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This is the December 2020 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. It was originally the December 2020-January 2021 issue but this post on only one December 2020 article about Gary Vikan has grown so long that I will instead post a January 2021 issue. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. The articles' words are bold to distinguish them from mine.
News:
"‘It has all the twists and turns of a classic detective story’ – unwrapping the Turin Shroud," Apollo - The International Arts Magazine, Anthony Cutler, 12 December 2020. ... In his first
[Above: "The Holy Shroud (c. 1540), attrib. here to Giulio Clovio. Galleria Sabauda, Turin. Photo: © akg-images/De Agostini Picture Library" [article].]
chapter, Vikan, `[a] towering figure in the art world' according to the publisher's blurb, This is hype. According to Vikan's own website he was primarily the director of an art museum in Baltimore (not New York, Paris or London!):
"Gary Vikan was Director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore from 1994 to 2013; from 1985 to 1994, he was the museum's Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Medieval Art. Before coming to Baltimore, Vikan was Senior Associate at Harvard's Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. A native of Minnesota, he received his B.A. from Carleton College and his Ph.D. from Princeton University; he is a graduate of the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors and the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program. An internationally known medieval scholar ..."[2]See my previous posts on Vikan: 21Jun20, 24Jul20, 14Oct20a & 14Oct20b.
describes how nearly 40 years ago he came across a facsimile of the Turin Shroud advertised (for $12) in a copy of the National Enquirer ... At that time, as well as long before and afterwards, he saw his real job as being that of whistle-blower where fakes were concerned. ... then and later at the Walters Art Museum, where he became the director, he pursued his passion for hoaxes, lecturing and writing about the subject of this book's title. ... As a trained historian of Byzantine art Vikan uncovers the Orthodox origins and artistic expressions of the idea of a holy image before turning to what was literally the invention of the shroud in medieval Lirey, today a hamlet of some 89 people a few miles south of Troyes, the capital of Champagne Since Vikan is an art historian and has for many years been "lecturing and writing about the subject of this book's title." i.e. "The Holy Shroud," he must know that Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory's Prof. Christopher Ramsey admitted in 2008, "There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates [1260-1390] allow":
"There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow and so further research is certainly needed. It is important that ... experts assess and reinterpret some of the other evidence. Only by doing this will people be able to arrive at a coherent history of the Shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information"[3].And so Vikan must know that among that "lot of other evidence" is the the Pray Codex which is dated 1192-95, at least 157 years before the latest date, 1352, that Vikan claims the Shroud was created[4]. Yet there are "eight [and by my count twelve] telling correspondences
between the Shroud and the drawings on a single page [above[5] of the Pray Codex"[6]! See 14Oct20c. But Vikan misleads his readers by not mentioning the Pray Codex in his book!
Vikan, "a trained historian of Byzantine art" (see above), further misleads his readers by also not mentioning in his book the miniature in 11th-12th century Madrid manuscript of John Skylitzes (c.1040–1101), depicting the transfer of the Image of Edessa/Shroud from Edessa to Constantinople in 944[7].
[Above (enlarge)[8]: 11th-12th century depiction of the transfer of the Image of Edessa, behind the face image of which is the full-length Shroud [see "944a"], from Edessa (left) to Constantinople (right) via Byzantine general John Kourkouas (fl. 915–946) to Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos (r. 919–944) in 944 [see "944b"]
The Madrid manuscript was produced in the 12th century but its 574 miniatures may be copies of earlier Byzantine images[9]. The above miniature among those 574 proves beyond reasonable doubt that by the 12th century it was known that behind the face of the Image of Edessa/Mandylion was the full-length Shroud[10]! And that the arrival in Constantinople of the Image of Edessa/Mandylion from Edessa on 15 August 944[11] was the arrival in Constantinople of the Shroud[12]! That means the Image of Edessa/Shroud in Constantinople in 944 was more than three centuries before the earliest 1260 radiocarbon date of the Shroud[12] and before that it was continuously in Edessa since 544 [see "544"]. This is 408 and 808 years respectively before the latest date, 1352, that Vikan claims the Shroud was created [see above]!
... With lots of help from his scientific friends In Vikan's book his "scientific friends" are an obscure father and daughter, Robert W. Morton and Rebecca J. Hoppe[13], both of whom are chemists (I have found only personal links to them but I will respect their privacy and not use them). Morton is "Mostly self-taught," a "Phillips 66 chemist," who "Phillips had hired ... straight out of college" (and therefore has held no academic position) and is "a compulsive inventor and backyard experimenter"[14]. Evidently knowing nothing about the Shroud, from a "television documentary" they decided that the image on the Shroud was made with iron gall ink:
"Fast forward to an evening in November 2005. Bob Morton and his teenage daughter Rebecca happened upon a television documentary on the Shroud of Turin that was devoted, as they all are, to the mystery of how the image was created ... During a commercial break in the show, Bob explained to his daughter the background of the Archimedes Palimpsest and the chemistry behind iron gall ink; how it oxidizes from black to brown to sepia if it is not sealed with gum arabic (tree sap). When the show returned, Rebecca had a simple but brilliant flash of insight: Perhaps there is nothing at all unusual, much less miraculous, about the image on the shroud; perhaps it was made with the same familiar materials as the script and diagrams of the Archimedes Palimpsest and of virtually all medieval manuscripts: namely, iron gall ink. That would explain why the sepia tones of the Archimedes text and those of the Man of the Shroud are so much alike"[15].Morton contacted Vikan and sent him this grotesque image of his
(Morton's) face [Above (enlarge)[16].], formed using tannic acid and iron sulfate on a damp cloth (see below). So great was Vikan's need to disbelieve in the Shroud, that astonishingly for an art historian, he called Morton's grossly distorted face print, "shroudlike" and he "was convinced" (but Morton wasn't-see below):
"After a few more experiments, Bob sent a shroudlike print of his face. But for its roundness and spiky short hair, it could be almost mistaken for the face on the shroud. With that I was convinced"[17].
Several points: • Compare Morton's grotesque wrap-around distorted ("roundness"!) face imprint (above) with Secondo Pia's 1898 negative photograph of the Shroud face [Right (enlarge)[18]], a copy of which is on page 108G of Vikan's book. Clearly the Shroud image was not formed using Morton's technique.
• Morton's `replication' of the Shroud is only a face. It does not follow that the same technique could produce the Shroud's double-body image[19].
• There is no image under the blood on the Shroud, so a forger would have to apply the blood first and then form the image around it [see 05Nov17]. But Vikan, although he mentions the Shroudman's blood in his book (pp. 16-17, 80), he doesn't say how it would have been applied to Morton's `shroud'.
• Morton himself doesn't claim that the Shroud was created using his iron and tannic acid technique:
"Chemist Robert Morton explained at a Good Friday seminar at the Walters Art Museum's Graham Auditorium how a realistic shroud could be made using common scribe's chemicals available throughout human history. Morton prepared linen cloth with an iron solution, and then brought the coloration out with tannic acids -- revealing images of his wife, and his daughter's boyfriend similar to the faint negative image on the shroud. `The more pressure you put on it, the tannic acid moves around on the cloth so you get more reaction,' Morton said. In his `shroud of Leo' his bluetick hound, Morton said the pressure sensitivity revealed the eyeball and cornea under Leo's closed eyelid. He did not, however, make any claim about whether those methods were used in the shroud housed in Turin, Italy. `I'm a chemist, I make observations,' Morton said. `We don't have an opinion, we speak of possibilities.'" (my emphasis)[20].• Morton's claim that the Shroud's image is comprised of iron-based ink doesn't fit the evidence discovered by STURP that, "there was no difference in iron content between image and non-image areas" and "the tiny amount of iron on the Shroud was too faint to be visible to the naked eye":
"Morton and Vikan are ignorant of the fact that STURP found in the 1970s that the iron on the Shroud was mixed with strontium and calcium and uniformly distributed, except for the blood areas, and therefore derived from the ancient process of retting flax in natural bodies of wate. And that there was no difference in iron content between image and non-image areas, proving that the image was not the result of the iron. Moreover, the tiny amount of iron on the Shroud was too faint to be visible to the naked eye. Only the blood areas showed more iron, but that is because blood's hemoglobin contains iron. So Vikan's `iron gall ink' forgery explanation of the Shroud's image (pp.88-89, 95, 158, 167, 176) is utterly and completely wrong![24Jul20] (footnotes omitted)
Vikan explains why the nails appear on the image to be driven through Jesus's wrists rather than the palms of the hands (the flesh would tear and the body drop to the ground); Vikan didn't explain it - he correctly acknowledged that it was Pierre Barbet (1884–1961) the chief surgeon at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Paris who discovered that:
"Wilson, for his part, gives the account of a French doctor and part-time sindonologists named Pierre Barbet, who in the thirties conducted a series of experiments with cadavers. He discovered that the human body cannot be supported on a cross by nails through the palms of the hands; the nails must be driven through the wrists, since the flesh of the hands will simply rip away and the body will fall to the ground. In medieval art, the nails of the Crucifixion are invariably set in the palms of Christ's hands. Crucifixion was abolished in the 4th century by Emperor Constantine. So how did the person who created the Man of the Shroud come up with that realistic crucifixion iconography?"[21].That was on pages 33-34. Immediately before on pages 32-33 Vikan reveals that he became "an atheist at age thirteen" and was "a Midwestern [Lutheran] kid who had turned against his God":
"This made me wonder: Am I trustworthy? Should shroud enthusiasts trust a Minnesota Lutheran who quietly became an atheist at age thirteen? Was my skepticism born of the dispassionate thinking of a DO [Dumbarton Oaks] scholar or of the resentment of a Midwestern kid who had turned against his God? And wasn't I thinking teleologically as well, but as a `sindonoclast,' with the opposite foregone conclusion?"[22].For Vikan, an atheist, it is a "foregone conclusion" that there is no God, therefore Christianity is false and the Shroud must be a "hoax." Then there would be no need to fairly consider the evidence for the Shroud being Jesus' burial sheet. And in fact that is what Vikan admits:
"Was I persuaded, even for a moment, by Ian Wilson? No, since for me, the rules of forgery detection are like the rules detectives follow in solving a murder: No amount of seemingly positive evidence in support of the accused can offset that damning, incontrovertible 1 percent that is revealing of guilt"[23].Leaving aside that any detective who operated the way that Vikan does with the Shroud would be fired, or even jailed, Vikan shows that he is "invincibly ignorant" towards the Shroud's authenticity:
"There does remain, nonetheless, a cast of mind which seems peculiarly closed to evidence. When confronted with such a mind, one feels helpless, for no amount of evidence seems to be clinching. Frequently the facts are simply ignored or brushed aside as somehow deceptive, and the principles [e.g. atheism] are reaffirmed in unshakable conviction. One seems confronted with what has been called `invincible ignorance.'" (my emphasis)[24]
he also attributes the excessively long arms suggested by the shroud ... to the artist's wish to cover Christ's groin. This is false. As Ian Wilson, who is about the same height of the man on the Shroud, showed by posing for artist Isabel Piczek (1927-2016) in a
[Above (enlarge): Ian Wilson posing for artist Isabel Piczek in a similar bent knees crucifixion position, fixed by rigor mortis, as the man on the Shroud[25] (see below).]
similar crucified and fixed by rigor mortis position as the man on the
Shroud, and as can be seen above, Wilson's hands easily covered his genitals!
In short, the Turin Shroud is a contrivance, a work of art, not something `made without hands', as the Byzantines conceived of their most holy icons ... If the Shroud is a work of medieval art, how come no modern artist (including Morton and Hoppe) can relicate even its face, let alone its double full-length body?
Such credence is of course remote from the concerns of those who have essayed several mistaken efforts to carbon-date the shroud, I don't understand what this means and I can't see it in Vikan's book.
and the loonies who to this day constitute STURP (the Shroud of Turin Research Project) ... STURP hasn't existed since the 1990s[28]. And far from being "loonies" STURP members were drawn from prestigious USA scientific organisations[29].
and publish a journal in the effort to make their case. STURP didn't "publish a journal" but published their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals[30]. Which is more than can be said for Morton and Hoppe's `shroud' face!
For my money, Vikan's book, unfurling this famous cloth with its accreted myth, is one of the most stimulating things I have read on the shroud ... "For the time will come when they will ... heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears" (2 Timothy 4:3)!
It has all the twists and turns of a classic detective story, illuminated by Vikan's intelligence and willingness to admit – to us and to himself – where over the years his hypotheses have been wrong, and what to do to check and correct them.Good! Then Vikan should correct Morton and Hoppe's absurd
[Above (enlarge)[31]: Extract from Shroud Scope of a close-up positive photograph of the Shroud man's mouth area. As can be seen, under the skin of the man's upper and lower lips are at least 4 pairs of upper and lower teeth with a bite line between them.]
claim [see 24Jul20] that the xray images of the Shroudman's teeth (see above and 16Sep18 & 20Apr17) are "likely folds in the fabric":
"The eerie presence of what look like teeth (in fact, they're likely folds in the fabric) coupled with faint, forward looking eyes (these in multiple, from multiple contact exposures) make the picture appear like an early, soft X-ray radiograph"[32]
The Holy Shroud is a work of empiricism in the service of both art and faith. As such it is very much a book for our times. The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death by Gary Vikan is published by Pegasus Books. See all the above that "a work of empiricism" Vikan's book most definitely is not! It is a work of anti-Christianity by which Vikan seeks (unsuccessfully) to self-justify his decision "at age thirteen" to "turn... against his God" (see above)!
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]
2. "About Gary Vikan," 2020. [return]
3. Ramsey, C.B., 2008, "The Shroud of Turin," Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, March. Last modified 17 July 2009. [return]
4. Vikan, G., 2020, "The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death," Pegasus Books: New York NY, pp.xv, 134. [return]
5. Berkovits, I., 1969, "Illuminated Manuscripts in Hungary, XI-XVI Centuries," Horn, Z., transl., West, A., rev., Irish University Press: Shannon, Ireland, pl. III. [return]
6. de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, p.180. [return]
7. Wilson, I., 1990, "Correspondence," BSTS Newsletter, No. 25, April/May, pp.10-12, 10; Scavone, D.C., "The History of the Turin Shroud to the 14th C.," in Berard, A., ed., 1991, "History, Science, Theology and the Shroud," Symposium Proceedings, St. Louis Missouri, June 22-23, 1991, The Man in the Shroud Committee of Amarillo, Texas: Amarillo TX, pp.171-204, 193-194; Scavone, D.C., "Underscoring the Highly Significant Historical Research of the Shroud," in Tribbe, F.C., 2006, "Portrait of Jesus: The Illustrated Story of the Shroud of Turin," Paragon House Publishers: St. Paul MN, Second edition, pp.xxvi-xxvii; Piana, A., 2007, "The Shroud's `Missing Years'," BSTS Newsletter, No. 66. December, pp.9-25,28-31; Fanti, G. & Malfi, P., 2015, "The Shroud of Turin: First Century after Christ!," Pan Stanford: Singapore, pp.54-55. [return]
8. "File:Surrender of the Mandylion to the Byzantines.jpg," in "Chronography of John Skylitzes, cod. Vitr. 26-2, folio 131a, Madrid National Library, Wikimedia Commons, 20 December 2012. [return]
9. "Madrid Skylitzes," Wikipedia, 16 November 2020. [return]
10. Scavone, 1991, p.194; Scavone, 2006, pp.xxvi-xxvii. [return]
11. "944: Byzantine Empire," Wikipedia, 26 November 2020. [return]
12. de Wesselow, 2012, p.183. [return]
13. Vikan, 2020, pp.v, 86-87. [return]
14. Vikan, 2020, p.86. [return]
15. Vikan, 2020, p.87. [return]
16. Vikan, 2020, p.108M. [return]
17. Vikan, 2020, p.89. [return]
18. "Holy Face of Jesus," Wikipedia, 16 February 2021. [return]
19. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, p.122. [return]
20. Hille, K., 2007, "Demonstration calls shroud into question," Washington Examiner, 7 April. [return]
21. Vikan, 2020, pp.33-34. [return]
22. Vikan, 2020, p.32. [return]
23. Vikan, 2020, p.33. [return]
24. Fearnside, W.W. & Holther, W.B., 1959, "Fallacy the Counterfeit of Argument," Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs NJ, 25th printing, p.113. [return]
25. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.50. [return]
26. Ricci, G., 1978, "The Way of the Cross in the Light of the Holy Shroud," Center for the Study of the Passion of Christ and the Holy Shroud: Milwaukee WI, Second edition, Reprinted, 1982, p.61. [return]
27. Bucklin, R., 1970, "The Legal and Medical Aspects of the Trial and Death of Christ," Medicine, Science and the Law, January; Meacham, W., 1983, "The Authentication of the Turin Shroud: An Issue in Archaeological Epistemology," Current Anthropology, Vol. 24, No. 3, June, pp.283-311, 284; Iannone, J.C., 1998, "The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence," St Pauls: Staten Island NY, p.80; Zugibe, F.T., 1988, "The Cross and the Shroud: A Medical Enquiry into the Crucifixion," [1982], Paragon House: New York NY, Revised edition, p.132; Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.65; de Wesselow, 2012, p.146 [return]
28. Meacham, W., 2005, "The Rape of the Turin Shroud: How Christianity's Most Precious Relic was Wrongly Condemned and Violated," Lulu Press: Morrisville NC, p.150; Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK, p.261. [return]
29. "Shroud of Turin Research Project," Wikipedia, 18 January 2021. [return]
30. Schwortz, B.M., 1996, "STURP's Published Papers," Shroud.com; de Wesselow, 2012, p.22. [return]
31. Extract from Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Durante 2002 Face Only Vertical," Sindonology.org. [return]
32. Vikan, 2020, p.171. [return]
Posted: 21 February 2021. Updated: 26 March 2021.
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