When I was in my second curacy (we had two curacies in “the olden days”)
in a remote market town in the middle of Fenland Cambridgeshire,
Ian Wilson, an historian, came to Ramsey Parish Church in 1979 to speak about his book “The Turin Shroud”, published in 1978 after much painstaking research on his part, and assisted by many specialists from different fields, forensic scientists , botanists, fellow-historians, criminologists, textile specialists and the like.
Intrigued by the Shroud, in his own research Ian Wilson started off as an agnostic. By the time the book was published, he described himself as “a somewhat open-minded Roman Catholic”, in which he made the case for the Turin Shroud being the burial cloth of Jesus.
It states in the Bible that after his crucifixion, Jesus was wrapped in linen before being placed in his tomb.
In Matthew's Gospel, the linen cloth is mentioned -
"Then Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a new linen cloth.
"He put Jesus' body in a new tomb that he had dug in a wall of rock. Then he closed the tomb by rolling a very large stone to cover the entrance. After he did this, he went away." Matt. 27:59-60
Archaeologists have been left baffled by this linen shroud that was said to have wrapped the crucified Jesus. Apart from the biblical accounts of the tomb, nothing more seems to have been said about it, or about where it went. However, Ian Wilson managed in his research to plot where this linen cloth appears to have been in the intervening years from the entombment up to Medieval times.
A burial cloth, which some historians maintain was the Shroud, was owned by the Byzantine emperors but disappeared during the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, probably into the custody of the Knights Templar. Before them, there are numerous reports of Jesus's burial shroud, or an image of his head, of unknown origin, being venerated in various locations before the 14th century.
Historical records seem to indicate that a shroud bearing the image of a crucified man appeared in the village of Lirey, in north-central France, around the years 1353 to 1357.It was in the possession of a French knight, Geoffroi de Charny, who died at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. In 1390, the Bishop of Troyes, Pierre d'Arcis, who had jurisdiction over the church in Lirey, wrote a lengthy memorandum to Antipope Clement VII (recognized as Pope by the Church in France during the Western Schism), declaring that the shroud was a forgery and that a previous Bishop of Troyes, Henri de Poitiers, had identified the artist who had made it.
The history of the shroud from the 15th century is well recorded. In 1453, Margaret de Charny gave the Shroud to the House of Savoy. In 1532, the shroud suffered damage from a fire in a chapel of Chambéry, capital of Savoy, where it was stored.
A drop of molten silver from the reliquary produced a symmetrically placed mark through the layers of the folded cloth. Poor Clare Nuns attempted to repair this damage with patches. In 1578, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy ordered the cloth to be brought from Chambéry to Turin and it has remained at Turin ever since.
The shroud has been kept in the Royal Chapel of Turin Cathedral since then, and is currently stored in an airtight case under bulletproof glass. The case is filled with argon and oxygen to control the temperature and humidity, and to prevent chemical changes. The shroud is kept flat on an aluminum support that slides on runners within the case.
It was to be displayed again to mark the fourth centenary of Turin Cathedral in 1898. It was also agreed that it should be photographed.
Secondo Pia (1855 – 1941) was an Italian lawyer and proficient amateur photographer. He is best known for taking the first photographs of the Shroud of Turin on 28 May 1898. When he was developing them, he noticed that the photographic negatives showed a positive image of the man in the Shroud, in addition to a clearer rendition of the image. The next few years witnessed a number of debates about Pia's photographs, with various suggestions of supernatural origin versus accusations of errors in his work, his doctoring of the photographs, etc. Some definite support for Secondo Pia eventually came in 1931 when a professional photographer, Giuseppe Enrie, also photographed the Shroud, and his findings supported Pia.
Many Christians believe this cloth to contain the imprint of Christ on the fabric, a “photograph” of the Resurrection. However, other researchers, particularly since carbon-testing was done on a small piece of the cloth, claimed that the cloth dates back to hundreds of years after Jesus' death. The British Museum in 1988 came up with findings which used carbon dating to examine the cloth. It suggested the shroud, which has an imprint of a bearded man, with wounds consistent to being nailed to a cross, but that it was actually made in the Middle Ages.
In the last couple of years Italian researchers now say they have proof that the cloth dates back about 2,000 years, to the time of Jesus.
In their study, researchers at the Institute of Crystallography of the National Research Council in Italy used X-ray scattering to study the fabric. This helped them look at cellulose patterns - long chains of sugar molecules that break down, helping researchers gauge how old a piece of material is. After comparing the cloth with other pieces of material from that century, they found the cellulose breakdown was similar. The study said: "The data profiles were fully compatible with analogous measurements obtained on a linen sample whose dating, according to historical records, is 55-74 AD, found at Masada, Israel [Herod's famous fortress built on a limestone bedrock overlooking the Dead Sea]. Scientists at Padua University used forensic tests to compare fibres from the shroud with a range of ancient fabric samples, and they discovered that the material could have been made in Jesus’s lifetime. As previously discovered, botanical samples found on the cloth show that it had been in Palestine.
This whetted the appetites of those who felt, like me, that the Turin Shroud was proof of the Resurrection for a faithless age….
This could be the iconic picture of all time,
of the iconic event of all time.
More of this in the next Blog from me.
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