Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Twentieth century (6)

Chronology of the Turin Shroud: AD 30 to the present
TWENTIETH CENTURY (6)
© Stephen E. Jones[1]

This is the fourth installment of part #30, "Twentieth century" (6) of my "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: AD 30 - present" series. For more information about this series see the Index #1. I will use in-line referencing to save time in renumbering out-of-order footnotes. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. This page was initially based on Ian Wilson's 1996, "Highlights of the Undisputed History: 1900."

[Index #1] [Previous: 20th century (5) #29] [Next: 20th century (7) #31]

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20th century (6) (1989-2000).

1989a 15 February. In a talk at the Logan Hall, Institute of Education, London, the Director of Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory, Prof. Edward Hall (1924-2001), lectures to the British Museum Society on 'The Turin Shroud: A Lesson in Self-Persuasion'. He very forcefully declares anyone continuing to regard the Shroud as genuine a 'Flat Earther' and 'onto a loser'[WI89, 10; WI98, 311]. But since the evidence is that the Shroud (as the Image of Edessa) was in Edessa in 544 (see "544"), which is "more than seven centuries (716 years) before the earliest 1260 radiocarbon date of the Shroud"[04Oct18], it is Prof. Hall and his anti-Shroud ilk who were and are the victims of "Self-Persuasion," are "onto a loser" and are the "Flat Earthers," refusing to consider all the other non-radiocarbon evidence! However Hall made the significant point that Oxford's dating was "blind," so the other two laboratories could have been, but weren't:

"He [Hall] said that at Oxford at least the carbon dating was done `blind'. After the combustion of the samples to gas, they were recoded so that while he, Professor Hall continued to know the identity of the samples, Dr. Hedges, who was actually carrying out the work, did not"[WI89, 10]

1989b 16 February. Publication, in the scientific journal Nature, of the official results of the Shroud radiocarbon dating. This has twenty-one signatories. It declares that the results 'provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is medieval'[DP89; WI98, 311].

1989c 20 March. Retirement of Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero (r. 1977-89) as Archbishop of Turin, to be succeeded by Giovanni Saldarini (r. 1989-99). Ballestrero temporarily remains official custodian of the Shroud[WI98, 311].

1989d 24 March. A press release to the UK press announces that forty-five businessmen and 'rich friends' have donated 1 million pounds to create a chair of archaeological sciences at Oxford to perpetuate the radiocarbon-dating laboratory created by Edward Hall. The first incumbent is to be the British Museum's Michael Tite[WI98, 311]. Rochester's Prof Harry Gove (1922-2009) noted that there were "unworthy foreign whispers" against the appointment of Michael Tite, of the British Museum's Research Laboratory, as an independent coordinator of the Shroud's radiocarbon dating because, "the head of the Oxford Research Laboratory, Professor Edward Hall, is a trustee of the British Museum"[GH96, 273]. One would have to be naive not to think that Hall, with £1M funding of his Oxford laboratory depending on a medieval radiocarbon date of the Shroud, did not say to Tite, words to the effect,`get it right Mike and the Director of Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory job is yours'!

1989e 28 April, Interviewed by journalists during a plane journey forming part of the papal visit to Africa, Pope John Paul II (r. 1978-2005) guardedly speaks of the Shroud as an authentic relic, while insisting that 'the Church has never pronounced on the matter'[WI98, 311].

1989f 6-7 May. International Shroud Symposium 'La Sindone e Le Icone' held in Bologna'[WI98, 311].

1989g 4 June. Death of University of Arizona physicist Timothy Weiler Linick (1946-89)[JS89], one of the authors of the Nature report on the

[Right: Photograph of Linick and report that "He died at the age of forty-two on 4 June 1989, in very unclear circumstances ..." (my emphasis)[BB00].This is consistent with my theory (see "My theory that the radiocarbon dating laboratories were duped by a computer hacker") that the KGB executed confessed KGB hacker Karl Koch (1965–89) between 23 and 30 May 1989[21Jul14; 02Jun16; 17May15; 27May19; 03Feb21], and police publicly identified the body as Koch on 3 June 1989, and the KGB executed Linick a day later on 4 June 1989[05Jul14; 17May15; 31Mar15; 30Jun15; 03Aug19; 30Dec15; 22Feb16; 02Jun16; 30Jul16]; where their murders by the KGB were made to look like suicides to stop them revealing that the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud as 1260-1390 (1325 ±65) was the result of a KGB-sponsored computer hacking by Linick, aided by Koch[05Jul14; 13Dec14; 31Mar15; 22Feb16; 02Jun16]; 30Jul16; 03Feb21].]

Shroud's radiocarbon dating[WI98, 311]. Chapter 16 of my book, "Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus!" (see 06Jul17, 03Jun18, 04Apr22, 13Jul22 & 8 Nov 22) will be, "Were the laboratories duped by a hacker?"

1989h 7-8 September. Shroud Symposium organized by the French Shroud group CIELT (Centre international d'études sur le linceul de Turin) is held in Paris. The speakers include Michael Tite[WI98, 311]. When asked in an interview at the symposium why blind testing of the Shroud did not occur, Tite answered, "We had decided it could not be a blind test because they'd [the laboratories] been given whole pieces of the Shroud which they could immediately identify and therefore it could not be a blind test:"'[AM00, 182]. This wasn't true. See above that Oxford's dating was blind.

1989i 30 September. New Scientist reports findings of the scientific workshop at East Kilbride that 'the margin of error with radiocarbon-dating ... may be two or three times as great as practitioners of the technique have claimed' "In 1989 Britain's Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) decided to conduct a trial in which the carbon-dating technique itself would be tested. Thirty-eight laboratories were involved in the trial, each being asked to date artefacts whose age was already known:

"Murdoch Baxter, the director of the Scottish Universities Research andReactor Centre at East Kilbride near Glasgow, and one of the organisers of the trial ... says that accelerator mass spectrometry, used last year by a laboratory at the University of Oxford to date the Turin shroud, allegedly the burial shroud of Jesus Christ, came out of the survey badly. Five of the 38 participating laboratories used this technique, for which samples weighing a few milligrams are acceptable. The other techniques require grams of the sample. Baxter says that some of the accelerator laboratories were way out when dating samples as little as 200 years old. Because so little material is used in accelerator mass spectrometry, the effects of chemical pre-treatment are likely to be more serious, says Baxter"[CA89, 26]

The Oxford laboratory, one of those that had dated the Shroud the previous year, declined to participate[WI98, 311]. It was found that 'The margin of error with radiocarbon dating ... may be two to three times as great as practitioners of the technique have claimed ... Of the thirty-eight [laboratories], only seven produced results that the organizers of the trial considered to be satisfactory.' In other words, about 80 per cent of the laboratories failed the test. The three laboratories that dated the Shroud the previous year employed a technique known as Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS), which 'came out of the survey badly'. According to one of the organizers of the trial, `some of the accelerator laboratories were way out when dating samples as little as 200 years old'[CA89, 26]. So, just a year after the Shroud was damned by AMS, the authority of this carbon-dating technique itself took a severe blow"[DT12, 163]. Further evidence that the 1325 ±65 carbon date of the Shroud was the result of a computer hacking!

1989j 9 March-2 September. London's British Museum holds exhibition entitled 'Fake. The Art of Deception'. This includes a life-size transparency of the Turin Shroud[WI98, 311-312].

1989k 8 November. The Spanish Center of Sindonology (CES) began their complete, multidisciplinary study on the Sudarium of Oviedo[BJ01, 273]

1989l c. December. Alan and Mary Whanger submit for publication their article, "Floral, Coin, and Other Non-Body Images on the Shroud of Turin"[WA90] but it is rejected[DB98, 202-203, 214; DA10, 8]. In the article they reported:

"While there are vague or partial images of hundreds of flowers on the Shroud, we feel that we have tentatively identified 28 plants whose images are sufficiently clear on the Shroud to make a good comparison and to be compatible with the drawings in Flora Palaestina ... Of the 28 plants we identified on the Shroud, 23 are flowers, three are small bushes, and two are thorns. All 28 grow in Israel, and 20 grow in Jerusalem itself (i.e., in the Judean mountains) ... Of the eight plants not growing in the climate of Jerusalem itself, all eight grow either in the Judean Desert or the Dead Sea area or in both. Hence these plants or flowers would be available in Jerusalem markets in a fresh state"[WA90, 13; IJ98, 28-29; WA98, 78-79; AM00, 112; WA08, 142; DA10, 12].

To be continued in the fifth installment of this post.

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
AM00. Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY.
BJ01. Bennett, J., 2001, "Sacred Blood, Sacred Image: The Sudarium of Oviedo: New Evidence for the Authenticity of the Shroud of Turin," Ignatius Press: San Francisco CA.
BB00. Bonnet-Eymard, B., 2000, "The Holy Shroud is as Old as the Risen Jesus, IV. Caution! Danger!, The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the XX^th Century, No 330, Online edition, May.
CA89. Coghlan, A., 1989, "Unexpected errors affect dating techniques," New Scientist, 30 September.
DA10. Danin, A., 2010, "Botany of the Shroud: The Story of Floral Images on the Shroud of Turin," Danin Publishing: Jerusalem, Israel.
DB98. Danin, A. & Baruch, U., 1998, "Floristic Indicators for the Origin of the Shroud of Turin," Paper presented at the Third International Congress on the Shroud of Turin, 6 June 1998, Turin, Italy, in Minor, M., Adler, A.D. & Piczek, I., eds., "The Shroud of Turin: Unraveling the Mystery: Proceedings of the 1998 Dallas Symposium," Alexander Books: Alexander NC, 2002.
DP89. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16 February, 611-615.
DT12. de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London.
GH96. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK.
IJ98. Iannone, J.C., 1998, "The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence," St Pauls: Staten Island NY.
JS89. Jull, A.J.T. & Suess, H.E. , 1989, "Timothy W. Linick," Radiocarbon, Vol 31, No 2.
WA98. Whanger, M. & Whanger, A.D., 1998, "The Shroud of Turin: An Adventure of Discovery," Providence House Publishers: Franklin TN.
WA08. Whanger, A. & M., 2008, "Aspects of the Shroud in Botany and Related Art," in Fanti, G., ed., 2009, "The Shroud of Turin: Perspectives on a Multifaceted Enigma," Proceedings of the 2008 Columbus Ohio International Conference, August 14-17, 2008, Progetto Libreria: Padua, Italy, 140-144, 142. .
WA90. Whanger, A. & M., 1990, "Floral, Coin, and Other Non-Body Images on the Shroud of Turin," Shroud News, No 59, June, 10-20.
WI90. Wilson, I., 1990, "Flower images on the Shroud?," BSTS Newsletter, No. 24, January, pp.11-13, 11. .
WI89. Wilson, I, 1989, "Lecture by Professor Hall of Oxford," BSTS Newsletter, No. 21, January/February, 7-10.
WI98. Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY.

Posted 21 March 2023. Updated 28 March 2023.

How was the Image Formed? (1) Turin Shroud Encyclopedia

Turin Shroud Encyclopedia
Copyright © Stephen E. Jones[1]

This is "How was the Image Formed? (1)" part #23 of my Turin Shroud Encyclopedia. This will help me write chapter "17. How was the Image Formed?" of my book, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus!" See 06Jul17, 03Jun18, 04Apr22, 13Jul22 & 8 Nov 22.

[Index #1] [Previous: Herbert Thurston #22] [Next: To be advised #24]

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• Explanations and replications There are theoretical explanations of how the Shroudman's image was formed and there are claimed replications of the Shroud and its image by Shroud sceptics. As the latter are more significant, I will only consider them here.

[Right (enlarge): Full-length image of the Shroud after the 2002 restoration[HR14].]

• Major features Any claimed replication of the Shroud must include all of its major features[JP88, 11]. Claimed replications of the Shroud which do not include each and every major feature of the Shroud, are a type of `straw man' fallacy. That is, they present a replication of the Shroud which does not contain all the Shroud's major features, and then claim that they have replicated the Shroud! Major features of the Shroud include: 1) Double body length[WI79, 21; AF82, 26; WI10, 184]. 2) Faint[WI79, 21; AF82, 5; AM00, 37]. 3) Negative[SH81, 67; BM95, 19; AM00, 34-35]; 4) Three-dimensional[SH81, 67; AF82, 93-94; CJ84, 53; AM00, 38-39]; 5) Non-directional[SH81, 67; CJ84, 53; CT96, 26]; 6) Superficial[SH81, 66; CJ84, 53; PM96, 217; AA99, 105; AA0a, 116; OM10, 238]; 7) Uniform straw-yellow colour[AA99, 105; AA0a, 116; AA0c, 15]; 8) No paint, pigment or dye[SH81, 67; CJ84, 53; RC99, 71; GV01, 71]; 9) Blood is human[BZ98, 20-22; RC99, 95, 100; AM00, 25; GV01, 49]; and 10) Blood was before image[HJ83, 203; GV01, 71; DT12, 104]. See my "The man on the Shroud #8." These will be explained as we consider each claimed replication.

• Spoiler alert! "The basic fact remains: neither Joe Nickell nor any other artist or forger has ever created an image showing all the characteristics of the image of the man of the Shroud"[SH81, 109]; "Yet none of the proposed mechanisms ... can replicate all the unique characteristics of both the body images and blood marks on the Shroud ... none even comes close"[AM00, 60-61].

• Admissions of failure Each new claimed replication of the Shroud by sceptics is a tacit admission that all previous claimed replications of the Shroud by sceptics had failed!

• No consensus What Ian Wilson wrote in 1998, ~25 years ago, is still true today:

"Indeed, if anyone had come up with a convincing solution as to how and by whom the Shroud was forged, they would inevitably have created a consensus around which everyone sceptical on the matter would rally. Yet so far this has not even begun to happen."[WI98, 235]

• Painted Chicago microscopist Walter McCrone (1916-2002) correctly pointed out that a medieval forger would have painted the Shroud:

"Why go to all the work of preparing a statue or bas-relief or making a transfer of the image from a primary artist's rendering? A direct approach to painting a dilute watercolor image on a canvas of the proper size is a common sense assumption; Occam's Razor applies here ..."[MW99, 124].

So McCrone commissioned a professional artist, Walter Sanford

[Above (enlarge): Negative of Sanford's painted Shroud face (left) compared with the Shroud face (right)[WS00, 120-121]. As can be seen, Sanford's negative lacks the photographic realism of the Shroud's.]

(1912-87), to paint the Shroud face, using medieval pigments[WI98, 196]. Yet even though Sanford had a photograph of the Shroud before him and only had to copy the Shroud face[WS00, 120], his finished result was "nowhere near as impressive as the Shroud," according to Shroud sceptic Lynn Picknett (1947-)[PP06, 77]. McCrone himself conceded before a 1980 meeting of the British Society for the Turin Shroud (BSTS) that Sanford's attempt to replicate only the Shroud face had failed[NJ87, 99, 173. n.16]. McCrone's reason why Sanford had failed, because an artist would "have to think in terms of what would a body under a cloth ... register"[NJ87, 99] would apply even more to a medieval artist who didn't know about photographic negativity and didn't have the Shroud to copy! McCrone told the meeting, "I'm sorry I got into this part of the controversy, and I wish that I had stuck to my microscope[NJ87, 99]! McCrone subsequently "quietly downgraded his references to" Sanford's `replication' of the Shroud face[WI98, 196]. In his 1999 book, Judgement Day for the Turin Shroud, while McCrone has a photograph of Sanford's painted Shroud face[MW99, 149], he tellingly omitted a negative photograph of it (which Wilson and Schwortz provided above)! So McCrone's painted replication of the Shroud fails because: 1) Double body length. It is face-only. It does not follow that a method which can replicate the Shroud face (and McCrone's replication didn't even do that) could replicate the double full-length Shroud. For one, there are more than a hundred scourge wounds on the man's back, chest and legs, each with blood serum retraction halos[SH90, 85; RC99, 42; AM00, 27-28; WS00, 56; WI10, 45-46; DT12, 122] and to date, no one has even attempted to paint those! 3) Negative. It's negative lacks the Shroud's realism (above). 4) Three-dimensional. McCrone's flat painted replication, was not three-dimensional[PP06, 77] 5) Non-directional. Being painted, McCrone's replication would show direcional brushstrokes. 6) Superficial. Sanford's paint would not have remained on the topmost fibrils as the Shroud image does, but would have soaked through the cloth. 7) Uniform straw-yellow colour The Shroud image is a uniform straw-yellow but Sanford's red ochre painting is redder than the Shroud's image[WS00, 120]. 8) No paint, pigment or dye is on the Shroud, but paint would be on Sanford's shroud. 9) Blood is human and 10) Blood was before image. Sanford painted the blood after he had painted the image[MW99, 124; WI98, 196; WS00, 120]. So McCrone's painted replication of the Shroud fails in all but one of the Shroud's 10 major features! There actually are more - see again my "The man on the Shroud #8." Only one major feature, 2) Faint in one of the photos of Sanford's paintings on page 149 of McCrone's book apparently passes! But as McCrone pointed out above a medieval forger would have painted the Shroud. So the abject failure of McCrone's painted replication is, in effect, the failure of the forgery theory!

• Powder rubbing Joe Nickell (1944-), a former stage magician [AM00, 73; GV01, 76; NJW], whose PhD is in English[NJW], experimented with replicating the Shroud image by rubbing powdered pigments on a wet

[Left (enlarge). Negative photograph of a powder rubbing of the Shroud face by Nickell using an iron oxide pigment[NJ15]. Sceptic Lynn Picknett (see above ) had included "Nickell's results" in with Sanford's, as "although more recognizable in negative-are nowhere near as impressive as the Shroud"[PP06, 77]!]

linen cloth placed over a bas-relief[NJ87, 102; AM00, 73], while impressing all the relief's features onto the cloth[AM00, 73; JNW]. After the cloth dried, he used a cotton dauber covered with cloth to rub powdered pigment onto the impressions left on the linen[AM00, 73]. Art historian Thomas de Wesselow pointed out that "Nickell implies an art-historical episode so bizarre, speculative, impractical and anachronistic that it is quite unbelievable"[DT12, 139]. Nickell's powdered pigment replication of the Shroud fails because: 1) Double body length. It is face-only (see above). Nickell needed to show that his powdered rubbing method can replicate the full-length Shroud image, front and back. In particular, Nickell would need to explain how his method could depict the Shroud's fine details[invented c. 1609) and in ultraviolet light (discovered 1801)[AM00, 76]. Indeed, modern sceptics like McCrone and Nickell who don't go to the trouble to replicate the entire full-length, double image, front and back, Shroud, but the face only, are refuting their own theory because they are showing that that is what a medieval forger would have done[DT12, 138]! 2) Faint Nickell claims "the rubbing technique can produce images which are quite faint"[NJ87, 103] but he doesn't say "as faint as the Shroud"! Nickell has in his 1987 book a black-and-white positive photograph and its

[Above (enlarge)[NJ87, pl. 6]: Black-and-white positive photograph (left) of powdered myrrh and aloes "rubbed on with a cloth-over-cotton dauber," and its negative (right). As can be seen, even though it isn't in colour, the positive would not be faint. I printed in grayscale a positive of the Shroud face and it was much fainter than Nickell's positive above.]

negative, of a myrrh and aloes powdered rubbing over a bas relief (above) and it is not faint. And presumbly the positive of an iron oxide powder rubbing would be even less faint, otherwise Nickell would have shown that in his book! 3) Negative. Nickell's negative of an iron oxide powder rubbing (above), like McCrone's, lacks the photographic realism of the Shroud. 4) Three-dimensional. STURP found that under a VP-8 Image Analyzer Nickell's shroud face is not truly three-dimensional[SH81, 108; RC99, 79; AM00, 73; OM10, 253] and is distorted[RC99, 79; SH90, 31; TF06, 181]. 5) Non-directional. Nickell claims his powdered rubbing images are "`directionless' (that is, without brush marks)"[NJ87, 102]. But he must know from the very word "directionless that what is meant is no direction at all, by any means [see "Non-directional #17"]. The Shroudman's image is random with no evidence of a directional pattern[BM95, 22; AA0a, 116; AA0c, 18]. Not up and down nor side to side[AM00, 38]. Any method by which colouring medium was added to the cloth by hand would be directional[SH81, 122]. So the application of powdered pigment would be directional[SH81, 108]. Nickell himself wrote: "using a dauber, I rubbed on powdered pigment"[NJ87, 102]. Nickell is deceiving himself if he thinks that rubbing with a cloth dauber is "directionless"! 6) Superficial. Nickell claimed that his powder "rubbing technique ... yields images that are superficial (remain on the topmost fibers)"[NJ87, 102; OM10, 253]. But this is self-evidently false as the powder particles which are smaller than the gaps between the Shroud's weave would not have stayed on the surface fibres, but would have fallen through those gaps, and larger particles would have become lodged between the threads, discolouring them throughout the weave[DT12, 138]. STURP tested Nickell's powder rubbing method and found that powder particles fell through the weave of the cloth and accumulated on the reverse side[AM00, 74; GV01, 77; OM10, 253]. 7) Uniform straw-yellow colour A uniform application of powder, resulting in a uniform image, has been shown to be unachiev-able[RC99, 136; OM10, 253]. 8) No paint, pigment or dye Nickell's image would consist of powdered pigment, but he later accepted STURP's finding that there was no build up of pigment particles in the image area[SH81, 107] and there isn't enough iron oxide on the Shroud to account for its image[DT12, 137]. So Nickell now claims that all the powdered pigment had fallen off the cloth and that the image is a `ghost' of the vanished iron oxide having dehydrated and oxidized the underlying cellulose[BM95, 44; DT12, 137-138]! But residues of powdered iron oxide pigment would remain on the cloth if they had been there originally[SH81, 122; DT12, 138]. And Nickell hasn't explained how iron oxide powder could have dehydrated and oxidized the underlying cellulose of the Shroud's linen. Iron oxide as red ochre has been used in Egypt since at least 1800 BC to colour red on linen[GC22], and obviously it wouldn't have been so

[Right (enlarge[GC22]): Linen coloured red with iron oxide (red ochre) from the tomb of Tuthmosis IV (c. 1400-1390 BC).]

used if it all fell off those linen cloths after it had dehydrated and oxidised them! 9) Blood is human. Nickell simply denies STURP's findings that the blood is real, human blood [see "Real human blood #23"] and claims the blood was paint applied after the image[AM00, 76; DT12, 137]. But, for starters, paint cannot account for the serum halos surrounding the edges of the hundreds of bloodstains on the Shroud[AM00, 76]. Nickell's painted `blood' is not realistic and does not have the correct shape or appearance of actual wounds that have formed and bled on human skin[AM00, 76]. 10) Blood was before image It would be impossible to apply the `blood' paint first to the cloth over a bas relief and then rub powdered pigment around it! So Nickell's powder rubbing replication of the Shroud fails to replicate all ten of the Shroud's major features!

Other problems with Nickell's powder rubbing method include: • There is no evidence in the Shroud cloth of tensions that would have resulted from it having been moulded wet over a bas-relief[OM10, 253]. • There are no medieval powdered rubbings on bas-reliefs[SH81, 122; SH90, 31-32; OM10, 253].]. Brass rubbing only began in 17th century Holland[BR83]. • The bas-relief that Nickell's rubbing was based on would itself be a major work of art[SH81, 108-109; DT12, 137]. So where is it[SH81, 108]? And after the forger had made his double body length, front and back, bas relief, he could have produced many shrouds identical to the Shroud[SH81, 108; DT12, 139], as Nickell admits[NJ87, 106]. So where are they? Why is there only one Shroud?

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
AF82. Adams, F.O., 1982, "Sindon: A Layman's Guide to the Shroud of Turin," Synergy Books: Tempe AZ, 26.
AA99. Adler, A.D., 1999, "The Nature of the Body Images on the Shroud of Turin," in AC02, 103-112.
AA0a. Adler, A.D., 2000a, "The Shroud Fabric and the Body Image: Chemical and Physical Characteristics," in AC02, 113-127.
AA0c. Adler, A.D., 2000c, "Chemical and Physical Aspects of the Sindonic Images," in AC02, 10-27.
AC02. Adler, A.D. & Crispino, D., ed., 2002, "The Orphaned Manuscript: A Gathering of Publications on the Shroud of Turin," Effatà Editrice: Cantalupa, Italy.
AM00. Antonacci, M., 2000, "The Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY.
BA91. 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.
BR83. "Brass Rubbing: Historic Craft Revived," The New York Times, 29 December, 1983.
BZ98. Baima-Bollone, P. & Zaca, S., 1998, "The Shroud Under the Microscope: Forensic Examination," Neame, A., transl., St Pauls: London.
CJ84. Cruz, J.C., 1984, "Relics: The Shroud of Turin, the True Cross, the Blood of Januarius. ..: History, Mysticism, and the Catholic Church," Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington IN, 52-53.
CT96. Case, T.W., 1996, "The Shroud of Turin and the C-14 Dating Fiasco," White Horse Press: Cincinnati OH.
DT12. de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London,
GC22.Graves-Brown, C., 2022, "Red cloth to protect the living and dead," Egypt Centre, Swansea [Wales], 10 February.
GV01. Guerrera, V., 2001, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL
HJ83. Heller, J.H., 1983, "Report on the Shroud of Turin," Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston MA.
HR14. "High Resolution Imagery: Image of Full 2002 Restored Shroud," Shroud University, Peachtree City GA, 2014.
JNW. "Joe Nickell," Wikipedia, 8 February 2023.
JP88. Jackson, J.P., 1988, "The radiocarbon date and how the image was formed on the Shroud," Shroud Spectrum International, No. 28/29, September/December, 2-12.
MW99. McCrone, W.C., 1999, "Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY.
NJ87. Nickell, J., 1987, "Inquest on the Shroud of Turin," Prometheus Books: Buffalo NY, Revised, Reprinted, 2000.
NJ15. Nickell, J., 2015, "Fake Turin Shroud Deceives National Geographic Author," Skeptical Inquirer, 23 April.
NJW. "Joe Nickell," Wikipedia, 18 March 2023.
OM10. Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK.
PM96. Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta.
PP06. Picknett, L. & Prince, C., 2006, "The Turin Shroud: How Da Vinci Fooled History," [1994], Touchstone: New York NY, Second edition, Reprinted, 2007.
RC99. Ruffin, C.B., 1999, "The Shroud of Turin: The Most Up-To-Date Analysis of All the Facts Regarding the Church's Controversial Relic," Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington IN.
SH90. Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1981, "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI.
SH81. Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1990, "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN.
TF06 . Tribbe, F.C., 2006, "Portrait of Jesus: The Illustrated Story of the Shroud of Turin," Paragon House Publishers: St. Paul MN, Second edition.
WI10. Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London.
WI79. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition.
WI98. Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY.
WI10. Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London.
WS00. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London.

Posted 3 March 2023. Updated 26 March 2023.

Date index 2023: The Shroud of Turin blog

The Shroud of Turin blog
DATE INDEX 2023
© Stephen E. Jones[1]

This is the date index to the 2023 posts on this my The Shroud of Turin blog. The posts are listed in reverse date order (recent uppermost). For further information on this date index series see the Main Index. The linked subject headings of my future 2023 posts will be added to this page in the background.

[Main index] [Previous: 2022] [Next: 2024]

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2023
21-Mar-23: Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Twentieth century (6)
03-Mar-23: How was the Image Formed? Turin Shroud Encyclopedia
02-Mar-23: Date index 2023: The Shroud of Turin blog
21-Feb-23: Herbert Thurston, Turin Shroud Encyclopedia
11-Feb-23: Prehistory of the Shroud (1001-1355).
23-Jan-23: The Shroudman and Jesus died on a cross #40
11-Jan-23: Ulysse Chevalier, Turin Shroud Encyclopedia

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Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]

Posted 2 March 2023. Updated 21 March 2023.

Herbert Thurston, Turin Shroud Encyclopedia

Turin Shroud Encyclopedia
Copyright © Stephen E. Jones[1]

Herbert Thurston #22

This is the eighth and final installment of "Herbert Thurston," part #22 of my Turin Shroud Encyclopedia. As mentioned in my previous Pierre d'Arcis #19, this series will help me write chapter "18. Sceptics and the Shroud" of my book, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus!" See 06Jul17, 03Jun18, 04Apr22, 13Jul22 & 8 Nov 22. Other Shroud sceptics covered in this series to date are "Pierre d'Arcis #19" and "Ulysse Chevalier #20,"

[Index #1] [Previous: Prehistory of the Shroud #21] [Next: To be advised #23]

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Herbert Henry Charles Thurston (1856-1939) was an English [Right (enlarge[PM23]) priest of the Roman Catholic Church, a member of the Jesuit order, and a prolific scholar on liturgical, literary, historical, and spiritual matters[HTW]. He was regarded as an expert on spiritualism but he is remembered chiefly for his extensive contributions to the Catholic Encyclopedia[HTW].

In 1901 Thurston read the fraudulent (see #20) anti-Shroud monograph[CU00] of Ulysse Chevalier (1841-1923)[AF82, 55]. Then in 1903 Thurston wrote an anti-Shroud article, "The Holy Shroud and the Verdict of History," in the English Jesuit journal, The Month[TH03]. In it Thurston included an English translation of Chevalier's fraudulent invention of the d'Arcis Memorandum (see "Pierre d'Arcis #19")[TH03, 21-26]. It is possible that Thurston did not know that it was fraudulent, that there was no actual parchment Memorandum, only two rough paper drafts which Chevalier fraudulently combined into one parchment document[BB91, 236-237; AM00, 151-152]. At the outset Thurston made an important concession that, either the Shroud is a forgery or it is Jesus' burial sheet:

"As to the identity of the body whose image is seen on the Shroud, no question is possible. The five wounds, the cruel flagellation, the punctures encircling the head, can still be clearly distinguished in spite of the darkening of the whole fabric. If this is not the impression of the Body of Christ, it was designed as the counterfeit of that impression. In no other personage since the world began could these details be verified"[TH03, 19; WE54, 40]

In my forthcoming book, I call this the "Central Dilemma of the Shroud."

Thurston brushed aside the refutation of the forgery thesis by the agnostic Sorbonne Professor of Anatomy, Yves Delage (1854-1920):

"As the shroud is authenticated since the fourteenth century, if the image is a faked painting, there must at this epoch, have existed an artist-who has remained unknown-capable of executing a work hardly within the power of the greatest Renaissance painters. While this is already very difficult to admit for an image painted as a positive, it becomes quite incredible in the case of a negative image, which lacks all aesthetic character in this form and assumes its value only when the lights and shades are reversed, while strictly respecting their contours and values. Such an operation would be almost impossible except by photography, an art unknown in the fourteenth century. The forger, while painting a negative, would have to know how to distribute light and shade so that after reversal they would give the figure which he attributed to Christ, and that with perfect precision; ... I add this argument whose force will be felt on reflection: Why should this forger have taken the trouble to realise a beauty not visible in his work and discernible only after reversal which was only later made possible? He would be working for his contemporaries and not for the twentieth century and the Academy of Sciences"[GM69].

Thurston deludedly thought the "history" of the Shroud was more important than its "scientific aspect':

"... M. Vignon's essay created a profound impression ... But before we come to take an account of what may be called the scientific aspect of the subject, there is an important preliminary question to be settled belonging to the domain of history"[TH03, 17-18].

But if "science" proved the Shroud is not painted (which it did - see 11Jul16), then the "history" of the Shroud which claimed it was "cunningly painted" (see 08Nov22), is wrong!

Thurston was doubly wrong that there was a d'Arcis Memorandum and that it was sent to the Pope, Clement VII (r. 1523-34):

"Under these circumstances Pierre d'Arcis drew up a very clear and able memorial, which he forthwith despatched to the Pope"[TH03, 21].

That there never was a d'Arcis Memorandum is evidenced by there being no original of it in the either the Troyes' or Papal archives:

"Similarly, there is no proof that the letter was ever sent to the pope. All that we have are the two copies of the rough draft. There is no copy of such a letter in the Vatican Archives; the Troyes diocesan records; in the works of Nicolaus Camuzat (the historian for the diocese); the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, where the copies of the rough draft were found; or anywhere else. Moreover, in numerous subsequent and extemporaneous documents from Pope Clement VII concerning the Shroud and its exhibition, the pope never said a word about such a previous communication from the bishop"[AM00, 152].

Thurston then quotes the supposed d'Arcis Memorandum (see [Pierre d'Arcis #19]) and in fact the English text of the d'Arcis Memorandum we have is Thurston's translation from its Latin[WI79, 266].

After quoting his English translation of the d'Arcis Memorandum, Thurston summarised its "confirmatory evidence," including:

"We possess nearly a score of documents which have some direct or indirect bearing on the facts reported in the Bishop's memorial. It may be said unhesitatingly that none of these in any one detail are in conflict with his statements. Such evidence as they furnish is wholly confirmatory"[TH03, 26].

But Shroud scholar Luigi Fossatt (1920-2007) checked the documents in the Appendix of Chevalier's monograph and found that those that are contrary to the Shroud's authenticity all boil down to one, "the so-called Memorandum of Pierre d'Arcis":

"But what documents and how many did Chevalier find, ninety-odd years ago, that are contrary to the authenticity of the Shroud? The first collection of documents appeared as an appendix in his Étude critique .... There are thirty-three items. 1. Four documents that are not concerned with authenticity, in fact they presume the Shroud to be authentic: a) the liturgical office approved by Julius II (1506); b) part of a text by a canon of Lirey who laments that the church no longer possesses the Holy Shroud of Our Lord; c) a text of Sixtus IV that indirectly mentions the Holy Shroud (1473); d) a brief report of an exposition (1503). 2. Eleven notarial and judicial documents concerning a litigation lasting several years between the canons of Lirey for the return of the Holy Shroud to their church, and the legitimate proprietor of the Shroud, Marguerite de Charny; 3. Five labels wrapped around the documents; 4. Calvin's derisory passage in Treatise on relics (1563). That leaves twelve documents. One is of very little interest because it is only a XVIth or XVIIth century résumé of an original. But not all of the remaining eleven can be considered contrary to authenticity: 1. The Memorandum of Pierre d'Arcis (1389); 2, 3, 4. The first version of the Bull of 6 January 1390 and the related letters to Pierre d'Arcis and the ecclesiastical officials of Autun, Langres and Châlons-sur-Marne; 5. The Report of the Liege investigation, which merely confirms what Clement VII had established, without giving any personal judgment. This includes the remaining six documents: a) the letter of Charles VI, king of France, to the bailiff of Troyes instructing him to requisition the Shroud (1389); b, c, d) the report of the bailiff, with two accompanying letters (1389); e) an official letter from the king's sergeant (1389); f) the letter from Clement VII to Geoffroy II de Charny, which is not concerned with authenticity (1390) ... All things considered, the documents contrary to authenticity, those that support a manual origin of the imprints, are reduced to one only: the so-called Memorandum of Pierre d'Arcis"[FL92, 3-4]!

Thurston's second item of "confirmatory evidence" was:

"A more important confirmation is to be found in the fact that whereas Pierre d'Arcis describes the shroud as fabricated in the time of his predecessor, it curiously happens that the history of the supposed relic for thirteen hundred years down to that precise date remains an absolute blank"[TH03, 26].

Thurston is lying! At the very end of his article, after admitting that his "conclusive" historical evidence against the Shroud, "would not perhaps be sufficient ... in a modern court of law"[TH03, 26], Thurston further admited that he knew the "history" of the Shroud having been "stolen" (in the 1204 Sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade as there was no other occasion when the Shroud was stolen):

"It is just conceivable, for instance, that the consciousness that the shroud had been stolen prevented the Charny family from giving any account of its previous history, and caused them even to acquiesce in the description of it as a mere picture or facsimile. But, on the other hand, the owners of stolen property do not generally seek to advertise the fact by bringing crowds together to view it, and in any case the alleged testimony of the artist remains unaccounted for"[TH03, 26].

And the crusader who stole the Shroud was Othon IV de la Roche (c.1170-1234), who `just happened' to be a direct ancestor of Jeanne de Vergy (c.1332–1428), the wife of Geoffroy I de Charny (c.1300-56)[see "1204b"] , and co-exhibitor with him of the Shroud in 1355[see "1355"]!

Thurston's, "But, on the other hand, the owners of stolen property do not generally seek to advertise the fact by bringing crowds together to view it" is weak. As he well knows, in his own translation of the d'Arcis Memorandum, d'Arcis said that after the 1355 exposition, the Shroud had been "kept ... hidden afterwards for thirty-four years or thereabouts down to the present year"[TH03, 22]! And in 1355 France had suffered the twin catastrophes of the Black Death from 1347-52, which killed 30%-50% of its population, and the English invasion in the first phase of the Hundred Years (1337–1360), so it was the right time to show the Shroud to the suffering French as a sign that God had not abandoned them.

Thurston's "in any case the alleged testimony of the artist remains unaccounted for"[TH03, 22], is even weaker. What "artist"? d'Arcis doesn't say, and being a lawyer [see "Pierre d'Arcis #19"], he would have if there had been one. And what "testimony"? That the Shroud had been "cunningly painted"? The Shroudman's image was not painted, so that "testimony" was false!

Thurston's third item of "confirmatory evidence" began:

"Our documents abundantly show that ... The Papal Court, influenced perhaps by Geoffrey de Charny [Geoffroy II de Charny (1352-98)], would even seem to have shown itself somewhat hostile, and the Bishop's request for the entire suppression of the shroud was bluntly refused"[TH03, 27].

Thurston evidently didn't know what I explained in a previous post, that Pope Clement VII knew from his former neighbour Jeanne de Vergy that the Shroud had been looted from Constantinople in 1204 by her ancestor, Othon de la Roche (c.1170-1234), and passed down to her, so it belonged to the Byzantine Empire, presenting the Pope with a diplomatic problem if at the 1389 exposition it was stated that the Shroud was the actual Shroud of Christ:

"Sox claimed that `The de Charnys appear to have been unconvinced of the authenticity of their Shroud, and quite willing to accept it as a 'likeness' or 'representation' (p.19[SH88, 19]). But Sox failed to consider that Pope Clement VII (r. 1378-94) who ordered that Bishop d'Arcis remain `perpetually silent' about the 1389 second Lirey exposition in exchange for Geoffroy II de Charny (c.1352–1398) and his mother Jeanne de Vergy (c.1332–1428) only claiming that the Shroud was `a representation'; as Robert of Geneva, was a nephew of Jeanne's second husband Aymon IV de Geneva (1324-88). And after Jeanne married Aymon in c.1359 she took her ~7 year-old son Geoffroy II, her ~3 year-old daughter Charlotte, and the Shroud, to live with Aymon in Anthon, High Savoy, where they were neighbours of Robert (see 16Feb15). There they would have given the future Pope a private viewing of the Shroud and explained to him that it was looted in the 1204 sack of Constantinople by Jeanne's ancestor, Othon de la Roche (c.1170-1234) [see 25Oct15). The problem for Pope Clement VII was that the Byzantine Empire (c. 330–1453) still existed and what's more, the Byzantine Emperor John V Palaiologos (1332–1391), was a son of Anna of Savoy (1306-65), a daughter of Count Amadeus V of Savoy (1249-1323), who in turn established Chambéry as his seat! So if the de Charny's continued to claim that the Shroud was Jesus' burial Shroud, John V would have known it was the one looted from Constantinople and demanded it be returned, creating a diplomatic crisis for the Pope! It seems significant that it was only when the Byzantine Empire finally fell in 1453 that Geoffroy II's daughter, Marguerite de Charny (c. 1390–1460), transferred the Shroud to Duke Louis I of Savoy (1440-1465)."

Thurston's fourth and last item of "confirmatory evidence" was:

"But the most damning and conclusive piece of evidence, one to which Canon Chevalier himself, it seems to me, has hardly given sufficient prominence, is the undoubted fact that Geoffrey de Charny and the canons had never ventured to maintain to the Pope that their shroud was an authentic relic"[TH03, 28].

But this is an example of the Argument from Ignorance Fallacy: `I Herbert Thurston, living in England in the 1900s, do not know if Geoffrey II de Charny privately told Pope Clement VII in France in the 1380s (or his mother Jeanne de Vergy when he was Robert of Geneva in the 1360s), over 520 years before, that the Shroud was the very burial sheet of Jesus, therefore it isn't"!

Thurston continued:

"M. Vignon spends a page of his book in asking why Bishop Peter d'Arcis in writing to the Pope did not produce the authentic records from the archives of his episcopal court to prove that the shroud was a painting. The answer is very simple. Bishop d'Arcis did not waste time in arguing the point further for the sufficient reason that nobody contested it. Whatever the people believed, it is quite certain now that from the very first neither Geoffrey, nor the canons, nor the Pope supposed that the so-called shroud was anything else but an ordinary painting"[TH03, 28-29].

Leaving aside that falsehood (see above that Geoffrey II de Charny and Pope Clement VII did know the Shroud to be Jesus'), the fact is, and Thurston must know it, that there are no "authentic records from the archives of his [d'Arcis] episcopal court" in suport of d'Arcis' claim in his Memorandum that:

"Eventually, after diligent inquiry and examination, he [Bishop Henri de Poitiers] 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"[TH03, 22]

That was Vignon's point, amongst others, in his 1902 book that, in "the archives of Troyes ... there is to be found no written record of any public disavowal of the relic":

"According to Monsieur Chevalier, this ecclesiastical pronouncement settles finally the question of the authenticity of the Shroud of Lirey ... The Bishop of 1389 recalls the fact that in 1353 his predecessor, after careful inquiry, had obtained a confession of the fraud from the forger himself, and proceeds ... [Latin omitted]. There, says Monsieur Chevalier, is the avowal of the actual forger himself. What more can be desired? We are not disposed to admit so easily an `ex parte' statement. The imputations and assumptions of the Bishop's inquiry - nay, the very avowal of the so-called forger - are worthless if we are able to prove that the impressions on the Shroud cannot have been painted, but are of the nature of a photographic negative ... We may be allowed to point out that the archives of Troyes must have been very badly kept when there is to be found no written record of any public disavowal of the relic. The Pope's letters on the subject make no mention of any such formal prohibition ... Indeed, had the authorities of the Abbey of Lirey, together with the Charny family, been guilty of the attempt to foist upon the religious world a manufactured relic they would have been well deserving of censure, if not of excommunication ..."[VP02, 57-58).

It would have been automatic, in d'Arcis' writing to the Pope about an investigation which discovered a confessed forger of the Shroud, to include details of the investigation, and especially the name of the forger. That those details were not included in d'Arcis' Meomorandum, shows that there was no investigation and no forger and why the d'Arcis Memorandum remained as two rough drafts and was never sent to Pope Clement!

Thurston completely ignored Vignon's point above that even if there had been an inquiry and a confession by an artist that he had painted the Shroud image, it would have all been "worthless if we are able to prove that the impressions on the Shroud cannot have been painted, but are of the nature of a photographic negative"[VP02, 58]. Vignon does just that in the remainder of his 1902 book, which Thurston, writing his article in 1903, must have read, but simply ignored.

Thurston also ignored Vignon's point above that had there been an investigation by Henri de Poitiers in 1355 which discovered that the Shroud was a painted forgery purporting to be the very burial sheet of Jesus and misleading a great many pilgrims, then "the Charny family ... would have been well deserving of censure, if not of excommunication"[VP02, 58]. When in fact, as we saw in "Pierre d'Arcis #19," amongst other evidence that Henri de Poitiers didn't have a problem with the Shroud, "Geoffroy II de Charny married Henri de Poitiers' niece, Marguerite de Poitiers (c. 1362-1418)!

Thurston concluded his article, with blatant self-contradiction, doubting "if anything can settle" the question whether the Shroud is a 14th century painted forgery or is the very burial sheet of Jesus, stating that "all history is relative," and what he treats "as conclusive ... would not ... be sufficient to convict ... in a modern court of law," yet "the probability of an error in the verdict of history" is "almost infinitesimal":

"There are many minor points that might be urged, but what has been said seems to me sufficient to settle the question, if anything can settle it. Of course all historical evidence is to some extent relative. What we treat as conclusive in discussing the events of the fourteenth century would not perhaps be sufficient to convict a prisoner on trial for his life in a modern court of law. None the less, the case is here so strong that however plausible M. Vignon's scientific hypothesis may seem, the probability of an error in the verdict of history must be accounted, it seems to me, as almost infinitesimal"[VPL, 29]!

In 1912 Thurston wrote an article, titled, "The Holy Shroud (of Turin)," in the Catholic Encyclopedia[OG85, 50; WR10, 121]. However, even though that article was corrected in 1968 in the hardcopy edition[WR10, 123], Thurston's fallacious article still appears in online editions[TH12]. Few Catholics and even fewer non-Catholic Christians believed in the Shroud after this article appeared[SD89, 23].

The first part of Thurston's article covered issues that have been dealt with above. However, having ignored Vignon's "photographic negative" evidence, Thurston unwisely tried to answer it:

"From the scientific point of view, however, the difficulty of the `negative' impression on the cloth is not so serious as it seems. This Shroud like the others was probably painted without fraudulent intent to aid the dramatic setting of the Easter sequence: `Dic nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via Angelicos testes, sudarium et vestes'["Tell us, Mary, what did you see on the way? ... I saw ... The angelic witnesses, the shroud and His clothes"[VPL]]. As the word sudarium suggested, it was painted to represent the impression made by the sweat of Christ, i.e. probably in a yellowish tint upon unbrilliant red. This yellow stain would turn brown in the course of centuries, the darkening process being aided by the effects of fire and sun. Thus, the lights of the original picture would become the shadow of Paleotto's reproduction of the images on the shroud is printed in two colours, pale yellow and red. As for the good proportions and æsthetic effect, two things may be noted. First, that it is highly probable that the artist used a model to determine the length and position of the limbs, etc.; the representation no doubt was made exactly life size. Secondly, the impressions are only known to us in photographs so reduced, as compared with the original, that the crudenesses, aided by the softening effects of time, entirely disappear"[TH12].

Thurston's colour reversion explanation had already been refuted by Vignon:

"At one time, a certain theory was advanced to explain away the negative ... that the image was painted as a positive, but that in the course of time it became a negative ... Dr. VIGNON ... disposed of this fanciful theory, by pointing out that, in such case, a chemical change should have taken place; that chemical change was possible only in pigments which were substantial; that there is no trace either of substantial pigments or pigments of any kind; that pigments could not have been attached to the thin, fragile material of the Shroud ; and that, even if they had been attached, they would long since have flaked off, owing to the fact that the Shroud has been rolled up in a casket for hundreds of years"[BP28, 95-96].

Thurston's final claim in his 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia article was:

"Lastly, the difficulty must be noticed that while the witnesses of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries speak of the image as being then so vivid that the blood seemed freshly shed, it is now darkened and hardly recognizable without minute attention. On the supposition that this is an authentic relic dating from the year A.D. 30, why should it have retained its brilliance through countless journeys and changes of climate for fifteen centuries, and then in four centuries more have become almost invisible? On the other hand if it be a fabrication of the fifteenth century this is exactly what we should expect"[TH12].

I had answered this in a previous post (15Aug20). Thurston provided no reference backing up his assertion and in the 1.7 gigabytes of Shroud literature on my system I cannot find anything with "vivid," "fresh" "shed" and "blood" together. So I assume that Thurston made it up! Below is an early 16th century depiction of the Shroud in a prayer book, presumably owned by Queen Claude of France (1499–1524)[DE16].

[Above (enlarge)[DE16]: An early 16th century depiction of the Shroud in its pre-1532 fire state.]

As can be seen above, although the bishops' clothing is vivid and bright, the image on the Shroud is faint and the blood is dull brown, as it is today, 5 centuries later! So there is no evidence that in "the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries" "the image" was "then so vivid that the blood seemed freshly shed," as Thurston, claimed, without references. And there is evidence (see above) that in the sixteenth century the Shroud's image was faint and the blood brown, as it is today! Turning Thurston's conclusion on its head: `since the Shroud is the very burial sheet of Jesus and not a medieval forgery, this is exactly what we should expect'!

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
AF82. Adams, F.O., 1982, "Sindon: A Layman's Guide to the Shroud of Turin," Synergy Books: Tempe AZ.
AM00. Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY.
BB91. Bonnet-Eymard, B., "Study of original documents of the archives of the Diocese of Troyes in France with particular reference to the Memorandum of Pierre d'Arcis," 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, 233-260.
BP28. Beecher, P.A., 1928, "The Holy Shroud: Reply to the Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J.," M.H. Gill & Son: Dublin.
CU00. Chevalier, 1900, "Etude critique sur l'origine du Saint Suaire de Lirey-Chambery-Turin," Picard: Paris.
DE16. Donandoni, E., 2016, "5 minutes with ... The earliest painted representation of the Turin Shroud," Christie's, 7 June.
FL92. Fossati, L., 1992, "A Critical Study of the Lirey Documents," Shroud Spectrum International, No. 41, December, 2-11.
GM69. Green, M., 1969, "Enshrouded in Silence: In search of the First Millennium of the Holy Shroud," Ampleforth Journal, Vol. 74, No. 3, Autumn, 319-345.
HTW. "Herbert Thurston," Wikipedia, 1 May 2022.
OG85. O'Rahilly, A. & Gaughan, J.A., ed., 1985, "The Crucified," Kingdom Books: Dublin.
PM23. Potts, M., 2023, "Herbert Thurston," Psi Encyclopedia, The Society for Psychical Research: London, 2 February.
SD89. Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA.
SH88. Sox, H.D., 1988, "The Shroud Unmasked: Uncovering the Greatest Forgery of All Time," Lamp Press: Basingstoke UK.
TH03. Thurston, H., 1903, "The Holy Shroud and the Verdict of History," The Month, CI, January, 17-29.
TH12. Thurston, H., 1912, "The Holy Shroud (of Turin)," The Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent.
VP02. Vignon, P., 1902, "The Shroud of Christ," University Books: New York NY, Reprinted, 1970.
VPL. "Victimae Paschali Laudes (unknown translation)," Wikisource, 25 January 2016.
WR10. Wilcox, R.K., 2010, "The Truth About the Shroud of Turin: Solving the Mystery," [1977], Regnery: Washington DC.
WE54. Wuenschel, E.A., 1954, "Self-Portrait of Christ: The Holy Shroud of Turin," Holy Shroud Guild: Esopus NY, Third printing, 1961.
WI79. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition.

Posted 21 February 2023. Updated 3 March 2023.

Prehistory of the Shroud (1001-1355). Turin Shroud Encyclopedia

Turin Shroud Encyclopedia
Copyright © Stephen E. Jones[1]

Prehistory of the Shroud #21

This is "Prehistory of the Shroud (1001-1355)," part #21 of my Turin Shroud Encyclopedia. See also 1st century and index. For more information about this series, see part #1 and part #2. As explained in part #16, the primary purpose of these "Prehistory" and later "History" of the Shroud articles in my Turin Shroud Encyclopedia is to help me write Chapter 9, "Prehistory of the Shroud (AD 29 - 1355)" and Chapter 10, "History of the Shroud (1355-present)" of my book, "Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus!" I am using in-line referencing to save time in renumbering out-of-order footnotes. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. However, as I wrote below, "I have abandoned this Prehistory series, because it is a duplication of my "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Eleventh century" and other centuries."

[Index #1] [Previous: Ulysse Chevalier #20] [Next: Herbert Thurston #22]

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Eleventh century (1001-1100)
1009 The tomb of Jesus is destroyed by agents of Caliph Al Hakim (996-1021) [BW57, 97; WI79, 59; AHW]. This would lead ultimately to the Crusades[NE85, 8]. What was destroyed, and restored in 1048[NE85, 9], was the Edicule[Right (enlarge)[CS17].] (from the Latin aedicule, or "little house"), a small structure within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which encloses the remains of a cave that was the tomb of Jesus Christ[RK17].

1014 Pope Sergius IV (r. 1009-12) consecrates an altar in the chapel of Pope John VII (r. 705-707) in St. Peter's Basilica, to the Veil of Veronica, possibly to on its arrival in Rome[WI79, 109; OM10, 37]. [Left (original): Excerpt from a poor quality distance photograph of Rome's Veronica icon[SVS], which the Vatican now won't allow to be seen or photographed up close because it has so deteriorated[BW57, 41; WI91, 183-187; WI98, 63; OM10, 37].]

This is Rome's early copy of the Image of Edessa[WI98, 269-270; GV01, 6] (the Shroud four-doubled tetradiplon). This copy becams known as the Veronica (from vera icon-"true likeness")[WI79, 256]. The story of a woman of Jerusalem named Veronica handing her veil to Jesus on his way to his crucifixion and imprinting his face image on it, is a late medieval innovation[WI79, 109].

c. 1025 "Threnos" or Lamentation scenes appear in art about this time, showing for the first time Christ laid out in death in the attitude on the Shroud[WI79, 256]. In these scenes a large cloth is depicted, consistent with the full size of the Shroud-whereas up till now burials had been depicted with Christ wrapped `mummy' style[WI79, 256]. For example, the late eleventh/early twelfth century Byzantine ivory of the threnos, or lamentation scene of Jesus being mourned as he is laid out in death, in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London[WI91, 151],

[Above (enlarge): "Scenes from the Passion of Christ ...The Lamentation"[SFP]: Part of a larger carved ivory panel in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Note that Jesus' arms cross awkwardly at the wrists, right over left, exactly as they are on the Shroud, in this 11th/12th century Byzantine icon. This alone (and it's not alone) is proof beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroud existed at least a century before the earliest 1260 radiocarbon date of the Shroud.]

Jesus' hands are crossed awkwardly at the wrists, with the right arm over the left, exactly as on the Shroud[WI10, 183]. Moreover, Jesus is lying on a double-length cloth[WI91, 151] which has a repeating pattern of Xs similar to those that accompany reproduction of the image of Edessa[PM96, 195] and hinting at the Shroud's herringbone weave[SD99, 204-205]. This late eleventh century threnos or Lamentation artistic style of depicting Jesus laid out in death on a double-length shroud coincides with the first references to the burial sheet [sindon] in Constantinople's relic lists[SD89, 88].

1032 Byzantine general George Maniakes (c. 998-1043), taking advantage of quarrels between Arab chiefs on the empire's eastern borders, captures Edessa on behalf of the emperor, Romanos III Argyros (r. 1028-34). Maniakes brought back with him to Constantinople the purportedly `genuine' letter of Jesus to Abgar V, the previous one brought from Edessa to Constantinople by general John Kourkouas (c. 900-946) in 944 with the Image of Edessa/Shroud (see 944a) having been discovered to be a fake[WI10, 178].

1036 The Image of Edessa is carried in procession in Constantinople, during the reign of Emperor Michael Paphlagos (1034-41) , accompanied by the reputed `genuine' letter of Jesus to Abgar[WI79, 157; WI98, 270].

1058 Christian Arab writer Abu Nasr Yahya states that he saw the cloth of Edessa in Hagia Sophia Cathedral, Constantinople[WI79, 157; WI98, 270].

c. 1063 The Crown of Thorns is transferred from Jerusalem to Constantinople[CJ84, 35; CTW].

[Right (enlarge)[FCW]: Crown of Thorns, received by French King Louis IX (r.1226-1270) from Emperor Baldwin II (1228-1273) in 1239, to repay Baldwin's debt to the Venetians[CJ84, 35]. It is now only a circlet of rushes, the thorns having been given away as relics[CJ84, 34]. The Crown was preserved at Notre-Dame de Paris 2019, when after fire it was moved to the Louvre, Paris[CTW].

1071 The Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes (r. 1068-71) in a battle at Manzikert, Armenia, resulting in the empire's loss of most of Asia Minor[TF06, 28; RDW].

1075 On 14 March the Arca Santa [Left (enlarge)[FRW].], the chest in which the Sudarium. of Oviedo is kept, is officially opened in the presence of King Alfonso VI (1065–1109), his sister Doña Urraca (c. 1033-1103), Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar aka el Cid (c. 1043-1099) and bishops[GM98, 17; OM10, 186]. The King identified the Sudarium as one of the relics in the Arca Santa[IJ98, 79]. This official act was recorded in a document which is now kept in the Capitular Archives of the Oviedo Cathedral[GM98, 17]. An inventory is carried out, which includes the Sudarium[BJ01, 196; GV01, 43; OM10, 186]. King Alfonso ordered that the chest be silver-plated to honor the precious relics[BJ01, 196; GV01, 43]. An inscription on the chest reads: "el Santo Sudario de NS.J.C." ("the Holy Sudarium of Our Lord Jesus Christ")[GV01, 43]. It is certain that the Sudarium was in Oviedo in 1075, and that it had been in Spain for several centuries prior to that date[BJ01, 79]. And all of the studies carried out on the Sudarium indicate that it covered the same crucifixion victim as the Shroud of Turin[BJ01, 79].

"We are faced with a choice. There are two irreconcilable conclusions, one of which must be wrong. All the studies on the sudarium point to its having covered the same face as the Shroud did, and we know that the sudarium was in Oviedo in 1075. On the other hand, the carbon dating specialists have said that the Shroud dates from 1260 to 1390. Either the sudarium has nothing to do with the Shroud, or the carbon dating was wrong - there is no middle way, no compromise. If the sudarium did not cover the same face as the Shroud, there are an enormous number of coincidences, too many for one small piece of cloth. If there was only one connection, maybe it could be just a coincidence, but there are too many. The only logical conclusion from all the evidence is that both the Oviedo sudarium and the Turin Shroud covered the same face"[GM98, 64].

1078 Seljuk Turks capture Jerusalem, taking over the holy places and thereby sparking off the Crusades[WI98, 270].

1092 Letter purporting to be from the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081-1118) to various Western princes, including Robert I, Count of Flanders (c. 1035-93), to help Constantinople not fall into the hands of the pagans, since in that city were kept very precious relics of the Lord, including His burial clothes [linteamina "linen cloths"] found in the sepulchre after His resurrection[RG81, xxxv; DT12, 177].

1095 Emperor Alexios I appeals to the West for aid[TF06, 28; AKW]. On 27 November, at the conclusion of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II (r. 1088-99) gave a speech in which he summoned the attending nobility to wrest the Holy Land, and the eastern churches from the control of the Seljuk Turks[PUW]. This was the speech that triggered the Crusades[PUW], nine in number, spanning the years 1096 to 1271, that were authorized by the popes and undertaken by European Christians, ostensibly to make safe the routes of pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the environs of Jerusalem, but they attempted conquest of much of the Near East and included looting for profit[TF06, 28].

1097 First Crusade contingent of many thousands of their countrymen

[Right (enlarge)[DU18]: Map of the First Crusade routes.]

raised by Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine (c. 1060- 1100) and his two brothers Eustace III, Count of Boulogne (c. 1050-1125) and Baldwin of Boulogne (c. 1060-1118), reaches Constantinople[ML08]. The leaders of the Crusade enjoyed the hospitality of Alexios and he presumably showed them the Shroud that was then kept in the Pharos Chapel[ML08], because later Crusader art in and around Jerusalem showed they at knew what the Shroud looked like [see "c.1149"]. After some dissension and disputes the Crusade left Constantinople in the summer of 1097 and fought their way to Jerusalem through Nicea and Antioch[ML08]. On the way they passed through Cappadocia to Caesarea, the capital[ML08]. At Caesarea they took differing routes to Antioch[ML08]. Godfrey de Bouillon and his party took the easier route whilst Tancred (1075-1112) and Baldwin took the shorter and more difficult through the Cilician Gates to Tarsus where they freed the Christian population from Turkish domination[ML08]. However, before Antioch Baldwin turned East to Armenian Edessa that was then ruled by Thorus with whom he became co-ruler, and then to eliminate him to found the Dynasty of `The Counts of Edessa' so they remained before being forced out by Zengi of Aleppo (c. 1085-1146) in 1144[ML08].

1099 7 June – 15 July. The Siege of Jerusalem was waged by European forces of the First Crusade, resulting in the capture of Jerusalem from the Muslim Fatimid Caliphate, and laying the foundation for the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, which lasted almost two centuries[SJW]. The capture of Jerusalem was the final major battle of the first of the Crusades to occupy the Holy Land begun in 1095[SJW]. Godfrey of Bouillon, prominent among the leaders of the crusades, was elected ruler, eschewing the title "king"[SJW].

I have abandoned this Prehistory series, because it is a duplication of my "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Eleventh century" and other centuries.

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
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Posted 11 February 2023. Updated 2 March 2023.