Shroud of Turin
The Shroud of Turin is a sacred relic of the Catholic Church, currently kept at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. It is a linen cloth woven in a 3-over-1 herringbone pattern, and measures 14' 3" x 3' 7". The faint image on the Shroud is both the front and back of a man 5 feet 10 1/2 inches tall, about 175 pounds, covered with scourge wounds and blood stains. Whether or not it is the burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth has long been debated. Is it the work of a medieval artist or physical proof of the resurrection of Jesus?
Dating the Shroud
Beginning in 1978, 33 researchers comprising the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) were given access to the Shroud for 5 days, conducting data-gathering experiments, measurements and tests. [1]
In 1988, 3 laboratories conducted radiocarbon dating tests on pieces of a sample taken from a corner of the shroud. Their results dated the sample to between 1260 and 1390 AD.
A Jan 20, 2005 paper in the professional journal ThermoChimica Acta by Dr. Ray Rogers, retired Fellow with the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and lead chemist with the STURP team concluded that the sample cut from The Shroud of Turin in 1988 was taken from an area of the cloth that was re-woven during the middle ages.(Rogers, 2005)
In 2013, a number of Italian scientists published results of tests made on fibers taken from the Shroud, provided by microscopist Giovanni Riggi di Numana. Riggi passed away in 2008, but he had been involved in the intensive scientific examination of the Shroud of Turin by the STURP group in 1978, and on April 21, 1988 was the man who cut from the Shroud the thin 7 x 1 cm sliver of linen that was used for carbon dating. The new tests were carried out in University of Padua laboratories by professors from various Italian universities, led by Giulio Fanti, Italian professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at the University of Padua's department of industrial engineering.
Three tests were conducted, two chemical and one mechanical. The chemical tests were done with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy, examining the relationship between age and a spectral property of ancient flax textiles. The mechanical test measured several micro-mechanical characteristics of flax fibers, such as tensile strength. The results were compared to similar tests on samples of cloth from between 3250 BC and 2000 AD whose dates are accurately known.
They produced the following dates: FTIR = 300 BC + 400 years; Raman spectroscopy = 200 BC + 500 years; and multi-parametric mechanical = 400 AD + 400 years. All the dates have a 95% certainty. The average of all three dates is 33 BC + 250 years (the collective uncertainty is less than the individual test uncertainties). The average date is compatible with the historic date of Jesus' death on the cross in 30 AD.(Fanti et al, 2013)(Fanti & Malfi, 2013)(Fanti & Gaeta, 2013).
Image on the Shroud
The image is a photographic negative, and is clearly not a painting; no evidence of pigments or media was found forming the image. Some microscopic particles of paint do exist on the Shroud, but these do not constitute the image. During the Middle Ages, a practice called the "sanctification of paintings" permitted about 50 artists to paint replicas of the Shroud and then lay their paintings over the Shroud to "sanctify" them. This permitted contact transfer of particles, which then migrated around the cloth with the folding and rolling of the Shroud when it was opened for exhibit and closed again afterwards.[2]
STURP determined that the image was caused by rapid dehydration, oxidation and degradation of the linen by an unidentified process, coloring it a sepia or straw yellow.[3] The coloration on the linen fibers of the Shroud is extremely thin. Italian scientists working at the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) conducted experiments on their own time between 2005 and 2010, applying ultraviolet radiation to strips of linen to see if they could match the coloration on the fibers of the Shroud of Turin. In their ENEA technical report, published in November 2011, they wrote that particular doses of radiation left a thin coating on linen fibers that resemble the colored fibers on the image of the Shroud of Turin. When questioned, the lead scientist in the study, Paolo Di Lazzaro, said that vacuum ultraviolet radiation (VUV, wavelength 200-100 nanometers) from laser pulses lasting less than 50 nanoseconds produced the best effect.(di Lazzaro et al, 2011)
Blood on the Shroud
The blood on the Shroud is real, human male blood of the type AB.[4] There is a high concentration of the pigment bilirubin, consistent with someone dying under great stress or trauma.[5]
Wounds in the image
There are scourge marks on the shoulders, back, and legs of the Man of the Shroud, and a lance wound in the right side. Nail wounds are in the wrist area (not the palms, as commonly depicted in Medieval art). These marks, combined with the capping of thorns, which is not found anywhere else in crucifixion literature of ancient Roman (Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder or Pliny the Younger) or Jewish historians (Flavius Joesphus, Philo of Alexandria), are unique to the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
Ancient Jewish burial
Ancient Jewish burial customs include the use of cave-tombs, hands folded over loins, and types of burial cloths. The Sindon (Shroud) enveloped the body. The Sudarium was a face-cloth used to cover the face out of respect during removal from the cross through entombment, and was then removed and placed to one side. There was also a chin-band holding the mouth closed. The Othonia were bandages used to bind the wrists and legs. Such cloths are spoken of in the Misnah - oral traditions of the Rabbis written down in the second and third century.
Historical notes
The first reference to a cloth with the image of Jesus is in the legend of King Abgar V, ruler of Edessa from 13 to 50 AD. It was said that Jesus’ image was left on the cloth when he wiped his face with it; then he sent it to Abgar with a message. This “Image of Edessa” was called a tetradiplon (folded twice into four) in the 6th Century text The Acts of Holy Apostle Thaddaeus.[6][7]
In 943 AD the Byzantine Emperor Romanus I sent an army of 80,000 men to besiege the Muslim-held city of Edessa in order to take the Image of Edessa. The cloth was given up, and on August 15, 944 AD it arrived in the Byzantine capitol Constantinople. The Narration De Imagine Edessena, written one year later gives a history of the Image including the legend of Abgar, and tells of a private viewing of the Image by the future emperor Constantine VII and his two brothers-in-law, the sons of Emperor Romanus. One of the most famous Medieval Greek writers, monk Symeon Magister Metaphrastes, wrote the Chronicle around 944, which describes the same event. These documents report that Constantine could see only a faint image, like a “moist secretion, without pigment or the painter’s art”. The other two men were said to be barely able to make out an image at all because it was so faint. The next day, Archdeacon Gregory Referendarius gave a sermon to the people of Constantinople in which he mentioned the side of Christ’s body on the image. Till then the cloth had only been reported to have a facial image. In 958 AD, Emperor Constantine VII sent a letter to his army which was engaged near Tarsus. To inspire them, he mentioned relics in the possession of the Byzantine Empire, including the “sindon” (burial cloth of Christ).[8]
In 1201 AD, Nicholas Mesarites, overseer of the Imperial Relic Collection in Constantinople, published an inventory. It includes “…burial sindones of Christ” that “wrapped the… naked body after the Passion… In this place He rises again…”[9]
The French Crusader knight Robert de Clari wrote in his memoirs that the "sindoines in which our Lord had been wrapped” was kept in a church and displayed every Friday, until it disappeared in 1204 with the attack and looting of Constantinople by French Crusaders during the Fourth Crusade. [10]
The Shroud was displayed in 1355 in the French town of Lirey, where it was in the possession of a famous Templar Knight, Geoffrey de Charny.[11]
The Shroud was kept at Lirey until the late 1400’s. It was given a home in the Royal Chapel of Chambéry Castle in 1502. In 1532, a fire broke out in the chapel. The Shroud was folded up in a silver container that partially melted, but it survived with damage along its sides from fire and water. However, only the upper arms of the man in the image were obscured; the rest was not affected. In 1534, Chambéry’s Poor Clare nuns repaired the Shroud, sewing it onto a backing cloth (the Holland cloth), and sewing patches over the worst damage. The Shroud was moved from one location to another until it was stored in Turin, Italy in 1578.
References
Raymond N. Rogers. 20 January 2005. Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of turin. Thermochimica Acta, Vol. 425, Issue 1-2, Pages 189-194
Giulio Fanti, Pietro Baraldi, Roberto Basso, and Anna Tinti. July 2013. Non-destructive dating of ancient flax textiles by means of vibrational spectroscopy. Vibrational Spectroscopy, Volume 67, pages 61-70
Giulio Fanti and Pierandrea Malfi. 2013. A new cyclic-loads machine for the measurement of micro-mechanical properties of single flax fibers coming from the Turin Shroud. In Proceedings of the XXI AIMETA (Italian Association of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics) Congress.
Giulio Fanti and Saverio Gaeta. 2013. Il Mistero della Sindone (The Mystery of the Shroud).
P. Di Lazzaro, D. Murra, E. Nichelatti, A. Santoni, G. Baldacchini. 2011. Colorazione similsindonica di tessuti di lino tramite radiazione nel lontano ultravioletto: riassunto dei risultati ottenuti presso il Centro ENEA di Frascati negli anni 2005-2010. RT/2011/14/ENEA
