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The Ordinary the Shroud of Turin is one of the most famous religious objects in the world. In a previous episode, I covered the topic of holy relics generally. But in this episode I want to zoom in on the Shroud because it's the best known object and because there's so much history and controversy surrounding it. So let's start this discussion by describing what the Shroud of Turin is. The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth measuring roughly 4.4 by 1.1 meters, or 14ft 5 inches by 3ft 7 inches. On it are front and back faint images of a man who appears to have suffered wounds consistent with the crucifixion of Jesus as described in the Bible. The image shows apparent marks on the wrist, feet and side, as well as numerous marks across the body suggesting scourging. There are some burn marks on the sheet, which were caused by a fire in 1532. Molten silver dripped onto the Shroud, burning a series of holes through it when it was folded. These holes were then patched by nuns in the late 17th and early 19th centuries. Whenever you're dealing with any historical or archaeological object, one of the primary things that is analyzed is the provenance of the item. This is the documented history of the item and its chain of ownership or possession over time. The earliest documented mention of the Shroud of Turin dates back to the 14th century in France. All reliable historical trails begin there, and no earlier. The Shroud first appeared in the small French town of Le Raill near the city of troyes in the 1350s. The earliest known owner of the Shroud was Geoffroy de Charny, a French knight of noble reputation who fought at Calais and Poitiers and was close to King John II of France. Around 1353-1357, Geoffroy or his widow arranged for the linen to be displayed in a newly built collegiate church in Leray that he had founded. Pilgrims came to see what was described as the burial cloth of Jesus bearing the faint front and back image of his body. Medallions and pilgrimage badges produced in Luray, several of which have survived to the present day, depict a long cloth with a double image, confirming that the object on view was already recognizable as the same modern Shroud of Turin. The Relic's authenticity was questioned immediately. Around 1389, Pierre D', Arcy, the Bishop of Troyes, wrote a memorandum to Pope Clement VII at Avignon protesting the public exhibitions. Darcy stated that one of his predecessors, Bishop Henri de Poitiers, had already investigated the cloth years earlier and found that it was cunningly painted and that the artist had already confessed. He argued that the image was a human creation, not a miraculous imprint, and that the displays misled the faithful. Now here I should note that the Catholic Church's long standing policy has always been to treat relics such as the Shroud of Turin with respect to the official policy is one of respectful veneration, not unquestioned belief or authentication. The Church distinguishes between faith in what a relic represents and belief in the object's physical authenticity. The Church will never come out and say that something associated with the life of Jesus is authentic because there's no way to possibly prove it. And another thing I should note. Almost no organic material from the ancient world has ever survived. Of the millions and millions of items of clothing from the ancient world, nearly none has survived to the present day. What few organic items that have survived usually come from a desert region such as Egypt, where dry conditions can preserve them in tombs. Likewise, a few leather items have been found buried in bogs without oxygen or on glaciers frozen in ice. Back to the provenance of the Shroud, Geoffroy de Chagny's family retained the cloth for nearly a century. His granddaughter Margaret de Chagny, inherited it and after years of disputes with the Church and local authorities over its possession, transferred it in 1453 to the House of Savoy, the ruling dynasty of a region which today straddles modern day France and Italy. From there, it was moved to Chambery, where it was kept in the Savoy Chapel and narrowly survived the 1532 fire before finally being brought to Turin in 1578, where it became known as the Shroud of Turin. As I mentioned, one of the biggest problems with the Shroud is the lack of provenance before the mid 14th century. This period also corresponds to the sudden appearance of many relics claiming to be directly associated with Jesus. These include the Holy Blood of Wilsnack in Northern Germany, the Crown of Thorns located in Paris, and the Veil of Veronica in Rome. I should mention one theory that does attempt to explain the Shroud's provenance prior to the 14th century. The theory claims that the Shroud is actually the image of Edessa, that is Odessa with an E, not Odessa with an O, which is a city in Ukraine. The image of Edessa, also known as the Mandelion, was a revered Christian relic said to bear a miraculous image of Jesus Christ's face on a cloth. According to the traditional account, King Abgar V of Edessa, which today is in southeastern Turkey, suffered from a serious illness and wrote to Jesus, asking him to heal him. Jesus supposedly replied that he could not come, but would send one of his disciples. Later, the disciple Thaddeus came to Edessa and cured the king. In later versions of the story, Particularly from the 4th to 6th centuries, this narrative was expanded. Jesus himself was said to have wiped his face with a cloth, miraculously leaving his image imprinted upon it, and this cloth was then sent to King Abgar. The image of Edessa became an object of pilgrimage and veneration by the 6th century. It was credited with saving the city of Edessa from Persian and Arab sieges. It was later reportedly hidden inside a city wall, rediscovered in 544, and enshrined in the Cathedral of Edessa. In 944, the Byzantine emperor Romanos I La Campanos obtained it from Edessa. They transferred it to Constantinople with great ceremony, where it was housed in the Imperial chapel of the Blachernae palace. After the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204, the relic disappeared from recorded history. Some modern theories propose that the image of Edessa and the Shroud of Turin are actually the same object. Only the image of Edessa was folded so that only the facial portion was visible in antiquity. It should also be noted that there is no evidence for any of this and that nothing ever said that the image of Edessa was folded. The theory is just based on the fact that the image of Edessa is supposed to have disappeared approximately 150 years before the Shroud of Turin suddenly appeared. The Shroud remained in Turin for several centuries, where it was an object of regional importance. But the Shroud became a worldwide sensation in 1898, when Italian photographer Secondo Pia produced the first photographs of the Shroud, whose negatives made the body image appear with striking clarity. Ownership of the Shroud remained with the house of Savoy until Italy's former king, Umberto II, who was king for about one month in 1946, bequeathed it to the Holy See in 1983. However, custodianship remained with the Archbishop of Turin. The Shroud is rarely displayed publicly. Major Exhibitions occurred in 1898-1931-1933-1978, 1998, 2000, 2010 and 2015, drawing millions of pilgrims and tourists. When I visited Turin, I went to the cathedral and you could see where the Shroud was stored, but not the Shroud itself. The big question that has hung over the Shroud since it first appeared back in the 14th century is it real? Or more generally speaking, is it at least plausible that it could be real? In the 1970s, the Swiss criminologist Max Frey lifted dust from the Shroud with sticky tape and reported dozens of pollen types, many from plants he said were characteristic of the Levant and Anatolia in Turkey. He argued that this supported an eastern origin of the Shroud. However, later electron microscopy of adhesive samples from the face region of the Shroud only revealed a small number of pollen grains, insufficient to draw any conclusions. The biggest scientific inquiry into the Shroud took place in 1978. The Shroud of Turin Research Project, or Stirrup, received about 120 hours of direct access to the Shroud and ran a large battery of non destructive tests. These included high resolution photography across the spectrum reflectance and fluorescence spectrography in the ultraviolet, visible and infrared wavelengths, X ray radiography, thermography, microchemical tests and adhesive tape sampling of fibers for later lab work. The Stirrup team reached several conclusions in their report. One was that no conventional paint was used for the body image. They reported that the image color resides in a very thin layer on the outermost linen fibers and did not detect binding media consistent with painted images. Data supported the claim that typical pigments or stains of that period did not produce the sepia body image. That doesn't mean that something wasn't used. It only means that it wasn't a typical type of paint of the period. Second, using the tape samples, Sturpt reported positive microchemical tests for heme derivatives and bilirubin in the reddish areas and argued that the blood stains were consistent with blood rather than paint. Other Stirrup and independent papers characterized multiple iron forms and noted heme related signals in the blood areas. I should also note that there was dissent within the Stirrup team. Microscopy Specialist Walter C. McCrone examined tape samples and argued that the body image and blood were actually iron oxide and vermilion particles in a protein binder, or in other words, it was a medieval painting. However, the majority of Stirrup scientists rejected his interpretation based on their spectroscopy and microchemistry. This agreement has persisted in the literature ever since. The big test, however, was conducting carbon 14 dating on the cloth itself. Small samples from a corner of the Shroud were taken for destructive testing in 1988. The samples were sent to three accelerator mass spectrometry labs, one in Oxford, England, one in Arizona, and one in Zurich, Switzerland. Accelerator Mass spectrometry directly counts the number of carbon 14 atoms relative to stable carbon 12 and carbon 13 atoms using a particle accelerator. This allows dating of much smaller samples with much greater precision. In 1989, the three labs jointly published their findings in the journal Nature. They concluded that the fiber samples from the Shroud can be dated to between the years 1260 and 1390, the same approximate dates as when the Shroud first appeared. I should also note that every finding and every test that was run by the Stirrup team has been criticized by someone. Some people are adamant that the Shroud is real, and others are just as adamant that it is a medieval creation. Critics of the carbon 14 tests have claimed that the tested corner may have been part of a medieval repair and not representative of the original cloth. Others claim that biogenic material, smoke or oil may have skewed the carbon ratio towards a younger date. One problem is that even in 1978, the time researchers were given to examine the Shroud was extremely limited. Since then, research techniques have improved dramatically, but the same level of access has never been given. Since all of the current evidence, from scientific data to the lack of provenance, indicates that the Shroud of Turin was probably manufactured Sometime in the 14th century, the sheer odds of anything made out of linen surviving for 1300 years without being mentioned once, despite being the most holy relic in all of Christendom, only to randomly show up in the middle of France, are highly improbable. However, I would also have to say the evidence isn't 100% conclusive yet. But even if it is a creation of the Middle Ages, and even if it was created with the intent to deceive people, I don't know if that necessarily takes anything away from just means that whoever made it inadvertently created one of the greatest religious works of art in history. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible, and I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast, and links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you can you too can have it read in the show.
