The reader who has come to the end of this book will have, I hope, the impression of a solid construction, one that is homogeneous and has the ring of truth. I am quite certain of this, as long as he is a reader who knows how to read, for, being naturally concise, I am not afraid of those who study it carefully; I am only worried about those people who are always in a hurry, who jump out of trains and buses at breakneck speed, and who gallop through a book with seven-league boots. To these I would say: read it over again at your leisure, or else leave the question alone! A thorough grasp of such a problem can only be obtained by a minute examination of the details.
It will have been noticed how this examination, with its anatomical experiments and its physiological considerations, its archaeological and philological researches, seems to have carried me far away from the Holy Shroud of Turin, which I set out to examine; but it was only so that I might come back to it with fresh weapons. The fact is, that my thought was dominated from the beginning with the idea of reconstructing the Passion of Our Saviour in its smallest details; of exploring all the physical circumstances of the central drama of our Redemption, which dominates our brief earthly existence and finally settles the course of our eternal destiny.
It thus happened that I often came to forget the original object of my researches. My fervent quest was left with but one objective: Jesus died for me; how then did He die? This question, as will be understood, is deeply disturbing, when one is at the same time a Christian and a surgeon.
To speak frankly, the authenticity of the shroud was from the start a matter of secondary importance in my mind. It would have been as serious an error to rank me among its passionate partisans as among its frenzied adversaries. Even now my attitude is still as impartial; for, as Pope Pius XI used to say, that sacred strip of linen is surrounded by many mysteries, and I am far from certain that the learned men of the future (I do not say Science, for I am never quite sure who that lady is) will ever be able to solve the problem correctly.
I certainly hold that to describe these imprints as the work of a forger is an attitude which is now absurd, and which it is impossible to uphold. It is my firm personal opinion that this shroud has contained the dead body of Jesus and also His Divinity. I believe in this, just as I believe in the law of gravitation and in the fact of weight. I believe in it in the same way that one accepts a scientific truth, because this belief is in agreement with everything that we know. I am, therefore, quite ready, as one should be in scientific matters, to give up or to modify the details of this belief, if new and incontestable facts should be produced which can be reasonably said to contradict it. God alone knows the absolute truths, that is to say, the Truth; He and those to whom He has been pleased to reveal small parts of them.
As for the shroud, when I first heard of it, I remained sceptical; but as I studied the facts, they impressed me as being genuine and reliable, even when at first sight they were rather puzzling. And then, little by little, I came to have a special fondness for it; as for some fine type of man giving evidence, who, being at the same time candid and astute and hard to understand, may start by confusing one, but who is, one is sure, thoroughly honest.
I have heard this same fondness spontaneously expressed by a man whose previous historical formation made him sceptical of its authenticity, but who was deeply moved after studying the images, so much so that he now holds the forgery hypothesis to be quite without foundation. He was, however, fully aware, as I am, that it is extremely difficult to produce scientific proof of its authenticity.
May I, therefore, in bringing this (I hope) objective account to an end, try and state exactly how much we do know.
We know, without any doubt, that the imprints on the shroud were not made by the hand of man, but that they have formed spontaneously. We definitely do not know, with scientific certainty, how and even when they were produced and became visible, certainly in the case of the bodily impressions. In the case of the blood-stained images, I think I can from now onwards affirm that they are reproductions by direct contact, the counter-drawings of the clots of blood which formed naturally on the flesh of the Crucified.
We have already studied this sufficiently in all its details, so that there is no need for me to stress this any further. I would only sum up the facts which have impressed me most, as forcibly sponsoring the authenticity of the shroud. Some are of a general and especially of a photographic nature; others belong to the spheres of anatomy and physiology. It will be easily understood that it is these latter by which I have been most affected. What is more, it is my special duty to make them stand out even more clearly, for the benefit of those unversed in the subject.
The first group can be summed up quite simply. The body imprints have the character of a perfect photographic negative. Now, the very idea of a negative was unknown and even inconceivable in the XIVth century. Even modern painters have never succeeded in making an exact copy of the shroud. As for the foolish hypothesis of the inversion of a positive and a negative, it will not stand up to examination.
There is no trace of painting, even in the photographs which have been made by direct enlargement; the whole scale of lights and shades has been obtained by the simple individual staining of the threads of the linen. The use of dyes, however, has been found incapable of obtaining such subtle variations of colour. Nature alone can produce them, as for example, in the phenomenon of photography. If more details are required, Enrie’s valuable conclusions should be read over again, in Chapter I (E, 2°).
We may add that the body and especially the face as seen on the shroud have no relation with any known style of painting. In particular, there is no painter of the XIVth century whose work even remotely recalls them, or approaches anywhere near to their perfection.
From the artistic point of view, I would strongly recommend the study of Vignon’s fine work (Le Saint Suaire, Paris, ed., Masson, 1938) on the probable influence of the Holy Face of the shroud on the ancient painters, especially the Byzantines. It contains a wealth of very suggestive documents which have been reproduced by Cechelli of Rome, after Vignon. {36} Finally, let us remember that the dead body in the shroud is completely naked; no painter has dared to portray it thus. To go further, would a forger have had the audacity to do this, on a shroud which was to be produced for the veneration of the faithful?
Let us now look at the blood-stained images. We shall notice first of all that most of them seem to be abnormal, strange, different from the traditional iconography, which indeed they usually contradict. Now, experiments have proved for me that they are all in strict conformity with reality. It is artistic custom, the fruit (in its place quite legitimate) of the imagination, which is always in error. A forger would naturally have been obedient to this tradition and would have avoided any such dangerous innovations, which might have made for the failure of his fraud. Let us now have a quick glance at these revolutionary anomalies.
The wounds of the scourging have an abundance and a realism, a conformity with the findings of archaeology, which are in curious contrast with the poverty of imagination to be found in the painters of every age.
The trickles from the crown of thorns, the clots which they have formed, are unimaginably genuine. Have a glance once more at the description of one of these clots on the forehead, in Chapter IV, D.
The carrying of the cross has left marks of excoriation which are in perfect conformity with the observations I was able to make. Who has ever thought of this, apart from one or two mystics? And what artist would ever have imagined those contused wounds on the face, and that fracture of the dorsal cartilage of the nose?
The hand is pierced at the level of the wrist, the only place where the nail could hold firmly. Before the shroud became known, it was always placed in the palm.
The thumb is bent back into the palm. Experiment has proved that it cannot remain stretched out.
A painter would probably have portrayed the four holes in the two hands and the two feet. Only two are to be seen on the shroud.
The blood flows from the wrist, vertically, and, which would have been a discovery of genius by any forger, there are two flows diverging at an acute angle; this is essential, when one takes into account the two alternatives of sagging and straightening of the body, in the course of the struggle against asphyxiating tetany.
The wound of the heart is placed on the right. This is also the most usual representation (although it corresponds with reality!). But neither tradition nor the forger knew the reason why, and how a blow from the left into the ventricles would not have produced the amount of blood, which is only to be found in the auricle. And above all, there was the false idea that there is no liquid blood in a dead body. Was it then a miracle? Indeed, a very great miracle, to account for that enormous forward clot, which would require an abundant flow of blood.
And then, why did this flow of blood leave a clot of irregular shape, with indented edges? Was the forger a trained anatomist, and did he think of the digitations of the serratus muscle?
Did he also foresee, when he was painting the back transversal flow, that, when in the horizontal position, the blood of the inferior vena cava would flow back into the heart, and would then flow out transversally on to the back, whilst the body was being borne to the grave? His imaginative efforts met with no reward, for in 1598 Mgr. Paleotto interpreted this curious image as the mark of a chain which had rubbed the skin off the poor loins!
But we must return to the front. Why has he placed the right elbow farther out than the left, thus lengthening the right arm and forearm? Was his intention to explain the contact of the shroud with the wound of the heart, which is behind it?
In any case, this painter must have witnessed the death of those who were crucified, from tetanic asphyxia, with forced inspiration, so as to be able to give us so impressive a picture: this over-distended thorax, with the pectoral muscles contracted and standing out; the ribs at the sides raised as far as they will go; the epigastric hollow made more hollow yet by the lifting up of the sides and not, as Hynek says, by the contraction of the diaphragm (which is also an inspiratory muscle); and then there is a protrusion of the lower abdomen, pushed out by the viscera, which are compressed precisely by the contraction of the diaphragm. An excellent painting, in which there is not one single blunder!
We need pay no attention to the minute details of the two successive flows on the right sole, the one towards the toes, the other towards the heel. We need not discuss whether the painter, by means of a few details, wished to give us a picture of death from tetanus, with a bending inwards in the front of the body (in emposthrotonos ), and many minor points of which I will leave you to complete the catalogue.
We have studied these details one by one; they are exact, and experiments have confirmed their genuineness. The opponents of the shroud’s authenticity say that they are, however, “Marks which are too uncertain,” over which “we shall deliberately spend no time.” “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
We can then conclude that this forger, who is as good an anatomist and physiologist as he is an outstanding artist, in whatever age he is expected to have lived, is evidently a genius of such high quality that he must have been made to order!
Let us now return to the formation of all these blood-stained images. I think I have been able to demonstrate a certain number of facts. It is impossible to obtain such fine images, with such distinct outlines as those on the shroud, with any colouring liquid, even with liquid blood.
On the shroud there is practically no image of a flow of blood, as depicted by the painters. Besides, we should take into account that the dead body, having lost so much blood during the journey to the tomb, would not have been able to emit any considerable quantity of blood within the shroud. All the blood-stained images on the shroud are then the counter-drawings of fresh clots, or clots softened by the steam, which normally issues from a corpse for a fairly long time.
These portraits of clots have about them a natural, indeed most striking effect of genuineness, down to the smallest details. Only nature could have produced them, forming them on the skin and making their counter-drawings on the linen. They are perfect reproductions of natural clots. No artist would even have been able to imagine them in all their minute details, and he would have drawn back before the insurmountable difficulties of executing them.
We may say, then, that a crucified body has lain in the shroud. Could it have been anyone else than Jesus? We here come up against an improbability, and I shall not linger over it. It is true that most crucified bodies would have borne almost all these stigmata (these would include the regulation scourging, and in certain cases, the blow with the lance). But this body must have been removed from its shroud at the end of quite a short time; the little that we know about the formation of imprints proves that too long an exposition, and in any case, putrefaction, would have diffused and dimmed these negative imprints. Furthermore, would the shroud have been so piously preserved in the case of any other crucified man?
But also, which crucified man was crowned with thorns, with an ironical pretence of royal honours? History only tells of one: That of the Gospels.
Finally, I would leave you to contemplate that wonderful Face, in which the Divinity shines out through the Semitic veil. Can you tell me of any artist who has painted one that approaches it, with its superhuman character?
It is also possible, as Vignon has tried to demonstrate, that the persistent tradition of this type of Christ among the artists goes back to ancient copies of the shroud, which interpreted it fairly well.