From the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 20 (taken from the Douay-Rheims Bible at www.drbo.org):
“And on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalen cometh early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre; and she saw the stone taken away from the sepulchre. She ran, therefore, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith to them: They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. Peter therefore went out, and that other disciple, and they came to the sepulchre. And they both ran together, and that other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And when he stooped down, he saw the linen cloths lying; but yet he went not in.
“Then cometh Simon Peter, following him, and went into the sepulchre, and saw the linen cloths lying. And the napkin that had been about his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but apart, wrapped up into one place. Then that other disciple also went in, who came first to the sepulchre: and he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. The disciples therefore departed again to their home.”
Forthwith ladies and gentlemen, I provide you with a reminder of a post sent by yours truly in 2022:
The protagonist in the novel I am currently working on (The Man Who Wore Hats — it’s a working title) is a private detective with a rather unusual background. He is a “fallen” aristocrat, a man who can trace his ancestry to the last King of Poland. Or so he says (or doesn’t, as the case may be). I only really hint at this in the story. His name is Albert Poniatowski. King Stanisław II August Poniatowski, who died in 1798, was the last monarch to reign in Poland.
The story opens with Poniatowski speaking to a priest in his small office. The priest wants Poniatowski to find a relic for him that was stolen from his chapel. This is because Poniatowski runs a special kind of private detective agency (out of London) that only specialises in finding “missing persons or items”. When I first started the novel, I went with the a piece of the “True Cross” as the relic. But for a few reasons that I won’t go into, I have recently switched it to being a piece of the original Shroud of Turin. The famous large linen cloth was harmed in a fire in 1532 and patches were sewn over the damaged areas. In my story, one of the original parts came off during this process and then was kept by someone involved in the restoration of the Shroud. He or she then handed it to some rich family for safekeeping and then it eventually somehow found its way to this priest’s chapel in London. I’m not sure that I will mention this in the final version though.
So what exactly is the Shroud of Turin?
Well, it is a large linen cloth that has the image of a crucified man on imprinted onto it. And many believe that the figure on the cloth is none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Many others consider it to be a hoax.
The Shroud is the “single most studied artefact in human history, and we know more about it today than we ever have before” *.
In my albeit limited research on the Shroud, I have discovered a few things, including the following:
The shroud is made of with a kind of cotton that has been be found in Palestine. It seems that the material used for the Shroud could not have originated from Europe due to the cotton type and the way it is woven.
The shroud is not a painting, no evidence of pigments have been found. The red colour of much of the blood and the high bilirubin levels that have been detected within that blood, along with the body’s image, strongly support the argument that the blood on the cloth came from a beaten individual.
The image of the body is anatomically and medically realistic to an extraordinary degree.
A type of pollen has been detected on the Shroud that matches that found in flowers in Jerusalem during the first century A.D.
Limestone particles and soil that are similar to/and or indigenous to Jerusalem have been observed on the cloth.
In 1988, it was announced that the Shroud dated back to only medieval times after some very high-profile radiocarbon dating tests were carried out on it. I still remember it leading the news bulletins on TV back at the time. This led to many concluding that it was definitely a fraud. Many researchers and scientists have challenged the 1988 tests however. Some have said the tests were faulty, others have said that the sample of the cloth that was tested was not part of the original cloth, but from one of the patches sewn on by nuns in the 16th century following the fire in which it was damaged. Other objections have also been raised.
Many researchers have noticed radiation-like qualities within the Shroud. A form of radiation could have therefore created the image on the cloth. One such researcher is Dr. Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at the University of Padua. He appears to have studied the Shroud for decades. In 2013, he concluded that the image on the cloth was caused by radiation and that it had no natural explanation.
An article (X-Ray Dating of a Linen Sample from the Shroud of Turin) was published in the journal Heritage on 11 April 2022. It details how a team from the Institute of Crystallography in Bari, Italy — after using some new “wide angle x-ray scattering” technique — has concluded that the Shroud is is a 2,000-year-old relic.
Barrie M. Schwortz, an American Orthodox Jew, was the official documenting photographer for the first large-scale scientific study on the Shroud, which took place in 1978. I quoted him earlier in this post (see * above). He has set up a website that documents many of the studies and papers written on the subject. He writes on the site, “I am still Jewish, yet I believe the Shroud of Turin is the cloth that wrapped the man Jesus after he was crucified. That is not meant as a religious statement, but one based on my privileged position of direct involvement with many of the serious Shroud researchers in the world, and a thorough knowledge of the scientific data, unclouded by media exaggeration and hype. The only reason I am still involved with the Shroud of Turin is because knowing the unbiased facts continues to convince me of its authenticity”.
If you would like to read my novel, The Fragment from The Shroud, you may purchase it here.
Progress report:
I have written 5,433 words of my new novel The Suspended Fourth (working title).
I have written 528 words of the next instalment of my series of stories about the private detective Albert Poniatowski, who is descended from the last king of Poland.
It is still not a good idea for me to try and write both at the same time. Well, that’s my thinking right now.
Happy Easter. And thanks for reading.
Beautiful and very moving image of Christ. Thanks Marek