III.  THE DISCOVERY OF JESUS’ “PHOTOGRAPH”

     When the fury of hell is provoked, it is a sign that God is present and at work. So it fares with the “invention” of the Holy Shroud, as the discovery of saints’ relics was once termed. It could be said that, at the dawn of the 20^th century, it ignited an “iconoclast” war analogous to the original one, a war which will only come to an end at the hour willed by God, through the much desired celebration of “Orthodoxy”, as was the case in 843.

     For it is indeed just such an “invention”, a discovery, that we are talking about. When the Holy Shroud was shown in public in 1898, on the occasion of an exhibition of Sacred Art, it had nothing about it to attract attention: it was «without beauty or majesty», like the Suffering Servant formerly announced by the Prophet (Is 53), its aspect so disconcerting that it repelled art connoisseurs. But not its devotees: by contemplating these marks and these stains of Precious Blood, the Salesians of Don Bosco for example – like Saint Francis de Sales and displaying the same sure touch as the Poor Clares three hundred and fifty years earlier – were able to discover the treasures of gentleness, goodness, peace, mercy, infinite Wisdom and beatifying Beauty which so richly appear in these markings. The immemorial tradition is sufficient to assure us of this: it is Jesus crucified and resurrected. It is the revelation of His Heart.

     People forget this truth too often: devotion to the Shroud is primary, and if science intervenes, it is as an additional benefit, as a recompense and a help in the combat that the Catholic faith must wage against the impiety of unbelievers, against the sarcasms of Calvin and Rabelais. That is why it was specifically given to a Salesian, Don Noël Noguier de Malijay, to conceive the brilliant intuition which set in motion the most fruitful scientific research of the twentieth century, research which has applied itself with all the resources of established techniques to this singular and fascinating Object. He takes us through his discovery: «Observing that the Body reliefs were marked in dark shades, whereas the hollow or receding parts were in lighter shades, it did not take me long to liken the image of the Shroud to a kind of negative photographic plate», writes the Salesian Father, at that time Professor of Physics and Chemistry at the International Lyceum of Valsalice (SS I, p. 128).

     «Foreseeing that it should be possible to obtain directly on the photographic plate a positive image of Christ», he immediately set about the task of obtaining authorization to photograph the Relic. Secundo Pia, the official photographer of the Exposition, was simply the King’s appointed agent of Don Noguier’s idea. On the night of 28 to 29 May 1898, the photographic negative revealed for the first time the perfect positive image of a real and magnificent man, a large well-proportioned man of athletic beauty and wonderful presence, emphasized by the majestic bearing of the head, perfectly separated from the shoulders, which were unfortunately rendered invisible following the fire at Chambéry. It was a discovery that was absolutely extraordinary and totally unforeseen. And yet, one hundred years later, it is still not understood. As proof of this, I will simply refer to the special edition of Dossiers d’archéologie dedicated to “JESUS in the perspective of history” (no 249, December 1999 - January 2000, p. 123). One article in it treats of the Holy Shroud of Turin and is signed by Daniel Raffard de Brienne. It is illustrated with an excellent photographic negative of the Holy Face, which is explained by this unbelievable caption: «The face of the man of the Shroud. The causes of the appearance of the imprint on the cloth still remain unknown.» Is this a lie or is it simple ignorance? In either case, this presentation is doubly inexact.

     1. First of all, it is not the «face of the man of the Shroud» which the author shows us, but its photographic negative. The «cause» of this image is therefore perfectly well known: it is the invention of photography which allowed it to be revealed and to spring forth as it were from the Shroud in 1898.

     By not showing us the «imprint on the cloth» (fig. 2, supra, p. 5), but its photographic negative (fig. 18, p. 27), D Raffard de Brienne makes his own the enormous deception perpetrated by the British Museum in its exhibition on “The art of deception”, organized in 1990 in order to definitively discredit the Holy Shroud in the eyes of the London public. Was this his intention? In our edition last January we quoted our dearly departed David Boyce: «the exhibition catalogue did not show the diapositive of the Holy Shroud as its presentation gave us to believe, but a photographic negative of the Holy Face, which is not the same thing. No one had seen this negative image before the year 1898, when it was realized by Secundo Pia. But a photographic positive of what people saw “in the Middle Ages” would not have convinced anyone that the author of the Holy Shroud was a forger.»

     After the exhibition closed, David Boyce therefore telephoned Dr Tite at Oxford. «I tried to make him understand that, in presenting a photographic negative of 1898 as an artefact from 1260-1390, he was himself committing a fraud...» Tite argued that he was no longer director of the British Museum and referred our friend to his immediate successor, Dr Mark Jones. David Boyce telephoned the latter and told him that in presenting the photographic negative in the exhibition catalogue as the Holy Shroud itself, he was misleading the public: «He was embarrassed, and sought to place the blame on Dr Bowman.» We will come across this Madam Bowman again in conjunction with the Carbon 14 dating of the Holy Shroud. Let us return to Raffard de Brienne and his second imposture.

     2. «The causes of the appearance of the imprint on the cloth still remain unknown.» If this is what he believes, there is really not much point his parading himself in the bibliography as the author of an Enquiry on the Holy Shroud and a Dictionary of the Shroud of Turin, and it is quite inappropriate to seek to «tell children» about the «wonderful adventure of the Holy Shroud» if one does not know how to explain «the causes of the appearance of the imprint on the cloth»!

     These causes have, however, been known for two thousand years. They have been transmitted through an immemorial tradition, exciting a devotion full of compassion: these imprints, nothing less than artistic, of a human body covered in blood, are the authentic traces of the sufferings undergone by Jesus Christ in His sorrowful Passion. So they are not the work of a forger, not even of a well-intentioned artist, but of Jesus Christ Himself. They depict His naked wounded Body, wrapped by this Cloth in the sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathaea.

Fig. 18 : Photographic negative of the Holy Face imprinted on the Holy Shroud. It has been said that it is the work of Leonardo da Vinci or one of his disciples. Suppose this were true. It would then be necessary for human genius to have conceived this masterpiece as a “positive” image as we see it today, something which is just about conceivable, and then to have executed it as a “negative” image. Which is quite impossible!

     The conclusion is unavoidable: since the photographic negative of the Holy Shroud provides the positive portrait of a real man (fig. 18), the positive image (fig. 2 and 5) can itself be compared to «a kind of negative photographic plate». Don Noguier correctly said «a kind of plate», for the Holy Shroud is not a photographic plate! And it is not the light reflected by the Body that has been imprinted on the surface of the cloth, as would have been the case if it had been actual photographic film. It is the reliefs of the Body that have left their imprint: the nose, the pectorals, the forearms, the abdomen very prominent above the crossed hands, and the bended knees (fig. 5).

     The image imprinted on the Holy Shroud is not, therefore, the work of a forger, but the natural impression of a human body on ancient cloth. One need only examine the collection of engravings, miniatures and ex-votos illustrating five hundred years of tireless devotion to the Holy Shroud at Lirey, Chambéry and Turin, from 1350 to 1898, to remark the powerlessness of artists even to imitate their model (cf. fig. 14)¹.

     This photograph is a revelation, an «apocalypse» to use the etymological sense of the term:

     «This fragile material, this sacrament of the Presence of Jesus, had within its fibres all sorts of unknown or as yet unperceived beauties and perfections. It was the photograph of 1898 that instantly and effortlessly, without the need for any inventiveness, revealed the figure, the image, the striking and undeniable reproduction of Jesus Son of God. Immediately, pious souls, and sometimes unbelievers like Delage, felt moved and drawn by the Holy Shroud, just as Zacchaeus, Mary Magdalene, the Samaritan woman and Matthew the publican were drawn by Jesus. Despite the obstacles put up by a modernist clergy, the anticlerical Sorbonne and the atheistic world of science, the silent, pure, sweet and humble Glory of Jesus began to radiate from Turin, over Rome and Paris, over the whole of France… as well as over the world.²»

THE GLORY OF JESUS CRUCIFIED

     According to Saint John, it was on the Cross, planted on Mount Calvary as on a new Sinai, that Christ let his divine Glory be seen. It streamed over His face, and the Holy Shroud in which He was wrapped on His descent from the Cross, as Moses veiled his glory when descending from Sinai, preserved its imprint. It has been the first fruit of scientific research to make this Glory shine forth again, a glory obscured by a Cloth which is, of itself, but a sign of death, and which has remained so for nineteen centuries.

     «Catching the sound of its fame from place to place down the centuries», as the Abbé de Nantes charmingly says³, we have followed it from Jerusalem to Constantinople, then to Lirey, Chambéry and Turin.

     We must now recount how «we have smelled and tasted it through the analyses of the biochemists who have isolated all its components down to the very least», how «we have touched and felt it through the hands and the equipment of the physicists and experts who have thus reconstituted all the accidents it has undergone. Finally, by bringing together all these many empirical data, we have made an exhaustive inventory, as it were, of the Object’s characteristics.¹»

     These characteristics were recalled in the communiqué published by the International Centre of Sindonology of Turin (Centro) at the end of the symposium held in the Piedmontese capital from 2 to 5 March this year. It is regrettable, however, that it expressed itself in such a clumsy way. Read this for example:

     «Research by physicists, chemists and computer experts have allowed us to establish that the human image visible on the cloth is not a painting, but the result of the oxidation and superficial dehydration of a body, Gian Maria Zaccone, vice-president of the Centro, pointed out on Wednesday. However, scientists have not been able to explain this phenomenon.»

     One understands why! But what exactly is this «oxidation and superficial dehydration of a body»?

A glorious Body.

     In 1981 I gave an account at the Congress of Bologna of the results obtained by the American team of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP)². It seems that the formula used by Zaccone in his communiqué results from a “superficial” reading of my report. What I wrote was: «In order to describe the body image, a perfect formula has been coined by our spokesmen, one that sums up the whole state of the question: “The image arises from the oxidation and dehydration of cellulose and can be explained; but what the specific mechanism was we cannot say.”

     «The image, chemically pure, superficial and monochrome, stands out because of a simple contrast: the contrast between the dehydrated fibres and the ivory background of the cloth. This is what delineates the “body”. Nothing else: “The image fibrils are simply more oxidized and dehydrated than the non-image fibrils, but less so than the fibrils carrying the scorch marks. This is a good explanation of our observations.” For instance, it is probably the reason why, when submitted to UV light, the image seems to dim the natural fluorescence of the cloth.

     «The main thing is to discover, if at all possible, “the specific mechanism” capable of explaining the genesis of this dehydration.»

     There remains the «scorch hypothesis”, the one most capable of «incorporating and unifying a certain number of the characteristics observed on the image – oxidation, dehydration, conjugation – without however providing a complete and ultimate explanation of them, because the nature of the radiation and the energy source which caused it lie beyond the scope of our experiments.»

Precious Blood.

     Zaccone continues: «Moreover, the cloth bears traces of human blood…» This was in fact the clearest of all the published results to have come out of the New London Symposium (1981). It expressed the general consensus of thirty-two STURP scientists and their assistants:

     «We may conclude for the time being that the image on the Shroud is that of the actual human form of a man who has been flogged and crucified. It is not the work of an artist. The bloodstains are made up of haemoglobin, and they also give a positive result to the albumin test.»

     Although the image of the Body is not composed of any external components, the same cannot be said for the bloodstains. Of a carmine colour, clearly visible to the naked eye, standing out on the forehead and the back of the head, flowing from the left hand, running down the forearms, issuing from the feet and the pierced side, the Precious Blood confirms that this Cloth wrapped the Body of Jesus after He had been detached and brought down from the Cross. In this respect, the evidence of the Poor Clares of Chambéry confounds, even today, and better than do the tests of Heller and Adler, the deception of McCrone who stated that he had identified the ferruginous pigment as well as the gelatine which bound this pigment to the sheet, and the «vermilion» which was used to «paint» the bloodstains³!

ANOTHER ATTACK BY THE DEVIL!

     Zaccone’s press release continues: «… as well as pollen from plants growing in the region of Jerusalem.» What does that prove? Precisely nothing! All kinds of pollen can be found all over the world…

     Ever since our lecture at the Sorbonne on 19 March 1984, we have continued to state, write and reiterate that the astounding «discoveries» of Max Frei, the Swiss criminologist, should be treated with the greatest caution⁴.

     Heller wrote to me on 20 April 1984: «Pollen is carried far and wide in the air, often over great distances involving thousands of kilometres. If you consult a map of the east coast of the United States, you will find that the northern parts of New York State are about 2,000 kilometres north of the southern tip of Florida. Now, just to the north of this part of Florida there grows a species of cypress which is found nowhere else and which releases its pollen at a very specific time of the year.

     «Well, at this very same time, one can also observe a sizeable deposit of these pollens as far away as in the north of New York State.»

     What is more: «Pollens originating from the continent have been detected right out in the Atlantic Ocean. Pollen particles from the Sahara and its borders can be discovered in Florida despite the fact that the winds generally blow in the opposite direction. In the Mediterranean, air currents and storms carry pollens from the Near East into southern Europe.»

     Therefore, the presence of pollen species found on the Holy Shroud does not allow one to draw conclusions about the provenance of the cloth.

     Frei liked to mockingly relate how he had discovered American pollen on the Holy Shroud, pollen that had come from the gloves which Rogers had made him wear before carrying out his tests. The good man did not notice that by insisting on denigrating his American colleagues who, according to him, «had failed to check that their gloves were uncontaminated», he was destroying his own argument. For, even if we accept that the Americans were at fault, if handling the Cloth with gloves for a mere half an hour was enough to contaminate it, how can Frei declare that it passed through Palestine, Anatolia and Constantinople on the strength of a qualitative pollen analysis? The slightest contact with a pilgrim who had come from the East to venerate the Holy Shroud in Europe between the 14^th and 20^th century could equally well have contaminated it!

     That is precisely the conclusion drawn by Heller in his letter: «We know that pilgrims would press relics against the Holy Sepulchre and then come to Turin  to touch the Shroud with the same relic.»

     It is a shame to have to quarrel with our Turin friends. But this matter has a serious bearing on our defence and demonstration of the Holy Shroud’s authenticity. We are not permitted to compromise the scientific value of the results thus far obtained in order to please the ears of those who read us and listen to us. That would be to play into the hands of Hell, the relentless enemy of this holy «standard of our salvation», as Saint Francis de Sales loved to call the holy Relic.

     «As regards its age, the carbon dating of 1988 which took it back to the Middle Ages has not put an end to the debate. Even though the symposium came to the conclusion that there was nothing irregular about the tests, it has not ruled out the possibility that contamination of the cloth could have distorted the result.

     «However, there are no plans to carry out a further carbon 14 test until all the hypotheses over the interpretation of the first test have been exhausted, stated Gian Maria Zaccone.»

     There we have the reason why this «multidisciplinary symposium, which brought together in the Piedmontese capital forty scientists from ten different countries» was organised without our knowledge, as if behind closed doors.

     For more than ten years now we have been denouncing a crime. So clearly and loudly that no one can be unaware of it. Including Daniel Raffard de Brienne in the article quoted above, who seeks to dissuade his readers from drawing the necessary conclusions. This author begins with a heavily equivocal statement: «Now, it has been widely demonstrated that the 1988 test has no scientific value», he writes. «Widely demonstrated», by whom? By Madame Marie-Claire van Oosterwyck Gastuche and Messieurs Ivanov and Kouznetsov? But the works of these authors lack any scientific validity! According to them, the “mediaeval” dating of 1988 was an “error” caused by the heat to which the Holy Shroud was exposed during the fire at Chambéry in 1532. Since 1988, the Abbé de Nantes has continued to point out, along with Georges Salet, that no cause exterior to the nuclear equilibrium of the cloth can modify the rate of its radioactivity. That is why, when Gian Maria Zaccone declares that «even though the symposium concluded that there was nothing irregular about the tests, it has not ruled out the possibility that contamination of the cloth could have distorted the result», he provides yet another reason to doubt the “scientific” credentials of the symposium met at Turin last March.

     «It was marred by numerous irregularities, continues Raffard de Brienne. What we know of the results, which have never been published in their entirety, shows an insoluble contradiction with regard to the dates.» What contradiction? A contradiction between what and what?

     «We are not even sure of the origin of the samples passed to the laboratories, since those who removed them from the cloth have published three contradictory versions in which they can agree neither on the dimensions nor the weight nor even the number of the samples taken!» Ah? Fancy that! But one would have hoped for something a little more specific, failing which these statements appear entirely gratuitous. But the author could not advance the least proof without referring to our works. And that is something he could never do!

     I have received the programme of the World Congress to be held at Orvieto between 27 and 29 next August, under the honorary presidency of His Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and His Excellency Mgr Tarcisio Bertone.

     The theme could not be more indeterminate: SINDONE 2000. The programme notes refer to a number of subjects involving physics and chemistry, medicine and biology, archaeology and iconography, theology and exegesis. But what use is any of this if, as the carbon 14 dating would have it, the Holy Shroud only goes back to the Middle Ages and if the Turin symposium last March «concluded that there was nothing irregular about the tests»?

     Only one person, a Frenchman, would interject, Philippe Bourcier de Carbon, in a session devoted to “Photographs and Measurements”. As he is a specialist in demographical statistical analysis, we dedicate the following section to him. It is impossible that he should not see the anomaly brought to light by our study, the rigorously technical character of which we must ask our readers to pardon us for. But, when all necessary allowances have been made, the crime is patent. It is ma-the-ma-ti-cal! The matter has been aptly epitomised in the words of Jacques Évin, a French specialist in low-level radioactivity at the Laboratory of Villerbanne: he recognised that it was necessary to «fiddle the figures»¹ in order to obtain the arithmetic “mean” published as the final result: “1260-1390!”

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(1) Cf. Eng CRC no 317, March 1999, p. 13-16.  –  (2) The Holy Shroud saved from the flames, Eng CRC no 295, April 1997, p. 32.  –  (3) Georges de Nantes, The mystical science of the Holy Shroud, SS II, p. 72.

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(1) Ibid.  –  (2) The physics and chemistry of the Holy Shroud, published in “La Sindone, scienza e fede”, Atti del II convegno nazionale di sindonologia, Bologna, 1981, CLUEB publications, Bologna, 1983, p. 417-436. Translated into Italian, p. 437-457; into English, p. 459-478. Separately reproduced in the English CRC, supplement August 1982 (SS I, p. 69-86).  –  (3) SS I, p. 40-41; 43-48; 111-114.  –  (4) SS I, p. 116-117; p. 145-146.

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(1) Eng CRC no 238, p. 25.