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This is "Barbara Frale," part #30 of my Turin 
Shroud Encyclopedia. For more information about this encyclopedia, see part #1. This post will help me write, Chapter 7, "Other Marks and Images" of my book in progress, "Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus!" [Right (enlarge[SU91]): The planned cover of my book.]. See 06Jul17; 03Jun18; 04Apr22; 13Jul22; 8 Nov 22 & 20Jun24). See my "The Shroud of Turin: 2.6. The other marks (6): Writing: Barbara Frale."
Frale Barbara Frale (1970-) is an Italian paleographer[BFW] (expert 
in ancient writings), and a researcher at the Vatican Secret Archives[FN09; OR09; BFW]. Frale has
[Left (enlarge): Barbara Frale (Maverick House).]
written books about the Templars[BFW] and a 2009 book about the Shroud in Italian, La Sindone di Gesu Nazareno ("The Shroud of Jesus of Nazareth")[OR09. See below]. The latter book has not been published in English, as far as I know. So, since I cannot 
read Italian, I must rely on English articles about Frale's book. However, I do have Frale's Italian book and I will post photographs from it.
[Right: Cover of Frale's book, "La sindone di Gesù Nazareno" (2009).]
This post will be primarily about Frale's claim to have discovered on the Shroud, ink writing from a Roman papyrus death/burial certificate of Jesus, which was glued to the Shroud where it covered the Shroudman's face!
Computer ehancement Frale based her burial certificate theory on the computer enhancement of Shroud photographs by nuclear physicist Andre Marion (1942-2009) and his graduate student, Anne-Laure Courage, at the Institut d'Optique d'Orsay, Paris[LR09]. See 04Jun13. Frale has a photograph at plate 11 of her book (below) of Marion and 
[Above (enlarge): "11. Traces of writing in Greek and Latin identified by Andre Marion and Anne-Laure Courage: a) NNAZAPENOE; b) (I)HEOY(E); c) INNECE(M d) PEZ(co); e) KIA-; ΑΔΑ-; g) SB" (Frale-translated by Google). Photograph at plate 11 in Frale's book showing the words that Marion and Courage claimed they found on the Shroud by computer enhancement. But because some of their words were vertical, Marion and Courage proposed that they had been on two U-shaped wooden frames which held Jesus' head in position[GM99]. This was contrary to John 19:30 where Jesus "bowed his head" and died[GV01, 108] (amongst many other things), so Frale has converted Marion and Courage's U-shaped wooden frames into a burial certificate! But as can be seen, it would be larger than necessary - by my scaling from a Shroud photograph[LM10], it would have been about 39.7 cm (15.6 in) wide and 45.3 cm (17.8 in.) tall. And surely no burial certificate would have a combination of horizontal and vertical writing!].
Courage' photograph at plate 17 of their French book, "Nouvelle Decouvertes sur Le Suaire de Turin" (1997). Frale counted at least 11 words in her study of enhanced images produced by French scientists (Marion and Courage)[FN09]. Frale stated that, "My research begins where that of the French researchers (Marion and Courage) ends"[LR09]. Frale named Marion and Courage in her claim that, "Marion and Courage were not paleographists and could not make much sense out of those words"[LR09].
Words Frale claimed that computer enhancement of photographs of the Shroud revealed extremely faint words[LR09; SN09]. That the letters are barely visible to the naked eye[OR09]. The words are fragmented and scattered on and around the image's head, crisscrossing the cloth vertically and horizontally[FN09]. According to Frale, the words are Greek, Aramaic and Latin[FN09; SN09] in archaic script[SN09]. Many of the letters are missing[OR09]. Like the image of the man on the Shroud, the words are in reverse and only make sense in negative Shroud photographs[OR09]. They included the Greek words "(I)esou(s) Nnazarennos," i.e. "Jesus the Nazarene"[FN09; LR09; OR09; SN09], and "(T)iber(iou)," which Frale interprets as "Tiberius," the Roman emperor at the time of Christ's crucifixion[FN09; SN09]. Frale claimed that scholars first noticed that there was writing on the Shroud in 1978[OR09], presumably STURP. But, according to Frale, when radiocarbon dating of the Shroud in 1988 claimed that the Shroud was a medieval forgery, historians lost interest in the writing[FN09; SN09]. When Frale cut out the words from enhanced photos of the Shroud and showed them to experts, they concurred the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century[FN09].
Death/burial certificate Frale claimed that the words were on a death or burial certificate[FN09; LR09; OR09; SN09], which was of Jesus Christ[OR09; FN09; SN09]. She explained that the three languages was consistent with the polyglot nature of a community of Greek-speaking Jews in a Roman colony[LR09; OR09]. Frale said that under Jewish burial practices current at the time of Christ in a Roman colony such as Palestine, a body buried after a death sentence could only be returned to the family after been purified for a year in a common grave[LR09; OR09]. Frale claimed that the death/burial certificates were written by low-ranking Roman officials or mortuary clerks on a scroll or piece of papyrus to identify each corpse[FN09; SN09]. According to Frale the certificates enabled the relatives of a dead person to retrieve his/her body from a communal morgue[FN09; SN09]. The papyrus burial certificate was attached to the Shroud with a flour-based glue[FN09; SN09], around the face[LR09; OR09] to 
[Above (enlarge): "9. The Burial of Jesus and the Glory of the Holy Shroud, painting by Jean-Gaspard Baudoin (1590-1669), today in the Chapelle du Saint-Suaire in Nice." (Frale-translated by Google). Photograph at plate 9 in Frale's book. Note that if Frale's papyrus burial certificate was stuck to that part of the Shroud which covered Jesus' face, that would be now be the non-image side of the Shroud. This is a fatal problem of Frale's theory because her claimed burial certificate writing is on the image side of the Shroud[OR09]! See "Problems of Frale's theory."]
identify it for later retrieval[LR09; OR09]. This had been done in the case of Jesus even though he was buried not in a common grave but in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea[OR09]. The metal based ink seeped through the papyrus burial certificate into the Shroud below it, leaving a faint imprint[FN09; SN09]. Frale claims that the certificate mentions that the man who was wrapped in the Shroud had been condemned to death[SN09]. According to Frale the certificate confirms the Gospels' account of Jesus' final moments[FN09], and provided a historical date consistent with the Gospels account[OR09]. And that a fragment in Greek on the Shroud can be read as "removed at the ninth hour" and so may refer to Christ's time of death reported in the Gospels[FN09]. Here is Frale's interpretation of the letters appearing in Marion and Courage's image above[LR09]. 1. (I)esou(s) "Jesus" 2. Nnazarennos "Nazarene" 3. (o)pse kia(tho) "taken down in the early evening." 4. in nece(m) "to death" 5. pez(o) "I execute"[LR09]. There are more letters on the linen[LR09], such as the word "iber," which Frale identified as referring to Emperor Tiberius, who reigned at the time of Jesus' crucifixion[LR09]. Frale's reconstruction of the burial certificate from the lettering on the Shroud[FN09; LR09; OR09] reads:
"In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year"[LR09; OR09].The certificate ends with "I execute"[LR09] and "signed by" but the signature has not survived[OR09].
Frale's credibility Shroudie historian Ian Wilson (1941-), has publicly cast doubt on Frale's credibility[WI11]. According to Wilson, Frale, in an article in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, about her book 2009 book, I Templari e la sindone di Cristo ("The Templars and the Shroud of Christ"), stated that a document she had discovered in the Archives Nationales, Paris, had vindicated Wilson's 1978 theory that the Knights Templar had owned the Shroud at some time during its disappearance from Constantinople in 1204 and its reappearance in Lirey, France in the 1350's[WI11]. The document which Frale stated was previously unknown, described an initiate to the Knights Templar, Arnaut Sabbatier, being shown a "long linen cloth," presumably the Shroud, at one of the Order's ceremonies in 1287[WI11]. Wilson, whom Frale had not contacted, emailed Frale asking for a copy of the Sabbatier document[WI11]. Frale, however, replied that the Archives Nationales had sent her a "bad reproduction" photocopy, pages of which were very dark" and she declined to send it to Wilson and even her transcript of the document[WI11]. When Wilson obtained a copy of I Templari e la sindone di Cristo, he was surprised to see that Frale had even less detail in it about the Sabbatier document than in the L'Osservatore Romano article[WI11]! Then in correspondence between Wilson and the Shroud sceptic historian, Andrea Nicolotti on another matter, Nicolotti mentioned that far from being a new discovery by Frale, a transcript of the Latin text of the Sabbatier document had been published in 1907 by a German medieval historian, Heinrich Finke (1855-1938)[WI11]! And Finke's transcript revealed that three of Sabbatier's fellow Templars described their order's "idol" as made of wood (lignum), whereas Sabbatier's document described it as made of lineum (linen)[WI11]. Historians had agreed that this was a translation error, and had corrected Sabbatier's lineum to lignum[WI11]. Frale, however, had translated it as the original "linen"[WI11]. Furthermore, Frale had inserted in her translation the descriptions "long" and "imprinted" which were not in the Sabbatier document's Latin text[WI11]! So Frale made that up to support her theory! Moreover, Nicolotti then provided Wilson with a photograph of the page of the Sabbatier document obtained by him from the Archives Nationales, which Frale had told Wilson was only available in a badly reproduced, "very dark" photocopy[WI11]. But actually the photograph is clear, in full colour, and perfectly legible[WI11]. Nicolotti further informed Wilson that that same photograph had been published, to accompany an interview with Frale, in the Italian magazine Fenix in June 2009 (below enlarge)[WI11]. 
Which was a month before Frale assured Wilson that all she had was illegible photocopies[WI11]. Wilson therefore concluded his article with:
"In summary, and quite aside from her seriously questionable behaviour towards me, Frale's so extravagant claims to the world's media as made back in 2009 simply cannot justify the conclusiveness that she so publicly attributed to them. Besides her misinforming the world in general, she misled me, and thereby seriously misdirected the line that I took in chapter 14 of my latest book … And whilst I have absolutely no competence to comment on Dr Frale's more recent claims to have discovered Aramaic lettering on the Shroud, it is hard for me to avoid harbouring the strongest doubts concerning these also ..." (my emphasis)Problems of Frale's theory
Computer enhancement Since Frale's 'writing on the Shroud' theory is based on Marion and Courage's computer enhancement, problems of their theory (see again 04Jun13) are problems of Frale's theory. In my book I will have covered Marion and Courage's theory before Frale's.
Words Frale admitted that her letters are barely visible to the naked eye. But if she cannot show publicly where they are on the Shroud, then it is because they are not really there but exist only in Frale's imagination!
Frale also admits that many of the letters are missing. Indeed most of them are missing! But if her claimed words are not substantially complete, they are not words at all, and therefore not even letters, but just random shapes in the weave vaguely resembling letters. For example, the Greek words translated "Jesus the Nazarene" in Mt 26:71 are "Iēsous ho Nazōraios," ("IHSOUS HO NAZORAIOS" in capitals), which are 17 letters all together in one direction. But according to Frale above the "words are fragmented and scattered ... crisscrossing the cloth vertically and horizontally! Frale's copy above in her book, of Marion and Courage's photograph of claimed words, Frale's caption includes the letters "HSOY" (Greek ΗΣΟΥ)," supposedly "Jesus," diagonally below the chin and "NNAZAPENOE" (Greek ΝΝΑΖΑΡΕΝΟΕ)," supposedly "the Nazarene," vertically alongside the man's face! So they are not the name "Jesus the Nazarene." And neither are "HEOY" and "NNAZAPENOE" found in the New Testament, according to my "Analytical Greek Lexicon" which lists in Greek alphabet order every Greek word in the New Testament[AG70].
Why are the letters in reverse and only make sense in negative photographs? If the letters "IBER" (using one of Frale’s claimed words as an example) are written on porous paper (representing a papyrus certificate), they do appear on the other side of that paper as "IBER", in reverse. But then if that "IBER" in reverse soaks through to an underneath sheet of porous paper (representing the Shroud), it appears on that underneath sheet of paper (the Shroud) as "IBER" again!
And why would the burial certificate of a crucified Jew include the name of the Roman emperor? And if it did, why wasn't it his official name, "Tiberius Caesar" (Lk 3:1)?
The only scholars who examined the Shroud in 1978 was STURP. And it is false that STURP noticed that there was writing on the Shroud in 1978. The first sentence of STURP's October 1981 Final Report stated: "No pigments, paints, dyes or stains have been found on the [Shroud's] fibrils"[SS81], and that includes ink. So Frale made this up!
Why did Frale cut out her claimed words from Marion and Courage's enhanced photograph of the Shroud to show them to experts? Why did she not show them copies of the photograph and ask them if they saw any words? Assuming that this is even true and not another made up claim by Frale?
Death/burial certificate Why would the words on first century Jerusalem burial certificates be written in Greek, Aramaic and Latin, when Frale claimed they were to enable Greek-speaking Jews to identify the bodies of their deceased relatives? For that, Greek alone would have been sufficient.
Why would the words on a burial certificate be "fragmented and scattered ... crisscrossing the cloth vertically and horizontally"?
Why under Jewish burial practices in a first century Roman colony could a body buried after a Roman death sentence only be returned to the family after been purified for a year in a common grave? For starters, this is refuted by Jesus' burial in Joseph of Arimathea's private cave-tomb[Mt 27:57-60; Mk 15:43-46; Lk 23:50-53; Jn 19:38-42]. The brutal Romans would not have altruistically provided a free written death/burial certificate service, and a free communal mortuary service, for Jewish criminals! In every first century Roman colony! This is a fatal problem of Frale's theory, and so she must have made it up also!
Since Old Testament times, the norm for Jewish burials was: 1) To be buried in the family rock-cut cave tomb, and 2) promptly "including that of the bodies of hung criminals":
"BURIAL AND MOURNING. I. In the Old Testament a. The times of the Patriarchs It was customary for successive generations to be buried in the family tomb (cave or rock-cut); thus Sarah (Gn. 23:19), Abraham (Gn. 25:9), Isaac and Rebekah, Leah (Gn. 49:31) and Jacob (Gn. 50:13) were all buried in the cave of Machpelah, E of Hebron. Individual burial was sometimes necessitated by death at a distance from the family tomb; so Deborah near Bethel (Gn. 35:8) and Rachel on the road to Ephrath (Gn. 35:19-20), their tombs being marked by an oak and a pillar respectively ... b. The Pentateuchal legislation Prompt burial, including that of the bodies of hung criminals, was the norm (Dt. 21:22-23) ... c. Israel in Palestine (i) Burial. When possible, people were buried in the ancestral inheritance in a family tomb: so Gideon and Samson (Jdg. 8:32; 16:31), Asahel and Ahithophel (2 Sa. 2:32; 17:23), and eventually Saul (2 Sa. 21:12-14)"[KA82, 151].How could there have been a communal morgue in first century Jerusalem, before the invention of refrigeration in the 19th century[RFW]? A communal morgue before refrigeration, in which bodies were continully being added, would be filled with an overpowering stench of decomposing corpses, including the poisonous decomposition gas hydrogen sulfide[DCW]. As well as blowflies[DCW] carrying diseases to the deceased's relatives who entered the morgue and the citizens of Jerusalem beyond it. This is a fatal problem of Frale's theory, and she must have made it up!
Why was there a burial certificate for Jesus when he was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, as Frale acknowledges? According to Frale the purpose of a Roman burial certificate was to enable the relatives of a dead Jewish criminal to retrieve his/her body from a communal morgue after a year. But since Jesus' body was was not taken into a Roman communal mortuary, there would be no reason for there to be a burial certificate attached to his Shroud. This is a another fatal problem of Frale's theory, and again she must have also made it up!
Frale claims that the papyrus burial certificate was attached to the Shroud with a flour-based glue, around the face to identify it for later retrieval (see above). But as pointed out above, that part of the Shroud which covered Jesus' face underneath it, is now the non-image side of the Shroud. This is yet another fatal problem of Frale's theory because her claimed burial certificate writing is on the image side of the Shroud! So again, Frale must have made this up.
Frale further claimed that the metal based ink seeped through the papyrus burial certificate into the Shroud below it, leaving a faint imprint. But this would mean that the ink did not quickly dry but seeped right through the papyrus burial certificate to its underside, and then continued to seep through to the underlying Shroud. But this would be the non-image side (see above), so Frale, to save her theory, would need to claim that the ink continued to seep right through the Shroud to its underneath image side! But an ink which did not quickly dry on the surface it first contacted, but kept seeping through its original document (the hypothetical papyrus burial certificate), and then continued to seep all the way through an underlying document (the Shroud), would be unusable and would not exist beyond its first testing! This is another fatal problem of Frale's theory, so again she must have made it up!
According to Microsoft Word, Frale's reconstruction of Jesus' burial certificate above has 58 words and 155 letters! Yet Frale counted only 11 words in Marion and Courage's computer enhanced Shroud photograph above! As pointed out above, "ΗΣΟΥ" supposedly "Jesus," and "ΝΝΑΖΑΡΕΝΟΕ" supposedly "the Nazarene," are nowhere near each other. On plate 10 of Frale's book, "IBER" is only the two letters "ie"! So again, Frale made up her reconstructed `burial certificate' out of random shapes in the Shroud's weave, or out of thin air! This also is a fatal problem of Frale's theory.
Conclusion As we have seen, there are at least six fatal problems with Frale's theory that the Shroud has imprinted on it the faint ink writing of Jesus' burial certificate:
- The Romans would not have provided a free written death/burial certificate service, and a free communal mortuary service, for Jewish criminals, in every first century Roman colony!
- There could not have been a communal morgue in first century Jerusalem (or anywhere), before the invention of refrigeration in the 19th century.
- Jesus would not have had a burial certificate so that his relatives could retrieve his body from a Roman communal morgue after a year, because (apart from there wasn't one) Jesus was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
- Frale claims that the papyrus burial certificate was attached to the Shroud covering Jesus' face, but that part of the Shroud is now its non-image side (see above), so Frale's writing cannot be on the same side as the man's image! (This is a fatal problem of some (if not all) other `writing on the Shroud' theories)!
- An ink would dry quickly on Frale's papyrus burial certificate and not remain liquid to seep right through it and then through both sides of the Shroud under it to imprint its image side.
- Frale's reconstruction of Jesus' burial certificate is self-evidently made up by her. Marion and Courage's computer enhanced Shroud photograph that Frale's burial certificate is based on has 11 words but Frale's reconstruction has 58 words! The words "Jesus the Nazarene" are together in Frale's reconstruction but they are far apart in Marion and Courage's photograph.
We have seen that Frale made up out of thin air the words "long" and "imprinted" to support her theory that the Templars' idol was the Shroud. The above at least six fatal problems with Frale's theory that the Shroud has imprinted on it writing of a Roman burial certificate bearing Jesus' name, must also have been made up by Frale. I presume the reason there has been after ~5 years no English translation of Frale's 2009 La sindone di Gesù Nazareno book is because Frale's claims in it are so self-evidently false that the English publisher, Maverick House rejected it!
Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
Bibliography
AG70. Bagster, S., ed., 1870, "The Analytical Greek Lexicon," Samuel Bagster and Sons: London, c. 1960, reprinted
BFW. "Barbara Frale," Wikipedia, 26 September 2024.
DCW. "Decomposition," Wikipedia, 17 August 2024.
FN09. "Does Hidden Text Prove Shroud of Turin Real?," Fox News, 20 November 2009.
GM99. Guscin, M., 1999, "Purported Inscriptions on the Shroud Claimed by French Researchers Marion and Courage - Are They Really There?" British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, November.
GV01. Guerrera, V., 2001, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL.
KA82. Kitchen, K.A., "Burial and mourning," in Douglas, J.D., et al., eds., "New Bible Dictionary," [1962], Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester UK, Second edition, 1982, Reprinted, 1988.
LM10. Extract from Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Durante 2002 Vertical," Sindonology.org.
LR09. Lorenzi, R, 2009, "Big Pic: Close-Up of Latest Shroud of Turin Claim," Discovery News 24 November.
OR09. Owen, R., 2009, "Death certificate is imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, says Vatican scholar in Rome," The Times, 21 November.
RFW. "Refrigeration," Wikipedia, 18 August 2024.
SN09. Squires, N., 2009, "Jesus Christ's 'death certificate' found on Turin Shroud," The Telegraph, 20 November.
SS81. "A Summary of STURP's Conclusions," October 1981, Shroud.com.
SU91. "Shroud University - Exploring the Mystery Since 33 A.D.," Shroud of Turin Education Project, Inc., Peachtree City, GA.
WI11. Wilson, I., 2011, "The Shroud, the Knights Templar and Barbara Frale," BSTS Newsletter, No. 73, June.
Posted 29 September 2024. Updated 16 October 2024.
