More on the image of the Shroud
The Shroud: part 4
In addition to the blood, on the Shroud there is the image of the body that was wrapped in it. This image, due to degradation, dehydration and oxidation of the superficial flax fibrils, is comparable to a photographic negative.
It is superficial, detailed, three-dimensional, thermally and chemically stable. It is also stable in water, it is not composed of pigments, it has no directionality and was not caused by the simple contact of the body with the sheet: with contact the sheet either touches or does not touch. There is no middle way. On the other hand, on the Shroud there is an image even where there was certainly no contact. Its shadows are proportional to the different distances existing between the body and the cloth in the various drapery points. It is therefore possible to hypothesize a radiant effect at a distance.
Under the blood stains there is no image of the body: the blood, deposited first on the canvas, shielded the area below while, subsequently, the image was formed. This would explain why many details of the face are visible (it can be said that it is a real photograph), while on the rest of the body only a few signs resembling a skeleton remain impressed. Perhaps the face is more visible and detailed precisely because it was in contact with the sheet, while the rest of the body in contact was much less so or even in some places it was not at all. It could be assumed that the image of the face is sharper than the rest of the body both because the blood would have shielded it and because the sheet would not have adhered to all parts of the body. But it is not clear why the blood should have shielded only the part of the sheet that covered the body from the neck down. The description of the crucifixion of Jesus tells us of a head surrounded by a crown of thorns that were pushed to him so as to stick more and more into him. So there should have been blood on his face too. It should also be considered that some time must have passed between death and burial (it was necessary to pull down the cross, remove the nails, etc.) and also that the body, already washed away by the rain, was still thoroughly cleansed before the final burial.
But the lack of blood in the face could be explained by the following considerations; in the cathedral of Oviedo (capital of the Principality of Asturias, Spain), a linen handkerchief has been venerated since medieval times which, according to tradition, was placed on the face of Jesus Christ on his descent from the Cross and until his final burial. In the time of Jesus a shroud was a handkerchief (equivalent, albeit the largest, to one of our present handkerchiefs) which was used as a small napkin, used to wipe sweat from the head and wipe the face in case of need. The universal Jewish encyclopedia collects the pre-writing according to which when a corpse was disfigured or mutilated the face was essentially covered with a veil to hide it from the eyes of the people. It is not strange that the shroud that is used by hand (on the occasion rolled up on the wrist) and that was placed on the death body before burial was used for this need. On the other hand we know that one "of the funeral linen handkerchiefs used" in the Jewish interments is the shroud and that only covers the face.
In the Gospel of St. John there is mention on two occasions of a shroud on the head of a body.
In the story of the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11.44) it is said that the dead man had "bound his feet and hands and wrapped his head in a shroud" but the most important Gospel text of the Acts of the Apostles on this point is Chap. XX. In his verses 6 and 7 he clearly distinguishes between the linen handkerchiefs in which the body was wrapped (between them, logically, the sheet mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels) and "the shroud that had been on its head". The Sudarium of Oviedo then wiped the blood-filled face of the crown of thorns before being covered by the cloth of the Shroud.
But the theories don't end there:
- Ashe proposes the thesis of electrocution: when, through the resurrection, there was the transformation from matter into spirit, there was an emission of radiations that impressed the Shroud;
- Carreno speaks of an atomic explosion which determined the footprint by burning; Brazilian Academy adds, resulting in a splitting of atoms with the production of anti-matter.
There are those who wonder why the so-called flash of the Resurrection, and therefore all its effects, did not burn the pollen found on the cloth, and could not have altered, for example, the results of the blood tests?
Then there remains the problem of the stereoscopic projection of the face.
A handkerchief on a face shows a distorted image different from that of the shroud, since the ears, for a question of three-dimensionality, of depth, are more distant from the nose than just looking at a photograph. Basically, the image of a face on a cloth "must" appear distorted, enlarged, like the famous mask of Agamemnon, discovered by Schliemann.
Unless we assume:
- a character depicted with a "flat" face
- an image formation mechanism that has exploited a sort of orthogonal projection (with cloth stretched over the face and not wrapped), and non-stereoscopic (resting wrapped around the face), practically a photocopy
- a forgery that used a bas-relief.
The question intrinsically has to do with how the image would have formed. If it is accepted that it was formed by contact with a body (or a shape that refers to a body), this to avoid the suspicion, which would seem dispelled, that it is a painting or similar work, then the shape that the drawing has is obvious: a face enlarged on the sides.
This is why those who favor the false hypothesis point their interest towards a basrelief (this is the hypothesis, among others, of Delfino Pesce, whose text seems unobtainable today). Regarding the work of a forger, so much denied by some researches, and the fact that there are no deformations, it is said that in reality the effect could be produced by using a cast in two ways, either by heating it so that placing a cloth on it would have produced a negative image, not distorted and blurred, both by placing the cloth on it that is rubbed with a pad and powder color. Over time, losing the initial strong pigmentation would result in a fuzzy imprint.
There are those who, like Dr. Lindner, have started to hypothesize a neutron bombardment, coming from who knows where, which would have rejuvenated the shroud, raising the content of C14; at the same time Dr. Fanti, together with Marinelli, hypothesized an orthogonal "energy flash" (ie a flash of light and neutrons orthogonal to the body) during the resurrection. Well, even taking these two fantastic conjectures for granted, the problem remains, since the cloth is supposed to be wrapped around the body anyway, so that even an orthogonal flash of energy would have "cooked" the fibers of the cloth in the point more orthogonally close to the body, that is still the point of contact with the body itself. That is, the image would have been enlarged anyway; to obtain what we have, one should assume a sheet suspended parallel, and stretched, to the disposition of the body, at the moment of the flash of energy. And we would not explain, then, the bloodstains, which imply contact.
The only way out would be to speculate on a further event, the suspension of the cloth, in a position parallel to the body, above it, by who or what it is not well known.
Of course, if we hypothesize the orthogonal energy flash, we would no longer be surprised by anything.
Indeed, according to some scientists, there seems to be involved a certain "energy power" in the formation of the Shroud, it seems that it was photographed from the body of Jesus in the resurrection by an ultra-violet process. In fact, there are those who argue that most likely it was a type of non-ionizing radiation, that is, it does not affect the tissues. In fact, the ultraviolet process is involved in the ionizing radiation, which is one of the possible causes of the image of the Shroud.
"At frequencies over a hundred kHz the most striking phenomenon is the heating of the tissues, initially even in depth, but which, as the frequency increases, ends up affecting only the most superficial epidermal layers."
But there are others who, with more empirical evidence, affirm with certainty that the image would have been left by the oils that were used for the burial, aloe and myrrh, thanks to the ammonia vapors released by the now dead body of the man of the Shroud.
This hypothesis is for the first time the safest because in the light of the experiments conducted, numerous scientists have proved, with excellent results, that the image is really reproducible through a simple experiment. Numerous tests are cited on the "vaporographic" theory, which was then the very first scientific theory to be taken into consideration. According to this hypothesis, in fact the vapors of ammonia, a substance produced by the decomposition of urea in sweat, acting in combination with aloe, which was impregnated with the sheet, would be responsible for the Shroud image. The ammonia vapors, in fact, on the one hand would have acted on the blood clots, and these, re-humidified, would have been impressed on the sheet, on the other hand the vapors would have acted on the aloe with which the sheet was soaked, determining the fingerprints in the points where the sheet was in contact with the body and paling instead the sections of the sheet not in direct contact with the body, that is causing a darkening whose intensity would have been directly proportional to the closeness between the sheet and the body, darker (therefore determination of the footprints) in contact, less dark, even non-existent, where the cloth was not in contact with the body.
We cite the very reliable experiments of Professor Sebastiano Rodante who "starting from the results of his colleagues, trying to grasp their reasons, and adopting a radical interpretation of the Gospels, where the details of the burial are told, proceeded with a series of experiments carried out in an environmental situation very similar to the Palestinian tomb, the catacombs of Syracuse. The experiments, which continued for about 15 years, which represent a success for the Italian researches and an important step in the attempt to reconstruct the formation of the Shroud imprint, are of two types. A cloth was impregnated with an aqueous solution of aloe and myrrh which would then cover a face sprinkled with blood and sweat, as well as blood clots, for 36 hours. For the second block of experiments, Rodante proceeded as for the first, simply by replacing the aqueous solution with an oily solution, again based on aloe and myrrh. The results, in both cases, were decidedly very satisfactory: the image obtained in fact is a negative in the somatic features, a positive in the blood clots".
So, as you can see, it is possible to obtain a photographic negative with aloe and myrrh in certain environmental conditions.
Finally, another merit of Rodante's experiments was that of being able to prove, with almost absolute certainty, that the Shroud enveloped the corpse of a death man. In fact, during one of these experiments, at the twentieth hour he moved the canvas a few millimeters, at the end of the experiment the blood prints were at times confused and doubled. If the man wrapped in the Shroud had been alive, the respiratory movements and the contraction of the muscles, although almost imperceptible, would have determined a movement of the sheet that would have meant that the Shroud image was certainly not as perfectly delineated and clear as instead it is.
