The Shroud of Turin is arguably the most famous Christian relic in the world. Devotees claim
that it shows the authentic Holy Face of Jesus, while skeptics claim that it's nothing but an
impressive and puzzling forgery. Keep watching for some mysteries and secrets of the Shroud of Turin.
Believers in the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin say that it is the
burial shroud of Jesus that has miraculously had a photonegative image of his face and body
imprinted on it. The use of burial shrouds is, and has been for many years, a more or less universal
practice in Jewish burial customs. So the idea that Jesus would have had one does check out.
Plus, the Gospels all agree he had one - just maybe not 100-percent on the details.
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all relate that after the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea
took Jesus' body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth before placing it in the tomb.
That rebel John, however, says that Jesus was wrapped in strips of linen with spices,
like a mummy. This description is repeated later when Peter finds the tomb empty except
for the mummy wrap on the floor, plus a previously unmentioned separate head cloth.
This distinction might seem minor, but the Shroud of Turin is definitely one single piece,
over 14 feet long, enough to cover Jesus' front and back, vertically. Pretty hard to
reconcile with the idea of strips and a separate head cloth, but maybe John whiffed this one.
Although the Shroud of Turin might be the most famous relic that claims to
bear the image of Jesus' face, it isn't the only one. In fact,
there's an entire class of relics that is basically made up of objects in which
Jesus' face was imprinted like newspaper ink on a wad of Silly Putty.
For instance, there's the Veil of Veronica. If you grew up Catholic,
you might know that Veronica is the name of a woman who used her veil to wipe the sweat
from Jesus' face as he was carrying the cross up to the site of his execution. When she did so,
his face miraculously imprinted on the veil.
If you weren't a Catholic, you might not have heard this story, as it's not from the Bible but
rather a medieval tradition. All copies of the veil were ordered destroyed by the pope in the
1600s; St. Peter's Basilica allegedly has the original but doesn't display it to the public.
Another piece is the Mandylion, which is Greek for towel.
The Mandylion is a cloth on which Jesus dried his face to heal a king of leprosy.
Like a lot of historical mysteries, it can be hard to nail down exactly what the first
definite mention of the Shroud of Turin is, as there are a number of oblique references
to similar objects that might be this particular relic but also might not. A key example, which,
if it is a reference to the Shroud, would be the earliest one found so far,
is an image from a Hungarian manuscript known as the Pray Codex.
That's right, it's not even a textual mention - it's a drawing that maybe depicts the Shroud.
However, while it's notable that this image includes a rectangle that might indicate a
burial shroud for Jesus, you should also notice that this rectangle is definitely not imprinted
with the image of Christ but rather some crosses and a kind of zigzag pattern.
Is it a shroud? Is it a tombstone? Is it just a decorative motif? Who can say?
Another early maybe comes from the 1300s in France. As Encyclopedia Britannica explains,
by 1354, the famous knight Geoffroi de Charny, known for his accomplishments in
the Hundred Years' War, possessed a shroud that seemed to bear the image of a man
who had been crucified and was displaying this sheet in his tiny French town of Lirey.
The earliest mention of the Shroud of Turin comes a few decades after
the death of Geoffroi de Charny, the knight who allegedly owned it. Somewhat ironically,
the first reference to the relic we know today as the Shroud of Turin is
a denunciation from a local bishop telling the pope that it is definitely a forgery.
In 1389, the bishop of Troyes, France, sent a report to Pope Clement VII
that he had seen an exhibition of the shroud and that it was not only fake,
but when confronted, the guy who had made it confessed to having painted it.
According to the bishop, the cloth was exhibited as authentic and had,
quote, "pretended miracles" attributed to it, but it was forged, quote, "not from any
motive of devotion but only of gain." Despite this strong and unambiguous report, Clement
did not officially denounce the Shroud, so its authenticity has been debated for over 600 years.
The very existence of the Shroud of Turin itself is believed to be a miracle,
but any good relic worth its salt is responsible for a number of miracles performed upon people
in its proximity. Naturally, a relic of the resurrection, literally the most important
moment in the history of Christianity, has some magical achievements on its résumé.
Works by Faith Ministries records a few such miraculous events,
including a few normally attributed to the Mandylion,
such as defending the city of Edessa from invasion by the Persian army and healing its king of
leprosy. The Shroud is believed to have made its way to the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople,
and it's said that a man who touched the Shroud there was healed of demonic possession.
A more modern miracle occurred in 1954, when an 11-year-old girl from England who
was dying of a bone disease and lung abscesses learned about the Shroud and asked to see it.
After receiving special permission, she was able to see and even touch
the Shroud. And thus she was healed, at least according to religious authorities.
The largest question surrounding the Shroud of Turin, besides, of course, its authenticity,
is how the image was made. How did a photonegative image of a human man get
impressed on a piece of cloth sometime in the 14th century at the latest? There are,
naturally, many different theories, and the BBC records a number of them.
"Lord Jesus, was this how you looked?"
Believers in the authenticity of the Shroud claim that the image came from a release of radiant
energy at the moment of the resurrection. But the short version is still that it's a miracle.
Non-miraculous explanations include that it's a painting, like the bishop of Troyes
claimed, but there are no identifiable pigments or brushstrokes in the image.
The fibers don't seem to be painted but rather fully darkened, leading to the theory that the
residual image could have been caused by a natural chemical process related to heat
from the decomposition of the body wrapped in the Shroud. However, the fact that the image
is a photonegative has raised the possibility that it is some kind of primitive photograph,
involving the cloth having been coated in silver nitrate, a light-sensitive compound used
later in legitimate photography. None of these theories, however, are completely satisfactory.
The primary approach to trying to confirm or disprove the authenticity
of the Shroud of Turin has been to attempt to scientifically determine its age. After all,
if scientists can definitively prove that the Shroud is no older than, for example,
the 14th-century date in which it first appeared,
then we can pretty much write off the idea that it's an artifact from first-century Judea.
As Encyclopedia Britannica explains, scientific endeavors to determine the chemical makeup of
and processes used in the creation of the Shroud's image have been going on since
the 1800s. But it wasn't until 1988 that the Vatican provided labs with samples of the Shroud
in order to perform carbon-14 tests to narrow down the age of the cloth.
All three labs independently determined, with 95-percent
confidence, that the cloth dated somewhere between 1260 and 1390,
placing it square in the period in which the bishop of Troyes was calling it a hoax.
The Independent reports that some scientists have taken a different tack in questioning the
authenticity of the relic: namely that forensic investigators have examined blood spatter patterns
on the Shroud to determine that the bloodstains on the cloth could only have been made by someone
adopting various different poses rather than lying still as a dead person presumably would.
While the Shroud of Turin is most famous for its ghostly image depicting the body
of a crucified man, one researcher claims that there's more to be seen imprinted on the cloth.
A Vatican archives researcher named Barbara Frale used computer-enhanced
images to examine the Shroud and found evidence of faint text in Greek, Latin,
and Aramaic written on the surface of the cloth. Within this text, she claims to have
recognized at least 11 different words, including the name "Jesus of Nazareth."
"You shall not see me here again! Not until you learn to cry!”
Her hypothesis is that the text is from ink that rubbed off onto the cloth and was originally from
a kind of death certificate for Jesus glued to the Shroud by the Romans. Interestingly, she
claims that the strongest evidence for authenticity of the text is not what's there
but rather what isn't. There is no suggestion of the divinity of Jesus within the words she found,
something she is confident that any medieval forger would definitely have included.
It is important to note, however, that many experts have expressed skepticism around Frale's
findings and say that there are not letters to be found among the grainy images that she examined.
The "letters" are actually patterns created by the
increased contrast of the enhanced photos, bolstered by a hopeful imagination.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the Shroud of Turin is the only claimant to being
the authentic burial shroud of Jesus. If, however, you know anything about relics,
you'd actually be more surprised if there weren't other shrouds out there.
Turin's main competitor comes in the form of the Sudarium of Oviedo, a bloodstained
cloth that is alleged to be the head wrapping placed on Jesus' body in the Gospel of John.
This cloth was taken from Palestine in the seventh century and eventually made its way to Spain, and
has been in a special box in a chapel in Oviedo since 840 C.E. Some people claim, however, that
rather than being a competing shroud, the Sudarium and the Turin shroud are part of a matching set.
Other relics in France and Italy also claim to be either the shroud
or various pieces of Jesus' multipart funereal ensemble. A notable example is the Sainte Coiffe,
eight layers of bloody gauze found in the Cahors Cathedral in France,
which was displayed for pilgrims in 2019 to celebrate the cathedral's 900th anniversary.
Despite the fact that the Shroud of Turin is arguably the most famous relic in the Christian
world, the Catholic Church has maintained a somewhat ambiguous stance on its authenticity.
As it goes, the Vatican has no official stance on the authenticity of the Shroud,
and, in fact, refers to it as an icon rather than a relic, being careful only to state that
it is an image of Christ and not necessarily a thing made by his magic body radiation.
This is not super surprising, as the Church does not usually take official
stances on the authenticity of such relics. Nevertheless, as an object, the Church promotes
the Shroud as being worthy of veneration as, quote, "an inspiring image of Christ."
However, since 1940, the Church has approved the production of medals bearing the face from
the Shroud on it, known as the Holy Face Medal, and the Vatican has owned the Shroud since 1983,
when it was given to them by the House of Savoy. In 1998, Pope John Paul II called the Shroud,
quote, "a mirror of the Gospel," and Pope Francis made a pilgrimage to see it in 2015,
both of which do kind of feel like endorsements.
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