The pope sat down and looked carefully at everybody in the room, one at a time. Praying silently for wisdom and guidance, he had made his decision.
“Okay, Father Bartholomew. I’m going to grant your request,” the pope said, resolved to go forward. “Father Morelli will make the necessary arrangements.”
Hearing that his request had been granted, Father Bartholomew solemnly made the sign of the cross, slowly touching his forehead first, then his stomach, and finally his left shoulder and his right shoulder. Grateful that he was given permission to see the Shroud of Turin in person, Bartholomew felt confident he was going to achieve the mission for which he had returned.
“Now, gentlemen,” the pope said with finality, “if you will please excuse me, I have some work to do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Tuesday
Vatican Library, Rome, Italy
Day 27
The Turin Cathedral requested until Friday of that week to prepare the Shroud for private viewing. The pope decided to use the time as an opportunity for Dr. Castle and the others to have a meeting at the Vatican Library with Dottoressa Francesca Coretti, a Vatican Library senior staff researcher who had been studying the history of the Shroud for decades. Her particular area of academic specialty involved researching religious icons and Church traditions since the time of Christ in the first century. Her goal was to find icons of Christ that looked like the face of the man in the Shroud of Turin and Church traditions involving a burial cloth of Christ that might document the existence of the Shroud of Turin from before the 1260–1390 A.D. dates established by the carbon-14 testing for the creation of the Shroud.
Pope John-Paul Peter I was confident Dr. Bucholtz’s presentation had made an impact on Dr. Castle, but there was yet another dimension to the Shroud the pope wanted Castle to understand. The Shroud had held the attention of believers for centuries. Millions around the world revered it as the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ. While Castle, as an atheist, tended to discount the importance of religious experience, the pope knew that as a psychiatrist Castle could not dismiss the deep emotional impact the Shroud had made in hundreds of millions of lives through the past centuries. Still, there was a mystery of lost knowledge about the Shroud, and the pope wanted to see if he could make that a subject for Dr. Stephen Castle’s contemplation.
At the pope’s suggestion, Father Morelli had invited Professor Gabrielli and Fernando Ferrar, along with his video crew, to attend the interview with Francesca Coretti, as well as to attend the private viewing of the Shroud in Turin arranged for Friday.
“If you’re concerned with millions putting pressure on the Church over the Shroud, why do you invite our biggest critic and the New York television news to attend?” Father Morelli had asked the pope, objecting to opening these two private audiences to the public by inviting the world press and a critic of the Shroud with a growing international reputation.
“The truth is that Fernando Ferrar and Professor Gabrielli counterbalance one another,” Pope John-Paul Peter I answered.
Morelli did not immediately get the point. “How’s that, Holy Father?”
“Gabrielli will do his best to prove that whatever happens is just more evidence the Shroud of Turin is a fraud,” the pope said, “and Ferrar will be doing just the opposite. Ferrar’s interest is in promoting Father Bartholomew’s alleged miracle as authentic. Besides, if I exclude either one of them, the other accuses me of bias. If I exclude them both, the world accuses me of conspiracy. Let them both attend and we’ll leave the results up to God.”
Morelli saw the wisdom of the pope’s argument and he made the necessary arrangements without further discussion.
Welcoming the group to one of the Vatican Library’s many conference rooms, Francesca Coretti looked very much the part. Castle judged her to be about fifteen years younger than him, in her late forties. She was attractively thin and strikingly dressed, with her knee-length gray dress complementing her elegant shoulder-length black hair and her jet-black eyes. The straight lines of her nose and chin were nicely set off with the round large lenses of her scholarly looking gold-frame eyeglasses. Coretti had received her doctorate in medieval art history from the University of Milan. She was one of the most highly regarded staff professionals at the Vatican Library, trusted by the pope for her painstaking investigations and honest judgments.
In keeping with the décor of the Vatican Library, the conference room Dottoressa Coretti selected provided a colorful background with a ceiling decorated with magnificently hand-painted frescoes that illuminated scenes of papal history.
Surveying the room, Ferrar’s camera crew picked up a corner from which they thought they could cover the meeting. To capture the flow of the meeting, one of the crew broke out the mobile camera, deciding to roam the room during the meeting to get different perspectives on the discussion and close-ups as needed. Ferrar had in mind using this footage as part of a TV documentary he planned to put together when he got back to New York.
As the group settled into the conference room, Coretti singled out Father Middagh, shaking his hand and greeting him warmly. “We are all looking forward to the publication of your magnum opus on the Shroud. When is the publication date?” she asked enthusiastically.
“We are planning to publish Behold the Face of Jesus as a two-volume work,” Middagh answered. “The first volume will be issued in January, with the second volume to follow a year later.”
Turning her attention to the group, Coretti began by making a dramatic statement: “We can trace the history of the Shroud of Turin back to the time of Christ. The mystery that a living likeness of Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion began even before Christ died.”
This statement got Castle’s attention. “How’s that?” he wondered out loud, not having heard this before.
“The legend is that a woman named Veronica wiped the face of Christ with her veil as Jesus carried the cross to Golgotha,” she said, “and that Christ in gratitude supernaturally left an imprint of his face on the veil. Veronica is a name derived from the Latin word veritas, for ‘truth,’ and icon for ‘image.’ So the very name Veronica signifies ‘true image’ in Latin. The Sixth Station of the Cross, still celebrated today in Catholic churches throughout the world, is dedicated to Veronica wiping the face of Jesus on the way to Golgotha. The Via Dolorosa is the path traditionally marked out through the Old City of Jerusalem as the route Christ took on the way to his crucifixion. The Sixth Station of the Via Dolorosa is located on the site reputed to have been Veronica’s home at the time of Christ’s crucifixion. The story is that Veronica came out of her house, saw Jesus suffering, and took pity on him by wiping his face with her veil.”
“Is there any reason to believe the story of Veronica is true?” Castle asked. “That the name derives from the Latin for ‘true image’ makes it sound like the story is apocryphal, that the character of Veronica was made up around the idea that a likeness of Jesus survived after his death.”
“Clearly, whether or not Veronica existed is debatable, despite the Stations of the Cross and the Via Dolorosa,” Coretti said. “Yet the story suggests the early Christians believed a true image of Christ existed. I believe what was known as the Veil of Veronica was actually what we see today as the Shroud of Turin. We have good historical authority to prove the Shroud of Turin was actually folded and framed so that only the face was visible for veneration. Just seeing the face of Christ, not the whole body image, would have been consistent with the Shroud of Turin being responsible for the Veil of Veronica we find related in early Christian writings and venerated in the Stations of the Cross.”
Coretti passed around the table several books illustrating the Veil of Veronica and documenting the Sixth Station of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa. The mobile camera moved in to get video of the group looking through the books. Ferrar made a note to stay behind after the meeting to get Coretti’s permission to take detailed shots of the various illustrations she was sharing with the
group.
“We can pick up the story of the Shroud in the first century after the death of Christ,” Coretti said. “There is a legend involving the Image of Edessa, named after the ancient Turkish city of Edessa, which is modern-day Urfa. In the early fourth century, Eusebius, an early historian of Christianity, said he translated an ancient letter in which King Abgar of Edessa wrote to Jesus, asking Jesus to heal miraculously an illness he had that was thought to be incurable. After Jesus died, an evangelist named Thaddaeus is said to have brought the Shroud to King Abgar in response to his request. The image brought to Abgar was said to have miraculously and instantly cured him of the leprosy that had paralyzed his legs. Tradition links the story of King Abgar with a face of Christ known as the Mandylion in the Greek Orthodox Church. We have many images of the Mandylion that closely resemble the man in the Shroud. The idea is that the Mandylion, which typically shows only the face of Jesus, was the Shroud of Turin folded and placed in a display frame so only the face could be seen.”
“Why would anyone believe this story?” Gabrielli asked.
“We have found frescoes of the Cloth of Edessa in Turkish churches dating back to around 1100 that look a lot like the face of the man in the Shroud. The man in the Shroud, the Cloth of Edessa, and the various images we have of the Mandylion in Greek Orthodox churches look a lot alike. Portraits of Christ on the gold coins of Byzantine emperor Justinian II, from around 692 A.D. in Constantinople, closely resemble the Cloth of Odessa and Mandylion images and look almost identical to the face of the man in the Shroud.”
Coretti passed around books containing photo illustrations of these various faces of Christ. Gabrielli looked unconvinced. All it proved to him was that at some point, maybe around 500 A.D., the image of Christ that artists accepted became an icon. After that, all images artists painted or otherwise represented of Christ had to look like the icon to be accepted; otherwise people would not recognize the image, or would be be confused.
“We can prove with almost absolutely certainty that painters in Constantinople prior to 1200 must have seen the Shroud of Turin,” she said.
Castle thought this point was more interesting. He wondered how Coretti was going to prove her assertion.
“The Pray Manuscript, an ancient codex written between 1192 and 1195, is preserved in the Budapest National Library,” Coretti said. “The Pray Manuscript contains illustrations that portray the burial of Christ, showing Christ removed from the cross being placed on a burial shroud. The figure of Christ in the Pray Manuscript displays facial and body features consistent with the Shroud of Turin, including the crossed shape of the arms in front of the body and the suggestion that the burial cloth of Christ used the unique herringbone twill we see in the weave of the Shroud of Turin. Interestingly, the Pray Manuscript depicts no thumbs in the hands of the dead Christ, another feature that appears to have been copied from the Shroud of Turin. The nails driven through Christ’s wrists would have damaged the median nerves, causing the thumbs to retract into the palms. A medieval artist is unlikely to have invented this important anatomical detail. The Pray Manuscript traces back to Constantinople.”
“Most importantly,” Middagh added, just to make sure nobody missed the key point, “the various images we have of the Cloth of Edessa, the Mandylion, the gold coins of Justinian II, and the Pray Manuscript all predate the carbon-14 dating that places the creation of the Shroud of Turin at around 1260 to 1390 A.D.”
Coretti nodded in agreement. “We also have the memoirs of French Crusader Robert de Clari, who documents that he personally witnessed a ritual in Constantinople where a cloth depicting the crucified Christ was raised by a mechanism the Byzantines designed to make it appear as if the Shroud was rising from a casket. Various Byzantine sculptures and paintings from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries show a Christ looking almost identical to the man in the Shroud—same beard, same crossed arms, same missing thumbs—rising from a casket. As bizarre as it may sound today, the Byzantine church in Constantinople before 1200 A.D. appears to have used the Shroud of Turin in some sort of a ritual ceremony reenacting Christ’s resurrection. Again, the early Church believed the Shroud contained not just the true image of Christ but a lost mystery about the ancient secrets at the heart of the resurrection itself.”
Then, sorting through the piles of books on the table, she found one in particular. “This is the book I published ten years ago on the Shroud of Turin and the Knights Templar,” she said. “It was titled The Secret History of the Knights Templar.”
Gabrielli laughed, particularly pleased to learn of this. Any ancient artifact he could tie in with the Crusades and the Knights Templar immediately increased its value dramatically. Gabrielli was well-known for saying, “Every good medieval conspiracy theory needs a connection to the Knights Templar and the Crusaders in Jerusalem.”
“The Knights Templar were accused of worshipping a bearded head they brought back from Jerusalem as a relic from the Crusades,” Coretti said. “The accusation was that the bearded head was Baphomet, a grotesque representation of the devil, typically seen as a goat-man, that the Knights Templar used in their worship of Satan. I disagree. I think the bearded head the Knights Templar venerated was the framed Shroud of Turin looking like it did when it was displayed as the Cloth of Edessa or the Mandylion in Byzantine Constantinople. A panel of wood found during World War II at a Knights Templar site in Templecombe, England, had been above a plastered ceiling. The panel contained a painting with a distinctly Shroud-like face. Carbon-14 tests placed the wood panel in the Templar period, around 1280 A.D. So there is good evidence the Knights Templar possessed the Shroud and that they venerated it, much as the early Byzantine Church in Constantinople venerated it.”
“There is another strong connection between the Knights Templar and the Shroud of Turin.” Middagh joined in, supporting Coretti’s argument. “We know that the Shroud of Turin was brought to Lirey, France, in the 1350s, by a descendant of Geoffrey de Charney, the Knight Templar who was burned at the stake in 1314 with Jacques de Molay, the famous last Grand Master of the Knights Templar. French and Venetian knights of the Fourth Crusade besieged Constantinople, along with the Knights Templar. Then, on April 13, 1204, they entered the city and looted it. Geoffrey de Charney was married to one of the leaders of the Fourth Crusade. So it is entirely possible that the Knights Templar were responsible for getting the Shroud of Turin from Constantinople to France. From Lirey, France, we know the Shroud traveled to Turin, where it has remained ever since.”
Gabrielli made detailed notes about Geoffrey de Charney and the Knights Templar, deciding not to challenge any of this history.
“Then there is the pollen analysis,” Coretti said. “If the Shroud had been forged in France during the fourteenth century by Leonardo da Vinci, for instance, we would not expect to find microscopic traces of pollen embedded in the cloth as residue from plants we know are found only in locations such as Jerusalem or Turkey. Yet this is just exactly what we do find. Dr. Middagh, would you like to explain the research?”
“Certainly,” Middagh said, pleased to have another chance to contribute his expertise to the discussion. “In 1978, Swiss criminologist Max Frei worked with the Shroud of Turin Research Project to obtain samples of dust from the Shroud by applying dabbed strips of sticky tape onto the cloth’s surface. Dr. Frei correctly assumed the dust samples would contain microscopic spores of pollen that would provide clues to where the Shroud had been over time. Under microscopic analysis, pollen spores have a hard outer enzyme shell that remains resistant to change for thousands of years. If the Shroud contained only French or Italian pollen spores, the results of the analysis would support the hypothesis that the Shroud had been forged in Europe in the years 1260 to 1390 A.D.”
“But this is not what we found,” Coretti quickly added.
“Right,” Middagh said. “Before his death in 1983, Frei had identified fifty-eight varieties of plant on the Shroud, permitting him to conclude the Shroud was once i
n the Middle East. Frei found pollen samples he identified as from plants found in Jerusalem; other pollens were characteristic of the areas around Edessa and Constantinople; there were also pollen spores common to Europe. Frei concluded the pollen had been deposited on the Shroud from its various public expositions over the centuries. At one time or another, the Shroud must have been exposed to the air not only in Jerusalem, but also in southern Turkey, including the surroundings of Constantinople, which is now Istanbul. Frei’s analysis established definitively that the Shroud did not originate in France or Italy.”
“One last point,” Dottoressa Coretti said. “In 1978, when they were working with the NASA VP-8 three-dimensional Image Analyzer that I believe you heard about at CERN, Dr. John Jackson and his longtime associate Dr. Eric Jumper discovered what looked like coins resting over the eyes of the man in the Shroud of Turin. Then in 1980, Father Francis Filas of Loyola University in Chicago, a Jesuit like our Father Morelli here, and Michael Marx, an expert in classical coins, identified the object over the right eye as a Julia lepton coin with a distinctive design of a sheaf of barley. Pontius Pilate minted the Julia lepton, equivalent to a low-value Roman mite, between 29 and 32 A.D. to honor Emperor Tiberius Caesar’s wife, Julia. The word lepton designates ‘small’ or ‘thin.’ The lepton with the distinctive barley sheaf design was minted only once, in 29 A.D. Putting coins on the eyes of the dead has a long history in the Middle East. In various religious traditions the coins are seen as providing the money to pay for the trip to Heaven, not just keeping the eyelids closed in death—”
Middagh interrupted. “Please allow me to elaborate why various Shroud researchers consider the coins to be an important discovery.
The Shroud Codex Page 26