Shroud of Turin News, January - June 2026

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

Newcomers start with: "The Turin Shroud in a nutshell"

[Previous: Shroud of Turin News, July - December 2025] [Next: To be advised]

This is the fifteenth instalment of my Shroud of Turin News for January - June 2026.

I have removed Total Pageviews, which stood at 6,604,234, after I realised that I can see on another page what it currently is, and therefore if and when Google corrects it.

Articles will be in date order (oldest first). My comments will be within [bold square brackets] to distinguish them from the articles' words. In this post I will first list the more significant articles, after which I will prune duplications, and then comment on what is left.

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My news I had continued most days word-processing Chapter 2, "What is the Shroud of Turin?" In parallel with my Open letter to Nature: "Shroud of Turin: Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?" Today (3 September) I started word-processing chapter 3, "A linen cloth," having previously completed word-processing chapter 1, "Preface" on 28 July and Chapter 2, "What is the Shroud of Turin?" on 3 September.

"New twist in Turin Shroud mystery as human DNA found on sacred Christian relic," GBN, 4 January 2026, Peter Stevens. "The presence of an "unusually high number of human heteroplasmies" and multiple sources of human DNA confirmed the Shroud of Turin "came into contact with multiple individuals, thereby challenging the possibility of identifying the original DNA of the Shroud"." [There are two reasons why identifying the DNA on the Shroud as Jesus' has never been a shroudie claim: 1. Any human DNA found on the Shroud could have been from one one of the great many humans who had handled the Shroud in its ~2000 year history. As STURP's blood chemist Alan Adler (1931-2000) pointed out:

"In `The DNA of God?' Garza-Valdez makes a large number of extravagant claims, many of them self-contradictory, at odds with accepted Shroud scientific literature, or at odds with basic accepted biochemical, chemical, or physical knowledge. This is illustrated by the DNA claim. The problem with the DNA claim is not that human DNA was isolated, but in identifying whose DNA it is. The Shroud has been contaminated by human contact countless times, offering many problems in this type of analysis."[AA99, 108]

And 2. We don't have Jesus' DNA to compare it with! ]

"The DNA from animals including dogs, cats, chicken, and cows, suggest the linen travelled through the Mediterranean or had Mediterranean origins."[However, this is different. DNA of animals from locations which are consistent with the Shroud having "travelled through the Mediterranean" is cconsistent with the Shroud having journeyed from Jerusalem to Constantinople via Antioch in Syria and Edessa in today's Eastern Turkey, from the first to the tenth centuries[04Dec15]. It is not consistent with Shroud scepticism's "Standard Model" (see 11May24). Which is that the Shroud's flax was harvested, retted, spun into linen thread, the thread was then woven on a loom into a linen cloth, all within France[RTB], and then the image was imprinted on the cloth by an unknown forger who lived in the diocese of Troyes, in the time of Bishop Henri de Poitiers (r. 1354–1370)![RTB]. This "Standard Model" was implied by Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory's Director, Prof. Edward Hall (1924-2001):

"There was a multi-million-pound business in making forgeries during the 14th century. Someone just got a bit of linen, faked it up and flogged it."[WS00, 9 4; HT01; OM10, 220]]

"The Shroud of Turin goes digital: Turin officially opens an ancient relic to the world in the AI era," ZENIT, 11 January 2026. [Right (enlarge): Pope Leo XIV (r. 2025-) looks at the new online digital Shroud platform.] "On January 9, a quiet but symbolically charged moment unfolded inside the Apostolic Palace. Pope Leo XIV became the first person to experience a new digital reading of the Shroud of Turin [Obviously false!], signaling that one of Christianity’s most scrutinized relics has now fully entered the online world. The initiative, called Avvolti, was presented to the Pope by Cardinal Roberto Repole, the pontifical custodian of the Shroud. The encounter marked a turning point: a relic long associated with guarded exhibitions and careful physical access is now available globally through a dedicated digital platform." [This is underwhelming! The Shroud has been online via Shroud Scope since 2010! Those interested in the Shroud know that, so this "turning point" will likely be ignored. The Vatican is deceived if it thinks that the Shroud being "available globally through a dedicated digital platform" is better than "guarded exhibitions and careful physical access"!]

"The Shroud of Turin enters the digital age," Aleteia, 12 January 2026, D. R. Esparza. "... Accessible via avvolti.org and sindone.org, the program works across smartphones, tablets, and computers. Users can move across a high-resolution reproduction of the cloth, enlarging details associated with the face, the wounds, and the signs traditionally linked to the Passion. "[Immediately there is a problem, Those sites are only in Italian and require a translation, into English and other languages. Many non-Italian readers (including me) could not be bothered with a site, after being confronted with a foreign language.] ... The digital project builds directly on the physical Avvolti installation that drew large crowds during the Jubilee year of 2025. From April 28 to May 5, a tent in Piazza Castello housed a life-size, 1:1 reproduction of the Shroud displayed on a specially designed five-meter table. More than 30,000 visitors from 79 countries passed through in just eight days, confirming that interest in the relic remains both intense and international. [The Vatican's self-deception continues. When the Shroud was last displayed physically in 2015, "From April 19, 2015 through June 24, 2015, more than two million visitors came to Turin from around the world to view the Shroud while it was on public display." (my emphasis)[SX20]. That was over a period of 66 days. That is an average of 30,000/8 = 3,750 per day for the digital exposition, compared with 2,000,000/66 = 30,303 per day for the 2015 physical exposition! So, the physical exposition of the Shroud in 2015 had as many visitors in 1 average day as the digital exhibition had in in 8 actual days! The Vatican is wasting its time and money hoping that a online digital exposition of the Shroud will substitute for a physical expoition of the Shroud. But they miss the point that to see the actual, physical, Shroud is to see the actual, physical, burial sheet of Jesus! Not a mere online photograph of it.]

"AI study blows open Shroud of Turin story and pinpoints strange origins," Irish Mirror, 23 January 2026, Emilia Randall. "A new 3D digital analysis suggests the Turin Shroud was likely created by a medieval artist using a shallow sculpture method, rather than being the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ ... Michael Moran used AI to reveal more of the cloth's history. In a startling revelation, researchers have employed AI technology to expose a glaring impossibility regarding the Shroud of Turin - long believed to be Christ's burial cloth." [This journalist confuses Michael Moran, who in this 2024 article, "'Face of Jesus' unveiled by AI using Shroud of Turin after astonishing discovery," By Michael Moran, Daily Express, 21 August 2024, is merely a journalist who used Midjourney, an image generation program to generate a so-called image of Jesus. I blogged about this on 25 October 2024, where I commented:"While some may be favourably impressed by this AI depiction of Jesus, I am not. All that this AI program does (and it is admittedly clever programming), is search the Internet for depictions of Jesus based on the Shroud and combine them into one Shroud-like image. I cannot understand why some prefer to have this, the equivalent of an artist's painting of Jesus, when they can actually have a photograph of Jesus at the instant of his

Above: "Shroud of Turin Face Detail," AllPosters.com]

resurrection (a "`snapshot' of the resurrection" ...) which this above Shroud face photograph is, over my computer desk as I type!

The article also confuses, "A new 3D digital analysis suggests the Turin Shroud was likely created by a medieval artist using a shallow sculpture method ... a Brazilian digital graphics specialist ... Cicero Moraes utilised free modelling software ... " which was not AI. I will comment on Moraes's "shallow sculpture method" next. ]

"Shroud of Turin 'impossible' discovery made by AI study," Emilia Randall, 23 January, 2026. [First, as previously mentioned, Moraes' theory that the shroudman's image was created by overlaying the Shroud cloth over a "low relief" (i.e. bas relief ), is not "AI". Here, from my posts of 10Oct25, 06Mar26 and 17Jul26, are some of the problems of Moraes' bas relief Shroud image formation theory theory: • Bishop d'Arcis would be wrong that the Shroud had been "cunningly painted" by an artist who confessed it to his predecessor, Bishop Henri de Poitiers. • As leading Shroud sceptic Walter McCrone (1916-2020) pointed out, a medieval forger would have simply painted the Shroud. • Art based on bas reliefs did not exist in the 14th century. • A bas relief is one-sided, whereas the Shroud image is two-sided: front and back. So a medieval forger transferring a bas relief image to the Shroud cloth would needed to have created two bas reliefs: one for the man's front and one for his back! • Such bas reliefs, engraved with anatomical details unknown in the fourteenth century, would be great works of art in their own right. So where are they; or where is the record of their having existed? • STURP found that there is no paint, pigment or dye which constitutes the Shroud's image, so that rules out a cold transfer of the bas relief image to the Shroud cloth using pigments, etc, as they would inevitably be trapped in the Shroud's weave. • STURP also found that bas-relief shrouds do not reproduce the Shroud's three-dimensional, superficial and non-directional properties. • If the Shroud image was created using heated bas reliefs to scorch the man's image onto the Shroud's linen, he would need to have manipulated a ~4.4 x ~1.1 metre (~14.4 x ~3.6 feet) linen cloth over two bas reliefs, heated at just the right temperature to not burn the cloth, when the only heat source was burning wood, charcoal, coal or oil, because electric heating was not invented until the 19th century. A heat scorch of a cloth draped over a hot bas relief inevitably causes hot spots (e.g. the tip of the nose) on the image, but there are no hot spots on the Shroud image; • Heat scorches fluoresce but the Shroud image does not fluoresce. • The blood was on the Shroud's linen before the image, which also rules out heated bas reliefs which would cook the blood. • If the Shroud was printed on linen laid over two bas relief, then the forger could run off many Shrouds, so why did he stop at one Shroud? • How did the forger obtain a ~4.4 x ~1.1 metre rare and expensive herringbone twill linen cloth, which the Shroud is? Which `just happens' to be close to 8 x 2 Assyrian cubits of 21.6 inches! ]

"Shroud of Turin: Medieval bas-relief hypothesis challenged on scientific grounds," Vatican News 10 February 2026.

"Shroud of Turin: Medieval Bas-Relief Hypothesis Questioned," Exaudi, 10 February, 2026.

"Believers See Jesus’s Face in the Shroud of Turin. A Study Now Says It’s Something Else. It may be no man at all." Popular Mechanics, 11 Febuary 2026, Michael Natale.

"Holy Shroud, medieval painting? The response of three Italian scientists to a Brazilian `researcher'," ZENIT, 11 February 2026, Valentina di Giorgio.

"New twist in battle over whether Turin Shroud is real or medieval fake," The Daily Star, 11 February 2026, Daniel Smith.

"Shroud of Turin Sculpture Theory Criticised by Experts in Latest Publication," Catholic Connect, 12 February 2026.

Expert debunks controversial evidence that ‘confirms’ existence of Jesus," LADbible", 12 February 2026, Joe Harker.

"Scientist Says Famous Jesus Relic Doesn’t Add Up," Inquisitr, 13 February 2026, Sohini Sengupta.

"Shroud study debate returns to spotlight," Aleteia, 18 February 2026, D. R. Esparza.

"A 600-Year-Old Document Exposes a Historic Fraud," Popular Mechanics, 17 March 2026, Michael Natale.

"Shroud: The Bas-Relief Hypothesis Definitively Debunked," UCCR, 23 March 2026, Alessandro Piana.

"The Shroud of Turin bears DNA from many people, plants and animals," New Scientist, 30 March 2026, James Woodford.

"New DNA Analysis Suggests That Shroud Of Turin May Have Indian Origins," NDTV, 31 March 2026, Srishti Singh Sisodia.

"Surprising DNA analysis reveals where Shroud of Turin may have actually originated," New York Post, 31 March 2026, Ben Cost.

"Shroud of Turin Mystery Deepens: Scientists Find DNA From ‘Multiple People’," Charisma Magazine, 31 March 2026, James Lasher.

"The mystery of the Shroud of Turin deepens,"Express Newspaper, 31 March 2026.

"Shroud of Turin shock as scientists find new DNA on Jesus 'burial cloth'," Daily Express, 31 March 2026, Emily Wright.

"Twist in Shroud of Turin mystery as scientists find shock new DNA in burial cloth ‘showing imprint of Jesus’," The Sun, 31 March 2026, Jamie Harris.

"New DNA research confirms Shroud of Turin's passage through the Middle East," Vatican News, 1 April 2026.

"DNA Study Casts Even More Doubt on Shroud of Turin’s True Origin," Gizmodo, 1 April 2026, Gayoung Lee.

"Scientists uncover human, plant, and microbial DNA in the Shroud of Turin," Tech Explorist, 2 April 2026, Pranjal Malewar.

"New Study Reopens the Case of the Turin Shroud’s Origins: what the DNA says," ZENIT, 3 April 2026.

"Shroud of Turin, claimed to be Jesus' burial cloth, contaminated with carrot and red coral DNA," Livescience, 5 April 2026, Chris Simms.

"Jesus’s Burial Cloth or Medieval Forgery? DNA Evidence Further Complicates the Debate Over the Shroud of Turin," Smithsonian Magazine, 9 April 2026, Sarah Kuta.

"DNA analysis claiming new origins for the Shroud of Turin

[Above: "A photo-negative view of the Shroud of Turin highlights the image of a bearded man on the shroud ..." Could an unknown medieval forger really have created this? Or does Naturalism's Emperor have no clothes?]

doesn't hold up, experts say," Scientific American, 9 April 2026, Stephanie Pappas.

"Shroud of Turin: DNA Tests Prove It’s A Forgery," Artlyst, 10 April 2026.

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To be continued in the sixteenth instalment 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
AA99. Adler, A.D., 1999, "The Nature of the Body Images on the Shroud of Turin," in Adler, A.D. & Crispino, D., ed., "The Orphaned Manuscript: A Gathering of Publications on the Shroud of Turin," Effat Editrice: Cantalupa, Italy, 2002, 103-112.
HT01. Hedges, R. & Tite M., 2001, "Obituary: Professor Edward Hall," The Independent, 16 August.
OM10. Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK.
RTB. Reference(s) to be provided.
SX20. "Shroud Exhibitions: 2015 Exposition," Shroud.com.
WS00. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London.

Posted 30 August 2026. Updated 18 September 2026.

Shroud of Turin News, July - December 2025

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

Newcomers start with: "The Turin Shroud in a nutshell"

[Previous: Shroud of Turin News, January - June 2025 ] [Next: Shroud of Turin News, January - June 2026].

This is my Shroud of Turin News for July - December 2025.

[The Total Pageviews (above right) of over 6 million is obviously wrong, presumably hacked. It is happening to others, so presumably Google knows about it. I have not removed Total Pageviews on my blog, so that Google can see it needs fixing, and so that when it has been fixed I will know that it has been.]

As previously mentioned, I don't want to abandon my Shroud of TurinNews posts, because they will be helpful in writing Chapter 11, "History of the Shroud," of my book in progress, Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus! [Right (enlarge)]. See 06Jul17, 03Jun18, 04Apr22, 13Jul22, 08Nov22, 20Jun24; 01Dec24 & 15Dec25.

Articles will be in date order. My comments will be within [bold square brackets] to distinguish them from the articles' words. I will list the more significant articles, and then comment on them.

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My news Yesterday, 17 July, I started on the next stage of writing my book: completing each chapter, the first being "01 Preface". My book is an outline of 27 chapters, each in various stages of completness. For the first time I started writing it in word-processed form.

"The silent sermon: The evangelical power of the Shroud," The Catholic Weekly, 2 July 2025, Daniel Ang. The Shroud of Turin has intrigued believers and non-believers alike for centuries. And in recent decades, it has become increasingly clear that the Shroud is not merely a religious curiosity. It is, in fact, one of the most extraordinary artefacts in human history. [The Shroud is not an artefact. An artefact is man-made: "An artifact or artefact (British English) is a general term for an item made or given shape by humans, such as a tool or a work of art, especially an object of archaeological interest."[AAW]. But the Shroudman's image is God-made, i.e. acheiropoiētos, "not made with [human] hands." The word occurs three times in the New Testament, of things made by God: Jesus' resurrection body (Mk 14:58; Jn 2:19-21); Christians' resurrection bodies (2Cor 5:1 and Christians' conversion (Col 2:11). It was used in c. 593 by the early historian Evagrius Scholasticus (c. 536-94) who wrote of a "divinely wrought image" (Gk acheiropoietos) on the Image of Edessa/Shroud which saved Edessa from a Persian siege in 544. See 07Dec16]

For many, it is a relic. For all of us, it is a mystery. And for those who seek truth, it can be a profound source of encounter with the Gospel. [In Roman Catholic theology a "relic" is "The material remains of a saint or holy person after his death", as opposed to an "icon" which is a humanly created representation of a real sacred person or thing[26Nov13]. So, if the Shroud is not a relic, i.e. Jesus' actual burial shroud, imprinted with an image of his actual resurrected body, and infused with his actual blood, then it is a man-made fake.

We are living in an age that hungers for evidence, for the tangible, for something real, especially when it comes to faith. And it is here that the Shroud speaks powerfully. [It would be nice if this were true, but in my experience it isn't. I live a type of `Walter Mitty' existence. In my own evangelical Christian church, of which I have been a member since 1994, i.e. ~32 years, I am a nobody. Some of my fellow members, including the Pastor, know of my interest in the Shroud, but no one asks me about it. Yet, on the Internet my blog has today (21 July) had a total of 3,615,419 page views since 30Jun07 which is 6961 days. Dividing 3,615,419 by 6961 days equals an average of 519 pageviews a day, over 19 years! And it is accelerating. Yesterday my blog had 4711 pageviews and Last Month it was 204,304! ]

Many now know that there is a great deal of scientific and historical evidence suggesting that the Shroud could not have been the work of a medieval forger, as claimed by the carbon dating results of 1988. [If my "Open letter to Nature is published it will consign the carbon dating results of 1988 to the dustbin of history!.] In fact, the deeper we delve, the more difficult it becomes to dismiss the Shroud as merely a product of human hands. [And yet the Shroud will continue to be dismissed by most people, including most Christians, as merely a product of human hands.]

... Even Dr Michael Tite, the man who oversaw that 1988 testing, later admitted in a 2016 BBC interview that he had come to believe a real human body had indeed been wrapped in the Shroud. That is a remarkable admission, one which we would do well to keep in view. [By coincidence, this very morning (21 July) I had included that quote in Chapter 4, "The Man on the Shroud" in my book in progress:

"There's no real evidence it was painted on there, and the other oddity is if you look at paintings from the Middle Ages they always paint Christ with the nails going through the palms of the hands. `Whereas in reality, you have to put the nails through the wrist, I think a complete replication of the image has not been achieved. `I don't believe it was the Shroud [of Jesus], but I believe it is highly probable that there was a body in there – it was the time of the Crusades and an appropriate way to humiliate a Christian would be to crucify him.'" (Tite, 2020)[21Jun20].

This is very significant. Unlike most Shroud sceptics, Tite saw the Shroud up close - for many hours at the cutting of the Shroud samples on 21 April 1988[08Dec22]. And he was forced to admit that the shroudman's image was not painted. But then it is a case of "out of the frying pan into the fire", "moving ... from a bad or difficult situation to a worse one." Because there are enormous problems with the Crucified Crusader Theory (see 19Jul17), which will be in my book. I have thought of writing an open letter to Tite listing those problems and asking him for his response, when I have the time.]

"Was the Shroud Laid on a Sculpture? A Study Full of Errors," UCCR, Alessandro Piana, 3 August 2025. The Shroud was allegedly not laid over a body but over a bas-relief sculpture. This is the "new" theory proposed by Brazilian designer Cicero Moraes, but it is riddled with errors that undermine its methodological validity. [See my 06 Mar26].

The Shroud of Turin, it is claimed, was not laid over a body but over a bas-relief sculpture. [A bas relief is one-sided, but the Shroudman's image is two-sided. So there would have needed to be two bas reliefs: one for the Shroud's front image and one for its back image. But why would a medieval forger go to all that trouble to make two bas relief sculptures, when he simply could have painted the Shroudman's image? This is a point that leading Shroud sceptic Walter McCrone (1916-2002) made:

"I realize that there are still, perhaps, a majority of people convinced by the carbon-dating that the `Shroud' is medieval, who are still looking for an answer as to how the `Shroud' was produced. Many mechanisms have already been proposed. Some say it was draped wet over a bas-relief to which it was shaped then dabbed with powder or a paint. Some say a painting was prepared and transferred to a cloth in contact with it by pressure ... 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 ..."[MC99, 122].]

[...]

The Brazilian designer used free software to digitally simulate in 3D the dynamics of the fabric and map the contact area.According to his findings, the contact pattern generated by the bas-relief model is more consistent with the Shroud image, showing less anatomical distortion and greater fidelity to the observed contours. [Moraes had set up a strawman by comparing only the projection of a three-dimensional human model and that of a bas-relief model. But by his own admission the bas-relief model only had "less anatomical distortion and greater fidelity to the observed contours" of the Shroud image than the three-dimensional human model. That is, the bas-relief model was only relatively closer to the Shroud image than the thr-dimensional human model. So, the bas-relief model still did not match the observed contours of the Shroudman's image!]

The first issue raised by Alessandro Piana is that the analysis does not address the physical and chemical elements related to the formation of the Shroud image. The focus is strictly methodological, centered on digital modeling and the comparative evaluation of contact patterns. [It was deluded of Moraes to ignore the practical realities of how a medieval forger made two bas reliefs, front and back, in negative, which when half of the Shroud's ~4.4 x ~1.1 metre rare and expensive 3:1 herringbone twill fine linen cloth was laid over the front image bas relief and the other half then was laid over the back image's bas relief, and how the two bas reliefs' images were transferred to the cloth.]

[...]

Beard and hair were added to the model, while the eyes, nose, mouth, chest and other features were slightly modified to match the target individual, using digital deformation tools to approximate the model's facial structure to that of the Shroud image. [This is merely copying the Shroud using 21st century digital software and then claiming that this was how a medieval forger created it!]

Judging by the images attached to the study, the simulations were run only on the front side, not the back. Why? This is a crucial omission: if one is to believe in the idea of a brilliant and unknown medieval forger, one must ask how he could have produced a bas-relief that reflects both the front and back imprint. [Again, the medieval forger would have needed to have made two bas reliefs. But Moraes must know how absurd that would be, so he ignored it! And where are those two bas reliefs? They would be major works of art in their own right. Where are the records of their existence? And who was the unknown sculptor?]

[...]

The fact that Cicero Moraes likely knows little about the Shroud and the decades of research on it is evident in his claim that the bas-relief used as a matrix "could have been made of wood, stone or metal, and pigmented or even heated only in the contact areas, generating the observed imprint." [This shows that Moraes did not consider the real-world implications of the Shroud image having been created by a bas relief.] Yet this theory has been debunked countless times since 1978, whether regarding pigment or heat. [A heated bas relief would leave hot spots where the cloth touched the metal or stone, e.g. the tip of the nose, but there are no hot spots on the Shroud. A cold bas relief relying on pigments to transfer the bas relief image to the overlying cloth would leave traces of pigment, but there are no pigments on the Shroud which constitutes the man's image (see below).] No technique has ever demonstrated that a bas-relief can produce a Shroud-like imprint with similar chemical and physical properties. Moreover, there are no traces of pigments on the Shroud, and any image created by a heated bas-relief would be fluorescent — unlike the Shroud image.

Unsurprisingly, Moraes himself is forced to concede that it is still

[Above enlarge: "Correlation of image intensity on the Turin Shroud with the 3-D structure of a human body shape"[11Aug15, 06Dec19; 15Aug20 & 13Jul21].

possible, however remotely, that the Shroud "could be the imprint of a three-dimensional human body." [Moraes is ignorant that STURP proved experimentally (see above) that the Shroudman's image could be expressed mathematically as, "a single global mapping function," consistent with a real, three-dimensional, human body!]

[...]

And then there's the recurring obstacle that thwarts such theories: the bloodstains on the Shroud prevented the image from forming underneath them. That is, the blood transferred from the deceased's body to the cloth first, and only afterward did the Shroud image appear. [STURP's Heller and Adler proved that the blood was on the Shroud before the image was (as it was for Jesus), and the blood prevented the later image from forming on the cloth[21Jul07; 08Oct09; 25Oct24]. This renders the bas relief theory impossible, because for a hot bas relief the image would would be under the blood, which would be cooked, and the pigment of a cold bas relief would have to be applied around the blood.]

"Shroud, A Rumor in a Medieval Document Peddled as Proof," UCCR, 29 Aug 2025. Alessandro Piana. A 1370 rumor in a medieval document about the Shroud is turned by the media into evidence against its authenticity. [See 10Oct25 and 12Nov25.] ... "Nicole Oresme, without ever having seen it, reports a "they say that" the Shroud was used to deceive the faithful. [As I wrote in my 10Oct25:

This is consistent with my assumption about this article by Sarzeaud, that the sceptics realise that they are losing in the court of public opinion and are desperate to turn this around. However, they won't do it with such a pathetic beat up that a 14th century philosopher, Nicole Oresme, who had never seen the Shroud, mentioned in a footnote, a rumour ("it was said"), that in the 1355 exposition of "the shroud of the Lord Jesus Christ" at Lirey, France, the "clergy" deceived the public to "elicit offerings for their church ...," which was false (see below). And Oresme did not dispute that it was "the shroud of the Lord Jesus Christ"!]

Yesterday a preview in the Italian newspaper "La Stampa" of a publication in the journal Journal of Medieval History, which the Turin daily presented as follows: "The University of Louvain has found in a medieval document the oldest testimony about the Shroud. It dates back to 1370 and confirms that already in the Middle Ages it was known that the relic was not authentic". The news was picked up today by major international newspapers, such as The Independent [...] According to the study conducted by researcher Nicolas Sarzeaud of the Catholic University of Louvain, a passage from the Problemata of Nicole Oresme, a French theologian and philosopher of the 14th century, would prove that already in 1370 the Holy Linen was known as an artifact made to defraud the faithful. [...] During the review of an unpublished treatise by Nicole Oresme, the two researchers Alain Boureau and Béatrice Delaurenti highlighted a mention of the Shroud of Turin, written between 1350 and 1382 (probably after 1370), the date of Oresme's death. According to what Sarzeaud writes in his study, the interest would be to underline the existence of the Shroud of Turin about twenty years earlier than previously known: the well-known period of the Lirey Controversy (1389–1390) [...]

Without detracting from the importance of the direct study of historical documents, fundamental to the understanding of the past, where is the news? That around 1370 there was a person who, by hearsay, considered the Shroud a forgery? [...] But if in the 21st century, with all the technology possible available and with an exorbitant number of scientific articles demonstrating the impossibility of reproducing the Shroud image, there are people who believe in the artificial and medieval origin of the artifact, should we really be concerned about a 14th-century commentator who speaks by hearsay? [Obvioudly not! But there are literary types like Sarzeaud who do understand scientific evidence and wrongly think that because a claim is the oldest surviving, it must be correct. But this is the argumentum ad antiquitatem fallacy. It would only be valid if the claim was by someone who was an eye-witness to the Shroud's c.1355 exposition. And Oresme definitely was not-he never saw the Shroud!]

Here he comes again on the horizon: the medieval forger. A phantom luminary of falsifications with foresight, who, though he could have become rich and famous thanks to his skill in creating still irreproducible images of the Christus patiens and in complete contradiction with the iconography of the time, instead of enjoying his skill and distributing fake relics throughout Christendom, decides to make only one copy to send to Lirey with the precise intent of making everyone gullible. Including us, almost 700 years later. If the Middle Ages produced such a man capable of surpassing 21st-century technology, then we have not discovered the Shroud, but the greatest forgotten genius in history. [And art historians want to have it both ways, assumimg that the Shroud is a medieval forgery but ignore that the Shroud must be therefore be a medieval work of art!] Too bad that no one ever saw him, just as Nicole Oresme never saw the Shroud on which he doubted authenticity based on hearsay.

["For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions" (2Tim 4:3)!]

"Shroud of Turin to go on virtual display for Holy Saturday," EWTN, 26 September 2025, Hannah Brockhaus. For the second time, the Shroud of Turin will be exposed for veneration on social media and websites on Holy Saturday, the archbishop of Turin has announced. [For the first time, see 22May20.]The Shroud, which bears the image of a crucified man and has been venerated for centuries as Christ's burial cloth [Congratulations to this journalist, Hannah Brockhaus, for omitting the usual, "which many believe to be."], will be displayed via live stream on April 3. [I vaguely remember seeing this and it was underwhelming! ]...

"The Shroud is a reality that concerns everyone. The Shroud image that Turin has preserved for almost five centuries testifies to pain and death, but also to resurrection and eternal life," Turin's Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia said in his March 3 announcement. [This is damning the Shroud with faint praise! Why doesn't the Archbishop of Turin tell the truth? That the Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet and the image on the Shroud is a photograph of Jesus at his resurrection? Presumably because he believes that the Shroud is a medieval fake?] "In front of the Shroud we can exclaim with our hearts turned to the Lord: ‘your love is forever.'" [Why does Nosiglia not say that the Shroudman's image is the Lord's? Because his are merely performative religious words for his audience? (Isa 29:13; Mt 15:8; Mk 7:6)]

Nosiglia will also preside over a liturgy on Holy Saturday, which will be live-streamed from the chapel of the Turin cathedral, where the Shroud is kept in a climate-controlled vault. Young adults from Turin will present reflections on the theme of hope. It will be the second time that the Shroud of Turin has been exhibited over the internet after it was displayed amid the coronavirus pandemic and Italy's national lockdown on Holy Saturday 2020. [...] A public display of the Shroud was supposed to take place from Dec. 28, 2020, to Jan. 1, 2021, during the 43rd international meeting of the Taizé Community, but both events had to be postponed due to the coronavirus restrictions. [... ] The Shroud has gone on public display four times since the year 2000. [According to Shroud.com there have been three expositions in that time: 2000, 2010 & 2015.] The last time it was presented to the public was in 2015. Pope Francis prayed before the relic during a visit to Turin on June 21 that year. Afterward, he described it as an icon of Christ's love. [That is, according to Pope Francis, the Shroud is a fake! See above. See also 01Mar14] "The Shroud," the pope said, "attracts people to the face and tortured body of Jesus and, at the same time, urges us on toward every person who is suffering and unjustly persecuted." [Pope Francis should have said, "The Shroud bears the imprint of the the actual face and tortured body of Jesus, full stop!]

"Discovery in Turin's Shroud confirms burst of radiant energy at Resurrection," ZENIT, 2 October 2025. By analyzing high-resolution photographs from the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project and applying four decades of surgical expertise in oral anatomy, he [Dr John Sottosanti] identified a distinct incisal plane — the biting edges of the lower front teeth —with their full crowns below [Sottosanti is ~44 years too late! In 1982 Prof. Giles Carter (1930-2010), who specialised in x-ray fluorescence, proposed in a peer-reviwed article that the Shroudman's finger and hand bones[20Apr17], and his teeth[20Apr17], were x-ray images visible under the man's skin!] [...]

A groundbreaking new paper by dental surgeon Dr. John Sottosanti presents striking evidence that the lower teeth of the man on the Shroud of Turin may, in fact, be visible—despite being concealed by the lower lip. [While Sottosanti's confirmation is welcome, it is not "groundbreaking" being more than 40 years old!] Such a detail, Sottosanti argues, could only appear if the image were seared onto the cloth by a burst of radiant energy at the moment of Christ’s Resurrection. [Agreed:, but Carter provided a scientific explanation:

"Intensive study of the Shroud of Turin by previous investigators has shown that the image very probably was not formed by painting, dyeing, rubbing, or staining. Indeed no hypothesis satisfactorily explains all attributes of the image, such as its inherent three-dimensional information or its shallow depth. The new hypothesis suggests that x-rays emanated from the elements sodium, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, potassium, and calcium on the surface of the skin. These long-wavelength x-rays, which are easily absorbed by air, apparently account for most attributes of the body-image"[CG82, 425].

Carter proposed that the cause of the x-rays was that the Shroud was Jesus' and the x-rays were the result of his resurrection:

"Another explanation, which should not be automatically rejected by scientists, is that perhaps the Shroud of Turin is in reality the Shroud of Jesus Christ, and perhaps some unknown process resulted in the resurrection, and the energy released by this process was partly in the form of x-rays, which then reacted with the linen Shroud as described above."[CG82, 445-446].]

In an opinion piece at TheBlaze.com, Sottosanti explains that while a handful of past researchers speculated about teeth in the Shroud, skepticism has always prevailed. [Sottosanti does not say that in his TheBlaze article and it is not true that "skepticism has always prevailed" about the Shroudman's teeth being visible under his skin. I posted on the evident x-rays of the Shroudman's bones and teeth in 2017[20Apr17, and as far as I am aware, Carter's x-rays explanation of the Shroudman's evident under-the-skin finger and hand bones, and teeth, is accepted by most shroudies. ]

By analyzing high-resolution photographs from the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project and applying four decades of surgical expertise in oral anatomy, he identified a distinct incisal plane — the biting edges of the lower front teeth —with their full crowns below. [I am not sure what photographs Sottosanti was referring to, but it is obvious from on-line Shroud Scope photographs that the man's teeth are visible under his skin (see below).]

[Above (enlarge)[Shroud Scope: Face Only Vertical]: 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[20Apr17].

Shroud Scope's Enrie Negative Photograph of the man's mouth area below is not as close-up as the positive above, but it can still be seen that what can only be a row of white teeth under the man's skin.

[Above: Shroud Scope Enrie Negative photograph of the man's face showing what can only be a row of white upper teeth. and less clearly part of a row of lower teeth, under the skin of the man's mouth area.]]

No comparable evidence was found for the upper teeth, likely hidden by the mustache and lip. [See above that the man's upper teeth are clearly visible.]

“If the lower teeth truly appear on the cloth,” said Dr. Sottosanti, “then the image could not have been painted or faked by human hands. It must have been created by radiant energy beyond the natural order—consistent with the very moment of the Resurrection.” [Again agreed.]

The Shroud has captivated scientists, believers, and skeptics for centuries. This new finding adds a powerful dimension to the ongoing debate. For believers, a fresh reason to contemplate the mystery of the Resurrection; for media and scholars, a provocative new angle on the world’s most studied relic—an artifact that refuses to be explained away. For skeptics, it offers an opportunity to reconsider their beliefs and contemplate life’s mysteries once again. [As previously mentioned, this has been known to skeptics for ~44 years, and they either ignore it, or don't accept that these images are teeth. "There are none so blind as those who will not see!"]

[...]

"Obituary: Daniel Carl Scavone," February 11, 1934 – November 7, 2025, Dignity Memorial, 7 November 2025. [Dan Scavone (1934-2025) [Left] was Professor of History at Indiana State University in Evansville, Indiana, from 1970 until his retirement in 1999[ODS]. There is a video interview of Scavone online at the "Shroud Report Interview with Dr. Daniel Scavone".

Books Scavone wrote only one Shroud book: "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints" (1989). It is an excellent, if underrated, book. Having been published in 1989, it has an "Epilogue: Radiocarbon Dating: The Final Chapter?" which is presumably the first shroudie book published after the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. In it Scavone asked some unanswerable, and unanswered, questions about the Shroud's claimed "mediaeval ... 1260-1390" radiocarbon date[DP89, 611]:

"The C-14 tests, therefore, did not put an end to the controversy over the Shroud. In fact, the mystery of the famous cloth was even more profound than be fore. As Luigi Gonella, scientific advisor to the Archbishop of Turin noted, there remained the question of how the image was formed. Also, how could one explain the numerous artistic and historical references which seemed to point to the Shroud as the genuine burial cloth of Jesus? How could one explain the fact that early portraits of Jesus seem to contain features found on the face of the man of the Shroud? How did pollens from the Holy Land get onto the Shroud? How shall we explain Constantine VII's description of the Edessa Mandylion in 944 as a `moist secretion not made with, artists' paints,' a description which precisely describes the Shroud? If the Shroud was really the burial wrapping of some person centuries later than Jesus, why has it not disintegrated as burial clothing does if left on the corpse for more than thirty-six hours?"[SD89a]

However, Scavone wrote many pro-Shroud chapters in books, including:
• Scavone, D., "The Shroud of Turin in Constantinople: The Documentary Evidence," in Sutton, R.F., Jr., 1989, "Daidalikon: Studies in Memory of Raymond V Schoder," Bolchazy Carducci Publishers: Wauconda IL, 311-329.
• 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, 171-204.
• Scavone, D.C., "The Turin Shroud from 1200 to 1400," in Cherf, W.J., ed., 1993, "Alpha to Omega: Studies in Honor of George John Szemler," Ares Publishers: Chicago IL, 187-225.
• Scavone, D.C., 1998, "A Hundred Years of Historical Studies on the Turin Shroud," 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., 2002, "The Shroud of Turin: Unraveling the Mystery: Proceedings of the 1998 Dallas Symposium," Alexander Books: Alexander NC, 58-70.
• 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, xxvi-xxvii.

Scavone also wrote many pro-Shroud online articles, including:
• Scavone, D.C., 1993, "Objections to the Shroud's Authenticity: The Radiocarbon Date," Texas Medieval Association, Shroud.com
• Scavone, D.C., 1996, "Book Review of `The Turin Shroud: In Whose Image?," Shroud.com.
• Scavone, D.C., 1999, "Greek Epitaphioi and Other Evidence for the Shroud In Constantinople Up To 1204," Shroud.com.
• Scavone, D.C., 2002, "Joseph of Arimathea, The Holy Grail & the Edessa Icon," BSTS Newsletter, No. 56, December.
• Scavone, D.C., 2003, "Chronological Listing of Supporting Texts," BSTS Newsletter, No. 57, June.
• Scavone, D.C., 2010, "Edessan sources for the legend of the Holy Grail," Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Scientific approach to the Acheiropoietos Images, ENEA Frascati, Italy, 4-6 May 2010, 1-6.

Scavone was an early supporter of Ian Wilson's theory that the Image of Edessa was the Shroud "doubled in four" (tetradiplon)[see 15Sep12]:

"Still another version of the Abgar story appeared in a work called The Acts of Thaddeus. The messenger of Abgar, in this account named Ananias, tried to paint Jesus, but he was unsuccessful. Taking pity on him, Jesus washed and then wiped his face with a cloth `doubled in four.' On this towel Jesus left the miraculous `not- made-by-human hands' imprint of his face. Three details should be noted. First, the word used for `towel' in this version is sindon, which is the Greek word for body shroud. Second, the towel is tetradiplon, `doubled in four." Third, the portrait is now `not made by human hands' (Greek word, acheiropoietos). These three clues finally bring us back in touch with the Shroud of Turin. These details are hints that Wilson may have been correct and that the Edessa face cloth may in reality be the Turin Shroud in disguise. What clues support this theory? … The Edessa icon no longer exists as such. However, copies were made by early artists. These copies show a frontal face of Jesus as it should be if it resulted from wiping his face. They show the cloth stretched out and tacked on a wooden frame. The face is seen in a circular central opening. The rest of the towel is covered by a wood frame carved with fairly typical Byzantine decorative designs. This is what those early artists saw, and this is what they copied. But there is something strange about these copies. Most of them are wide and short. Normally, portraits (like school photos) are tall and narrow. Wilson believes that this cloth (called a sindon in the Acts of Thaddeus) was always the Shroud, but doubled in four (tetradiplon). If this were done with the Turin Shroud, a panel showing only the face would be seen." (emphasis original)[SD89a, 81-82]

"Coming towards the end of the promised one hundred years of my title was Ian Wilson's great insight - insights such as this drive and revolutionize historical researches. His identification of the Edessa facial icon as the actual face of Jesus, the man of the Shroud, was no less than stupendous in its day. This face-on-cloth had previously been considered merely the earliest true copy of the Shroud face. Could its historical record, Wilson asked, provide a much-needed documentation for the centuries during which no burial shroud per se was mentioned in antiquity? Scholarship that has followed Wilson's lead has tended to corroborate more and more precisely the correctness of his assumption. With the same insight, Wilson discovered the thin documentary thread that suggested how this Edessa mandylion really held more than just a face: it was large enough to couch the image of a full-size man. In short, the Edessa icon-unfolded-was always the Turin Shroud. the Shroud, virtually absent from the historical record-anywhere found its own historical pedigree in the documents of Edessa." (emphasis original)[SD98, 59-60]

Scavone was also the most prominent supporter of the Besançon theory:

"Another theory of what happened to the Shroud after the Fourth Crusade is that Othon de La Roche brought it with him to Athens. Othon became one of the prominent leaders of the crusaders and was made Lord of Athens in 1204. If the Shroud was in Athens, Othon was the one person among the crusaders who was in an important enough position to have obtained the Shroud. There are two documents in support of this theory, though they do not mention Othon by name. First is a letter from Theodore of Epirus to Pope Innocent III (Pope, 1198-1216) complaining that Constantinople was being stripped of its wealth and its holy relics by the crusaders. Theodore singled out the Shroud of Jesus which he said was taken to Athens. The letter is dated August 1, 1205, about a year after Robert of Clari says the Shroud disappeared from Constantinople. A second document, dated in 1207, again does not mention Othon by name, but may also place the Shroud in Athens. Nicholas of Otranto, a bilingual interpreter between Greeks and Europeans in Constantinople, wrote that he had seen the Shroud with his own eyes. He wrote elsewhere that he had been in Athens in 1206. What Othon may have done with the Shroud or where he sent it is another area of controversy ... It is also possible that by about 1208 Othon had shipped the Shroud to his father, Pons de La Roche, who turned it over to Bishop Amadeus de Tramelai for safekeeping in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Besançon, France. This town is not far from Othon's estates in Burgundy, and it is only a relatively short distance from Lirey, the first home of the Turin Shroud. Is there any evidence for this set of events? Could the Shroud of Turin ever have been in Besançon? ... The answer is `yes' ... The evidence in favor of the Shroud having been in Besançon begins with the claims of the town that the Shroud was there since the 1200s. The Besançon claim should be taken seriously since no other place or group claimed to have the Shroud between 1208 and 1355 ... Also around 1750, a handwritten document was placed in the Besançon City Library. It was written anonymously. It is called MS 826. It consists of arguments in favor of and against the Besançon theory. The pro-argument says that Othon sent the Shroud to his father, Pons, who gave it to the Bishop Amadeus. It names three medieval writers who stated this fact. These sources have not been found; perhaps they no longer exist. The other part of the manuscript denies that the Shroud was ever in Besançon. The Shroud may have originally been kept privately in the residence of Bishop Amadeus. But at some time, according to this theory, he deposited it in the Cathedral of St. Stephen. This cathedral was badly damaged by fire in 1349. The Shroud disappeared. Everyone thought it had been destroyed in the fire. Six years later, today's Turin Shroud appeared in nearby Lirey. The history of the Lirey-Chambery-Turin Shroud is so well established from 1355 to the present day that after 1349 we know the Shroud of Turin was not in Besançon ... If the pre-fire Besançon cloth was the Shroud that came into the possession of Geoffroy I de Charny we can't say exactly how he got it. However, the distance from Besançon to Lirey is only about 160 miles. Documents do place the Constantinople Shroud in Besançon through Othon. Altogether this seems the shortest and most direct route from Constantinople to Lirey ... One additional note has not been fully explored by the historians: it is that the family of Jeanne de Vergy was very prominent in Besançon. Jeanne was Geoffroy I's second wife and widow. She was also the great, great, great, great granddaughter of Othon de La Roche. It may turn out to be the case that she, and not Geoffroy, had the Shroud and deposited it in the church at Lirey ... The Besançon theory is by far the best documented of all the theories on the Shroud between 1204 and 1355 ... As the case stands, Besançon seems the best of several choices as the home of the Turin Shroud between 1208 and 1349. It bears repeating that of all the candidates that have been proposed … only Besançon has actually claimed the Shroud; the others are all, without exception, the well-reasoned products of modern scholars. If there are too few documents attesting to the Shroud being in Besançon, there are NO documents placing the Shroud anywhere else." (emphasis original). [SD89a, 96-101].

"There are other suggested itineraries for the Shroud between Constantinople and Lirey, some quite plausible. All suffer from the same total lack of documentation in the form of direct reference to the Shroud. My personal choice … is the infamous Besançon theory. I can only present it in outline. Its strength is that only the city of Besançon in Franch-Comte claimed to possess the Shroud from 1208 to 1349 … The pertinent aspects of this thesis are that Burgundian knight Othon de La Roche acquired the Shroud after the Fourth Crusade. Its presence in Athens, where Othon became Lord in 1205, is indirectly attested by Nicholas of Otranto in 1205-6 and directly in a letter of Theodore of Epirus date August 1, 1205. Later Othon sent it home to the custody of the Bishop of Besançon. In 1349 the Cathedral of St-Etienne burned down and the Shroud disappeared. As most readers know, about 1353-55 the Lirey Shroud made its entrance in history from mysterious, or at least unknown, origins. Arguably, Jeanne de Vergy, of a prominent Besançon family, the new wife of Geoffroy I de Charny, appropriated the cloth and delivered it to Lirey and Geoffroy. True, there are no records of the Shroud so early (1208) in Besançon: but it is also true that the cathedral and its records were destroyed by fire in 1349 and French revolutionaries destroyed remaining religious records along with a painted copy of the Shroud in 1793. Today, town records go back only to 1412. If adequate records do not exist in Besançon, the reader should note again that the Shroud is not recorded anywhere from 1208-1355."[SD91, 198].

On Besançon and other plausible theories for the Shroud from 1204 to 1355. The hypothesis, herein elaborated, which identifies the Turin Shroud in its early Lirey period (1355-1390) with the cloth previously used in the Easter liturgy at the Cathedral of St. Etienne at Besançon in the 13th and 14th century, has been thoroughly scrutinized by a number of excellent scholars of the Turin Shroud, among whom are Edward Wuenschel, Paul Vignon, and Paul de Gail. Their success in refuting the Besançon hypothesis (in its several forms) has appeared very strong, but never conclusive. Wuenschel was completely devoted to the Besançon possibilities until dissuaded by Vignon. The Besançon hypothesis has remained tantalizingly attractive … Up to the present moment, all other theories -- many are very plausible -- of the Shroud's whereabouts, from its "disappearance" from Constantinople around 1204 until it came into the possession of Geoffroy de Charny in the 1350s, remain absolutely devoid of supporting documentation. Indeed, not one person or group to whose possession the Shroud as been imputed during this period has ever claimed to possess or even to know the existence of the Shroud in any known document? Meanwhile the Besançon theory has recently acquired a more reassuring collection of supporting evidences. If the Shroud was not at Besançon where it has been claimed from ca. 1208 to 1349, it was somewhere else, absolutely unattested and undocumented ... Geoffroy I de Charny, who is certainly the first known owner of the Lirey-Chambery-Turin Shroud about 1355 ... All the available evidence, therefore, militates against Geoffroy I as the principal personage in the Shroud's reaching Lirey, and even points to his second wife, Jeanne de Vergy, in that role. The Vergy family was extremely prominent in Besançon and may even have had a claim to ownership of the cloth, as will be shown. Even the present fresh approach to the Besançon thesis cannot produce certainty, but it has the merit of the following points. 1) It does not directly contradict any documentary evidence about the acquisition of the Shroud by Geoffroy I de Charny, for such documentation does not exist. Indeed, it may explain his mysterious ownership. 2) It establishes a possible location for the Shroud from 1204 to about 1349, and from 1349 to 1355. 3) This thesis can provide an account of the Shroud's departure from Constantinople and its arrival in the west. Finally, it corrects some imprecise interpretations of the available source material from Constantinople, Troyes, and Besançon. In short, the Besançon thesis is at the same time as plausible and as tenuous, as attractive and as frustrating, and as full of conjecture as any other hypothesis …" (footnotes omitted)[SD93a, 188-190].

The Besançon theory (with my modifications to it) is the theory that the Shroud was taken from Contantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade's Sack of Constantinople, by a crusader leader, Othon de la Roche (c. 1170-1234)[25Oct15; 15Feb16; 11Nov17; 25Sep19; 10Oct25]. Othon was an ancestor of Jeanne de Vergy (c. 1332-1428)[25Oct15; 11Nov17; 02Mar18; 13Mar19; 25Sep19; 10Oct25], the second wife of Geoffroy I de Charny (c. 1300-1356)[22Mar08; 25Oct15; 11Nov17; 10Feb18], who, jointly with Jeanne. exhibited the Shroud at Lirey, France in c. 1355[09Jan14; 16Feb15; 13Apr18]. Or more likely, Jeanne, the true owner of the Shroud[22Mar08; 25Sep19; 10Feb18; 10Feb18; 11May24; 10Feb26], exhibited the Shroud herself after her husband Geoffroy I was killed on 19 September 1356 in the Battle of Poitiers[24May15; 13Apr18; 10Feb26]. 22Mar08; 25Oct15; 13Mar19; 10Oct25]. From Athens, Othon sent the Shroud to his chateau in Bergundy[25Oct15; 11Nov17; 26Feb20; 04Apr22; 10Oct25; 10Feb26]. The Shroud was subsequently kept at St. Étienne's (Stephen's) Cathedral in Besançon[11Nov17; 11May24; 10Feb26]. Othon de la Roche's granddaughter, Isabelle de la Roche de Ray (c.1235-78) married Henri I de Vergy (c.1205-63)[PA07], and so the Shroud became owned by the de Vergy family. Besançon was actually a free imperial city of the German Holy Roman Empire[04Apr22], within France's Franche-Comté region. In c. 1343 the pro-French de Vergys, fearing that the Shroud might be lost to France, secretly moved their Shroud from St. Etienne's Cathedral Besançon to 25Sep19; King Philip VI (r. 1328-50) in Paris[10Feb18; 12Nov25]. On the condition that Jeanne de Vergy marry Geoffroy I de Charny[04Apr22; 12Nov25], which she did in c.1351[13Apr18; 12Nov25].

"Geoffroy was born in c.1306, and Jeanne was born in c.1337. So, when they married Geoffroy was ~45 and Jeanne was ~14! Their first child, Geoffroy II de Charny (1352-98), was born in 1352. Geoffroy I was a councillor of King John II, the Captain-General of the French army, and one of the foremost figures in France. Whereas Jeanne was a ~14 year-old girl from Besançon, 410 km = 255 mi. from Paris, whose family owned the Shroud. That, and the ~31 year difference in their ages, proves beyond reasonable doubt that this was an arranged marriage, that the dying King Philip VI had given the Shroud to Geoffroy I in 1349 on the condition that he marry Jeanne when she reached the medieval marriageable age of 14, Thus placing the Shroud firmly under the control of France and removing the threat of the Shroud coming under the control of the Holy Roman Empire"[12Nov25; 10Feb26]

---

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
AAW. "Artifact (archaeology)," Wikipedia, 18 June 2026.
CG82. Carter, G.F., 1982, "Formation of the Image on the Shroud of Turin by x-Rays: A New Hypothesis," in Lambert, J.B., ed., 1984, "Archaeological Chemistry III: ACS Advances in Chemistry, No. 205," American Chemical Society, Washington D.C., 425-446.
DP89. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16 February, 611-615.
MC99. McCrone, W.C., 1999, "Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY.
ODS. Obituary: Daniel Carl Scavone, Dignity Memorial, 7 November 2025.
PA07. Piana, A., 2007, "The Shroud's "Missing Years," British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 66, December, 9-25.
SD89a. Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA, 105.

Posted 17 July 2026. Updated 1 September 2026.

Open letter to Nature: "Shroud of Turin: Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?" Part 2 (draft)

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

Newcomers start with: "The Turin Shroud in a nutshell"

[Previous: Open letter to Nature Part 1] [Next: To be advised].

This is part 2 of my "Open letter to Nature: Shroud of Turin: Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?" See Part 1 for information about this series.

The hacker and his accomplice I have identified the hacker and his accomplice[JS25], as Timothy Weiler Linick (1946-89)[JS89] and Karl Werner Koch (1965-89)[KKW]. As previously mentioned, the three laboratories' AMS systems were not online, so while Linick could install and test his program on Arizona's AMS computer, he needed a hacker to install his program on Zurich and Oxford's identical AMS computers.

Linick was a physicist at Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory, in Tucson[JS89]. He "did the programs"[MJ20b] at Arizona laboratory, that is, Linick was its Systems Administrator. Linick was "extremely mathematically gifted"[JS89]. But Linick had severe psychological and personal problems. He was deeply introverted, "doomed to grow up in a family of losers"[LA08, 250], suffered from depression[MJ20b] and had threatened to commit suicide[MJ20b]. Linick was separated from his wife and young son[MJ20b] and had become an "underachiever"[MJ20b].

Linick was quoted in Shroud sceptic David Sox's 1988 book, "Unmasking the Shroud":

"Timothy Linick, a University of Arizona research scientist, said: `If we show the material to be medieval that would definitely mean that it is not authentic. If we date it back 2000 years, of course, that still leaves room for argument. It would be the right age - but is it the real thing?"[SH88, 147].

This was despite Linick having, along with all present at Arizona laboratory's first dating of the Shroud on 6 May 1988, signed a confidentiality agreement:

"... not to communicate the results to anyone-spouse, children, friends, press, etc., until that time when results are generally available to the public."[GH96, 262].

While it could be argued (and presumably Linick did argue to his laboratory leaders when they would have asked him to explain why he had communicated with Sox about the Shroud's radiocarbon dating), that Linick's quoted words did not communicate the results to Sox. But Linick's words breached the spirit of his signed confidentiality agreement. As an ordinary `backroom' Arizona laboratory scientist, Linick had no authority to communicate with Sox, an anti-Shroud writer in another country, in or before August 1988 (the date of Sox's book[SH88, 6]), more than two months before the results were generally available to the public," which was on 13 October 1988[WI98, 6-7]. And, see below that, Linick did leak Arizona's first run 1350 date to Sox before 13 October 1988.

Leaks While the Shroud's dating was still ongoing, leaks appeared in the British media that the Shroud had been dated as "medieval"[WI88; GH96, 276] and "1350"[WI88; GH96, 277]. The Editor of the British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, Ian Wilson, publicly concluded that Sox was "the true source of possibly all the leaks"[WI88]. Sox later admitted that he was indeed the source of those leaks[PM96, 49], But Wilson realised that Sox was only the secondary source of the leaks and his "`inside information ... can only have come from Arizona or Zurich" laboratories[WI88]. Zurich radiocarbon dating laboratory Director Willy Wolfli was the source of the "medieval" leak to Sox[RP88] and Linick was the source of the "`1350" leak to Sox.

That leak was by Cambridge University librarian Richard Luckett (1945-2020), on 26 August 1988, in the London Evening Standard[WI88]. Luckett wrote, "a probable date of about 1350 looks likely"[WI88; GH96, 276] and "laboratories are rather leaky institutions"[WI88]. Yet no one in the radiocarbon dating laboratories had even heard of Luckett, nor knew from where he had obtained his information[WI88; GH96, 282; PM96, 92], In an article of 9 September 1988, Luckett clarified that the 1350 leak was "from one of the laboratories and it wasn't Oxford"[GH96, 279]. Wilson phoned Luckett and asked him whether Sox had been his source, and Luckett "hastily changed the subject"[WI88]. Gove realised that the primary leaker was "someone who was present at Arizona during the first measurement"[GH96, 279], which Linick was[GH96, 282]. That Gove

[Above: Photograph of "Those present at the Arizona AMS carbon dating facility at 9:50 am on 6 May 1988 when the age of the shroud was determined."[GH96, 176H]. Linick, in the black shirt, is standing in front of Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory leaders and staff who are around the AMS control console computer terminal. That Linick is standing in front of Arizona laboratory leaders and staff indicates that he was in charge of Arizona's AMS computerised dating process and those present were acknowledging that.]

later realised that the "someone" was Linick is evident in the group photograph in Gove's 1996 book above) of those who were present at Arizona laboratory at its first dating of the Shroud on 6 May 1988[GH96, 176H], but Gove barely mentioned Linick in his book[GH96, 282].

Sox was a teacher at the American School in London from 1974 to 1993[BFH]. Anthony Linick, Timothy Linick's half-brother[LA08, 619], was a teacher at that same American School in London from 1982 to 2002[ALW]. So, Sox and Anthony Linick had worked together at the American School in London for ~11 years, from 1982 to 1993, which included 1988. This further confirms that Timothy Linick was the leaker of Arizona laboratory's "1350" first run date of the Shroud to Sox.

Koch was a confessed and convicted paid hacker for the KGB[CM92, 164, 183-184; KKW]. He had been a member of a three-man hacker ring[; CU12; KKW]. The other members were Markus Hess (1962-)[MHW] and Hans Heinrich Hübner (1968-)[HHW]. From West Germany they logged into insecure computers in other countries via a free dial-up modem service called Tymnet[SC89, 27-28; HM91, 240; TYM]. From those insecure computers they logged into other insecure computers via Arpanet[HM91, 216, 221; RPN], a precursor to the Internet, and copied information from them which was taken into East Germany and sold to the KGB[HM91, 224-225]. Hess had hacked into an estimated 400 military, government and business computers, mainly in the USA[MHW]. In 1986 Hess was detected and caught hacking into Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory by Clifford Stoll (1950-)[CM92, 175-176; CSW; MHW]. Hess was convicted of espionage in West Germany, but due to a bungle by the West German police in not applying to a judge for permission to wiretap Hess, he received a suspended sentence[HM91, 322-323; CM92, 184; MHW]. Koch and Hübner, rightly fearing that the authorities were closing in on them, independently took advantage of West Germany's amnesty law for espionage, if they turned themselves in before they were caught, fully confessed their hackings and cooperated fully with their prosecution, which they did[CM92, 183]. Koch and Hübner were each convicted of espionage but were not imprisoned[SC89, 362; CM92, 184]. Koch would have read (or it had been brought to his attention by his Christian friends) the news in February 1989 that three radiocarbon dating laboratories, including those at Zurich and Oxford universities, had dated the Shroud as 1260-1390 and he would have realised that the hacking the KGB had required him to do at those two universities in 1988, was the Shroud's radiocarbon dating (as we shall see). On 3 June 1989 the West German police publicly identified the burnt body as Koch's[KT89].

In March 1989, a well-known American Shroud author (with the pseudonym "Harry", because he does not want his name revealed publicly-I will ask "Harry" for permission to publish his real name in my word-processed letter to Nature)[MJ20a, 515]) received a phone call about 1:30am[MJ20a, 515], The caller did not apologise for the lateness of the hour[MJ20a, 516], so presumably he was not phoning from within America. He had a German-sounding male voice[MJ20a, 516]. The caller sounded extremely distraught[MJ20a, 516]. He told Harry that he had been involved in falsifying the results of the 1988 dating of the Shroud[MJ20a, 516]. The caller mentioned the word "espionage" in relation to his having falsified the Shroud dating[MJ20a, 516]. The caller repeatedly refused to identify himself, explaining that he could get into some real trouble if he did[MJ20a, 516]. This can only have been Koch. While a German hoaxer might conceivably know about the German hackers who had been convicted of espionage, only Koch would know about both him having been convicted of espionage and his part in the in falsifying the results of the 1988 dating of the Shroud! This is proof beyond reasonable doubt that my Linick-Koch hacker theory is true!

Koch was found dead on 1 June 1989[HM91, 303; CU12; KKW]. He had left his workplace, the office of the West German Christian Democratic Party, in Hanover, West Germany on 23 May 1989, in his employer's car to deliver a parcel across Hanover but he never returned[SC89, 362; CM92, 163]. A farmer checking his irrigation noticed a car parked on the edge of a forest opposite his farm[SC89, 362; CM92, 163], near the town of Ohof, about 49 km (32 mi) east of Hanover, and called the police[HM91, 303; CU12]. They found Koch's burnt body near the car, with an empty gasoline can nearby[SC89, 362; CM92, 163]. The vegetation around the body was scorched and burned[CM92, 163]. Koch had been burnt alive by having been doused with gasoline and set alight[HM91, 303; CU12]. Being burnt alive was a punishment by the KGB for its spies who had betrayed the KGB's own secrets[OPW].

Ohof is ~62 km (~38 mi) from Helmstead[DBT], the latter of which

[Above: Map of the distance between Ohof and Helmstedt[DBT].]

in 1989 was the West German side of the Helmstedt–Marienborn border crossing between West and East Germany]. My reconstruction is that a three-man KGB execution squad had crossed from East Germany to West Germany at the Helmstedt–Marienborn border crossing, and stayed at an address on the outskirts of Hanover. They then ordered a parcel from the the office of the West German Christian Democratic Party, knowing that Koch was its messenger[HM91, 301], and waited for him to arrive at the address on the parcel. When Koch arrived with the parcel on 23 May 1989, the KGB agents overpowered and handcuffed him. They then drove Koch in their car with a can of gasoline and fire extinguishing equipment the ~49 km (~32 mi) to the edge of a forest near the town of Ohof, with one of them following in Koch's work car. They burned Koch alive by a gasoline fire, extinguished it, removed the handcuffs, and drove back to East Germany through the Helmstedt–Marienborn border crossing.

The police announced that Koch's death was suicide[CM92, 163; KKW]. But no suicide note was found[SC89, 362; KKW]. Koch had been wearing shoes when he left his office, but no shoes, or the remains of them were found at the site, so someone must have taken them[CM92, 163, 185; KKW]. Koch's burnt body was found at the edge of a forest[CU12; KKW]. It was summer and had not rained for five weeks, so the undergrowth was very dry[CM92, 163]. Yet the gasoline fire which killed Koch had been controlled in a circle around his body[CM92, 163; KKW], and evidently extinguished but no fire extinguishing equipment was found nearby, and Koch could not have extinguished the gasoline fire which killed him. There was no reason for Koch to have committed suicide[CM92, 185]: he was had been granted an amnesty from imprisonment for his hacking, under West Germany's espionage law[CM92, 185], he was recovering from drug addiction[CM92, 185], had become a Christian[HM91, 301], and had a job[HM91, 301-302]. Not only was Koch having committed suicide not supported by the evidence, but it was against it, it was concluded with unnecessary haste. The first of June 1989 was a Thursday[JNN], when Koch's burned body had found, and so the third of June 1989 was a Saturday, when the police announced the burned body was Koch's, which means there was only one working day, Friday, to conduct a post-mortem to determine if the body was Koch's, and whether his death had been suicide or murder. It would have taken many days to call for Koch's dental records, receive them and compare them with the teeth of the burned body. So, what was the hurry? The answer is that Mikhail Gorbachev, then the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union[MGW], and its future President, was due in East Berlin[CM92, 185; HM91, 286] on 7 October 1989, for the 40th anniversary of the founding of East Germany[EGW]. If it had been announced that the KGB had burned alive a German citizen in Germany, it would have been hugely embarrassing for Gorbachev, who would have had known nothing about it. And it would have set back the process of German reunification, which would have been West Germany's highest priority. So, the pronouncement that Koch's death was suicide was political suppression!

Linick was found dead in Tucson, on 4 June 1989[JS89; TWL, 3], the day after West German police had announced on 3 June 1989, that the burnt body was Koch! A gun had been fired just above Linick's right ear[TWL, 5], the bullet passed through his brain and exitied his top left scalp[TWL, 5-6], killing him instantly[TWL, 1]. It was assumed that Linick had committed suicide[TWL, 3; RTB]. The police report is not available, but I obtained Linick's autopsy report[TWL, 1-10]. The autopsy report was very thorough, even mentioned that Linick's right forearm had a faint purple-yellow bruise[TWL, 4]. So, if Linick had been bleeding it would have mentioned it but it did not. Yet in Linick's clenched left hand was a bloodstained white tissue[TWL, 4]! This could only have been placed there by the murderer who had held a gun to Linick head and pulled the trigger, and some of Linick's blood blew back on the murderer's hand, and he had wiped it off with a tissue and placed it in Linick's left hand. This is similar to a case in which a man who who was found dead by a gunshot to his head and it was assumed to have been suicide until a blanket covering him was removed and revealed "his hands were clasped together, in a `folded hands' position"[SP20]. But, "As there was no possible way for the decedent to have folded his hands after shooting himself through the brain" his death "was ruled `homicide'."[SP20]. So, Linick, like Koch, had been murdered, disguised as suicide!

My Linick-Koch hacker theory Based on the forgoing, the following is my Linick-Koch hacker theory. Linick, because of his psychological and personal problems: having separated from his wife and son, and having become an "underachiever," sought to escape from his problems by offering in 1987, the Soviet Union, for a large amount of money, a guaranteed radiocarbon date of the Shroud, closely before its first appearance in undisputed history at Lirey, France in c. 1355[WI10, 222]. Linick's offer was made to the Consulate General of Russia in San Francisco, the primary mission of which was to funnel U.S. computer technology into the Soviet Union[HM91, 226]. Linick would write a program which would substitute the Shroud samples' dates with computer-generated dates which, when combined and averaged, would return a date plausibly close to 1355, and install it on Arizona laboratory's AMS computer. But because the AMS computers were not online, the Soviet Union would need to provide a hacker to install the program on Zurich and Oxford laboratorys' AMS computers. Linick's offer was accepted because in 1987 the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse[DFW], and it did collapse with the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989[FFW]. Despite the Soviet Union being officially an atheist state, it contained many millions of Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians[RNW] who believed that the Shroud was Jesus' burial sheet[BA96]. If the Shroud's radiocarbon date was first century, or early centuries due to unremovable carbon contamination[TJ88, 11], it could be the last straw for the tottering Soviet Union. The hacker whom the Soviets chose to load Linick's program on Zurich and Oxford's AMS computers was Koch. A KGB agent would have taken Koch to each laboratory after hours, gained access to their AMS facility, and pointed Koch to each computer on which Koch was to load Linick's program. Koch would not need to be told what the computers did. Nor would Koch need to be told the program was Linick's.

Conclusion The claim in the Nature article of 16 February 1989, Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin, that the Shroud's radiocarbon date is 1260-1390, cannot be correct[TWT]. Artistic[TPC] and historical[TSF] evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroud existed long before 1260[TWT]. The AMS method which dated the Shroud was fully computer-controlled[WWW]. It was therefore vulnerable to hacking[SWT], and it was hacked by Arizona laboratory physicist and System Administrator, Timothy Linick[LWP]. There is evidence in the Nature article itself that the Shroud's 1260-1390 radiocarbon date was computer-generated, the result of a computer hacking[TVF]. The 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Shroud of Turin was therefore the result of scientific fraud, arguably the worst yet, considering the many millions deceived by it and the length of time of the deception, ~38 years and counting. The article should therefore be retracted.

To be continued in my word-processed letter to Nature. I will post updates of its progress.

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]

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Posted 19 June 2026. Updated 16 August 2026.