Religious Mysteries: The Shroud of Turin

In a two-hour TV special on the History Channel, which aired last night, computer artists claim to have recreated the face of Jesus Christ using digital technology. The image was created by taking information and blood encoded on the Turin Shroud and transforming it into a 3-D image. I watched this show due to my sheer curiosity about what they would find. I know some facts about the Turin Shroud and I know a lot of the speculation as well. I felt like the show used the right about of scientific fact, educated skepticism, and blind faith to create a show that doesn’t prove the Turin Shroud is the actually burial shroud of the man known as Jesus Christ, nor does it completely discredit the Turin Shroud as a fake. In fact, the show came to the same conclusion that most educated people who have come in contact with the shroud…it is a mystery. In light of the coming Easter holiday, I want to touch on this truly great mystery of Christianity.

The Shroud of Turin (or Turin Shroud) is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, northern Italy. The origins of the shroud and its image are the subject of intense debate among scientists, theologians, historians and researchers. Some contend that the shroud is the cloth placed on the body of Jesus Christ at the time of his burial, and that the face image is the Holy Face of Jesus. Others contend that the artifact postdates the Crucifixion of Jesus by more than a millennium. Both sides of the argument use science and historical documents to make their case. The image on the shroud is much clearer in black-and-white negative than in its natural sepia color. The striking negative image was first observed on the evening of May 28, 1898, on the reverse photographic plate of amateur photographer Secondo Pia, who was allowed to photograph it while it was being exhibited in the Turin Cathedral. 

It is said that the Shroud of Turin is the most studied artifact in the world. Yet, after 100 years of scientific inquiry, we are left, ultimately, with the same possibilities that shroud viewers shared in the 1800’s and before: The shroud is either a genuine relic or an icon. (A relic is either the remainder of a saint or a sacred object that has come into contact with a saint’s body, or, in this case, with Jesus. An icon is a sacred image created to awaken people’s faith.) If it was a hoax, its own history has made it into an icon. The Church has never made an official ruling on the shroud. Pope John Paul II believed the image drew people to Christ, and in fact, he had stated that he considers the shroud authentic. That’s a pretty heavy endorsement, but the Church does not consider the shroud’s authenticity a matter of faith. Therefore Catholics are free to draw their own conclusions. If its roots can be traced to the ancient Icon of Edessa, as some claim, then the shroud might well be the source of many ancient images of Jesus. From 50 until 1204, there was a faint image of Jesus’ face on a cloth enshrined in two ancient cities. Iconographers copied that face. It had been brought to Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine Empire, from Edessa, a town in southern Asia Minor that was one of the first Christian cities. Historians speculate that the earliest Christians could easily have brought the shroud from Jerusalem to Edessa. One theory is that the face was discovered to be part of an entire body image at some point during its later years in Constantinople. Though there was a major, well-documented parade and ceremony for the arrival of the Edessa icon at Constantinople, there is no mention ever of a shroud’s arrival. Yet after 1157 there begins to be mention of a burial shroud of Jesus in the records of tourists who visited Constantinople. During the shameful Fourth Crusade, when European knights occupied and looted Constantinople, the burial shroud disappeared. That was about 150 years before the shroud that is now in Turin first showed up in the possession of a French knight, Geoffroy de Charney. He may be related to another Geoffroy de Charney, a monk-knight whose order collected and safeguarded religious relics. The links among these events are tenuous, and certainly debatable.

If it’s a relic, the Shroud of Turin is invaluable. It would be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, bearing an imprint of Christ’s body, perhaps at the moment of the Resurrection. But what if it’s not real? Father Frederick Brinkmann, president of the U.S.-based Holy Shroud Guild, says the shroud would still be of tremendous value even if it isn’t authentic. Since the shroud supports the Passion narratives of the Gospel it puts us in touch with the Lord’s passion and death. He notes that the man on the Shroud of Turin bears the scourge marks, marks in the head that would suggest a crown of thorns, nail marks in the hands and in the feet, and the wound in the side. Especially the crown of thorns and the wound in the side and the lack of broken bones mark the crucifixion of Christ uniquely. Father Brinkmann seems typical of many well-educated people who are drawn to the shroud. The considerable numbers of people who write books and give lectures on the shroud tend to be scientists, he observes. That is especially true after an international team of 40 scientists and forensics experts known as STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) studied the shroud for five days straight in 1978. That team did a battery of tests that included even a computer imaging process developed by NASA to create 3-D maps of Mars. The 3-D image that resulted is evidence that the shroud image was not painted. No medieval painting could produce a proportional 3-D image. There are seemingly countless angles to shroud research, and each inquiry seems to have its advocates and foes. There is Swiss crime investigator Dr. Max Frei’s theory that pollen particles on the shroud prove it has been in Asia Minor and in the Middle East, even in the Jerusalem vicinity, at some point in its history. That would have to be before it turned up in France, since the Turin shroud hasn’t left Europe since.

So how’s that for a story? Experts taking opposing sides viewing the same evidence…that seems unavoidable when it comes to the shroud. Meanwhile, the faithful throng to the shroud during instances when it is on display, simply praying for the Lord’s presence. Father Brinkmann of the Holy Shroud Guild puts things into perspective. He says he considers the shroud "the real McCoy," but doesn’t make it the center of his faith: "For me, it’s a curious relic. If it were determined to be absolutely false, to have nothing to do with Christianity, I would let it go in an instant, and it wouldn’t affect my faith." In the meantime, preservation of the shroud has become an issue. The shroud will remain in Turin, but it has been decided that the shroud will never be rolled up again. There is talk of a hermetically sealed, leaded crystal display case that would protect the shroud from further harm for future generations. Those generations might develop new ways to determine the date of its creation and discover how the image was created. These things have natural answers because the thing exists in nature. Until then the shroud will continue to be an enigma based on the Passion and the mystical thing that happened to Christ in the Resurrection. The tantalizing notion that this is a relic of the Resurrection itself is far too great for any Christian to simply dismiss it.