There is no proof that the Turin Shroud existed in the time of Jesus Christ, or that its image did.
The carbon dating says the cloth was medieval. If there was a claimed burial shroud before that, we don’t know and cannot prove that the current Turin Shroud and that cloth are one and the same. If a precious relic rotted, the Church often secretly swapped it with a duplicate.
The cloth could have been venerated for ages until somebody decided to put an image on it.
Whoever was going to forge the image knew he had to have a very old cloth to pull it off. People would expect discoloration, fraying, and dirt on a cloth from the first century. Since Palestinian Jews buried differently from everybody else, he knew he had to get a cloth from Palestine. If he had to do without a real cloth from the first century, it would not have mattered. It just needed to pass for Palestinian. Nobody was going to research how burial cloths were designed at the time of Jesus.
The Shroud might have been replaced a few times with a better production. This could have been done at any time, though it is a bit more likely to have happened when the Shroud was hidden away following its removal from the shrine at Lirey. It is possible that the Shroud the bishops opposed at the time was a painting of blood with no image, and the blood was painted on as if there had been a body in it. Then later, somebody decided to put a more mysterious image on it.
The Shroud was usually exposed in the past to celebrate the weddings of the Savoy family, and before that, it was exposed once a year on the Feast of the Shroud (The Blood and the Shroud, page 132).
The Shroud went missing, apparently stolen, after very slight damage in a fire of 1349.
When it was recovered, it was laid upon a dead man who came back to life. This was a test to see if it was the right Shroud (The Holy Shroud and Four Visions, page 8). Now, the Shroud had been displayed before thousands, so there was no need for doubt if it were the same Shroud. There were plenty of witnesses to verify it. This silly test is consistent with desperation to hide something—perhaps that this was not the real Shroud. We can be sure the witnesses doubted that it was. Even a priest, Richard La Pie, who had seen the old Shroud, had to see the miracle before he would believe that it was the old one! A miracle was staged to get him to mistrust his memory. It shows the people knew the Shroud had been a fake and knew fakes as good.
Two bishops testified that the Shroud was a painting in the fourteenth century, and one of them set out to track down the artist and was successful. He got professors to declare their certitude that it was forged (The Turin Shroud, page 307).
The Turin Shroud does not look like a painting, for it is a light print to the naked eye and is only clear or impressive when seen in the negative—which nobody saw until Pia photographed the image in 1898. So, was this Shroud not our present Shroud? We can’t be sure, but maybe the image faded since then. Plus, a painting you can hardly see is still a painting, and the bishops could have known other ways that it was painted apart from testing it for evidence of paintwork.
If the cloth from Lirey was an obvious painting and the current Shroud is not, then they are not the same shroud.
Bishop D’Arcis, in 1389 AD, declared that when his predecessor began to sue the Shroud promoters as fraudsters, they hid the cloth away for thirty-four years or thereabouts, for they were scared they would lose the case (The Turin Shroud, page 308).
However, when they displayed the cloth again in 1389, they said it was a copy of the Shroud. That could mean it was not the shroud condemned previously, or it could mean they were admitting the Lirey Shroud was not the Shroud of Jesus but a copy.
The bishop did not believe it was really a copy of the Shroud condemned as a fraud. He thought it was the fake. The bishop could have been wrong.
In any case, even the promoters as good as admitted the image was a fake in the end. That was very unusual for those times—relic mongers usually admitted to nothing. If the image was a good attempt at the imprint of a dead body, would the forgers have called it an artist's copy? Whatever it was, it was not as good as the current Turin Shroud.
The Benedictine monk Cornelius Zantiflet said that he saw the Shroud and admired it as an excellent picture of Jesus, agreeing with his bishop that what he saw was a painting. This happened in Belgium in 1449. He wrote that it showed the outline of the whole body and the wounded hands and side with red blood (The Blood and the Shroud, page 336). Wilson accepts that this is his beloved Turin Shroud, despite the monk saying the picture is a painting. But nobody would think that of something with no sketch or brush marks and that was faint. Also, the Turin Shroud looks like its man was nailed through the wrists, and only one wrist is visible. Turin Shroud is right to say that the vague image on the cloth would not be called remarkable or admirable (page 109), suggesting that this was not the Turin Shroud, though it was supposed to be. It was obviously a painting, which is why it did not take the world by storm like a blood print of a body would have. That superstitious age was mad for Christ’s blood and would have adored the Shroud if it existed then in the form we know today.
Picknett and Prince think that the painted Shroud was replaced by Leonardo da Vinci’s copy in 1492. The Shroud was hidden at that time, so the opportunity was there. It would be wrong to think that a new cloth would have been used, for the carbon dating shows a 95% probability that the Shroud fibres were cut between 1260 and 1390. 1492 is not likely to be the year in which the cloth was made—possible, but not likely. So, it could be that an old cloth was used. Leonardo would certainly have used an older cloth, for a new length of linen would not make a very convincing forgery. Maybe he used the original Shroud after removing the paint, to put the image on it by photography then. Some say there is no evidence that their idea—that Leonardo created the image and put an image of his face on the cloth—is right. The fact that the Shroud face looks exactly like a picture of Leonardo as a young man to many is evidence enough. We know that the head of the Shroud man does not belong to the body—the fact that it is more clearly printed than the body proves that, as does the indication of decapitation. There is even a cut mark where the throat would be, and if the neck were there, the head would not be in such an unnatural position that no model can duplicate (Turin Shroud, page 135). This shows that somebody wanted to use some important man’s face to fake the cloth. Chances are, it is a self-portrait when all that trouble was gone to.
Leonardo could have created the Shroud image. If he didn’t, then somebody did.
A SWITCH AFTER 1500?
The first copies of the Shroud were made in the 1500s (Turin Shroud, page 107). So, there is no evidence that the present image existed before then, even if the cloth did.
The Shroud was allegedly boiled in oil and then in water many times in 1503 to test its authenticity (The Holy Shroud and Four Visions, page 9). It was reasoned that if the imprints were the miraculous image of Jesus Christ, they could not be removed. In 1532, water was poured on the cloth to stop it burning, and these left stains, which makes one wonder why there is no discolouration from the boiling in oil and water. The Shroud that went through all this could not have been the Turin one, because the latter contains ancient pollen which would have been washed out.
The tests are probably a pack of lies. If they really happened, then the Shroud would have been ruined, and another one would have needed to be created.
The tests were unlikely, for it was clear from the cloth, with its burn marks, that it was not immune to damage. The Shroud had holes in it because of the fires it nearly perished in. That is why only half of the arms are visible. A large part of the image has therefore been lost together with the blood. When the Shroud is not fireproof, how can it be resistant to hot water and boiling oil? Scientists today can remove “blood” from the image and cut pieces off it. It cannot protect itself.
Also, the body—not the blood—image of the man rests on top of the fibres (The Turin Shroud is Genuine, pages 37, 41) and so would have been easy to wash out, for they were not deep stains—unless they are simply burn marks.
It’s tempting to think that whoever forged the Shroud forged more than one. When a Shroud was destroyed, it was replaced.
SHROUD MENDED IN 1534 IS NOT OUR TURIN SHROUD
The Shroud perished in the fire of 1532.
However, later a story began to appear about how the Shroud was delivered from the conflagration. The legend goes that in this fire, a blacksmith was sent into the chapel to rescue the Shroud, and it was saved.
The Shroud is believed by many to have got burn marks from the 1532 fire. A cloth bearing an image and burn and water marks was brought to the nuns to repair in 1534.
The cloth was folded into forty-eight, and one corner of the folded cloth caught fire from the molten silver casket, resulting in the burn holes that the nuns had to fix. He threw water on it right away (The Blood and the Shroud, page 75). But if a cloth is folded into forty-eight, it has four corners, and if it is burned down one corner, then you get fourteen holes. But the Turin Shroud has sixteen holes, though the four ones on the back along the arms are met but still a pair. And the water stains that came from the dousing do not cover the holes and only touch some of them. That water couldn’t have put anything out. See for yourself in the diagram of the Shroud damage (Diagrams 6 & 7 of The Blood and the Shroud). It seems very odd that only small and unimportant parts of the image were burned.
Five copies of the shroud were made afterward, until 1578, but none of them show the marks (The Blood and the Shroud, pages 135–136). Was this because the Savoys were ashamed they could have done more to make the Shroud safe, as Ian Wilson suggests? Or was it because the Church was embarrassed that the cloth could not protect itself? None of these reasons are believable, for the marks were known about and written about, and the poker holes were well known. The copies were of another shroud and not what is now the Turin one. They are copies of one which had been replaced by the Turin one. It seems that afterward, it was decided to destroy the copy and use the Turin one only.
A 1516 copy in Belgium of the Shroud shows pre-1516 poker holes (The Blood and the Shroud, page 76). A 1550 copy in Lisbon shows the poker holes but not the 1532 burns. This tells us that though the Turin Shroud was copied, it was not thought to be identical with the one burned in 1532 but a good copy of that one.
It has been suggested that the artist saw the Turin Shroud and copied it by memory. The copies had to touch the original to deserve and win veneration. The practice was to lay them on top of the original (The Blood and the Shroud, page 115). This means the artist did not need to struggle with memory, for he could see the original. There are too many features in common with the Turin Shroud for it to be merely memory. The poker-hole burn marks are exactly where they are on the Turin Shroud. The side-wound blood flows are the same length. Whatever he sketched had a lot in common with the Turin Shroud of today. The differences are very telling. Whatever he sketched had toes and other things that the Shroud in Turin does not have. It is not the same image but close. He did not sketch our Turin Shroud.
The burns on the Turin Shroud do not prove it is the same one that allegedly survived the 1532 fire with a few holes, for the new Shroud would have had these marks—it was a replacement of the old. It had to be passed off as the old one that was destroyed. The 1516 Shroud shows Jesus with his feet crossed and an egg-shaped face, and the crucifixion wounds on both hands are visible. This suggests that what the artist copied was like but not our present Turin Shroud, for this copy differs too much. It shows toes and hand wounds, not wrist wounds.
In 1534, nuns repaired a cloth presented as being the Shroud pulled from the flames. This cloth does not match our Turin Shroud. Another switch must have taken place after 1534.
Witnesses had to be brought in about 1534 to make sure the damaged cloth that was due to be repaired was the Shroud. The nuns, who were to sew it, described it. They said the blood of the side wound went to about half a foot long. It does not. They said they saw the back of the head pierced by a cap of thorns. They did not say they meant the blood, so the cap of thorns must have been on the image. It is not on our Shroud. There are many spots of blood on the back of the head, but they need not have come from a cap of thorns. The blood dripping and the stains soaking into the hair would have done that. Roman soldiers would not have made a cap of thorns when a ring-shaped coronet would do. Making a cap would have been harder, and they didn’t want their hands all pricked.
The nuns said they noticed traces of a chain bound tight to the back. Wilson says they incorrectly thought trickles of blood going out more or less horizontally from the middle of the back were indications of this chain (The Blood and the Shroud, page 347). But the nuns knew that if there had been a chain, there would have been similar marks on the stomach. Our Turin Shroud does not have stomach marks. The nuns must have been implying that there were such marks on the stomach. The nuns would not have believed there had been a chain around Jesus’ waist when he was laid in the tomb and would not have said there was a chain unless they were totally sure what they saw was a chain mark. The marks on our Turin Shroud bear only a slight resemblance to a chain, so one wonders what made them say it was a chain? The answer is that there was a chain, and so the Shroud was not the Turin one.
IMAGE ALLEGEDLY MISTAKEN FOR CHAIN
Those women did not repair the Turin Shroud we have now but another Shroud. This would mean that the Turin Shroud has been replaced and/or perhaps retouched a few times through the centuries.
The 1534 Shroud is not the Turin Shroud.
In the middle of the 1500s, the cloth was snatched from the cathedral in Vercelli by a priest who hid it for years in his house to prevent it from being stolen (The Jesus Conspiracy, page 224). Another golden opportunity to get rid of the painting, if that is what it was, and replace it with something more “unexplainable.”
Finally
The most convincing part of the switch theory is that every time the Shroud reappeared after damage, controversy, or hiding, witnesses described a cloth and/or image that doesn’t match the one in Turin today — suggesting the Church quietly substituted a more convincing relic to preserve the illusion of authenticity.
Bibliography
Wilson, Ian. The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real. New York: The Free Press, 1998.
Wilson, Ian. The Turin Shroud. London: Penguin Books, 1979.
Bulst, Werner, and Rinaldi, Piero. The Holy Shroud and Four Visions. Translated by Mary A. Mangan. Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1957.
Vignon, Paul. The Turin Shroud is Genuine: The Irrefutable Evidence. London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1938.
Picknett, Lynn, and Clive Prince. The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ. New York: Bantam Books, 1997.
(Contains the authors’ theory about Leonardo da Vinci and the Shroud.)
Baima Bollone, Pierluigi, and Kersten, Holger. The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth about the Resurrection. Shaftesbury: Element Books, 1994.