Miracle of the Shroud II: The Second Coming

[Giordano]

Something to keep in mind: in the Catholic Church there are such things as "secondary relics:" objects of non-miraculous origins that became holy through contact with "truly" holy objects. Thus, a ring can become holy and worth veneration by contact with or by being in proximity of a "primary relic" such as the "true" ring or bone of a saint.

So even common objects can become objects worth veneration through indirect means. This would allow the Pope to allow a cloth to be publicly venerated, even if that cloth was known to be painted by a human, if its history was considered to be sufficiently "holy" (perhaps if it was decided that the human painter was supernaturally inspired). Given the politics of the time, it was probably easy for the Pope to just "go along" and permit the cloth to be displayed as a holy object, as long as it was announced first that it was not the "real" burial cloth of Jesus.

A caution here: I am beginning to use Jabba's approach: "perhaps, it is not impossible, one might imagine that, we cannot rule out, etc." Sorry- I am only suggesting possible explanations of what people were thinking at the time, and not trying to present any hard facts.

 

[tsig]

This is the coincidence that I have trouble swallowing with Charles Freeman's theory. Of the supposed many similar painted shrouds of the era, this is the one that needed to be declared a fraud in the 1300s. The others were accepted as paintings, but this one was different enough that someone thought they could get away with saying it was the true shroud and that someone else had to say, "liar." Now that same painted cloth has deteriorated enough that it has been re-declared authentic (by some). That seems a little too coincidental to me. Perhaps the original painting deteriorated very quickly---within 50 years of its creation---and looked pretty much how it does today in the late 1300s. Fifty Easters is actually a pretty long time of folding and unfolding and perhaps exposure to the elements. I dunno. I just think the forgery letter works against Charles Freeman's hypothesis, not as much as it works against the hypothesis of the authenticists, but still.

People of the era knew what a painted cloth looked like. Perhaps it was a situation where people were simply being ripped-off, like at a circus side-show. Some carnival barker was charging people money to step inside a tent to see the true shroud. People paid a groat to enter the tent only to see an obvious painting. Complaints were lodged, a letter was written and the rest is the future. That's one possibility, but I'm not entirely satisfied.

Ward

P.S. I know that people in medieval France would not pay a groat.

A letter stating it is fake actually helps prove it isn't fake?

 

[Belz...]

Something to keep in mind: in the Catholic Church there are such things as "secondary relics:" objects of non-miraculous origins that became holy through contact with "truly" holy objects. Thus, a ring can become holy and worth veneration by contact with or by being in proximity of a "primary relic" such as the "true" ring or bone of a saint.

You have to admite these people's devotion to the idea that magic exists.

 

[wardenclyffe]

I understand the nature of relics and even secondary relics, but the letter from the late 1300s seems to be responding to claims (by someone) that the shroud was the one true shroud used in the burial of Jesus. So someone was saying it was the true shroud, just as some people are making the same claim today. I just think that would be a hard claim to make when your painted cloth looked like every other painted cloth around.

Ward

 

[hugh farey]

Thanks, Wardenclyffe and Giordano. Although Charles Freeman's hypothesis is attractive, there are undoubtedly several inconsistencies that need sorting out.

1) Contemporaneous pictures which definitely intend to be the Shroud of Turin show both a clearly defined body with a loincloth and feet splayed outwards, and a vaguely defined body with feet splayed inwards. These go on for several centuries and appear to derive from two different traditions, or even two different shrouds. This is odd.

2) A painting or a miraculous image of Christ might be expected to look like Christ in terms of shape, colour and definition as possible. It might be an obvious painting, but if miraculous, that wouldn't matter.

3) On the other hand a stage prop intending to show that Christ had been wrapped in it but was no longer there would be better painted by a vague sepia image that might have been derived from sweat and blood rather than a miracle.

4) So I'm imaging a naturalistic looking sheet which nobody thought was miraculous, until one day somebody threw away their crutches and somersaulted down the aisle shouting "I'm cured!" An unmiraculous medieval cloth became a miraculous (but still medieval) cloth, and Bishop Henri loved it. A bit later the miraculous medieval cloth morphs into a miraculous authentic cloth. At that point Bishop Henri stops being enthusiastic and tells the Lirey clergy to put it away. Which they do, for 30 years.

 

[wardenclyffe]

A letter stating it is fake actually helps prove it isn't fake?

Not saying that. I'm saying that a normal Quem Queritis painted cloth would not be mistaken for an actual burial shroud. A cloth that looks like today's shroud has a better chance of convincing someone.

No one would claim that a velvet Elvis is a cloth that Elvis used to wipe his face during a concert, but a worn, used cloth might convince someone.

A Quem Queritis cloth was the velvet Elvis of its day. No one would claim it was real and no letter declaring it a fraud would be necessary. If that cloth quickly deteriorated to the point that we see today, then it might make sense.

Ward

 

[Giordano]

I understand the nature of relics and even secondary relics, but the letter from the late 1300s seems to be responding to claims (by someone) that the shroud was the one true shroud used in the burial of Jesus. So someone was saying it was the true shroud, just as some people are making the same claim today. I just think that would be a hard claim to make when your painted cloth looked like every other painted cloth around.

Ward

Remember that claims were/are not always linked to plausibility, Many of the bone relics claimed to be Jeanne D'Arc were not even human when tested. This is a religion where red wine is officially turned into blood, and host into flesh.

 

[wardenclyffe]

But at least they were bones and not paintings of bones. Maybe medieval people were dumb, but not that dumb.

Ward

 

[Charles Freeman]

' No one would claim that it was real'. You would be surprised what people got away with, especially in the 1350s in the aftermath of the trauma of the a Black Death when up to forty per cent of the population had actually died of what was seen as a punishment sent by God ( the Black Death). I am not surprised that Jeanne de Vergy, her husband away at war and dead in 1356, may have tried it on. The key point was that it was very quickly spotted that she was (fraudulently) having people on and the Shroud disappeared for thirty years until it reappeared in 1390.
The sequence of events is unfortunately not documented for the Shroud but there are no end of examples of ordinary objects becoming associated with miracles. So a processional banner created in 1464 in Perugia to be carried in processions at times of plague , somehow became associated with the cessation of plague itself and was given the same status as the Shroud- an indulgence was granted to those who saw it in procession.

Hugh's points. I have long argued for a database of all depictions and descriptions of the Shroud so that we can pin down as closely as possible whether there were different portrayals,of the same Shroud, a shroud that was repainted over time, etc, etc. Lots of work to do here.
Also a lot of work to be done on how the Shroud would have been painted for the Quem Queritis ceremony if that was why it was made. The ceremony took place early on Easter morning, I am assuming in a typical medieval church of the fourteenth century - or an earlier building- with a long nave. What would have been important was to make images that could be seen in the poor light . So the artist makes the images slightly bigger than life size and doubles them up. The point is made- it does not matter that the bodies do not match each other or even that Christ's head is shown as of a man standing. So long as the images are strong and can be seen that so enough.

 

[gabeygoat]

Sorry, Jabba; things moved on. Dan Scavone offered 15 contentions against d'Arcis' credibility, did he? Let me see...



2) D'Arcis does not name the painter who painted the Shroud.
This is true, but he may not have known who the painter was. His claim was that Bishop Henri investigated the Shroud and discovered the painter, not that d'Arcis had.

not being able to name the painter also seems to imply that THE SHROUD WAS PAINTED

 

[wardenclyffe]

I can buy being associated with something or even having miracles attributed to it, but the idea that a velvet Elvis was the shroud seems far fetched. And to say that the velvet Elvis coincidentally later degraded into something that was again claimed to be the shroud seems more far fetched. If the degradation happened early and quickly, then that might explain it. There's no reason to mention that it's a painting and that the painter is known if it's already obviously a painting just like any other painting known at the time.

Ward

 

[Slowvehicle]

not being able to name the painter also seems to imply that THE SHROUD WAS PAINTED

 

[Giordano]

But at least they were bones and not paintings of bones. Maybe medieval people were dumb, but not that dumb.

Ward

You appear to be ignoring my citations of even greater suspensions of disbelief. Doesn't the Church to this day maintain that wine truly becomes Christ's blood? Religion is a funny thing: people can believe multiple impossible, even contradictory things at once, and not even break a sweat. Believing otherwise could get you into a lot of trouble in the Middle Ages.

Besides: what exactly would a miraculous burial cloth bearing the magical image of Christ look like? Why couldn't the colors be intense or the image sharp or even painting-like? There were no photos back then, so all images of people were paintings or sculptures.

Believers already accepted the story by the same Church that an omnipotent God couldn't forgive people directly for an original sin, but had to have a Son who needed to suffer greatly so that...etc. These same people often accepted that a given sliver of wood was from the true Cross, and that a heap of chains were exactly those used to imprison St. Peter. Why would they have any more trouble accepting a much more minor miracle, that a strange image of Christ was left behind on a burial cloth? Do you think that the intended audience was a very skeptical one?

 

[Slowvehicle]

You appear to be ignoring my citations of even greater suspensions of disbelief. Doesn't the Church to this day maintain that wine truly becomes Christ's blood? Religion is a funny thing: people can believe multiple impossible, even contradictory things at once, and not even break a sweat. Believing otherwise could get you into a lot of trouble in the Middle Ages.

Besides: what exactly would a miraculous burial cloth bearing the magical image of Christ look like? Why couldn't the colors be intense or the image sharp or even painting-like? There were no photos back then, so all images of people were paintings or sculptures.

Believers already accepted the story by the same Church that an omnipotent God couldn't forgive people directly for an original sin, but had to have a Son who needed to suffer greatly so that...etc. These same people often accepted that a given sliver of wood was from the true Cross, and that a heap of chains were exactly those used to imprison St. Peter. Why would they have any more trouble accepting a much more minor miracle, that a strange image of Christ was left behind on a burial cloth? Do you think that the intended audience was a very skeptical one?

Another example: La Tilma de La Virgen de Guadalupe; clearly painted, yet still "miraculous" and "authentic".

 

[Pacal]

Sorry, Jabba; things moved on. Dan Scavone offered 15 contentions against d'Arcis' credibility, did he? Let me see...

1) D'Arcis did not send the letter.
Even if this is true, it is not evidence against its truthfulness, especially as he had just been sworn to perpetual silence whatever he thought.

2) D'Arcis does not name the painter who painted the Shroud.
This is true, but he may not have known who the painter was. His claim was that Bishop Henri investigated the Shroud and discovered the painter, not that d'Arcis had.

3) There is no record of the "inquest" Bishop Henri held.
This may be true, but I don't think it matters. Three possibilities occur: a) The "inquest" was nothing more than an "inquiry", not a formal commission, and no written record was made. b) There was a written record but, like most records, it has disappeared over time. I don't believe the relevant archive is anything like complete. c) There was a written record, but after the Shroud had become generally accepted, it was destroyed deliberately.

4) The only communication we have from Bishop Henri to Geoffrey de Charny was to "praise, ratify, and approve a divine cult of this sort." Well maybe it all went sour or Henri changed his mind, as, even after this letter was sent, the Shroud nevertheless disappeared for 30 years.

5) D'Arcis cathedral collapsed in 1389, so d'Arcis wanted money.
This is not evidence of his dishonesty.

So I don't find these five amount to evidence against d'Arcis, and I can't find the other ten. If you could list them, I'll explain their value to you.



David. Even the Nature paper found that there was only a 1 in 20 chance of the measurements coming from a homogeneous sample, given the data submitted. There are a number of possible reasons for its occurrence, however.
a) That 1 in 20 chance just came up!
b) The data was not correctly submitted, because the error ranges were mistakenly made too narrow. (the Nature solution)
c) There was some contamination variously affecting the age of each sample. (the Riani et al. solution)
d) The dates are wholly random. (quite a popular solution among authenticists, but statistically more unlikely than a!)
My own preference is for c, probably with a bit of b mixed in.

And yes, I omitted Fanti. I'm not sure what his contribution to the paper was. Perhaps Riani et al. would be the best, although I think Atkinson was actually the statistician.

I did a search of Dan Scavone's website and was unable to find his 15 reasons to downplay Pierre Arcis' letter. However what I did find out was that Dan Scavone is a true believer and his blog a variation of a Creation Science website. The appearance of "science" is just that an appearance. See http://shroudstory.com/tag/dan-scavone/ For one thing he really doesn't understand the whole "burden of proof" thing.

 

[Charles Freeman]

Dan Scavone is one of the Holy Grail lot. I have challenged his bizarre interpretations of documents many times. What Jabba never seems to realise is that these people, and Ian Wilson is another example, are all complete jokes in the academic community.

 

[David Mo]

(...)
David. Even the Nature paper found that there was only a 1 in 20 chance of the measurements coming from a homogeneous sample, given the data submitted. There are a number of possible reasons for its occurrence, however.
a) That 1 in 20 chance just came up!
b) The data was not correctly submitted, because the error ranges were mistakenly made too narrow. (the Nature solution)
c) There was some contamination variously affecting the age of each sample. (the Riani et al. solution)
d) The dates are wholly random. (quite a popular solution among authenticists, but statistically more unlikely than a!)
My own preference is for c, probably with a bit of b mixed in.

(...)

Thank you, Hugh:

It seems to me there are other explanations. For example:

§24. Sindonologists believe that the authors of Nature have used only one method to combine the results.
Instead, they used three methods, as we showed in the first part of the article. Sindonologists not have been noticed.
(Gian Marco Rinaldi: “La statistica della datazione della Sindone”, 2012, http://sindone.weebly.com/statistica-nature.html; personal translation).​

But there are more things I don’t understand of this debate.

It seems that the problem with the homogeneity arises because the “spread” or “dispersion” of measurements is too large. But if I go to the table 1 of Nature report I see that the range of deviation of the global measurements is not larger than in the other samples: 204 for Turin, 207 for Nubia, 203 for Thebes and 188 for Provence. If I limit the variance to a single lab the spread of the dates in Arizona-Torino is not wider than Arizona-Nubia, Arizona-Thebes or Arizona-Provence (in fact it is smaller). And if I see the spread in Zurich-Torino, for example, it is similar to Arizona-Torino.

So, I don’t understand where is the problem with the spread of measurements and the level of reliability.

This is one of the things that nobody has ever explained to me. Perhaps it is not easy to do.

 

[David Mo]

You seem to be jumping into the thread and asking about something published elsewhere without giving any clues what you're talking about.

See coment #1304 in this thread. Thank you.

 

[Peter i]

Another example: La Tilma de La Virgen de Guadalupe; clearly painted, yet still "miraculous" and "authentic".

An interesting read, thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe

Yet another case of "faith" ruling out any facts or common sense.

..... and a clear opposition to doing any in-depth studies.

 

[zooterkin]

See coment #1304 in this thread. Thank you.

It would have helped if you'd mentioned that, even more if you'd quoted it.
Here it is:

Slowvehicle is correct that the Nature paper itself does not speculate much upon why, for the Shroud samples alone, "The spread of the measurements for sample 1 is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted." Nor did I say it did. However, the unexpected spread of the measurements surely entitles any interested party to ask; why? And as I did say, various possibilities present themselves, which, on the data alone, cannot be ruled out. Some of those possibilities may be mutually contradictory. One possibility is that the samples came from different materials. Another possibility is that the sample was progressively contaminated. Another possibility is that it was just luck. Another possibility is that the sample was homogeneous but that the error measurements quoted by the laboratories were smaller than they really were. There may be further possibilities involving secret agents or aliens. On the statistical data alone, it is not possible to ascribe probabilities to these alternatives. We must then use other data to distinguish between them. On the basis of that other data (mostly the detailed examination of the samples by the laboratories), the Nature paper authors assumed that the reason for the anomaly was erroneous errors ("It is unlikely that the errors quoted by the laboratories for sample 1 fully reflect the overall scatter.") and proceeded accordingly.

It is a common feature of authenticist arguments that they pretend that anomalies in their information simply do not exist. That saves them the bother of having to explain them. It is important that non-authenticists do not fall into the same error, I think. I bow to Dinwar's expertise in radiocarbon dating, but I fear I do not think that "Those percentages are essentially meaningless" (even if largely true) is a sufficient way of explaining the difference between the X-squared result for the Shroud (6.4) and the contemporaneous Control Sample 4 (the St Louis Cope) - 2.4. If it were, then there would have been no need for the authors of the paper to comment on it.

And your post, apparently responding to it, nearly 3 weeks later:

There are some things I don’t understand.
1. What means here “dispersion”? Dispersion between the global results of the different labs? Dispersion with the detailed results of the different measurements on a single sample (Nubian, for example)?
2. If some dispersion is detected in the Turin sample, why it has to be ascribed to the absence of homogeneity of the fabric? What about an error in the manipulation, for example?
I will be glad if the possible answers are featured in a plain language without many technical expressions. Thank you.