Let us leave aside the literary and commercial pirating, even though we shall come back to it later in the chapter on «sindonological deontology», where Serge Mouraviev will formulate «a few important (though often neglected) principles» in conclusion to his work (p. 191-193). For the moment, let us concentrate simply on the effect produced on the public. Already, a parish priest has told his parishioners of his «latest discovery on the Internet: a book by two unbelieving Russian [sic!] scientists, who are convinced of the Holy Shroud’s authenticity and who present new lines of enquiry». In 1996, Cherpillod had sent us his work with this dedication, which was intended to be flattering: «To Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, whose kicks, occasionally violent, are preferable to the bleating of the flock. With the author’s homage.» He alludes to «the extreme credulity with which public opinion, carefully manipulated by the media», had welcomed the «brutal verdict» of the carbon 14 dating of the Holy Shroud. Turning to the chapter devoted to this question, I was expecting to come across the inevitable and convenient loophole of the "inaccuracies" of carbon 14. Surprise! Although the author does indeed begin by listing the reasons for uncertainty, it is only in order to observe that «all these causes when taken together might have produced an error of one or even two centuries», but not fourteen centuries…
«On one hand there is technology, and on the other men. "Good machines, bad people", as B. Bonnet-Eymard says (vol. II, p. 79).» The reference is his. It deserves to be pointed out. Having read us carefully, André Cherpillod is led to «distinguish between two plainly opposed clans: « 1) On the one hand, there is STURP which would like to supervise a large-scale scientific operation, in which radiocarbon dating would be an additional element amongst the many other tests. STURP is supported by Luigi Gonella, scientific adviser to the Archbishop of Turin, and professor of instrumental physics at the Polytechnic of the same city. « 2) On the other hand, there is the carbon 14 lobby, interested only in its speciality, which is dating, to the exclusion of any other test, and which does all it can to eliminate the scientists from STURP. The carbon 14 clan of physicists seems to be strangely merged with the "anti-Shroud" clan, who have, moreover, made no secret of their opinion. Those most active in this clan seem to be Harry Gove, of Rochester (E.U.), and Michael S. Tite, director of the research laboratory of the British Museum.» Two lines here have been strangely skipped, which makes this courageous denunciation unintelligible. We have re-established them (in italics) according to the original 1996 edition (p. 71-72). THE PREMEDITATION OF THE CRIME Cherpillod goes on to pose the crucial question: «How does one explain that the Church, in the person of Ballestrero and of Gonella, systematically favoured those who would do everything to prove that the shroud is mediaeval? Does this not look like masochism?» In fact, the excuse made for eliminating four out of the seven laboratories initially planned was «to economise on the cloth. The original plan was to take 200 milligrams to be shared among seven. And, as we shall see, they ended by taking 300 milligrams. So where is the economy?» Cherpillod writes, incorrectly, that «the method chosen is the less reliable of the two, especially for very small samples». That statement was proved wrong by the results finally obtained by the three laboratories, which were of an unparalleled precision, as we have explained. But he is right to add: «More serious still is the fact that the three laboratories will use the same method; so if that method is marred by some deficiency, it will modify the three results in the same way.» He then comes to the affair of the fourth sample, which he calls "the mystery sample", which Tite requested from Jacques Évin: «One cannot help wondering at this request, outside of the protocol and absent from the schedule, even though it was drawn up by Tite himself. One is aghast to note that Tite, who had never hidden the fact that he regarded the Shroud as a XIVth century forgery, actually asks for a piece of cloth resembling in every respect that of the Shroud. What was he planning to do with it?» Indeed! It is Jacques Évin who should have been the first one to ask that question. But this conniving accomplice of Tite’s is no longer trustworthy. When the first samples were taken on 21 April 1988, «was Jacques Évin (of Lyons) present? "No, I arrived a little later" (interview given to Michel Leclercq, Paris Match no 2044 of 29 July, page 13). But questioned by J.-M. Colombani on channel M6 (February 1989) in the course of a programme called When Science conducts the enquiry, he declared, "I was present when these samples were taken." So, when should we believe him? […] «The age of the two control samples, which should have been kept secret and revealed only after the laboratory work, was revealed two weeks later, on the 2nd May, by the Osservatore Romano. But that did not prevent J. Évin from declaring in Paris-Match, in July 1988, that it was very important to use the double blind technique: "if this quite exceptional procedure of blind samples was adopted, it was not to embarrass the laboratories nor to impose useless constraints on them. It was rather because of public opinion". However, on the following 4th April, it seemed preferable to say that "it never took place" and finally on the 7th September 1989 we were assured that "the double blind operation was totally useless". That is what is called "being consecutive in one’s ideas".» (p. 74-75) The portrait of the French physicist ends with this revelation, emphasised by Cherpillod to mark what he calls the «rout of the "anti-shrouders"»: «Jacques Évin, a scientist and a Catholic, as is his right, seems to be embarrassed when he writes: "My scientific conviction is concrete when it comes to the mediaeval date. It is also concrete over the fact that we are not dealing with a fake, that is to say, something that was deliberately made." (MNTV no 9, p. 20) There we have two concretes that hardly mix well together! In other words, it is not a fake, that is to say, something that was deliberately made (therefore, it is the burial cloth of Jesus; that is the Catholic speaking), and it is mediaeval (therefore, it is not the burial cloth of Jesus; that is the scientist speaking). There we have a fine case of double personality!» (p. 81) André Cherpillod, scientist and unbeliever, «as is his right», is triumphant… He then takes on Odile Celier, of the Paris Catholic Institute1: she «has no fear of hyperbole when she writes, on page 123 of her work, that "the operation proceeded under the best possible scientific conditions", and that "the measurements were taken with extra precautions, as had never been done till then for any other archaeological radiocarbon dating". Extra precautions! The bluff is hard to swallow! Let us point out, however, to excuse Mme Celier, that this phrase is not hers: it was simply copied from J. Évin’s collective letter (p. 1-2) of 4 April 1989.» THE ARITHMETICAL PROOF In order to give the reader some idea of the enormity of the "bluff", Cherpillod looks back over what he has entitled "The waltz of the numbers". It deserves to be framed (below, page 13). He continues: continued after following inset...
«But that is not all! The official report of the operation, published by Nature on the 16th February 1989 (p. 612), alleges one band of about 10 mm × 70 mm, that is 7 cm2, divided into three parts. Here we have Riggi’s figure no 1. «In the Lyon-Matin for 8 May 1988, G. Vial assured his readers that "it was agreed that a strip 8 cm long and 1.5 cm wide" be taken from the border, which gives 12 cm2. This is the same figure as that of Testore and Riggi’s no 2, or as good as. «In Paris-Match for 29 July 1988 (p. 14), J. Évin stated that Vial and Testore "cut three small strips of cloth, each piece measuring about one by seven centimetres". We have read it correctly; three strips of cloth, 7 × 1 cm each, that is a total of 21 cm2. So is it 7, 12 or 21 cm2? It all depends on who is prepared to lie most.» We can exempt Gabriel Vial, who is above suspicion and who has demonstrated the concern of a true expert on all of this2. Cherpillod continues: «As for Hall, interviewed by John Cornwell in The Tablet of 14 January 1989, he stated, which is something new, that "the sample was not taken from a border. And, of course, we would have been mad to take it from there. We took it from a part of the Shroud well inside". «What conclusion are we to draw from this grotesque situation? "In matters of this kind, one does not play with science", Jacques Évin assures us (F2, 24 December 1994). What will it take for him! Let us rather say with Bonnet-Eymard that "so many accumulated falsehoods no longer hide anything, they confess the crime!" (vol. II, p. 144) «Serge Franchette, who devotes five bold pages (from 26 to 30) to attacking Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, without once naming him, sees this as nothing but a "vile accusation" (p. 200). However, this accusation is based on the personal reports of the scientists concerned, each of whom returns the gunfire, that is to say the fraud, on the others […]. «Jacques Évin (MNTV no 12, p. 29) also treats these allegations as "despicable" – allegations which he says, "are sometimes cloaked in a supposed scientific rigour, for example by subtle calculations concerning the total weights of the samples". He regrets "that such excesses (the accusations) could have taken place", but he forgets to regret that such excesses (the fraudulent reports) could have occurred in the first place. And to refer to four figures, one of which should be the exact and unmanipulated sum of the other three, is certainly not to descend into "subtle calculations". A dim eleven-year-old schoolboy would be capable of that.» THE FRAUD RECONSTITUTED The merit of this indictment is to revive what Cherpillod prudently calls the "hypothesis of a fraud". He skilfully quotes the suspicions expressed by Father Bulst at Bologna in 1989, and the uncertainties uttered by Professor Lejeune over the airwaves of Radio-Courtoisie, before coming to the real source of all his information (including that on Father Bulst and on Professor Lejeune!): «But the most precise and well founded accusations were those expressed by the great expert on the Shroud, Bruno Bonnet-Eymard […]. «Two different and incompatible pieces of cloth seem to be involved (Bonnet-Eymard, vol. II, p. 140-150). « – A piece of authentic cloth from the Shroud measuring 8.1 × 1 cm, which was removed in public, and seen, but all trace of which has been lost since 21 April. These dimensions come from Testore’s report and are confirmed by Vial. « – A 7 × 1 cm strip from another cloth, from which samples were extracted for the laboratories. Everyone has heard about this strip, but no one has seen it. Its dimensions are those of Riggi’s first report and of Tite’s account in Nature […]. «The proof of the substitution lies in:
At this point, the indictment is cut short and ends on this note added by Serge Mouraviev to Cherpillod’s text: «To complete the picture, we add that Bonnet-Eymard and his superior, the Abbé de Nantes, have pursued their investigation and have considerably filled out their version of the facts. Cf. CRC no 271 (French edition), 1991, 35-71. But to reproduce their whole argument here would add nothing to their fundamental accusation, and it is not for us to settle the question. The important thing is that these scientists on their high horse have behaved in such an offhanded manner that – whether or not they knowingly tried to undo the results of their tests – they have in any case completely compromised their credibility.» And so, the readers of our two «Russian scientists» will not learn that our enquiries, conducted at the three laboratories of Tucson, Zurich and Oxford, and at the British Museum, led us to reconstruct an almost perfectly successful substitution: three samples numbered 1, 2 and 3 were sealed in three tubes. Tube no 3, labelled "Cleopatra’s mummy" (2nd century), contained a sample from the 14th century. Tube no 1 contained the sample of the Holy Shroud. The substitution consisted in putting the latter into tube no 3, and the cloth of tube no 3 into tube no 1. The result was that the "Holy Shroud" was dated in the 14th century, and nobody thought, nor even imagined, that the authentic sample of the Holy Shroud, laboriously removed by Riggi and Testore in Turin on the 21st April 1988, had been transferred into tube no 3 labelled "Cleopatra’s mummy". But under this fraudulent label, it was well and truly dated, with a wonderful precision, in the year 30, give or take 25 (between 11 and 64 AD). It should be added that this substitution of the samples was made possible by the prior substitution of one team for another. To be precise, the team headed by Dr Tite alone, appointed by the Trustees of the British Museum, replaced the commission formed by STURP under the presidency of Robert Dinegar. It is now ten years ago that we began our investigation. These conclusions are now so unanswerable that they have not yet received the least refutation. But nobody moves, especially in the Church, for nobody dares to take on the "carbonari". Not even our two «non-believing scientists», although they profess in their preface to refuse «to close their eyes and to stop their ears even when their ears and eyes seem to refute their unbelief. For there is none more deaf and dumb as those who refuse to see or hear anything.» (page 12) This calculated silence on the final outcome of our "detective" investigation seems to constitute an early denial of this declaration, signed by Serge Mouraviev, which adorns the beginning of the work. As though he too were obeying some imperative command… But before we come to Mouraviev’s contribution, let us end our review of his fellow author. He proposes to «attempt to resolve the problem of the authenticity or non-authenticity of the Shroud of Turin by asking History and Science to yield their answers». And as science in fact comprises a multitude of different disciplines, Cherpillod announces his intention of reviewing them all. And one will be compelled to «note that the indications in favour of authenticity would convince any court, whether civil or criminal». THE TRUTH SHINES OUT DESPITE First of all History. It gets off to a bad start. Under the unfortunate title of The morning of the Jewish Pasch, which was a Saturday that year let us not forget, we are told of the discovery of the empty tomb… the next day! The author is plainly confusing the "Jewish Pasch" with the "Christian Pasch", the Saturday with the Sunday… On the day of the "Jewish Pasch", which coincided with the "Sabbath" that year, nobody moves in Jerusalem, whilst Jesus sleeps in His Burial cloth. It is only on "the first day of the week", the day following "the Jewish Pasch", that Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb early in the morning when it was still dark. She finds it empty, because Jesus rose from the dead that morning, first day of the "Christian Pasch", which will become our Sunday or "Lord’s Day". When it comes to religious knowledge, the author clearly cannot tell A from B. However, that does not prevent him from dogmatizing: «It is plain that the Gospels are not historical documents in the sense that we understand in the modern era. They are first and foremost an expression of the beliefs of those who wrote them.» Therefore, André Cherpillod, a "non-believer", lends no credence to them: «Why was the tomb empty? Here is not the place to deal with such a question.» The historical event of the Resurrection thus emptied, the way is clear for Serge Mouraviev, in the second part of the work, to explain as best he can the formation of the image imprinted on the Holy Shroud. This is no longer "unbelief", it is bad faith, disguised beneath useless and uncertain erudition. The author states that the «Greek version» of the Gospels «probably does not date from before the 2nd century», without offering any proof. He stuffs his text with Greek, Latin and Hebrew words, and passes in open view from Mathew’s Gospel to the legend of the Grail, taking in various apocryphal texts en route! EXEGESIS On the other hand, the following paragraph puts paid to the stupid quarrel waged against us by the people of CIELT, following those of the MNTV association (headed by Mgr Thomas), over terminology: they «latch on to the word Linceul (burial cloth) and will not pronounce the word Suaire (shroud) at any price». «It is a futile quarrel», Cherpillod declares, for the two words are synonymous, like the Greek soudarion and sindon, «which can be proved by the following argument, due for the most part to the erudition of Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, the great expert on the Shroud». There follows a deluge of words in Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Greek and Georgian! They gave me no trouble, but they are meant to dazzle the reader and bury in silence the essential find, which was the object of my communication to the Congress of Bologna in November 19813. There I explained that though the Greek word soudarion is an Aramaic expression in Saint John, the important thing is to know why the Evangelist preferred this term to that of sindon, along with the appositional clause which bothers all the exegetes: «which was over His head» (Jn 20.7). We have here a "mashal", a "sign" of wondrous profundity, which allows us to penetrate into the Johannine theology of the event of the Lord’s Death and Resurrection. We read in the Palestinian targums of the Book of Exodus, that when Moses came down from Mount Sinaï carrying «the two tables of the Testament», he was unaware that the image of his face shone with the splendour radiating from the Glory of the Presence of Yahweh while he had been speaking with Him». «And so, after Moses had finished telling Aaron and the children of Israel, who were frightened by "the radiance of the image of his face", all that Yahweh had said to him on the mountain, "he placed a veil (soudarâ) over the image of his face".» It is this word from the Aramaic targum, soudarâ, that Saint John transposed into the Greek word soudarion, on account of the parallel he had established between Moses and Jesus in the Prologue to his Gospel (Jn 1.17; cf. 1.45). In Saint John’s eyes, it was not so much at the Transfiguration, of which however he was the witness on Mount Tabor, that the Glory of God shone on the Face of Christ, as at the moment of His supreme humiliation, at the «Hour» of His Passion. It is on the Cross, planted on Mount Calvary as on a new Sinaï, that the divine Glory radiated from His Face. Coming down from Calvary, He hides His Glory so as to be seen by men in His state of humiliation. As Moses veiled his face, so Jesus was clothed in His Shroud. At the moment of the Resurrection, His light, the light of His Face was made manifest. Is this the burning we recognise on the Holy Shroud of Turin? The conclusions of the symposium held at New London shortly after that of Bologna, on 10 and 11 October 1981, seem to correspond to this hypothesis. But André Cherpillod, a "non-believer" discards this without further examination. And we shall see that the whole of Serge Mouraviev’s "scientific hypothesis" was constructed to replace it by reversing the cause and effect relationship; it is not the resurrection that created the image, but it is the image that supposedly created the "myth" of the resurrection… HISTORY The rest of the chapter takes us from Jerusalem to Constantinople, via Edessa. The author only had to follow Father Dubarle in his Histoire ancienne du linceul de Turin jusqu’au 13e siècle (ŒIL 1985). I have called it "a book for nothing" and I do not take this back, because it fathoms twelve centuries of history in vain and tells us nothing about the Holy Shroud4. Cherpillod adds a selection of clichés based on "unbelief", which it would be pointless to detail here; they are off the subject. For example, primitive Christianity knew nothing of Christ’s portrait, but it liked to represent him under the symbol of a fish, which is explicable since «the new religion was the religion of the era of the Fish (roughly from the year 0 to the year 2000), reckoned to have replaced Judaism, which was the era of the Ram (from -2000 to 0 in round figures), which itself succeeded the era of the Bull (from -4000 to -2000).» (p. 16) That is not history; it is astrology! As for the crucifix, «it should be noted that these representations of the crucified coincide with the institution of the "holy" Inquisition, of the sinister Inquisition. Furthermore, it is in Spain that the Inquisition committed most of its crimes, and it is Spain that witnessed, and still does, processions of flagellanti, of men carrying the cross… and of women named Dolour (Dolorès).» Etc. Concerning the "recent history of the shroud" (chapter III), it gets even worse. André Cherpillod compiles information, but he has undertaken no serious personal research. From there to inventing stories is only a step, lightly taken: Jeanne de Vergy exhibits the Shroud after her husband’s death, he states without the least evidence for this, in order to «save her family from poverty», for «an exposition of the Shroud would have brought in a lot of money». The author reproduces (badly) the fine enlargement of the Cluny medal which he found on page 20 of our special number for February-March 1991 (CRC no 271, French edition; nos 237, 238, English edition). If he had studied it carefully, he would have seen what we had only just explained: the Holy Shroud is seen being taken out of a reliquary bearing the arms of the Charny family and of the Vergy family. «It is an important point, we wrote, for although the lead badge, made from a mould, may be 15th century, the reliquary it depicts as part of an exposition scene is exactly dated by these two shields. It means that the scene could only have occurred during the lifetime of those whose arms are represented, in accordance with the immemorial custom in force right up to the 19th century. As the shield to the right of the reliquary has the place of honour, it must therefore be that of her husband, in this case Geoffrey I de Charny. The reliquary was constructed for the Holy Shroud in his lifetime and at his request, as is proved by its entire ornamentation. It is crystal clear. In accordance with custom, he affixed his arms and those of his wife. » (CRC, English edition no 237, p. 24) It has to be admitted that Cherpillod redeems the stupidity of his initial summary judgements by a refutation, all the more forceful from his pen, of the "mediaeval hoax" thesis, which his prejudices would incline him to a priori, were it not for the scientific impossibility of discovering the hoaxer, "the unknown forger" of Lirey, and the technique used by him (see the inset below). continued after following inset...
From Lirey to Chambéry, the Holy Shroud continues to be hounded by the mockery of our "unbeliever", who has no respect for anything: «Pope Sixtus IV, Francesco della Rovere, to whom we owe the Sistine Chapel, but also the burning of 16,200 victims by the Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada, whom he appointed to this post, honoured the Shroud by recognising its authenticity in his treatise De sanguine Christi […]. But this was only a private recognition, committing only himself and not the authority of the Church.» (p. 36-37) Let us leave this hard-wearing lie about the Inquisition, which the latest works on the subject have put right (cf. Jean Dumont, L’«incomparable» Isabelle la Catholique, Criterion, 1992, p. 96-97). The lack of understanding of a devotion that is centuries old is only equalled by an ignorance of the things of the Church. In claiming for the "Holy Shroud of Chambéry" «the homage and adoration due to the Cross because of the divine Blood with which it is tinted», Sixtus IV inaugurated an era of public veneration which was to last for two centuries, the extent of which we today find difficult to appreciate. It has be said, contrary to Cherpillod’s comments, that the Church encouraged this devotion with all her might. The approval of the Sovereign Pontiffs reinforced the official favour of the Princes. THE AMAZEMENT CAUSED BY THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH Under this title, the author finally comes to the photograph of 1898, which he attributes to the initiative of «a French Salesian priest, Father Noguier de Malijay, teacher of chemistry and physics at a high school in Valsalice, near Turin», according to the explanations which we gave (Le Saint Suaire, vol I, p. 128). Suddenly everything becomes serious. «When the photos were developed, Pia was overcome with amazement. Father Noguier was right: the negatives revealed a positive image, which plainly means that the Shroud is a negative. In other words, the parts that are normally light are dark on the shroud. And the parts that are normally dark are light. Pia, therefore, was the first person in the world to contemplate a positive image of the face of the "Man of the Shroud".» His recapitulation recalls all the great names which mark out "the century of scientific studies" born of this discovery, from Yves Delage to… André Cherpillod! I note only one slight inaccuracy: it was at the Congress of Cagliari (1990) and not at Paris (1989) that «Professor Teddy Hall, one of the authors of this dating, first announced that he would attend, but then made his excuses when it was made known that Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, who intended to renew his accusations, would be present.» (p. 45) In the chapter which sums up the results of the scientific research on «the cloth and the image» Cherpillod confidently copies from me: «After studying the cloth by means of electronic microscope», he writes, «G. Raes revealed that the linen cloth contained a few cotton fibres, proving that the material of the burial cloth must have been fabricated on a loom which had previously been used for cotton.» (p. 47; cf. our volume I, p. 15) In fact, these cotton traces prove nothing at all. As Gabriel Vial pointed out: «one cannot ignore the consequences of the many movements and voyages of the Shroud: it would have been hidden and transported under precarious conditions (perhaps wrapped in cotton cloths?); there would have been open-air expositions lasting for weeks, when textiles of all sorts would have touched it, to be venerated themselves as secondary relics. During the tests that followed the removal of the samples in 1978, all sorts of micro fibres were found: wool, cotton, silk, polyester and even elastic nylon.» The expert from Lyons drew the wisest conclusion from these observations: «I think it would be extremely surprising to find nothing but linen there, and there is absolutely no need to consult the Mishnah to settle this problem of cotton fibres being present, since this could be merely accidental.» He adds; «Even so, it would be perfectly reasonable, if the opportunity occurred again, to proceed with a systematic collection of threads in those areas least exposed to such contagion, on the underside for example: threads from the warp of the fringe where the 1988 sample was cut, threads of the weft from the hem at the top and the bottom of the shroud, fragments of warp or weft from the underside where the burnt parts have been patched by modern linen. «Even though it is very difficult – but maybe not impossible – an attempt could be made to determine whether this cotton (if any is found) exists on the surface or inside the thread. Only in this case, would it be contemporary with the fabrication of the cloth.5 » I wanted to quote these observations at length 1° in order to retract my former statements made prior to Vial’s appraisal; 2° for their contrast with Cherpillod’s linguistic considerations, throwing dust in our eyes by writing the word «cotton» in Hebrew, in Sanscrit (!), in Greek, in Latin, in Arabic and in Iranian… What is the point of all that? On the other hand, Vial, armed with his thread-count and inspired by his restrained fervour, studies the Holy Shroud, drawing on all his knowledge and his immense experience, unique in France and perhaps in Europe, in order to gather observations of which nobody was yet aware. And with what precision and diligence! His "technical study" should be quoted in full, so admirable is it. On the question of the pollens, there is nothing to say. Cherpillod did not fall into that trap (p. 48-49). It must be said that I had made the necessary revisions (vol. I, p. 116-117) On the physics and chemistry of the image, on the blood stains, on the coins placed over the eyes, on the hypothetical inscriptions to be read on the Shroud, Cherpillod has nothing to teach us. He claims, however, to teach us something in history. Concerning crucifixion, he writes: «The Hebrews never used this form of punishment.» (p. 85) Wrong!6. There is no need for us to tarry over this. Let us not forget that Cherpillod is only there to prepare the way for the Mouraviev "hypothesis", the object of the second part of this work.
THE DEVIL ADDS HIS CONTRIBUTION Serge Mouraviev finds it amazing that no «serious mention of the Shroud of Turin has been found in academic reference works dealing with ancient archaeology, either ancient Jewish, palaeochristian or mediaeval. The Library of the École normale supérieure, which holds an extremely rich collection of archaeological books, albums and reviews, does not even refer to it in its subject catalogue and possesses practically nothing on the subject. The catalogue of the Library of the Institut catholique in Paris (yes, yes!) offers only a dozen or so secondary works and only one important book (that by Vignon) out of hundreds of books which have appeared in the last hundred years. A research worker from this same Institute, in a work just published on the trial of Jesus, "supposes" that the Shroud of Jesus was woven of cotton (!) and had immediately been torn up into strips (!) in order to bind the body… «Now, ask an archaeologist working on the ground in the Holy Land what it would mean for him if, for example, a 1st century Roman mosaic or fresco were discovered depicting the crucifixion of Jesus. He will unhesitatingly admit that he does not believe it, but that it would be the greatest day of his life. Yet, that is practically just what the Shroud of Turin is. More extraordinary still, it is not a painting, but a photo of the corpse (sic!) of the dead Jesus, with all his wounds, with clear traces of everything described in the Gospels and hundreds of extra details of a clamant truth which only a photo can preserve… In short, it is a source of incredibly rich historical information which archaeological monuments are rarely capable of offering (the only exceptions being – as they still are – certain inscriptions). «But consider… these "photos" are seemingly inexplicable and remain unexplained. What is more, they suggest a miracle, the miracle of the resurrection, that described in the Gospels. Now the resurrection is a scientific impossibility (sic!). "Therefore"… the Shroud of Turin is a fake.» (p. 176) Serge Mouraviev challenges this conclusion because he knows, as each of us knows, and the "carbonari" too, that the Shroud of Turin is not a fake. But he identifies with the minor premise, according to which «the resurrection is a scientific impossibility». His intention is, therefore, to destroy the «proof of the death and resurrection of Christ» which we have been victoriously proclaiming for twenty years: «of the death», yes! and of the «presumed resurrection, which modern science cannot admit, even as an hypothesis» (p. 179), no! anything but that! In fact, he writes, «the real existence of Jesus and the circumstances of his death as described in the Gospels and reflected by the Shroud, as well as the date of his death (which the lepton identified on the right eye allows us to identify: struck under Pilate between 29 and 31, which means that the year 29 is the terminus post quem of the crucifixion) are historical facts which no historian can afford to ignore without infringing the most elementary rules of science.» (p. 177) Note that it is the same for the resurrection. It is not an «hypothesis»: it is an historical fact certified by the same Gospels, whose testimony Mouraviev accepts concerning the Passion, death and burial of Jesus. On what basis does he impugn this testimony when it comes to the Resurrection? To the point where he «reverses the relationship of cause and effect» by writing:
In itself, there is nothing original in this idea. It conforms with the modernism universally widespread, even in the Church, according to which it is not the miraculous events told by the Evangelists that gave birth to Christianity, but it is the first Christians who concocted these stories in order to convey their "experience". What is new and piquant is to see a «non-believing scientist» make of the Holy Shroud of Turin an archaeological proof in favour of modernism! This merits a close examination, which we shall strive to make perfectly objective, without allowing ourselves to be put off by any strangeness. Let us arm ourselves with patience and look into this… Mouraviev starts from where the question was left off, exactly twenty years ago, by the forty scientists who came from the United States specially to make their observations, for a hundred and twenty hours at a stretch. From midnight of Sunday 8 October to midnight of Friday 13 October 1978, they examined the holy Relic itself, full length on a table that had been specially constructed for an experimentation programme, in a room of the palace of the Dukes of Savoy, adjoining the cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. After three years devoted to examining the recorded data, involving continuous interdisciplinary comparisons, they published their conclusions at the New London symposium (10 and 11 October 1981). The results obtained were summed up in a formula: the image is the result of an «oxydization of the linen, by dehydrating acid, forming a yellow carbonyle chromophore7». Whence the first great unknown of the problem of the images, writes Mouraviev : what is the physical, chemical or biological agent that provoked this oxydization? «According to STURP, an oxydization of this kind could be obtained artificially by sulphuric acid or by heating the linen. But neither acid nor heat as such can create a superficial scorching, nor can they serve to transmit faithful, clear images, which are both flat and three-dimensional…» (p. 117) That is «the central contradiction» which Mouraviev does his best to resolve. In order to shed light on the subject, he begins by quoting our "Physics and chemistry of a glorious body and of glorious blood" 8. After listing the characteristic properties of the image, we noted with Jackson that some of these excluded the hypothesis of an artificial creation, the work of a human eye, brain and hand, and that neither was any process of natural transfer conceivable. «So what then? I asked. How can all these factors be reconciled? It seems an impossible task, especially as "some of the characteristics of the image appear to rule each other out". For example, the image is both clear and three-dimensional; "it is difficult to conceive of a mechanism which transfers information from the body surface to the cloth enveloping it in such a way that the image has at one and the same time a good definition and a structure of intensity correlating to the distance between the body and the cloth". In fact the "high definition", the clarity, implies that a given point of the image on the Shroud corresponds to a precise point of the body. But the tridimensionality implies an action based on distance. Now, projected at a distance, by diffusion or radiation, the point becomes blurred, for the natural sources of radiation are omnidirectional. One would need, therefore, to imagine the impossible play of myriads of lenses and microscopic diaphragms in order to obtain what we see on the Holy Shroud.» After quoting this text, Mouraviev continues: «That, in the end, is the whole optical problem, the unknown number two of the problem of the images, – an absolutely real problem insofar as one remains prisoner of a tacit presupposition hitherto shared by all those known to have attempted to explain the images of the Shroud.» (p. 119) The «presupposition» is that of the fact of the resurrection which seemingly holds us all «prisoners», «with the exception of two, Nicholas Allen and me.» Let us begin by studying Allen, and then Mouraviev. INVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY The merit of the South-African Nicholas Peter Legh Allen is that he starts from the photographic fact revealed in 1898. Too many "researchers" forget this basic, insuperable, primordial fact in their supposed explanations concerning ancient iconography, or the fabrication of a fake shroud of Christ in the Middle Ages. Nobody before 1898 had ever cast his eyes on the real and true image of the Body of Jesus crucified, His admirable Head and His incomparable Face, as is brought out by the photographic inversion, the negative. All they had seen, positively, were these mysterious brownish stains on a linen cloth without any photographic operation. Unless… unless some genius had invented the process in the Middle Ages? Such is the "hypothesis" very seriously expounded by Allen before millions of television viewers on channel M6. His "experiments" have led him to the following conclusion, quoted by Cherpillod: «A whole number of facts strongly assert that the image observed on the Shroud of Turin was produced by a technique which, according to general opinion, was only invented towards the end of the 18th century (sic), namely: the photographic negative. These facts allow me to conjecture that our present understanding of the level of scientific and artistic technology existing in the Middle Ages (especially around 1280-1357 of our era) needs serious revision.9» In fact, Allen takes the "mediaeval dating" proclaimed by the carbonari in 1988 as a proven fact. And he is seeking to harmonise this with the "photographic" nature of the image discovered in 1898. Cherpillod thus sums up the «facts» established by Allen’s "experiments" as follows:
«So we are still dealing with a corpse, concludes Cherpillod, crucified or got up to look like Christ, but painted in white and hung out in the sun for days. Is there any need to say more?» (p. 59-60) But Mouraviev does not hesitate to say more. But he does better still: he takes over this «fantastic hypothesis» and transports it to the 1st century, since the poor dead individual wrapped in the Shroud of Turin is none other than Jesus. Because of all the scientific proofs establishing this identification, Mouraviev rejects Allen’s "mediaeval" hypothesis, but retains the fundamental intuition:
RESURRECTION? ANYTHING, BUT THAT! The «presupposition», we know all too well: it is that of the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, according to Mouraviev this «presupposition» entails three corollaries which are themselves the causes of the «contradictions which all the researchers have stumbled against: between vertical alignment and envelopment, between total contact, partial contact and an action based on distance, and between uniformity of the two images and gravitational asymmetry of the two body surfaces, front and back, etc.» According to these «presuppositions» numbered 1, 2 and 3:
«None of these presuppositions was supported by anything (sic!) other than the association of ideas which involuntarily spring to mind between these images and the resurrection of Jesus as related in the Gospels.» A scientist worthy of the name owes it to himself to dismiss from his mind even the memory of such a "myth", unacceptable from a scientific point of view. «The only hypothesis which we might be entitled to put forward was that the images were either a natural chance co-product, not of the mysterious disappearance of the body (sic!), but of the burial process itself, or else they were a fake (but, as we have seen in the first part of this study, hypotheses based on this second approach run into further problems and are incapable of accounting for all the data involved).» (p. 162) We repeat: the resurrection of Christ is not a "presupposition" : it is an historical fact. On the other hand, to speak of a «mysterious disappearance of the body» is a matter of «presupposition» with no foundation in the texts. It is also contrary to the principle so well formulated by Mouraviev with regard to Allen: «We must find explanations that agree with the documents that have come down to us on the subject of the event, in this case the Gospels.» (p. 135) As for «the burial process itself», Mouraviev recognises that the Gospels «unfortunately teach us nothing as to how burials were in fact conducted». That does not prevent him, however, from making a thousand gratuitous suppositions in support of his "hypothesis", as we shall see. The data of the problem are simple: the image imprinted on the Shroud represents the body of Jesus, front and back. The image is «realistic: of natural size, with no marked deformities, of high resolution and with a well produced relief» (p. 127). The question, which has remained insoluble to this day, is that of the origin of this image. In fact, «these properties demand a parallel transfer. It means that each point has to be the geometric projection of one point of the body and that the lines from the points of the body to the points of the image must run parallel and be perpendicular to the surface of the image. Which presupposes that:
The solution proposed by Mouraviev is «of a childlike simplicity» (p. 115). One only had to think about it. THE SUN’S RAYS The first thing to observe is that the Shroud shows us only two surfaces of this Body arranged around the head, and it excludes the top of the head and the sides of the Body. It is as though this Body were being reflected in two flat mirrors, one in front of the Body and the other behind, the first recording a frontal image, the second a dorsal image. There are no images of the top of the head or of the sides of the Body. Mouraviev’s hypothesis consists in making the Holy Shroud play the part of this "mirror". How can that be? Oh! it is very simple. It is enough to abandon the «presupposition no 2» according to which the images were formed whilst the Body lay in the tomb: «During spring afternoons in the Middle East, the whole atmosphere vibrates with the burning rays of the sun. A corpse, of course, could not have emitted these rays, but it could very well have reflected them […]. Whence the proposed hypothesis. The two images would have been formed by the sun’s rays while the Shroud containing the body was exposed to the sun, first the front and then the back (or vice versa). The rays had penetrated the linen, had been reflected by the body and projected onto the inner surface of the Shroud.» (p. 162) Let us follow Mouraviev in his ingenious «hypothesis», without posing any question as to the motive for such an "exposition" of the Body before the sun’s rays. We must bear in mind, however, what the author declared at the outset: «I am neither a physicist nor a chemist.» Thus, we shall be surprised by nothing, not even by the strange absurdities to which his obsessive denial of the Lord’s resurrection leads him. «The sun’s rays possess two properties that are very important for us: like all electromagnetic rays, they are naturally rectilinear and, furthermore, as their source is "at infinity", they are practically parallel. «But if they were actual solar rays, we are entitled to ask, firstly, how they were capable of penetrating a tomb cut out of the rock and, secondly, how they could have contributed to the formation of the image. «In fact, they did not have to penetrate the tomb. And if they ever did, it was certainly not in the form of a beam capable of lighting up the body within its shroud, a fortiori the whole of this body. «But who said that the image or rather the images of the Shroud were formed inside the tomb? We ask: what is the foundation for this general conviction which insists that the image of Jesus was formed only after his burial? There is none – apart from the link of association which our minds involuntarily make between this image and the resurrection of Jesus, which, according to the Evangelists, supposedly occurred after the body had been placed in the tomb.» (p. 129) Here, we are at the heart of Mouraviev’s thesis: he deflates this «presupposition», the heritage of nineteen centuries of Christianity, which has held us blind, and he reverses the roles. According to him, not only is the resurrection not the cause of the images, but it is «the discovery of the Shroud with its images» which «must have contributed to lending credit to the thesis of the resurrection» (p. 180). Let us not discuss this. For the moment, let us see where it leads us. But if readers have lost patience with all these incongruities, we recommend them to go straight to our conclusion, enriched with a new «proof of the death and resurrection of Christ» arising from this confrontation and from these very incongruities : proof through the absurd! THE OPTICAL MECHANISM «If we suppose that the Shroud images were formed by the action of the sun before the burial, several questions are immediately raised, and the most burning (sic!) of these concerns yet again the concrete optical mechanism of their formation. For we are far from having exhausted this subject. «Let us represent the situation that this implies. «The source of the image, the body of Jesus, lies in its shroud beneath the sun’s rays. What happens? The sun’s rays fall straight down, in a parallel beam, on the top of the shroud (to simplify matters, let us suppose they are vertical); one part of them is reflected, refracted (deflected) or absorbed by the linen, but another part penetrates the thin, white cloth and strikes the body. These incident parallel rays are in their turn either absorbed by the body, or reflected. What becomes of the reflected rays? «They cease to be parallel; they are reflected in conformity with the laws of reflection, that is to say (1) in the same plane described by the incident ray and the normal at the point of incidence and (2) at an angle equal to double the angle of incidence (the angle between the direction of the incident ray and that of the normal at the point of incidence). In other words, there is a dispersion or scattering of the rays, and the effect of this is, on one hand, to send back in an inverse direction those rays whose angle of incidence is zero, and, on the other hand, to deflect at a different angle those rays whose angle of incidence diverges from zero.» Can a body of complex form, like that of a man lit up by the sun’s rays, cast an image? It depends first of all on its reflecting power: the more the body glows, the greater its reflecting power. And then it depends on the distance between the body and the Shroud: the less the distance, the clearer and more realistic the image. Such is the principle of the mechanism responsible for the "model" of the image, according to Mouraviev. He explains why the image shows us only the upper part of the body and leaves the side surfaces in the shade. «The reason for this is the parallel nature of the solar light. It is like a projector in the night; it only illuminates the body on one side and not the others, and thus selects the surfaces it directly lights up to the detriment of the others.» All that is «of a childlike simplicity» and «needs no experimental verification. It is sufficient for a body to have a reflectance for it to reflect the parallel rays that strike it.» However, one objection arises. The hypothesis supposes that the Holy Shroud has properties that are apparently contradictory: the outer surface of the material is transparent to the incident rays of the sun, but opaque on its inner surface which is browned by the rays reflected from the Body. In order to resolve this contradiction, it is not enough to write that the cloth was «unilaterally transparent» (p. 131). Experiments should be made. Another question: how was the image imprinted on the linen? By what alchemy «could this piece of cloth have become photosensitive?» MYRRH AND ALOES «The answer was suggested to us by John, the author of the fourth Gospel, who points out that 100 Roman pounds (nearly 33 kilos) of a mixture of aloes and myrrh were used for the burial of Jesus in accordance with the custom of the Jews (Jn 19.39). A modern doctor, the Sicilian Sebastiano Rodante, who had conducted experiments on the properties of this mixture, also suggested the same answer. One of Rodante’s conclusions was that this mixture of aloes and myrrh in solution made the linen impregnated with it sensitive to the sun’s rays.» Saint John does not state that it was «the custom of the Jews», but Mouraviev is convinced: «In our opinion, Joseph and Nicodemus literally and hermetically enclosed the body of Jesus in his shroud […] at the same time as the aromatics.» They had, in fact, «prepared the shroud in advance with the aim of making it impermeable if only for two or three days», by coating one surface of the cloth, the obverse side, the side of the warp, «with a layer of aloes and myrrh in solution», which they then allowed to dry. They then transformed the long piece of linen «into a hermetic bag (or half-bag)». All that was needed «after it had been prepared and dried, was to add a new coat of solution, or rather a pure solvent (water or oil), and to stick down the whole length of the edge (as one moistens the dry gum of an envelope or of a stamp) by folding one piece over another, pressing down the edges and letting them dry. The result was then strengthened with stitches.» (p. 133) Such were the «historical circumstances» of Christ’s burial, hitherto unknown to us and reconstituted today by Serge Mouraviev, a «non-believer» but very learned. The Shroud which «Joseph must have brought, or arranged to be brought, either to the foot of the cross or straight to the provisional burial place» was therefore like a «portfolio case», into which the Body of Jesus was inserted (p. 139). It was a delicate operation. As related by Mouraviev, one would imagine so! The first stage consisted in coating the body and the shroud with a solution of aromatics without «losing a single drop of the solution which had touched the corpse (sic!)». We excuse a «non-believer» for the impropriety of this term: there was never a "corpse" of Jesus, because His Body never suffered the corruption of the grave, having never ceased to be assumed by the divine Person Who consecrated It entirely to Himself to be the sacrament of our Redemption. Mouraviev continues: «First of all they had to coat the inside of the shroud, which was unstitched on one side; then they had to insert the body, head first and facing upwards, at the closed end of the bag, coating it with aromatics as they went along. The back must have been coated beforehand or else the body was simply placed on the coated inside surface of the Shroud.» The women then proceeded with the «closing of the second side of the bag by pressing one border of the remaining selvage against the other (dampened by the aromatics) and then sewing them together as closely to the body as possible». The cloth then had to be applied to the Body «in order to obtain the maximum adhesion» and «the remainder of the aromatics poured into the shroud to fill out the inevitable hollows. No doubt, a man standing would have had to lift up the bottom of the shroud together with the body by taking hold of the corners of the back piece (30 cms longer that the front piece) whilst someone else poured in the liquid through the opening.» It was then possible to close «the opening of the shroud-bag. Whilst held in this position, the bottom of the reverse (outer face) of the frontal side is coated, and it is pressed against the top of the dorsal side, itself also coated with aromatics (but on its inner surface). They are stuck together and sewn up as carefully as possible.» EXPOSURE TO THE SUN «The effect of liquid aromatics inside the shroud is to soften the initial preparation which, if it were to dissolve, would seep through outside – something that had to be avoided at all costs for as long as the shroud had not been placed in its niche. It was therefore necessary to harden this preparation by keeping it for a few minutes beneath the burning rays of the Sun (the capital letter is his). For that, it was of course necessary to expose not only the frontal side, but also the dorsal side, especially since it was on the back that the corpse (sic!) had to rest.» Thus the frontal side was exposed first to the action of the sun’s rays, the Body being laid in a perpendicular direction to the sun. «As soon as the time required had passed for this operation, the body was turned round to expose the back to the sun’s rays.» (p. 150) It is during these two exposures «that the two images still to be seen on the shroud must have been formed» (p. 140). In order to verify the hypothesis, Mouraviev simply proposes «a proper reconstruction, at the real time, in the real place and at the real season, of the whole procedure of the preparation and carrying out of the burial» as he imagines it – I beg your pardon! – «as it follows from the Gospels» (p. 165). For Mouraviev is fully persuaded that that is how things happened, according to the Scriptures. This "project" will certainly be costly, but Mouraviev declares himself ready to take an active part in its execution, «if he is given the material means», as he made clear in his preprint of 1996. Note that «these experiments do not imply any examination or sophisticated measurements of the Shroud, nor any chemical or physical analyses of samples, of any kind, of the cloth.» All that have to be provided are 1° «a mannequin of Jesus» fabricated in accordance with «the physical measurements of Jesus as implied by the images of the Shroud and the way they were formed»; 2° «a piece of linen of the original dimensions and other characteristics, established or supposed, of the Shroud»; 3° the preparation of «thirty-three kilos of mixed aloes and myrrh in conformity with the results of the previous experiments». These last words allude to the numerous research projects carried out by Italian sindonologists, and by the French Michel Adgé, on the chemical properties of mixed aloes and myrrh. This is «the unique hypothetical key which can give an answer to nearly all the questions» (p.132), through a very questionable concordance with John19.39. In order to make quite sure that everything agrees, Mouraviev gives his own translation of the passage from Saint John: «Nicodemus also came […] bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds. They [Joseph of Arimathea (sic!) and Nicodemus] then took the Body of Jesus and wrapped it in the cloths with the aromatics, as is the custom with the Jews when preparing burials.» Thus is explained in advance why the Body did not remain in the Shroud more than thirty-six hours: the Good Friday burial was simply "preparatory". Soon after the Sabbath, the women went to the tomb to finish the anointing, and so take the Body from its Shroud by cutting the side strip: «Later, it was sewn back on again to make the shroud more presentable […]. And that is also doubtless why, in order to free the body, 30 cm of the back length and 10 cm of the front length were cut, for they had been folded over the dead man’s feet and stuck (even sewn?) onto the back so as to close the bottom of the shroud. And if later, they were not sewn back on, it may be because they did not bear the image and their absence did not harm the integrity of the rest.» (p. 140) This is no longer science; it is «literature», as Gabriel Vial would say.
«If science should one day feel that it has been surpassed, let it say so, and in so doing it will have made a discovery all the same.10» Vignon could not have put it better. It was as though he foresaw the turn that research into sindonology would soon be taking when scientists found themselves faced with an ongoing mystery, according to the latest expression from the American team… fifty years later! The «mystery» arises from who drew the silhouette of Jesus on the Shroud: this straw yellow colour comes from an «intrinsic change in the structure of the cellulose of the linen itself»11, from an oxydization of the linen cellulose, and not from the hypothetical aloes, no trace of which is to be found on the Holy Shroud, despite the statements of our friend Pier Luigi Baïma Bollone, who is given a large place in Mouraviev’s book. And for good reason! Baïma assures us that he found myrrh and aloes in the layer of threads taken from the dorsal imprint of the soles of the feet. But he provides no specific macromolecular chemical test in support of his assertion. Pellicori, Jumper and Heller found nothing of the sort, but only mud and blood. Not the least trace of aromatics. Nor could Riggi find any in the dust collected from the reliquary, after seven hundred tests with an electron microscope. The truth is that the image is made… of nothing! And that indeed is an "ongoing mystery", the object of immense perplexity on the part of the whole American team: «Certain explanations which could be retained from a chemical point of view are excluded by physics», and vice versa. One can say that all the efforts used by «two non-believing scientists» to empty this mystery, end in throwing even more light on it. That is why we made a point of quoting at length from Serge Mouraviev’s lucubrations. Everything in his "research" is done as though he were guided by the concern to contradict the Abbé de Nantes, this «French ecclesiastic» – as he calls him in his preprint of 1996 – who brings in the angels: «Christ must have had operators to help Him work this miracle: "Hold the cloth, I am rising".12» It is an imaginative reconstruction of a certain fact: «It is clear that this spectacle was seen by no one, our Father continues. The holy women and the Apostles will come to the tomb at dawn, only after the event.» But the angels are no imagination: they were there in attendance; they were seen and heard by witnesses (Lk 24.4). Whereas the "preparation" of the "shroud-portfolio" is well and truly the fruit of a "non-believer’s" imagination seeking a "natural" means of keeping the cloth above the Body, and of holding it very straight so that there should be no creases. For that is the problem posed by the characteristics of the two silhouettes, facial and dorsal: «The state of "weightlessness" of this Body, which the dorsal imprint seems to indicate, unsupported as though floating in the air, is a fascinating enigma13… » «It is as though the two angels (Lk 24.4) before having rolled away the stone, or afterwards, had been summoned by Christ to hold the Shroud very straight, without leaving any folds, so that this Sheet might receive the flash of the resurrection. The flash burst in a fraction of a second from the Body of Christ freed from its weight and floating between the two layers of the Sheet, leaving these scorch marks and at the same time this impression of contact with the blood of the wounds.13» Once again, this is only an act of the imagination, but it is not gratuitous. It recalls an absolutely inexplicable fact vouched for by the dorsal surface: the full mass of the Body does not weigh down on this Sheet while it is impregnating it with its Blood and the marks of its wounds, and at the same singeing it with the image of its volume. Whereas the Body laid on its stomach, turned and turned again in its bag, is a purely gratuitous act of the imagination – crude and sacrilegious too – fabricated in order to provide «a natural explanation of the optic intensities of the frontal and dorsal images (that disturbing "weightlessness"!)», on the admission of Mouraviev himself (p. 131). Let us come back to the simple, sublime and divine reality. "The Sun" was in this Sheet. Here, I am in agreement with Serge Mouraviev, because, here again, we said it before he did!14 But in taking up this "Sun" from us, he attempts to "naturalise" the miracle long since expressed by the Abbé de Nantes, our venerable Master and Father. Mouraraviev’s "Sun" is pure speculation, without even the beginning of an experimental verification. Whereas the "Sun" of which we speak has been the object of repeated experiences, on the part of privileged witnesses who have informed us about them: on the road to Damascus, the risen Christ appeared to Saint Paul, in «a light» capable of blinding him physically «for three days» (Ac 9.3-9). On Mount Tabor, «His face shone like the sun, His clothes became dazzling like light.» (Mt 17.2) Our conclusion is therefore corroborated by the testimony of those who saw the empty tomb and Jesus appearing to them alive and risen: «Namely that it is HE, Jesus Christ, who conceived and wanted this image of Himself, and who made it with the controlled energies of His own Body brought to their highest degree of glory by His resurrection.15» In his work, Mouraviev mentions the "angels" of the resurrection, without any quotation marks or reference, as proof via the absurd of the «impasse», so he says, reached by «the traditional approach which makes the body the source of the image or, in the case of distance-based action, of the intermediate flux». The thing is inconceivable, he declares, unless this «gaseous flux or radiation of some kind» had been «submitted to some mysterious and powerful field which would have deflected and/or maintained its trajectory in two preferential vertical directions. And on condition that the upper length of the cloth was held flat by angels…» (p. 127-128) At this point, Mouraviev seriously fails to observe rule number 2 of scientific deontology which, according to him, demands that one’s sources are always indicated (p. 192). For want of which, the idea formulated here is presented as a borderline case, imagined by himself, which must be generally rejected as absurd, whereas he is doing no more than exactly transcribing the thinking of the Abbé de Nantes, the only «French ecclesiastic», to my knowledge, to have proposed a coherent explanation for the origin of the image of the Holy Shroud by taking into account all the results of scientific research: «The miracle, scientifically established, leads to the mystery and the mystery in turn explains the miracle. Thus the adequate final cause of the Object of our study is eventually revealed to us, on condition however that we believe in the word of Him who, having predicted it in the course of His mortal life, worked the first miracle of raising Himself from the dead and secondarily this other, much more modest and unexpected, miracle of leaving the proof of it on His shroud "in perpetual memory".» This image is «the last appearance of Jesus» leaving us a perfect and clear projection of His resurrection: «What he did then, He wished to do. No doubt, because such would be the normal physical and chemical effects of every resurrection to come… But, much more, He did it intentionally, so that we might see Him, from age to age until the end, taking us to be witnesses of His new Glory. «Having recovered its life, the Body detached itself, separating molecule by molecule from its coagulated blood, from its serum haloes which can still be seen around the edges of every mark left by the scourging or every blood clot, and from the dust of the street. Of the linen fibres to which His Body had stuck an instant before, none was broken, torn or crumpled. «In this new state of apparent weightlessness – I insist on this! –, all the while in the horizontal position of one lying in the tomb, He acted through His human will, out of perfect love for us and for our salvation, and, with supreme mastery of His energies, from every cell of His body He cast forth – on to the miraculous linen cloth expectantly held out and in parallel vertical beams, both facial and dorsal – the million rays of light and heat that fixed for ever His indelible image on this sheet. It was a scorching of life, a scorching of love, a gift of His whole Self, as of Person to person in love.15» Brother Bruno Bonnet-Eymard (1) Cf. CRC no 256, English edition, March 1993, p. 5-8. – (2) Cf. CRC no 224, English edition, Nov-Dec 1989; in Le Saint Suaire, volume II, signe de contradiction, p.148-149. – (3) Le "soudarion" johannique, negatif de la gloire divine, in Le Saint Suaire, vol. I, p. 57-68. – (4) CRC no 192, English edition, p.10-20; in Le Saint Suaire, vol. I. p. 134-145. – (5) Gabriel Vial, Le linceul de Turin. Étude technique, Bulletin of the International Centre for the Study of Ancient Textiles, no 67 (1989), p. 11-24. – (6) Cf. Émile Puech, Les manuscrits de la mer Morte et le Nouveau Testament, in Qumrân et les manuscrits de la mer Morte, Cerf 1997, p. 288-294. – (7) B. Bonnet-Eymard, Le Saint Suaire à l’épreuve de la Science, in Le Saint Suaire, vol. I, p. 109-119. – (8) CRC no 237, English edition, March 1991, p. 29-36. – (9) Nicholas P. L. Allen, First recorded photograph, in South African Journal of Art History, no 11 (1993), p. 23-32. – (10) P. Vignon, Le Saint Suaire de Turin, Masson, 1939, p. 206. – (11) B. B.-E., La physique et la chimie du Saint Suaire, in Le Saint Suaire, vol. I, p. 69-86; 109-119. – (12) Ibid., p. 156. – (13) G. de Nantes, La science mystique du Saint Suaire, in Le Saint Suaire, vol. II, p. 73. – (14) Ibid., p. 53. – (15) Ibid., vol. II, p. 76.
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"THE YOUNGEST SON OF MY
WORRIES"