown to the people, the priest should declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ, but only a picture made to represent it. The authenticity of the documents connected with this appeal is not disputed. Moreover, the grave suspicion thus thrown upon the relic is immensely strengthened by the fact that no intelligible account, beyond wild conjecture, can be given of the previous history of the Shroud or its coming to Lirey.

 

[cornbread_r2]

See this article in History Today for the Turin shroud’s possible role in the context of Medieval European Easter liturgical services.

 

[john_ennis]

In the 1970s a special eleven-member Turin Commission conducted several tests. Conventional and electron microscopic examination of the Shroud at that time revealed an absence of heterogeneous coloring material or pigment.[5] In 1979, Walter McCrone, upon analyzing the samples he was given by STURP, concluded that the image is actually made up of billions of submicrometre pigment particles.

Even the non-believing scientists who examined the shroud were quickly satisfied that the image is nothing that could have been “painted” on.
So I don’t know how the artist theory is still considered in this day and age.

 

[patrick457]

From the Catholic Online Encyclopedia:

This is a repost of something I wrote a good while back re. the d’Arcis memorandum. It’s three posts long, so apologies in advance.

In 1389, Pierre d’Arcis, the bishop of Troyes, was furious: Geoffroy de Charny, son of the French knight of the same name who died at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, had begun to exhibit a shroud which he claimed was that of Jesus in a small church at Lirey, attracting pilgrims. D’Arcis’ ire may be attributed to the fact that de Charny got permission for the exhibition directly from the Pope (who had ratified the permission that the papal legate granted de Charny to exhibit what he carefully called “the image or representation of the Shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ”) and from King Charles VI, effectively bypassing the local bishop. In retaliation to this perceived slight, he penned a lengthy memorandum, ostensibly addressed to the antipope Clement VII (one of the Avignon Popes). I say ‘ostensibly’ here because we have no proof that the letter was really sent: we have no copy of it in the Apostolic Archives, and the two handwritten versions of the memorandum (Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection de Champagne, v. 154, folios 137-138) are still in rough form. One of these (folio 138) is clearly the original draft, containing a few scribbles and some strong expressions crossed out; the other (folio 137) is a more polished version (it carries the name of a ‘Maitre Guillaume Fulconis’ at the back, who may have been the scribe) but which still carries no addressee, no date and no sender’s name.

Despite the lack of an explicit date, we can, however, infer when this memorandum was penned. On 28 July the Pope wrote to de Charny, giving his permission for the cloth to be exhibited, also stating that d’Arcis should be perpetually silent about the matter. The memorandum refers to the letter, but states that d’Arcis had yet to see a copy of it. It also refers to the successful legal appeal of the bishop’s dispute with de Charny to Charles VI, a proceeding completed shortly before it was cited in the king’s own letter to Jean de Venderesse, the bailli of Troyes (dated 4 August), who had been given orders to seize the Shroud.

The Bishop of Troyes has asserted before our Curia that ‘in the collegial church of Blessed Mary in Lirey, a certain hand-made and artificially depicted cloth was kept, bearing the figure or likeness of, and in commemoration of, the holy sudarium in which the most precious body of our Lord Jesus Christ the Savior was wrapped after His holy Passion.’ And although the faithful are in danger of idolatry, the knight Georrey de Charny has himself displayed or caused to be displayed the cloth with full ceremony as if it was the true sudarium Christi and he has not ceased, though we have tried to impede this practice. And so we command you, bailli, to get the cloth and bring it to me, so that I might relocate it in another church in Troyes and place it under honest custody.

The memorandum does not however refer to the bailli’s reply to the king, dated 15 August, that he had failed to repossess the Shroud from Lirey (de Charny was apparently not at Lirey at the time, and the dean at the church did not have one of the several keys to the treasury, which was in the possession of de Charny’s people; Venderesse gave up the search after the dean and the canons filed an official appeal), and a report by the King’s First Sergeant dated 5 September to the effect that the Shroud was now “verbally put into the hands of the lord our king.” We can thus infer that the memorandum was drafted in early August of 1389.

(1389 was really a bad year Bishop d’Arcis: the nave of the cathedral of Troyes, then under construction, collapsed during that year - the expenses in the diocese were greater than the income; the collapse of the nave meant that for the next sixty years, no major construction work could be done. Some even think that the reason for d’Arcis’ outbursts against the Shroud was so that he could obtain the relic for himself and (perhaps) get some money out of it. After all, the king specifically ordered to seize the Shroud, “relocate it in another church in Troyes and place it under honest custody.”

The situation went a bit downhill for d’Arcis after the whole fiasco: The following year in 5-6 January he got a stern reply from Clement ordering d’Arcis to keep silent about the Shroud under threat of excommunication. For the record, Clement also sent a letter to De Charny allowing him to continue exhibiting the cloth, but with the proviso that he should limit the lavishness of the ceremonial which accompanied the exhibition.​

 

[patrick457]

(Continued)

Sometimes, the memorandum is claimed to date at the “end of 1389,” but this identification comes from the famous French historian Fr. Ulysse Chevalier, who published the memorandum in 1900. He wasn’t very good at presenting his data though: his purported ‘transcription’ of the memorandum actually consists of the heading of folio 137 followed by the text of folio 138; in other words, a fabricated hybrid. It was because of this that Chevalier is oftentimes accused of intellectual dishonesty: it is purported that because he personally had an axe to grind against the Shroud (Chevalier was apparently rather liberal in his views and did not take kindly to what he saw as “superstition”) he attempted to make it appear as though the memorandum was indeed sent to Clement VII, and responded to - in this case, the January 5-6 letter. Hence the addition of the incorrect “fin 1389” date. Chevalier’s blunder was taken one step further by the English Jesuit scholar Fr. Herbert Thurston, who in his translation of the memorandum into English, deleted one paragraph from the text which contradicted the attribution to the “end of 1389,” and meddled with a few other bits of the text.

In the memorandum d’Arcis claims that:

Some time since in this diocese of Troyes the Dean of a certain collegiate church, to wit, that of Lirey, falsely and deceitfully, being consumed with the passion of avarice, and not from any motive of devotion but only of gain, procured for his church a certain cloth cunningly painted, upon which by a clever sleight of hand was depicted the twofold image of one man, that is to say, the back and front, he falsely declaring and pretending that this was the actual shroud in which our Savior Jesus Christ was enfolded in the tomb, and upon which the whole likeness of the Savior had remained thus impressed together with the wounds which he bore.
The story was put about not only in the kingdom of France, but, so to speak, throughout the world, so that from all parts people came together to view it. And further to attract the multitude so that money might be cunningly be wrung from them, pretended miracles were worked, certain men being hired to represent themselves as healed at the moment of the exhibition of the shroud, which all believed to be the Shroud of our Lord. The Lord Henry of Poitiers, of pious memory, then Bishop of Troyes, becoming aware of this, and urged by many prudent persons to take action, as indeed was The Lord Henry of Poitiers, of pious memory, then Bishop of Troyes, becoming aware of this, and urged by many prudent persons to take action, as indeed was his duty in the exercise of his ordinary jurisdiction, set himself earnestly to work to fathom the truth of this matter. For many theologians and other wise persons declared that this could not be the real shroud of our Lord having the Savior’s likeness thus imprinted upon it, since the holy Gospel made no mention of any such imprint, while, if it had been true, it was quite unlikely that the holy Evangelists would have omitted to record it, or that the fact should have remained hidden until the present time.

===

He then continues:

Eventually, after diligent inquiry and examination, he discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it, to wit, that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously wrought or bestowed. Accordingly, after taking mature counsel with wise theologians and men of the law, seeing that he neither ought nor could allow the matter to pass, he began to institute formal proceedings against the said Dean and his accomplices in order to root out this false persuasion.
They, seeing their wickedness discovered, hid away the said cloth so that the Ordinary could not find it, and they kept it hidden afterwards for thirty-four years or thereabouts down to the present year.​

 

[patrick457]

Here, we run into a problem. D’Arcis claims that Henri managed to root out the painter who committed the fraud, and that he tried to confiscate the Shroud, but the clerics of Lirey had stowed it away into hiding. However, in a letter dated to 28 May 1356, Henry was still apparently on good terms with the elder Geoffroy, just months away before his gallant death in Poitiers. He praised the latter’s “sentiments of devotion,” and warmly approved of the foundation of the church at Lirey and explicitly “praising,” “ratifying” and “approving” the exhibition of the Shroud. (D’Arcis also notes that “it was on the previous occasion declared to be the true shroud of Christ,” suggesting that the elder Geoffroy himself believed this to be the case.) It seems that d’Arcis allowed his temper to take over, as he had never done anything other than hand out very vague accusations in rapid-fire succession: he had never produced any concrete proof that the Shroud was a painting or identified precisely who exactly was the artist who purportedly made the cloth.

It appears that there is one grain of truth to his story: Henri did seem to have begun to perceive the tiny church in Lirey and its Shroud, which attracted pilgrims and cashflow, as a competitor against the very cathedral of Troyes, which was taking ages to finish due to financial difficulties (it was still under construction three decades later in d’Arcis’ time - the collapse of the nave in 1389 further complicated things) and which only had for its main relic the body of the relatively minor saint Helen of Athyra. His anger was probably not directed against the de Charny family who were technically the owners of the Shroud, however, but the dean who was involved with the exhibitions, Robert de Caillac.

In the letter, d’Arcis purports that the investigations “for thirty-four years or thereabouts.” If this is accurate, it would give us a date of 1355 for the first certain European showings of the Shroud, but as we have seen, Henri was still amicable with the elder Geoffroy, and apparently with the whole venture, by May of 1356. This then necessitates that the inquiry must have happened some time after the elder Geoffroy’s death. Again, d’Arcis does not provide us with any official record of Henri’s alleged proceedings against Lirey, and he could not even provide an accurate date for these supposed proceedings, which is surprising given that any diocesan records from Henri’s time would have still been intact (the city of Troyes was never captured nor ravaged by any fire during the time period in question): d’Arcis could have easily consulted them for convenient documentation. It is thus more likely that the Shroud was whisked out, not by the clerics of Lirey, but by de Charny’s widow, Jeanne de Vergy, the moment Henri’s hostile designs on the Shroud became clear, but before any document could be filed.

So in conclusion, all that the d’Arcis memorandum tells us is a story of raging jealousy and possible financial trouble.

 

[patrick457]

From the Catholic Online Encyclopedia:

So, to sum.

(1) In August of 1389, Bishop Pierre d’Arcis of Troyes did apparently try to write a lengthy memorandum to the pope complaining against a supposed burial shroud of Jesus that was being exhibited in Lirey (which was under the diocese of Troyes) by Geoffroy de Charny. However, there is no copy of the letter extant in either Avignon or the Vatican archives, and the two versions of the memorandum we do have (Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection de Champagne, v. 154, folios 137-138) are rough drafts that were apparently never sent - they were marked for deletion with the word vacat in the margin.

(2) The famous French historian Fr. Ulysse Chevalier published the memorandum in 1900, but his presentation of the data - he grafts the heading of the second polished version (folio 138) with the text of the original, rougher draft (folio 137) and attributes the penning of the memorandum to the end of 1389, when all the evidence we have points to it being written earlier in the year - leaves much to be desired and could, in fact, be argued is borderline, if not outright, intellectual dishonesty. So is the translation of the memorandum into English by Fr. Herbert Thurston, who not only deleted one paragraph from the text which clearly contradicted Chevalier’s attribution of the letter to the “end of 1389,” but also meddled with a few other bits of the text. (Incidentally, Fr. Thurston is the author of the OCE article on the Turin Shroud.)

(3) As for the memorandum itself, d’Arcis never really produces solid evidence that the shroud in Lirey was a painted fraud. All he essentially did was insult the item and accuse those in Lirey who were involved in its exhibition of simony, claiming they were “consumed with the passion of avarice, and not from any motive of devotion but only of gain.”

D’Arcis also claims that a predecessor of his, Henry of Poitiers, had rooted out the artist who supposedly committed the fraud, took formal action against the exhibitors and tried to confiscate the shroud, supposedly prompting the clerics of Lirey to hide it “for thirty-four years or thereabouts down to the present year” (the people at Lirey, on the other hand, according to d’Arcis, claimed that the cloth’s being hidden was ordered by Henri himself because of the Hundred Years’ War), but d’Arcis never says who this supposed artist was and never produces any official record of Henry’s alleged proceedings against Lirey, which is itself surprising, since d’Arcis, a former canon lawyer, was normally the type who did his research: he carefully cites documents when he could.

On the contrary, evidence points to Henry actually being supportive of the Lirey exhibitions and the elder Geoffroy de Charny’s piety - father of the younger Geoffroy, who was the owner of the shroud as of d’Arcis’ time of writing - as late as 1356-1357 (although he never really visited the place - for that matter, d’Arcis as far we know didn’t either). Also, King Charles VI’s letter of authorization to the bailli of Troyes to seize the shroud (dated August 4th, 1389) mentions only d’Arcis’ charge - not Henri’s charge, note - that the image on the cloth was man-made. Had d’Arcis cited Henri’s supposed inquest or the name of the supposed artist, it would have been mentioned in the king’s letter. But what the letter says is that it was d’Arcis who was filing the complaint.

Financial concerns might have been involved in this debacle, but if you’ll ask me, I think the exhibitors at Lirey aren’t the ones who wanted the money. I mean, Clement VI’s letters and bulls explicitly said that (1) the bishop of Troyes should shut up and (2) that appropriating or usurping the offerings of the faithful to the church in Lirey is forbidden. And d’Arcis was the one who keeps accusing the other side of greed …

 

[cornbread_r2]

This is a repost of something I wrote a good while back re. the d’Arcis memorandum. It’s three posts long, so apologies in advance.

…]

Thanks for all of that.

Despite the twists and turns of the memorandum, did the pope ultimately order that the shroud could be displayed under the condition that “…the priest should declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ, but only a picture made to represent it.”, as is contended in the COE article?

 

[Angel_Bradford]

Google “Shroud Encounter”…Great information!

 

[patrick457]

Thanks for all of that.

Despite the twists and turns of the memorandum, did the pope ultimately order that the shroud could be displayed under the condition that “…the priest should declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ, but only a picture made to represent it.”, as is contended in the COE article?

There’s two letters and two papal bulls involved. Yes, in one of these the pope (or rather, the antipope - Clement VII) did order that to be done.

In July 28th 1389, Clement wrote a brief to Geoffroy II de Charny, recognizing the Charny family’s religious motives and permits the cloth’s - which he carefully calls the “image or representation (figura seu representacio) of the Shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ,” a phrase that might very well have been used by the Charnys in their petitions - public exhibition, at the same time granting indulgences to it. In the same letter he also imposed “perpetual silence” on Bishop d’Arcis.

(To put things in perspective, the warrant from King Charles VI ordering the bailli of Troyes to seize the shroud from Lirey is dated August 4th - just seven days after this brief would have been sent. August 15th, the bailli, as per the warrant, went to Lirey and demanded the shroud be delivered to him, only to be told by the dean at the church that the treasury was locked and that “the other key resided with the people of the lord of Lirey.” The bailli gave up when the dean and the canons filed an official appeal. Now there’s a reason why de Charny and his people were not in Lirey and why the shroud was not being exhibited at the time, despite it being a major feast day (the feast of the Assumption): he would have been in Paris participating in the coronation ceremony of Charles VI’s queen, Isabeau of Bavaria.

The next month (September 5th), the First Sergeant of the King says he officially announced to the dean and to Geoffroy II that the cloth was verbally made royal property, although in reality the cloth is still held in the treasury.)

The next we hear from Clement is a papal bull dated January 6th 1390, where Clement repeats what he said to de Charny during July of last year, with one modification: whenever the shroud is exhibited, one is to announce that it is “not the true shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ” (non est verum sudarium Domini nostri Ihesu Xpisti), but a pictura seu tabula, “a picture or a copy” - a more loaded phrase which clearly supposes the idea of a man-made picture compared the earlier, more neutral expression he used (figura seu representacio). The reason Clement gives for this is to remove every chance of error or fraud (omni fraude cessante) in the display of the cloth.

Along with the bull, Clement also sent messages to d’Arcis and to de Charny. To d’Arcis, Clement says that he permitted the cloth (again using the expression figura seu representacio for it) to be replaced in the church despite d’Arcis’ objections, and tells him again to shut up - this time on pain of excommunication. Geoffroy on the other hand was granted permission to continue the exhibition of the shroud provided that he cut back on the lavish ceremonial that accompanied it.

This isn’t, however, the end of the story. In May 30th, the phrase pictura seu tabula was struck out of the papal register’s copy of the bull. Whereas the bull sent in January stipulated that the shroud be declared “a kind of pictura seu tabula made like a figura seu representacio of the shroud,” the corrected version simply says that it should be publicly declared “the figura seu representacio of the shroud.” In other words, Clement reverted to his ambivalent, more ambiguous evaluation of the shroud he exhibited in July last year.

Yet another bull dated the very next day (June 1st) confirmed the correction of the January bull and granted indulgences to everyone who might visit the church in Lirey where the object described as figura seu representacio is conserved venerabiliter. (In the end, Clement actually ends up granting more indulgences to Lirey than was previously granted.) Unlike the January bull, no mention is longer made of concerns about error or idolatry. The same bull also forbade the appropriation or usurpation of gifts offered by the faithful to the church.

So to sum: in July 1389, Clement refers to the cloth somewhat ambivalently as “the image or representation (figura seu representacio) of the Shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He did flirt with explicitly calling it a man-made image (pictura seu tabula) in his January 1390 bull, but just four to five months later he ultimately reverted to his original stance on the item, cancelling the phrase pictura seu tabula and expressing his support of the Lirey exhibitions by granting lavish indulgences to pilgrims who visited the church.

 

[cornbread_r2]

There’s two letters and two papal bulls involved. Yes, in one of these the pope (or rather, the antipope - Clement VII) did order that to be done.

…]

Thanks again for your efforts.

Did the phrase “non est verum sudarium Domini nostri Ihesu Xpisti” originally included in the public announcement survive the various edits of Clement’s January bull or was that stricken too?