Shroud of Turin

Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin (Italian: Sindone di Torino), also known as the Holy Shroud (Italian: Sacra Sindone or Santa Sindone), is a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a man. Some describe the image as depicting Jesus of Nazareth and believe the fabric is the burial shroud in which he was wrapped after crucifixion.

First mentioned in 1354, the shroud was denounced in 1389 by the local bishop of Troyes as a fake. Currently the Catholic Church neither formally endorses nor rejects the shroud, and in 2013 Pope Francis referred to it as an "icon of a man scourged and crucified". The shroud has been kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Turin, in northern Italy, since 1578.

In 1988, radiocarbon dating established that the shroud was from the Middle Ages, between the years 1260 and 1390. All hypotheses put forward to challenge the radiocarbon dating have been scientifically refuted, including the medieval repair hypothesis, the bio-contamination hypothesis and the carbon monoxide hypothesis.

The image on the shroud is much clearer in black-and-white negative—first observed in 1898—than in its natural sepia color. A variety of methods have been proposed for the formation of the image, but the actual method used has not yet been conclusively identified. The shroud continues to be intensely studied, and remains a controversial issue among scientists and biblical scholars.

Description

Secondo Pia's 1898 negative of the image on the Shroud of Turin has an appearance suggesting a positive image. It is used as part of the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Image from Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne.

The shroud is rectangular, measuring approximately 4.4 by 1.1 metres (14 ft 5 in × 3 ft 7 in). The cloth is woven in a three-to-one herringbone twill composed of flax fibrils. Its most distinctive characteristic is the faint, brownish image of a front and back view of a naked man with his hands folded across his groin. The two views are aligned along the midplane of the body and point in opposite directions. The front and back views of the head nearly meet at the middle of the cloth.

The image in faint straw-yellow colour on the crown of the cloth fibres appears to be of a man with a beard, moustache, and shoulder-length hair parted in the middle. He is muscular and tall (various experts have measured him as from 1.70 to 1.88 m or 5 ft 7 in to 6 ft 2 in). Reddish-brown stains are found on the cloth, correlating, according to proponents, with the wounds in the Biblical description of the crucifixion of Jesus.

In May 1898 Italian photographer Secondo Pia was allowed to photograph the shroud. He took the first photograph of the shroud on 28 May 1898. In 1931, another photographer, Giuseppe Enrie, photographed the shroud and obtained results similar to Pia's. In 1978, ultraviolet photographs were taken of the shroud.

The shroud was damaged in a fire in 1532 in the chapel in Chambery, France. There are some burn holes and scorched areas down both sides of the linen, caused by contact with molten silver during the fire that burned through it in places while it was folded. Fourteen large triangular patches and eight smaller ones were sewn onto the cloth by Poor Clare nuns to repair the damage.

History

Main article: History of the Shroud of Turin

There are no definite historical records concerning the particular shroud currently at Turin Cathedral prior to the 14th century. A burial cloth, which some historians maintain was the Shroud, was owned by the Byzantine emperors but disappeared during the Sack of Constantinople in 1204.[24] Although there are numerous reports of Jesus' burial shroud, or an image of his head, of unknown origin, being venerated in various locations before the 14th century, there is no historical evidence that these refer to the shroud currently at Turin Cathedral.

The first possible historical record of the Shroud of Turin dates from 1353 or 1357,[13][26] and the first certain record is from 1390 when Bishop Pierre d'Arcis in Lirey, France wrote a memorandum to Antipope Clement VII (Avignon Obedience), stating that the shroud was a forgery and that the artist had confessed.[24][27] Historical records seem to indicate that a shroud bearing an image of a crucified man existed in the small town of Lirey around the years 1353 to 1357 in the possession of a French Knight, Geoffroi de Charny, who died at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356.

Some images of the Pray Codex are claimed by some to include a representation of the shroud. However the image on the Pray Codex has crosses on what may be one side of the supposed shroud, an interlocking step pyramid pattern on the other, and no image of Jesus. Critics point out that it may not be a shroud at all, but rather a rectangular tombstone, as seen on other sacred images. A crumpled cloth can be seen discarded on the coffin, and the text of the codex fails to mention any miraculous image on the codex shroud.

The pilgrim medallion of Lirey (before 1453),[29] drawing by Arthur Forgeais, 1865.

The history of the shroud from the 15th century is well recorded. In 1453 Margaret de Charny deeded the Shroud to the House of Savoy. In 1532, the shroud suffered damage from a fire in a chapel of Chambéry, capital of the Savoy region, where it was stored. A drop of molten silver from the reliquary produced a symmetrically placed mark through the layers of the folded cloth. Poor Clare Nuns attempted to repair this damage with patches. In 1578 Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy ordered the cloth to be brought from Chambéry to Turin and it has remained at Turin ever since.[30]

Since the 17th century the shroud has been displayed (e.g., in the chapel built for that purpose by Guarino Guarini) Repairs were made to the shroud in 1694 by Sebastian Valfrè to improve the repairs of the Poor Clare nuns.[32] Further repairs were made in 1868 by Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy. The shroud remained the property of the House of Savoy until 1983, when it was given to the Holy See.

The shroud was first photographed in the 19th century, during a public exhibition.

A fire, possibly caused by arson, threatened the shroud on 11 April 1997.[33] In 2002, the Holy See had the shroud restored. The cloth backing and thirty patches were removed, making it possible to photograph and scan the reverse side of the cloth, which had been hidden from view. A faint part-image of the body was found on the back of the shroud in 2004.

The Shroud was placed back on public display (the 18th time in its history) in Turin from 10 April to 23 May 2010; and according to Church officials, more than 2 million visitors came to see it.

On Holy Saturday (30 March) 2013, images of the shroud were streamed on various websites as well as on television for the first time in 40 years. Roberto Gottardo of the diocese of Turin stated that for the first time ever they had released high definition images of the shroud that can be used on tablet computers and can be magnified to show details not visible to the naked eye. As this rare exposition took place, Pope Francis issued a carefully worded statement which urged the faithful to contemplate the shroud with awe but, like his predecessors, he "stopped firmly short of asserting its authenticity".

The shroud was again placed on display in the cathedral in Turin from 19 April 2015 until 24 June 2015. There was no charge to view it, but an appointment was required.

Conservation

Main article: Conservation-restoration of the Shroud of Turin

The shroud has undergone several restorations and several steps have been taken to preserve it to avoid further damage and contamination. It is kept under laminated bulletproof glass in an airtight case. The temperature- and humidity-controlled case is filled with argon (99.5%) and oxygen (0.5%) to prevent chemical changes. The shroud itself is kept on an aluminum support sliding on runners and stored flat within the case.

Religious views

A poster advertising the 1898 exhibition of the shroud in Turin. Secondo Pia's photograph was taken a few weeks too late to be included in the poster. The image on the poster includes a painted face, not obtained from Pia's photograph.

The Gospels of Matthew,[40] Mark,[41] and Luke state that Joseph of Arimathea wrapped the body of Jesus in a piece of linen cloth and placed it in a new tomb. The Gospel of John refers to strips of linen used by Joseph of Arimathea.

After the resurrection, the Gospel of John states: "Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen." The Gospel of Luke states: "Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves."

In 1543, John Calvin, in his book Treatise on Relics, explained the reason why the Shroud cannot be genuine:

In all the places where they pretend to have the graveclothes, they show a large piece of linen by which the whole body, including the head, was covered, and, accordingly, the figure exhibited is that of an entire body. But the Evangelist John relates that Christ was buried, "as is the manner of the Jews to bury." What that manner was may be learned, not only from the Jews, by whom it is still observed, but also from their books, which explain what the ancient practice was. It was this: The body was wrapped up by itself as far as the shoulders, and then the head by itself was bound round with a napkin, tied by the four corners, into a knot. And this is expressed by the Evangelist, when he says that Peter saw the linen clothes in which the body had been wrapped lying in one place, and the napkin which had been wrapped about the head lying in another. The term napkin may mean either a handkerchief employed to wipe the face, or it may mean a shawl, but never means a large piece of linen in which the whole body may be wrapped. I have, however, used the term in the sense which they improperly give to it. On the whole, either the Evangelist John must have given a false account, or every one of them must be convicted of falsehood, thus making it manifest that they have too impudently imposed on the unlearned.

Although pieces said to be of burial cloths of Jesus are held by at least four churches in France and three in Italy, none has gathered as much religious following as the Shroud of Turin. The religious beliefs and practices associated with the shroud predate historical and scientific discussions and have continued in the 21st century, although the Catholic Church has never passed judgment on its authenticity. An example is the Holy Face Medal bearing the image from the shroud, worn by some Catholics. Indeed, the Shroud of Turin is respected by Christians of several traditions, including Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Orthodox, Pentecostals, and Presbyterians. Several Lutheran parishes have hosted replicas of the Shroud of Turin, for didactic and devotional purposes.

Devotions

Although the shroud image is currently associated with Catholic devotions to the Holy Face of Jesus, the devotions themselves predate Secondo Pia's 1898 photograph. Such devotions had been started in 1844 by the Carmelite nun Marie of St Peter (based on "pre-crucifixion" images associated with the Veil of Veronica) and promoted by Leo Dupont, also called the Apostle of the Holy Face. In 1851 Dupont formed the "Archconfraternity of the Holy Face" in Tours, France, well before Secondo Pia took the photograph of the shroud.

Miraculous image

Further information: Acheiropoieta, Veil of Veronica, Manoppello Image, Image of Edessa, and Sudarium of Oviedo

The Vatican Veil of Veronica

17th-century Russian icon of the Mandylion by Simon Ushakov

The religious concept of the miraculous acheiropoieton (Greek: made without hands) has a long history in Christianity, going back to at least the 6th century. Among the most prominent portable early acheiropoieta are the Image of Camuliana and the Mandylion or Image of Edessa, both painted icons of Christ held in the Byzantine Empire and now generally regarded as lost or destroyed, as is the Hodegetria image of the Virgin Mary.[54] Other early images in Italy, all heavily and unfortunately restored, that have been revered as acheiropoieta now have relatively little following, as attention has focused on the Shroud.

Vatican position

In 1389, the bishop of Troyes sent a memorial to Antipope Clement VII, declaring that the cloth had been "artificially painted in an ingenious way" and that "it was also proved by the artist who had painted it that it was made by human work, not miraculously produced". In 1390, Clement VII consequently issued four papal bulls, with which he allowed the exposition, but ordered to "say aloud, to put an end to all fraud, that the aforementioned representation is not the true Shroud of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but a painting or panel made to represent or imitate the Shroud ".[55] However, in 1506 Pope Julius II reversed this position and declared the Shroud to be authentic and authorized the public veneration of it with its own mass and office.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano covered the story of Secondo Pia's photograph of 28 May 1898 in its edition of 15 June 1898, but it did so with no comment and thereafter Church officials generally refrained from officially commenting on the photograph for almost half a century.

The first official association between the image on the Shroud and the Catholic Church was made in 1940 based on the formal request by Sister Maria Pierina De Micheli to the curia in Milan to obtain authorization to produce a medal with the image. The authorization was granted and the first medal with the image was offered to Pope Pius XII who approved the medal. The image was then used on what became known as the Holy Face Medal worn by many Catholics, initially as a means of protection during World War II. In 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, and declared its feast to be celebrated every year the day before Ash Wednesday.[57][58] Following the approval by Pope Pius XII, Catholic devotions to the Holy Face of Jesus have been almost exclusively associated with the image on the shroud.

In 1936, Pope Pius XII called the Shroud a "holy thing perhaps like nothing else", and went on to approve of the devotion accorded to it as the Holy Face of Jesus.

In 1998, Pope John Paul II called the Shroud a "distinguished relic" and "a mirror of the Gospel".[60][61] His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, called it an "icon written with the blood of a whipped man, crowned with thorns, crucified and pierced on his right side".[4] In 2013, Pope Francis referred to it as an "icon of a man scourged and crucified".

Other Christian denominations, such as Anglicans and Methodists, have also shown devotion to the Shroud of Turin.

In 1983 the Shroud was given to the Holy See by the House of Savoy. However, as with all relics of this kind, the Roman Catholic Church made no pronouncements on its authenticity. As with other approved Catholic devotions, the matter has been left to the personal decision of the faithful, as long as the Church does not issue a future notification to the contrary. In the Church's view, whether the cloth is authentic or not has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of what Jesus taught or on the saving power of his death and resurrection.

Pope John Paul II stated in 1998 that: "Since it is not a matter of faith, the Church has no specific competence to pronounce on these questions. She entrusts to scientists the task of continuing to investigate, so that satisfactory answers may be found to the questions connected with this Sheet."[65] Pope John Paul II showed himself to be deeply moved by the image of the Shroud and arranged for public showings in 1998 and 2000. In his address at the Turin Cathedral on Sunday 24 May 1998 (the occasion of the 100th year of Secondo Pia's 28 May 1898 photograph), he said: "The Shroud is an image of God's love as well as of human sin ... The imprint left by the tortured body of the Crucified One, which attests to the tremendous human capacity for causing pain and death to one's fellow man, stands as an icon of the suffering of the innocent in every age."

On 30 March 2013, as part of the Easter celebrations, there was an exposition of the shroud in the Cathedral of Turin. Pope Francis recorded a video message for the occasion, in which he described the image on the shroud as "this Icon of a man", and stated that "the Man of the Shroud invites us to contemplate Jesus of Nazareth." In his carefully worded statement Pope Francis urged the faithful to contemplate the shroud with awe, but "stopped firmly short of asserting its authenticity".

Pope Francis went on a pilgrimage to Turin on 21 June 2015, to pray before, venerate the Holy Shroud and honor St. John Bosco on the bicentenary of his birth.

Scientific analysis

Station biologique de Roscoff in Brittany, France where Yves Delage performed the first scientific analysis of the photographs of the shroud in 1902.[70]

Sindonology (from the Greek σινδών—sindon, the word used in the Gospel of Mark[15:46] to describe the type of the burial cloth of Jesus) is the formal study of the Shroud. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first use of this word in 1964: "The investigation ... assumed the stature of a separate discipline and was given a name, sindonology," but also identifies the use of "sindonological" in 1950 and "sindonologist" in 1953.[71]

Secondo Pia's 1898 photographs of the shroud allowed the scientific community to begin to study it. A variety of scientific theories regarding the shroud have since been proposed, based on disciplines ranging from chemistry to biology and medical forensics to optical image analysis. The scientific approaches to the study of the Shroud fall into three groups: material analysis (both chemical and historical), biology and medical forensics and image analysis.

Early studies

The first direct examination of the shroud by a scientific team was undertaken in 1969–1973 in order to advise on preservation of the shroud and determine specific testing methods. This led to the appointment of an 11-member Turin Commission to advise on the preservation of the relic and on specific testing. Five of the commission members were scientists, and preliminary studies of samples of the fabric were conducted in 1973.

In 1976 physicist John P. Jackson, thermodynamicist Eric Jumper and photographer William Mottern used image analysis technologies developed in aerospace science for analyzing the images of the Shroud. In 1977 these three scientists and over thirty other experts in various fields formed the Shroud of Turin Research Project. In 1978 this group, often called STURP, was given direct access to the Shroud.

Also in 1978, independently from the STURP research, Giovanni Tamburelli obtained at CSELT a 3D-elaboration from the Shroud with higher resolution than Jumper and Mottern. A second result of Tamburelli was the electronic removal from the image of the blood that apparently covers the face.

Tests for pigments

In the 1970s a special eleven-member Turin Commission conducted several tests. Conventional and electron microscopic examination of the Shroud at that time revealed an absence of heterogeneous coloring material or pigment.[13] In 1979, Walter McCrone, upon analyzing the samples he was given by STURP, concluded that the image is actually made up of billions of submicrometre pigment particles. The only fibrils that had been made available for testing of the stains were those that remained affixed to custom-designed adhesive tape applied to thirty-two different sections of the image.[73]

Mark Anderson, who was working for McCrone, analyzed the Shroud samples.[74] In his book Ray Rogers states that Anderson, who was McCrone's Raman microscopy expert, concluded that the samples acted as organic material when he subjected them to the laser.

John Heller and Alan Adler examined the same samples and agreed with McCrone's result that the cloth contains iron oxide. However, they concluded, the exceptional purity of the chemical and comparisons with other ancient textiles showed that, while retting flax absorbs iron selectively, the iron itself was not the source of the image on the shroud.[19]

Radiocarbon dating

Main article: Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin

After years of discussion, the Holy See permitted radiocarbon dating on portions of a swatch taken from a corner of the shroud. Independent tests in 1988 at the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology concluded with 95% confidence that the shroud material dated to 1260–1390 AD. This 13th- to 14th-century dating is much too recent for the shroud to have been associated with Jesus. The dating does on the other hand match the first appearance of the shroud in church history.[76][77] This dating is also slightly more recent than that estimated by art historian W. S. A. Dale, who postulated on artistic grounds that the shroud is an 11th-century icon made for use in worship services.[78]

Some proponents for the authenticity of the shroud have attempted to discount the radiocarbon dating result by claiming that the sample may represent a medieval "invisible" repair fragment rather than the image-bearing cloth. However, all of the hypotheses used to challenge the radiocarbon dating have been scientifically refuted, including the medieval repair hypothesis,[7][8] the bio-contamination hypothesis and the carbon monoxide hypothesis.

In recent years several statistical analyses have been conducted on the radiocarbon dating data, attempting to draw some conclusions about the reliability of the C14 dating from studying the data rather than studying the shroud itself. They have all concluded that the data shows a lack of homogeneity, which might be due to unidentified abnormalities in the fabric tested, or else might be due to differences in the pre-testing cleaning processes used by the different laboratories. The most recent analysis (2020) concludes that the stated date range needs to be adjusted by up to 88 years in order to properly meet the requirement of "95% confidence".

Material historical analysis

Historical fabrics

A Roman loom, c. 2nd century AD

In 1998, shroud researcher Joe Nickell wrote that no examples of herringbone weave are known from the time of Jesus. The few samples of burial cloths that are known from the era are made using plain weave. In 2000, fragments of a burial shroud from the 1st century were discovered in a tomb near Jerusalem, believed to have belonged to a Jewish high priest or member of the aristocracy. The shroud was composed of a simple two-way weave, unlike the complex herringbone twill of the Turin Shroud. Based on this discovery, the researchers concluded that the Turin Shroud did not originate from Jesus-era Jerusalem.

Biological and medical forensics

Blood stains

There are several reddish stains on the shroud suggesting blood, but it is uncertain whether these stains were produced at the same time as the image, or afterwards.[91] McCrone (see painting hypothesis) believed these as containing iron oxide, theorizing that its presence was likely due to simple pigment materials used in medieval times.[92]

Skeptics cite forensic blood tests whose results dispute the authenticity of the Shroud, and point to the possibility that the blood could belong to a person who handled the shroud, and that the apparent blood flows on the shroud are unrealistically neat.

Flowers and pollen

Chrysanthemum coronarium, now called Glebionis coronaria

A study published in 2011 by professor Salvatore Lorusso of the University of Bologna and others subjected two photographs of the shroud to detailed modern digital image processing, one of them being a reproduction of the photographic negative taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. They did not find any images of flowers or coins or anything else on either image.[96]

In 2015, Italian researchers Barcaccia et al. published a new study in Scientific Reports. They examined the human and non-human DNA found when the shroud and its backing cloth were vacuumed in 1977 and 1988. They found traces of 19 different plant taxa, including plants native to Mediterranean countries, Central Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Asia (China) and the Americas. Of the human mtDNA, sequences were found belonging to haplogroups that are typical of various ethnicities and geographic regions, including Europe, North and East Africa, the Middle East and India. A few non-plant and non-human sequences were also detected, including various birds and one ascribable to a marine worm common in the Northern Pacific Ocean, next to Canada.[97] After sequencing some DNA of pollen and dust found on the shroud, they confirmed that many people from many different places came in contact with the shroud. According to the scientists, "such diversity does not exclude a Medieval origin in Europe but it would be also compatible with the historic path followed by the Turin Shroud during its presumed journey from the Near East. Furthermore, the results raise the possibility of an Indian manufacture of the linen cloth."[97]

Anatomical forensics

Full length negatives of the shroud.

A number of studies on the anatomical consistency of the image on the shroud and the nature of the wounds on it have been performed, following the initial study by Yves Delage in 1902.[70] While Delage declared the image anatomically flawless, others have presented arguments to support both authenticity and forgery.

The analysis of a crucified Roman, discovered near Venice in 2007, shows heel wounds that are consistent with those found on Jehohanan but which are not consistent with wounds depicted on the shroud. Also, neither of the crucifixion victims known to archaeology show evidence of wrist wounds.[98]

Joe Nickell in 1983, and Gregory S. Paul in 2010, separately state that the proportions of the image are not realistic. Paul stated that the face and proportions of the shroud image are impossible, that the figure cannot represent that of an actual person and that the posture was inconsistent. They argued that the forehead on the shroud is too small; and that the arms are too long and of different lengths and that the distance from the eyebrows to the top of the head is non-representative. They concluded that the features can be explained if the shroud is a work of a Gothic artist.[27][99]

In 2018 an experimental Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) was performed to study the behaviour of blood flows from the wounds of a crucified person, and to compare this to the evidence on the Turin Shroud. The comparison between different tests demonstrated that the blood patterns on the forearms and on the back of the hand are not connected, and would have had to occur at different times, as a result of a very specific sequence of movements. In addition, the rivulets on the front of the image are not consistent with the lines on the lumbar area, even supposing there might have been different episodes of bleeding at different times. These inconsistencies suggest that the Turin linen was an artistic or "didactic" representation, rather than an authentic burial shroud.[100]

Image and text analysis

Image analysis

Both art-historical, digital image processing and analog techniques have been applied to the shroud images.

In 1976 scientists analysed a photograph of the shroud image using NASA imaging equipment, and found that the shroud image has the property of decoding into a 3-dimensional image.[101] Optical physicist and former STURP member John Dee German has noted that it is not difficult to make a photograph which has 3D qualities. If the object being photographed is lighted from the front, and a non-reflective "fog" of some sort exists between the camera and the object, then less light will reach and reflect back from the portions of the object that are farther from the lens, thus creating a contrast which is dependent on distance.[102]

The front image of the Turin Shroud, 1.95 m long, is not directly compatible with the back image, 2.02 m long.

If Jesus' dead body actually produced the images on the shroud, one would expect the bodily areas touching the ground to be more distinct. In fact, Jesus' hands and face are depicted with great detail, while his buttocks and his navel are faintly outlined or invisible, a discrepancy explained with the artist's consideration of modesty. Also, Jesus' right arm and hand are abnormally elongated, allowing him to modestly cover his genital area, which is physically impossible for an ordinary dead body lying supine. No wrinkles or other irregularities distort the image, which is improbable if the cloth had covered the irregular form of a body. For comparison, see oshiguma; the making of face-prints as an artform, in Japan. Furthermore, Jesus' physical appearance corresponds to Byzantine iconography.

Hypotheses on image origin

Painting

The technique used for producing the image is, according to Walter McCrone, described in a book about medieval painting published in 1847 by Charles Lock Eastlake (Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters). Eastlake describes in the chapter "Practice of Painting Generally During the XIVth Century" a special technique of painting on linen using tempera paint, which produces images with unusual transparent features—which McCrone compares to the image on the shroud.[107]

Acid pigmentation

In 2009, Luigi Garlaschelli, professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, stated that he had made a full size reproduction of the Shroud of Turin using only medieval technologies. Garlaschelli placed a linen sheet over a volunteer and then rubbed it with an acidic pigment. The shroud was then aged in an oven before being washed to remove the pigment. He then added blood stains, scorches and water stains to replicate the original.[108] Giulio Fanti, professor of mechanical and thermic measurements at the University of Padua, commented that "the technique itself seems unable to produce an image having the most critical Turin Shroud image characteristics".

Garlaschelli's reproduction was shown in a 2010 National Geographic documentary. Garlaschelli's technique included the bas-relief approach (described below) but only for the image of the face. The resultant image was visibly similar to the Turin Shroud, though lacking the uniformity and detail of the original.

Medieval photography

According to the art historian Nicholas Allen, the image on the shroud was formed by a photographic technique in the 13th century.[112] Allen maintains that techniques already available before the 14th century—e.g., as described in the Book of Optics, which was at just that time translated from Arabic to Latin—were sufficient to produce primitive photographs, and that people familiar with these techniques would have been able to produce an image as found on the shroud. To demonstrate this, he successfully produced photographic images similar to the shroud using only techniques and materials available at the time the shroud was supposedly made. He described his results in his PhD thesis,[113] in papers published in several science journals,[114][115] and in a book.[116] Silver bromide is believed by some to have been used for making the Shroud of Turin as it is widely used in photographic films.[117]

Dust-transfer technique

Scientists Emily Craig and Randall Bresee have attempted to recreate the likenesses of the shroud through the dust-transfer technique, which could have been done by medieval arts. They first did a carbon-dust drawing of a Jesus-like face (using collagen dust) on a newsprint made from wood pulp (which is similar to 13th- and 14th-century paper). They next placed the drawing on a table and covered it with a piece of linen. They then pressed the linen against the newsprint by firmly rubbing with the flat side of a wooden spoon. By doing this they managed to create a reddish-brown image with a lifelike positive likeness of a person, a three-dimensional image and no sign of brush strokes.[118]

Bas-relief

In 1978, Joe Nickell noted that the Shroud image had a three-dimensional quality and thought its creation may have involved a sculpture of some type. He advanced the hypothesis that a medieval rubbing technique was used to explain the image, and set out to demonstrate this. He noted that while wrapping a cloth around a sculpture with normal contours would result in a distorted image, Nickell believed that wrapping a cloth over a bas-relief might result in an image like the one seen on the shroud, as it would eliminate wraparound distortions. For his demonstration, Nickell wrapped a wet cloth around a bas-relief sculpture and allowed it to dry. He then applied powdered pigment rather than wet paint (to prevent it soaking into the threads). The pigment was applied with a dauber, similar to making a rubbing from a gravestone. The result was an image with dark regions and light regions convincingly arranged. In a photo essay in Popular Photography magazine, Nickell demonstrated this technique step-by-step. Other researchers later replicated this process.

In 2005, researcher Jacques di Costanzo constructed a bas-relief of a Jesus-like face and draped wet linen over it. After the linen dried, he dabbed it with a mixture of ferric oxide and gelatine. The result was an image similar to that of the face on the Shroud. The imprinted image turned out to be wash-resistant, impervious to temperatures of 250 °C (482 °F) and was undamaged by exposure to a range of harsh chemicals, including bisulphite which, without the gelatine, would normally have degraded ferric oxide to the compound ferrous oxide.[120]

Instead of painting, it has been suggested that the bas-relief could also be heated and used to scorch an image onto the cloth. However researcher Thibault Heimburger performed some experiments with the scorching of linen, and found that a scorch mark is only produced by direct contact with the hot object—thus producing an all-or-nothing discoloration with no graduation of color as is found in the shroud.[121]

Maillard reaction

The Maillard reaction is a form of non-enzymatic browning involving an amino acid and a reducing sugar. The cellulose fibers of the shroud are coated with a thin carbohydrate layer of starch fractions, various sugars, and other impurities. The potential source for amines required for the reaction is a decomposing body, and no signs of decomposition have been found on the Shroud. Rogers also notes that their tests revealed that there were no proteins or bodily fluids on the image areas.  Also, the image resolution and the uniform coloration of the linen resolution seem to be incompatible with a mechanism involving diffusion.

Replica of the Shroud of Turin, found in the Real Santuario del Cristo de La Laguna in Tenerife (Spain).

Fringe theories

Main article: Fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin

Images of coins, flowers and writing

Various people have claimed to have detected images of flowers on the shroud, as well as coins over the eyes of the face in the image, writing and other objects. However a study published in 2011 by Lorusso and others subjected two photographs of the shroud to detailed modern digital image processing, one of them being a reproduction of the photographic negative taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. They did not find any images of flowers or coins or writing or any other additional objects on the shroud in either photograph, they noted that the faint images were "only visible by incrementing the photographic contrast", and they concluded that these signs may be linked to protuberances in the yarn, and possibly also to the alteration and influence of the texture of the Enrie photographic negative during its development in 1931.[96] The use of coins to cover the eyes of the dead is not attested for 1st-century Palestine. The existence of the coin images is rejected by most scientists.[132]

Radiation processes

Some proponents for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin have argued that the image on the shroud was created by some form of radiation emission at the "moment of resurrection". However, STURP member Alan Adler has stated that this theory is not generally accepted as scientific, given that it runs counter to the laws of physics.[133] Raymond Rogers also criticized the theory, saying: "It is clear that a corona discharge (plasma) in air will cause easily observable changes in a linen sample. No such effects can be observed in image fibers from the Shroud of Turin. Corona discharges and/or plasmas made no contribution to image formation."[75]: 83 

Fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin is a length of linen cloth bearing the imprint of the image of a man, and is believed by some to be the burial shroud of Jesus. Despite conclusive scientific evidence that it is of medieval origin, multiple alternative theories about the origin of the shroud dating it to the time of Christ have been proposed.

Although three radiocarbon dating tests performed in 1988 provided conclusive evidence of a date of 1260 to 1390 for the shroud, some researchers have challenged the dating based on various theories, including the provenance of the samples used for testing, biological or chemical contamination, incorrect assessment of carbon dating data, as well as other theories. However, the alternative theories challenging the radiocarbon dating have been disproved by scientists using actual shroud material, and are thus considered to be fringe theories.

The Holy See received custody of the shroud in 1983, and as with other relics, makes no claims about its authenticity. After the 1988 round of tests, no further dating tests have been allowed.

Overview

The Shroud of Turin is a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a man who is alleged to be Jesus of Nazareth. The cloth itself is believed by some to be the burial shroud he was wrapped in when he was buried after his crucifixion. The origins of the shroud and its images are the subject of multiple fringe theories. Diverse arguments have been made in various publications claiming to prove that the cloth is the authentic burial shroud of Jesus, based on disciplines ranging from chemistry to biology and medical forensics to optical image analysis.

In 1988, three radiocarbon dating tests dated a sample of the shroud as being from the Middle Ages, between the years 1260 and 1390. Some shroud researchers have challenged this dating, arguing in favor of fringe theories. However, all of the scientific hypotheses used to challenge the radiocarbon dating have been scientifically refuted, including the medieval repair hypothesis, the bio-contamination hypothesis and the carbon monoxide hypothesis.[9] As the highly-respected[17] journal Nature put it, writing about the radiocarbon dating: "These tests provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval."[18]

Proponents for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin argue that empirical analysis and scientific methods are insufficient for understanding the methods used for image formation on the shroud, believing that the image was miraculously produced at the moment of Resurrection. Some proponents have argued that the image on the shroud can be explained with scientific evidence that supports the Gospel narrative. John Jackson (a member of STURP) proposed that the image was formed by radiation methods beyond the understanding of current science, in particular via the "collapsing cloth" onto a body that was radiating energy at the moment of resurrection. However, STURP member Alan Adler has stated that Jackson's theory is not generally accepted as scientific, given that it runs counter to the laws of physics. In 1989 physicist Thomas Phillips speculated that the Shroud image was formed by neutron radiation caused by a miraculous bodily resurrection.

Defective sample theories

Allegations have been made that the sample of the shroud chosen for testing was defective in some way, usually involving questions about the provenance of the threads: for example that the sample chosen was not from the original shroud but from a repair or restoration carried out in the Middle Ages.

Medieval repair argument

Although the quality of the radiocarbon testing itself is unquestioned, criticisms have been raised regarding the choice of the sample taken for testing, with suggestions that the sample may represent a medieval repair fragment rather than the image-bearing cloth. It is hypothesised that the sampled area was a medieval repair which was conducted by "invisible reweaving". Since the C14 dating at least four articles have been published in scholarly sources contending that the samples used for the dating test may not have been representative of the whole shroud.

Questionable provenance of samples

The medieval repair argument was included in an article by American chemist Raymond Rogers, who conducted chemical analysis for the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) and who was involved in work with the Shroud since the STURP project began in 1978. Rogers took 32 documented adhesive-tape samples from all areas of the shroud and associated textiles during the STURP process in 1978. He received 14 yarn segments from Luigi Gonella (Department of Physics, Polytechnic University of Turin) on 14 October 1979, which Gonella told him were from the Raes sample. On 12 December 2003, Rogers received a tiny fragment of what he was told was a shroud warp thread, and a tiny fragment of what he was told was a shroud weft thread, which Luigi Gonella told him had been taken from the radiocarbon sample[clarify] before it was distributed for dating. The actual provenance of these threads is uncertain, as Gonella was not authorized to take or retain genuine shroud material, but Gonella told Rogers that he excised the threads from the center of the radiocarbon sample.

Raymond Rogers stated in a 2005 article that he performed chemical analyses on these undocumented threads, and compared them to the undocumented Raes threads as well as the samples he had kept from his STURP work. He stated that his analysis showed: "The radiocarbon sample contains both a gum/dye/mordant coating and cotton fibers. The main part of the shroud does not contain these materials."[27] He speculated that these products may have been used by medieval weavers to match the colour of the original weave when performing repairs and backing the shroud for additional protection. Based on this comparison Rogers concluded that the undocumented threads received from Gonella did not match the main body of the shroud, and that in his opinion: "The worst possible sample for carbon dating was taken."[29]

In March 2013, Giulio Fanti, professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at the University of Padua conducted a battery of experiments on various threads that he believes were cut from the shroud during the 1988 carbon-14 dating, and concluded that they dated from 300 BC to 400 AD, potentially placing the Shroud within the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth.[30] Because of the manner in which Fanti obtained the shroud fibers, many are dubious about his findings. The shroud's official custodian, Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia of Turin, told Vatican Insider: "As there is no degree of safety on the authenticity of the materials on which these experiments were carried out [on] the shroud cloth, the shroud's custodians cannot recognize any serious value to the results of these alleged experiments."[31][32] Barrie Schwortz, a member of the original STURP investigation team, commented on Fanti's theory: "But it would be more convincing if the basic research had first been presented in a professional, peer-reviewed journal. If you're using old techniques in new ways, then you need to submit your approach to other scientists."[31]

Contamination of sample theories

Various theories call into question results of carbon-14 dating, based on contamination by bacteria, reactive carbon, or carbon monoxide.

By bacteria

Pictorial evidence dating from c. 1690 and 1842 indicates that the corner used for the dating and several similar evenly spaced areas along one edge of the cloth were handled each time the cloth was displayed, the traditional method being for it to be held suspended by a row of five bishops. Others contend that repeated handling of this kind greatly increased the likelihood of contamination by bacteria and bacterial residue compared to the newly discovered archaeological specimens for which carbon-14 dating was developed. Bacteria and associated residue (bacteria by-products and dead bacteria) carry additional carbon-14 that would skew the radiocarbon date toward the present.

Rodger Sparks, a radiocarbon expert from New Zealand, had countered that an error of thirteen centuries stemming from bacterial contamination in the Middle Ages would have required a layer approximately doubling the sample weight.[33] Because such material could be easily detected, fibers from the shroud were examined at the National Science Foundation Mass Spectrometry Center of Excellence at the University of Nebraska. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry examination failed to detect any form of bioplastic polymer on fibers from either non-image or image areas of the shroud. Additionally, laser-microprobe Raman analysis at Instruments SA, Inc. in Metuchen, New Jersey, also failed to detect any bioplastic polymer on shroud fibers.

Harry Gove, director of Rochester's laboratory (one of the laboratories not selected to conduct the testing), once hypothesised that a "bioplastic" bacterial contamination, which was unknown during the 1988 testing, could have rendered the tests inaccurate. He has, however, also acknowledged that the samples had been carefully cleaned with strong chemicals before testing.[34] He noted that different cleaning procedures were employed by and within the three laboratories, and that even if some slight contamination remained, about two thirds of the sample would need to consist of modern material to swing the result away from a 1st century date to a Medieval date. He inspected the Arizona sample material before it was cleaned, and determined that no such gross amount of contamination was present even before the cleaning commenced.[15]

By reactive carbon

Others have suggested that the silver of the molten reliquary and the water used to douse the flames may have catalysed the airborne carbon into the cloth.

The Russian Dmitri Kouznetsov, an archaeological biologist and chemist, claimed in 1994 to have managed to experimentally reproduce this purported enrichment of the cloth in ancient weaves, and published numerous articles on the subject between 1994 and 1996.

Kouznetsov's results could not be replicated, and no actual experiments have been able to validate this theory, so far.

Jull, Donahue and Damon of the NSF Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Facility at the University of Arizona attempted to replicate the Kouznetsov experiment, and could find no evidence for the gross changes in age proposed by Kouznetsov et al. They concluded that the proposed carbon-enriching heat treatments were not capable of producing the claimed changes in the measured radiocarbon age of the linen, that the attacks by Kouznetsov et al. on the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the shroud "in general are unsubstantiated and incorrect," and that the "other aspects of the experiment are unverifiable and irreproducible."

Gian Marco Rinaldi and others proved that Kouznetsov never performed the experiments described in his papers, citing non-existent fonts and sources, including the museums from which he claimed to have obtained the samples of ancient weaves on which he performed the experiments.

Kouznetsov was arrested in 1997 on American soil under allegations of accepting bribes by magazine editors to produce manufactured evidence and false reports.

By carbon monoxide in smoke

In 2008, John Jackson of the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado proposed a new hypothesis – namely the possibility of more recent enrichment if carbon monoxide were to slowly interact with a fabric so as to deposit its enriched carbon into the fabric, interpenetrating into the fibrils that make up the cloth. Jackson proposed to test if this were actually possible.[45] Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, took the theory seriously and agreed to collaborate with Jackson in testing a series of linen samples that could determine if the case for the Shroud's authenticity should be re-opened. Before conducting the tests, he told the BBC that "With the radiocarbon measurements and with all of the other evidence which we have about the Shroud, there does seem to be a conflict in the interpretation of the different evidence." Ramsey stressed that he would be surprised if the results of the 1988 tests were shown to be far out – especially "a thousand years wrong" – but he insisted that he was keeping an open mind.

The results of the tests were to form part of a documentary on the Turin Shroud which was to be broadcast on BBC2. The producer of the 2008 documentary, David Rolfe, suggested that the quantity of carbon 14 found on the weave may have been significantly affected by the weather, the conservation methods employed throughout the centuries,[48] as well as the volatile carbon generated by the fire that damaged the shroud while in Savoy custody at Chambéry. Other similar theories include that candle smoke (rich in carbon dioxide) and the volatile carbon molecules produced during the two fires may have altered the carbon content of the cloth, rendering carbon-dating unreliable as a dating tool.[49][50]

In March 2008, Ramsey reported back on the testing that: "So far the linen samples have been subjected to normal conditions (but with very high concentrations of carbon monoxide). These initial tests show no significant reaction – even though the sensitivity of the measurements is sufficient to detect contamination that would offset the age by less than a single year. This is to be expected and essentially confirms why this sort of contamination has not been considered a serious issue before." He noted that carbon monoxide does not undergo significant reactions with linen which could result in an incorporation of a significant number of CO molecules into the cellulose structure. He also added that there is as yet no direct evidence to suggest the original radiocarbon dates are not accurate.[45]

In 2011, Ramsey commented that in general "there are various hypotheses as to why the dates might not be correct, but none of them stack up."

Response to restoration claims

The official report of the dating process, written by the people who performed the sampling, states that the sample "came from a single site on the main body of the shroud away from any patches or charred areas."[18]

As part of the testing process in 1988, a Derbyshire laboratory in England assisted the University of Oxford radiocarbon acceleration unit by identifying foreign material removed from the samples before they were processed.[52] Edward Thomas Hall of the Oxford team noticed two or three "minute" fibers which looked "out of place",[52] and those "minute" fibers were identified as cotton by Peter South (textile expert of the Derbyshire laboratory) who said: "It may have been used for repairs at some time in the past, or simply became bound in when the linen fabric was woven. It may not have taken us long to identify the strange material, but it was unique amongst the many and varied jobs we undertake."[52]

Mechthild Flury-Lemberg is an expert in the restoration of textiles, who headed the restoration and conservation of the Turin Shroud in 2002. She has rejected the theory of the "invisible reweaving", pointing out that it would be technically impossible to perform such a repair without leaving traces, and that she found no such traces in her study of the shroud.

H. E. Gove, former professor emeritus of physics at the University of Rochester and former director of the Nuclear Structure Research Laboratory at the University of Rochester, helped to invent radiocarbon dating and was closely involved in setting up the shroud dating project. He also attended the actual dating process at the University of Arizona. Gove has written (in the respected scientific journal Radiocarbon) that: "Another argument has been made that the part of the shroud from which the sample was cut had possibly become worn and threadbare from countless handlings and had been subjected to medieval textile restoration. If so, the restoration would have had to be done with such incredible virtuosity as to render it microscopically indistinguishable from the real thing. Even modern so-called invisible weaving can readily be detected under a microscope, so this possibility seems unlikely. It seems very convincing that what was measured in the laboratories was genuine cloth from the shroud after it had been subjected to rigorous cleaning procedures. Probably no sample for carbon dating has ever been subjected to such scrupulously careful examination and treatment, nor perhaps ever will again."

In December 2010, Timothy Jull, a member of the original 1988 radiocarbon-dating team and editor of the peer-reviewed journal Radiocarbon, coauthored an article in that journal with Rachel A Freer-Waters. They examined a portion of the radiocarbon sample that was left over from the section used by the University of Arizona in 1988 for the carbon dating exercise, and were assisted by the director of the Gloria F Ross Center for Tapestry Studies. They viewed the fragment using a low magnification (~30×) stereo microscope, as well as under high magnification (320×) viewed through both transmitted light and polarized light, and then with epifluorescence microscopy. They found "only low levels of contamination by a few cotton fibers" and no evidence that the samples actually used for measurements in the C14 dating processes were dyed, treated, or otherwise manipulated. They concluded that the radiocarbon dating had been performed on a sample of the original shroud material.[55]

Statistical analyses

In 2010, statisticians Marco Riani and Anthony C. Atkinson wrote in a scientific paper that the statistical analysis of the raw dates obtained from the three laboratories for the radiocarbon test suggests the presence of contamination in some of the samples. They conclude that: "The effect is not large over the sampled region; ... our estimate of the change is about two centuries."[56]

In recent years several statistical analyses have been conducted on the radiocarbon dating data, attempting to draw some conclusions about the reliability of the C14 dating from studying the data rather than studying the shroud itself. They have all concluded that the data shows a lack of homogeneity, which might be due to unidentified abnormalities in the fabric tested, or else might be due to differences in the pre-testing cleaning processes used by the different laboratories. The most recent analysis (2020) concludes that the stated date range needs to be adjusted by up to 88 years in order to properly meet the requirement of "95% confidence".

In 1994, J. A. Christen applied a strong statistical test to the radiocarbon data and concluded that the given age for the shroud is, from a statistical point of view, correct.

However critics claim to have identified statistical errors in the conclusions published in Nature:[18] including: the actual standard deviation for the Tucson study was 17 years, not 31, as published; the chi-square distribution value is 8.6 rather than 6.4, and the relative significance level (which measures the reliability of the results) is close to 1% – rather than the published 5%, which is the minimum acceptable threshold.

In a 2020 paper, respected pro-authenticity advocates Bryan Walsh and Larry Schwalbe stated in the Discussion section as follows:

"At this time, the source of the statistical heterogeneity of the Shroud data is unknown, but one of two broad hypotheses could reasonably account for the effect. One is that some differences may have existed in either the sample processing or measurement protocols of the different laboratories. The other is that some inherent variation was present in the carbon isotopic composition of the Shroud sample itself ...

"An alternate hypothesis is that some difference in residual contamination may have occurred as a result of differences in the individual laboratories' cleaning procedures ...

"In support of the contamination hypothesis, Fig. 4 illustrates how the mean results from the Zurich and Tucson data (open symbols) agree within their calculated experimental error (note level B-B′), whereas that from Oxford does not (A-A′). If the Zurich and Tucson data were displaced upward by 88 RCY as shown in the figure all of the results would agree within the uncertainty observed. Indeed, if the magnitude of the "adjustment" were as small as ~10 RCY, the χ2 analysis would confirm a statistical homogeneity assuming the uncertainties in the data did not change."

Vanillin loss theory

Raymond Rogers argued in the scientific journal Thermochimica Acta that the presence of vanillin differed markedly between the unprovenanced threads he was looking at, which contained 37% of the original vanillin, while the body of the shroud contained 0% of the original vanillin. He stated that: "The fact that vanillin cannot be detected in the lignin on shroud fibers, Dead Sea Scrolls linen, and other very old linens indicate that the shroud is quite old. A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggest the shroud is between 1300 and 3000 years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years".[27]

In a 2020 paper, pro-authenticity advocates Bryan Walsh and Larry Schwalbe stated of this test that "Rogers' method has limitations and his results have not yet been widely accepted."[64] Rogers' analysis is also questioned by skeptics such as Joe Nickell, who reasons that the conclusions of the author, Raymond Rogers, result from "starting with the desired conclusion and working backward to the evidence".[65]

Claims of writing on the Shroud

A late 19th-century photograph of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud

In 1979 Greek and Latin letters were reported as written near the face. These were further studied by André Marion, a professor at the École supérieure d'optique and his student Anne Laure Courage, in 1997. Subsequently, after performing computerized analysis and microdensitometer studies, they reported finding additional inscriptions, among them INNECEM (a shortened form of Latin "in necem ibis"—"you will go to death"), NNAZAPE(N)NUS (Nazarene), IHSOY (Jesus) and IC (Iesus Chrestus). The uncertain letters IBE(R?) have been conjectured as "Tiberius".[66] Linguist Mark Guscin disputed the reports of Marion and Courage. He stated that the inscriptions made little grammatical or historical sense and that they did not appear on the slides that Marion and Courage indicated.[67]

In 2009, Barbara Frale, a paleographer in the Vatican Secret Archives, who had published two books on the Shroud of Turin reported further analysis of the text.[68] In her books Frale had stated that the shroud had been kept by the Templars after 1204. In 2009 Frale stated that it is possible to read on the image the burial certificate of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth, imprinted in fragments of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin writing.

Frale stated the text on the Shroud reads: "In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year." Since Tiberius became emperor after the death of Octavian Augustus in AD 14, the 16th year of his reign would be within the span of the years AD 30 to 31. Frale's methodology has been criticized, partly based on the objection that the writings are too faint to see. Dr Antonio Lombatti, an Italian historian, rejected the idea that the authorities would have bothered to tag the body of a crucified man. He stated that "It's all the result of imagination and computer software."

A study by Lorusso et al. subjected two photographs of the shroud to digital image processing, one of them being a reproduction of the photographic negative taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. They did not find any signs, symbols or writing on either image, and noted that these signs may be linked to protuberances in the yarn, as well possibly as to the alteration and influence of the texture of the Enrie photographic negative during its development in 1931.[76]

Images of coins theory

Researchers Jackson, Jumper, and Stephenson report detecting the impressions of coins placed on both eyes after a digital study in 1978.[77] They claimed to have seen a two-lepton coin on the right eyelid dating from 29–30,[78] and a one-lepton coin on the left eyebrow minted in 29.[79] The existence of the coin images is rejected by most scientists.[80] A study published in 2011 by Lorusso and others subjected two photographs of the shroud to detailed modern digital image processing, one of them being a reproduction of the photographic negative taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. They did not find any images of flowers or coins or any other additional objects on the shroud in either photograph, they noted that the faint images identified by the Whangers were "only visible by incrementing the photographic contrast", and they concluded that these signs may be linked to protuberances in the yarn, and possibly also to the alteration and influence of the texture of the Enrie photographic negative during its development in 1931.[76] The use of coins to cover the eyes of the dead is not attested for 1st-century Palestine.

Pollens and images of flowers theory

In 1997 Avinoam Danin, a botanist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reported that he had identified Chrysanthemum coronarium (now called Glebionis coronaria), Cistus creticus and Zygophyllum whose pressed image on the shroud was first noticed by Alan Whanger in 1985 on the photographs of the shroud taken in 1931. He reported that the outlines of the flowering plants would point to March or April and the environs of Jerusalem. In a separate report in 1978 Danin and Uri Baruch reported on the pollen grains on the cloth samples, stating that they were appropriate to the spring in Israel. Max Frei, a Swiss police criminologist who initially obtained pollen from the shroud during the STURP investigation, stated that of the 58 different types of pollens found, 45 were from the Jerusalem area, while six were from the eastern Middle East, with one pollen species growing exclusively in Istanbul, and two found in Edessa, Turkey. Mark Antonacci argues that the pollen evidence and flower images are inherently interwoven and strengthen each other.

In 2008 Avinoam Danin reported analysis based on the ultraviolet photographs of Miller and Pellicori taken in 1978. Danin reported five new species of flower, which also bloom in March and April and stated that a comparison of the 1931 black and white photographs and the 1978 ultraviolet images indicate that the flower images are genuine and not the artifact of a specific method of photography.

However Danin stated in 2011, that: "In 2001 we brought most of the slides to Prof. Dr. Thomas Litt who is an expert palynologist and has very sophisticated microscopic equipment. Prof. Litt concluded that none of the pollen grains he saw could be named at a species level. Hence, all the conclusions drawn from previous palynological investigations of Dr. Frei's material should be suspended until a new collection of pollen grains can be carried out and the grains thus obtained can be studied with modern equipment and by an expert of pollen of this area."[88]

Skeptics have argued that the flower images are too faint for Danin's determination to be definite, that an independent review of the pollen strands showed that one strand out of the 26 provided contained significantly more pollen than the others, perhaps pointing to deliberate contamination.[89] Skeptics also argue that Max Frei had previously been duped in his examination of the Hitler Diaries and that he may have also been duped in this case, or may have introduced the pollens himself.[90] J. Beaulieau has stated that Frei was a self-taught amateur palynologist, was not properly trained, and that his sample was too small.[91]

A study published in 2011 by professor Salvatore Lorusso of the University of Bologna and others subjected two photographs of the shroud to detailed modern digital image processing, one of them being a reproduction of the photographic negative taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. They did not find any images of flowers or coins or anything else on either image, they noted that the faint images identified by the Whangers were "only visible by incrementing the photographic contrast", and they concluded that these signs may be linked to protuberances in the yarn, and possibly also to the alteration and influence of the texture of the Enrie photographic negative during its development in 1931.[76]

In 2015, Italian researchers Barcaccia et al. published a new study in Scientific Reports. They examined the human and non-human DNA found when the shroud and its backing cloth were vacuumed in 1977 and 1988. They found traces of 19 different plant taxa, including plants native to Mediterranean countries, Central Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Asia (China) and the Americas. Of the human mtDNA, sequences were found belonging to haplogroups that are typical of various ethnicities and geographic regions, including Europe, North and East Africa, the Middle East and India. A few non-plant and non-human sequences were also detected, including various birds and one ascribable to a marine worm common in the Northern Pacific Ocean, next to Canada. After sequencing some DNA of pollen and dust found on the shroud, they confirmed that many people from many different places came in contact with the shroud. According to the scientists, "such diversity does not exclude a Medieval origin in Europe but it would be also compatible with the historic path followed by the Turin Shroud during its presumed journey from the Near East. Furthermore, the results raise the possibility of an Indian manufacture of the linen cloth."

3D Imaging

In 1976 Pete Schumacher, John Jackson and Eric Jumper analysed a photograph of the shroud image using a VP8 Image Analyzer, which was developed for NASA to create brightness maps of the moon. A brightness map (isometric display) interprets differences of brightness within an image as differences of elevation—brighter patches are seen as being closer to the camera and darker patches as farther away. Our minds interpret these gradients as a "pseudo-three-dimensional image". They found that, unlike any photograph they had analyzed, the shroud image has the property of decoding into a 3-dimensional image, when the darker parts of the image are interpreted to be those features of the man that were closest to the shroud and the lighter areas of the image those features that were farthest. The researchers could not replicate the effect when they attempted to transfer similar images using techniques of block print, engravings, a hot statue, and bas-relief.

Optical physicist and former STURP member John Dee German has noted that it is not difficult to make a photograph which has 3D qualities. If the object being photographed is lighted from the front, and a non-reflective "fog" of some sort exists between the camera and the object, then less light will reach and reflect back from the portions of the object that are farther from the lens, thus creating a contrast which is dependent on distance.[95]

Energy source theories

Since 1930 several researchers (J. Jackson, G. Fanti, T. Trenn, T. Phillips, J.-B. Rinaudo and others) endorsed the flash-like irradiation hypothesis. It was suggested that the relatively high definition of the image details can be obtained through the energy source (specifically, protonic) acting from inside. The Russian researcher Alexander Belyakov proposed an intense, but short flashlight source, which lasted some hundredths of a second. Some other authors suggest the X-radiation or a burst of directional ultraviolet radiation may have played a role in the formation of the Shroud image. From the image characteristics, several researchers have theorized that the radiant source was prevalently vertical. These theories do not include the scientific discussion of a method by which the energy could have been produced.

Corona discharge

During restoration in 2002, the back of the cloth was photographed and scanned for the first time. Giulio Fanti, a scientist at the University of Padua, wrote an article on this subject with colleagues in 2005 that envisages electrostatic corona discharge as the probable mechanism to produce the images of the body in the Shroud.[102] Congruent with that mechanism, they also describe an image on the reverse side of the fabric, much fainter than that on the front view of the body, consisting primarily of the face and perhaps hands. As with the front picture, it is entirely superficial, with coloration limited to the carbohydrate layer. The images correspond to, and are in registration with, those on the other side of the cloth. No image is detectable in the reverse side of the dorsal view of the body.

Raymond Rogers criticized the theory, saying: "It is clear that a corona discharge (plasma) in air will cause easily observable changes in a linen sample. No such effects can be observed in image fibers from the Shroud of Turin. Corona discharges and/or plasmas made no contribution to image formation."

In December 2011, Fanti published a critical compendium of the major hypotheses regarding the formation of the body image on the shroud. He stated that "none of them can completely explain the mysterious image". Fanti then considered corona discharge as the most probable hypothesis regarding the formation of the body image. He stated that it would be impossible to reproduce all the characteristics of the image in a laboratory because the energy source required would be too high. Fanti has restated the radiation theories in a 2013 book.

Ultraviolet radiation

In December 2011 scientists at Italy's National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Development ENEA deduced from the STURP results that the color of the Shroud image is the result of an accelerated aging process of the linen, similar to the yellowing of the paper of ancient books. They demonstrated that the photochemical reactions caused by exposing linen to ultraviolet light could reproduce the main characteristics of the Shroud image, such as the shallowness of the coloration and the gradient of the color, which are not reproducible by other means. When subsequently illuminated with a UV lamp, the irradiated linen fabrics behaved like the linen of the Shroud. They also determined that UV radiation changes the crystalline structure of cellulose in a similar manner as aging and long-duration background radiation.

Paolo Di Lazzaro, the lead researcher, indicated in an e-mail interview that "... it appears unlikely a forger may have done this image with technologies available in the Middle Ages or earlier", but their study does not mean the Shroud image was created by the flash of a miraculous resurrection, contrary to how the story was presented in the media, especially on the Web. Professional skeptic Joe Nickell states that the latest findings are nothing new despite being "dressed up in high-tech tests", and that they don't prove much of anything.

Burial ointments theory

In November 2011, F. Curciarello et al. published a paper that analyzed the abrupt changes in the yellowed fibril density values on the Shroud image. They concluded that the rapid changes in the body image intensity are not anomalies in the manufacturing process of the linen but that they can be explained with the presence of aromas or burial ointments.[111] However, their work leaves the existence of an energy source for the image an open question.

Other theories

Other theories have been proposed as well, such as the nuclear emissions theory which claims that the image was formed from nuclear emissions from an earthquake that struck Jerusalem in 33 AD.

History of the Shroud of Turin

The History of the Shroud of Turin begins in the year 1390 AD, when Bishop Pierre d'Arcis wrote a memorandum where he charged that the Shroud was a forgery.[1] Historical records seem to indicate that a shroud bearing an image of a crucified man existed in the possession of Geoffroy de Charny in the small town of Lirey, France around the years 1353 to 1357.[2][3] The history from the 15th century to the present is well documented.

The period until 1390 is subject to debate and controversy among historians. Prior to the 14th century there are some allegedly congruent but controversial references such as the Pray Codex. Although there are numerous reports of Jesus' burial shroud, or an image of his head, of unknown origin, being venerated in various locations before the 14th century, there is no reliable historical evidence that these refer to the shroud currently at Turin Cathedral.[5] A burial cloth, which some historians maintain was the Shroud, was owned by the Byzantine emperors but disappeared during the Sack of Constantinople in 1204.[6] Barbara Frale has cited that the Order of Knights Templar were in the possession of a relic showing a red, monochromatic image of a bearded man on linen or cotton.

In 1453 Margaret de Charny deeded the Shroud to the House of Savoy. In 1532, the shroud suffered damage from a fire in the church in Chambery, France where it was stored.[8] A drop of molten silver from the reliquary produced a symmetrically placed mark through the layers of the folded cloth. Poor Clare Nuns attempted to repair this damage with patches. Repairs were made to the shroud in 1694 by Sebastian Valfrè to improve the repairs of the Poor Clare nuns. Further repairs were made in 1868 by Clotilde of Savoy.

In 1578 the House of Savoy took the shroud to Turin and it has remained at Turin Cathedral ever since. As of the 17th century the shroud has been displayed (e.g. in the chapel built for that purpose by Guarino Guarini) and in the 19th century it was first photographed during a public exhibition. The shroud remained the property of the House of Savoy until 1983, when it was given to the Holy See, the rule of the House of Savoy having ended in 1946.

A fire, possibly caused by arson, threatened the shroud on 11 April 1997. In 2002, the Holy See had the shroud restored. The cloth backing and thirty patches were removed, making it possible to photograph and scan the reverse side of the cloth, which had been hidden from view for centuries. The Shroud was exhibited to the public from August 8 to August 12, 2018.

Prior to the 14th century

This 10th-century image shows Abgarus of Edessa displaying the Image of Edessa. The oblong cloth shown here is unusual for depictions of the image, leading some to suggest that the artist was influenced by seeing the Shroud.

Although there are numerous reports of Jesus' burial shroud, or an image of his head, of unknown origin, being venerated in various locations before the fourteenth century, there is no historical evidence that these refer to the shroud currently at Turin Cathedral.

When speaking of the resurrection of Jesus, the Gospel of Luke (24:12) states: "Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened." The Gospel of John (20:4–7) states that: "Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen."

When speaking of the death of Jesus, the Gospels of Matthew (27:59), Mark (15:46), and Luke (23:53) all refer to a singular "sindon" (fine linen cloth) which was wrapped (entulisso) around Jesus' body. In other Greek usage the word "sindon" refers to a wrapping such as a toga (Mark 14:51–52).

The Gospel of the Hebrews, a 2nd-century manuscript extant in about 20 lines states "and after He had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest he appeared to James".

The Image of Edessa was reported to contain the image of the face of Jesus, and its existence is reported since the sixth century. Some have suggested a connection between the Shroud of Turin and the Image of Edessa.[14] No legend connected with that image suggests that it contained the image of a beaten and bloody Jesus. It was said to be an image transferred by Jesus to the cloth in life. This image is generally described as depicting only the face of Jesus, not the entire body. Proponents of the theory that the Edessa image was actually the shroud, led by Ian Wilson, theorize that it was always folded in such a way as to show only the face, as recorded in the apocryphical Acts of Thaddeus from around that time, which say it was tradiplon – folded into four pieces.[15]

Ian Wilson, under 'Reconstructed Chronology of the Turin Shroud'[16] recounts that the 'Doctrine of Addai' mentions a 'mysterious portrait' in connection with the healing of Abgar V. A similar story is recorded in Eusebius' History of the Church bk 1, ch 13,[17] which does not mention the portrait.

Three principal pieces of evidence are cited in favor of the identification with the shroud. Saint John of Damascus mentions the image in his anti-iconoclastic work On Holy Images,[18] describing the Edessa image as being a "strip", or oblong cloth, rather than a square, as other accounts of the Edessa cloth hold. However, in his description, St. John still speaks of the image of Jesus' face when he was alive.

In several articles, Daniel Scavone, professor Emeritus of history at the University of southern Indiana, puts forward a hypothesis which identifies the Shroud of Turin as the real object that inspires the romances of the Holy Grail.[19]

To the contrary, Averil Cameron, expert of Late Antique and Byzantine History at the University of Oxford, denies the possibility of the Turin shroud being identified with the Image of Edessa. Among the reasons are too big differences in the historical descriptions of the Image of Edessa compared to the shroud.[20] The Image of Edessa has according to her its origin in the resistance to the Byzantine iconoclasm.[21]

The surrender of the Image of Edessa to the Byzantine parakoimomenos Theophanes by the Edessenes, from the Madrid Skylitzes.

On the occasion of the transfer of the cloth to Constantinople in 944, Gregory Referendarius, archdeacon of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, preached a sermon about the artifact. This sermon had been lost but was rediscovered in the Vatican Archives and translated by Mark Guscin in 2004. This sermon says that this Edessa cloth contained not only the face, but a full-length image, which was believed to be of Jesus. The sermon also mentions bloodstains from a wound in the side. Other documents have since been found in the Vatican library and the University of Leiden, Netherlands, confirming this impression. "Non tantum faciei figuram sed totius corporis figuram cernere poteris" (You can see not only the figure of a face, but [also] the figure of the whole body). (In Italian) (Cf. Codex Vossianus Latinus Q69 and Vatican Library Codex 5696, p. 35.)

The Pray Codex. Shroud proponents cite it as evidence for the shroud's existence before the fourteenth century. Critics point out that inter alia that there is no image on the alleged shroud.

The Codex Pray, an Illuminated manuscript written in Budapest, Hungary between 1192 and 1195, includes an illustration of what appears to some to be the Shroud of Turin Currently in the Budapest National Library, it is the oldest surviving text of the Hungarian language, and it was created at least 65 years before the earliest carbon-14 date in the 1988 tests. One of its illustrations shows preparations for the burial of Christ. The picture supposedly includes a burial cloth in the post-resurrection scene. According to proponents, it has the same herringbone weave as the Shroud, plus four holes near one of the edges. The holes form an "L" shape. Proponents claim this odd pattern of holes is the same as the ones found on the Shroud of Turin. They are burn holes, perhaps from a hot poker or incense embers.[25] On the other hand, Italian Shroud researcher Gian Marco Rinaldi interprets the item that is sometimes identified as the Shroud as a probable rectangular tombstone as seen on other sacred images. He sees the alleged holes as decorative elements, as are also seen on the angel's wing and clothes. Rinaldi also points out that the alleged shroud in the Pray codex does not contain any image.[26] Furthermore, it would be most unlikely that anyone who had seen the Shroud would have shown Christ being buried without any sign of the wounds that are so graphically shown on the Shroud.

In 1204, a knight named Robert de Clari who participated in the Fourth Crusade that captured Constantinople, claims the cloth was among the countless relics in the city: "Where there was the Shroud in which our Lord had been wrapped, which every Friday raised itself upright so one could see the figure of our Lord on it. And none knows – neither Greek nor Frank – what became of that shroud when the city was taken." (The apparent miracle of the cloth raising itself may be accounted for as a mistranslation: the French impersonal passive takes the form of a reflexive verb. Thus the original French could equally well be translated as the cloth was raised upright. De Clari's matter of fact delivery does not suggest that he witnessed anything out of the ordinary.) However, the historians Madden and Queller describe this part of Robert's account as a mistake: Robert had actually seen or heard of the sudarium, the handkerchief of Saint Veronica (which also purportedly contained the image of Jesus), and confused it with the grave cloth (sindon). In 1205, the following letter was allegedly sent by Theodore Angelos, a brother of Michael I Komnenos Doukas, to Pope Innocent III protesting the attack on the capital. From the document, dated 1 August 1205 in Rome: "The Venetians partitioned the treasures of gold, silver, and ivory while the French did the same with the relics of the saints and the most sacred of all, the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death and before the resurrection. We know that the sacred objects are preserved by their predators in Venice, in France, and in other places, the sacred linen in Athens." (Codex Chartularium Culisanense, fol. CXXVI (copia), Bilioteca del Santuario di Montevergine) According to Emmanuel Poulle, a French medievalist, although the Mandylion is not the Shroud of Turin, the texts "attest the presence of the Shroud in Constantinople before 1204". But it was claimed that the letter of Theodore and other documents contained in the Chartularium are a modern forgery.

Unless it is the Shroud of Turin, then the location of the Image of Edessa since the 13th century is unknown but may well have been among the relics sold to Louis IX and housed in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris until lost in the French Revolution.

Some authors suggest that the shroud was captured by the knight Otto de la Roche who became Duke of Athens, sometimes adding that he soon relinquished it to the Knights Templar. It was subsequently taken to France, where the first known keeper of the Turin Shroud had links both to the Templars as well the descendants of Otto. Some speculate that the shroud could have been a major part of the famed "Templar treasure" that treasure hunters still seek today.

The association with the Templars seems to be based on a coincidence of family names; the Templars were a celibate order and so unlikely to have children after entering the Order.

14th and 15th centuries

The fullest academic account of the history of the Shroud since its first appearance in 1355 is John Beldon-Scott, Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin, University of Chicago Press, 2003. This study is indispensable for its many illustrations that show features of the Shroud images now lost.

The pilgrim medallion of Lirey (Drawing by Arthur Forgeais, 1865)

The 14th century attribution of the origin of the shroud refers to a shroud in Lirey, France dating to 1353–1357. It is related that the widow of the French knight Geoffroi de Charny had it displayed in a church at Lirey, France (diocese of Troyes). According to the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia:

On 20 June 1353, Geoffroy de Charny, Lord of Savoisy and Lirey, founded at Lirey in honour of the Annunciation a collegiate church with six canonries, and in this church he exposed for veneration the Holy Winding Sheet. Opposition arose on the part of the Bishop of Troyes, who declared after due inquiry that the relic was nothing but a painting, and opposed its exposition. Clement VI by four Bulls, 6 Jan., 1390, approved the exposition as lawful. In 1418 during the civil wars, the canons entrusted the Winding Sheet to Humbert, Count de La Roche, Lord of Lirey. Margaret, widow of Humbert, never returned it but gave it in 1452 to the Duke of Savoy. The requests of the canons of Lirey were unavailing, and the Lirey Winding Sheet is the same that is now exposed and honoured at Turin."[31]

In the Museum Cluny in Paris, the coats of arms of this knight and his widow can be seen on a pilgrim medallion, which also shows an image of the Shroud of Turin.

During the fourteenth century, the shroud was often publicly exposed, though not continuously, because the bishop of Troyes, Henri de Poitiers, had prohibited veneration of the image. Thirty-two years after this pronouncement, the image was displayed again, and King Charles VI of France ordered its removal to Troyes, citing the impropriety of the image. The sheriffs were unable to carry out the order.

Full-length image of the Shroud of Turin

In 1389, the image was denounced as a fraud by Bishop Pierre D'Arcis in a letter to the Avignon Antipope Clement VII, mentioning that the image had previously been denounced by his predecessor Henri de Poitiers, who had been concerned that no such image was mentioned in scripture. Bishop D'Arcis continued, "Eventually, after diligent inquiry and examination, he discovered how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it, to wit, that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously wrought or bestowed." (In German:) The artist is not named in the letter.

The letter of Bishop D'Arcis also mentions Bishop Henri's attempt to suppress veneration but notes that the cloth was quickly hidden "for 35 years or so", thus agreeing with the historical details already established above. The letter provides an accurate description of the cloth: "upon which by a clever sleight of hand was depicted the twofold image of one man, that is to say, the back and the front, he falsely declaring and pretending that this was the actual shroud in which our Saviour Jesus Christ was enfolded in the tomb, and upon which the whole likeness of the Saviour had remained thus impressed together with the wounds which He bore."

Despite the pronouncement of Bishop D'Arcis, Antipope Clement VII (first antipope of the Western Schism) did not revoke the permission given earlier to the church of Lirey to display the object,[35] but instructed its clergy that it should not be treated as a relic[36] and should not be presented to the public as the actual shroud of Christ, but as an image or representation of it.[37] He prescribed indulgences for the many pilgrims who came to the church out of devotion for "even a representation of this kind",[38] so that veneration continued.

In 1418, Humbert of Villersexel, Count de la Roche, Lord of Saint-Hippolyte-sur-Doubs, moved the shroud to his castle at Montfort, Doubs, to provide protection against criminal bands, after he married Charny's granddaughter Margaret. It was later moved to Saint-Hippolyte-sur-Doubs. After Humbert's death, canons of Lirey fought through the courts to force the widow to return the cloth, but the parliament of Dole and the Court of Besançon left it to the widow, who traveled with the shroud to various expositions, notably in Liège and Geneva.

The widow sold the shroud in exchange for a castle in Varambon, France in 1453. The new owner, Anne of Cyprus, Duchess of Savoy, stored it in the Savoyard capital of Chambéry in the newly built Saint-Chapelle, which Pope Paul II shortly thereafter raised to the dignity of a collegiate church. In 1464, Anne's husband, Louis, Duke of Savoy agreed to pay an annual fee to the Lirey canons in exchange for their dropping claims of ownership of the cloth. Beginning in 1471, the shroud was moved between many cities of Europe, being housed briefly in Vercelli, Turin, Ivrea, Susa, Chambéry, Avigliana, Rivoli, and Pinerolo. A description of the cloth by two sacristans of the Sainte-Chapelle from around this time noted that it was stored in a reliquary: "enveloped in a red silk drape, and kept in a case covered with crimson velours, decorated with silver-gilt nails, and locked with a golden key."

In 1543 John Calvin, in his Treatise on Relics, wrote of the Shroud, which was then at Nice, "How is it possible that those sacred historians, who carefully related all the miracles that took place at Christ’s death, should have omitted to mention one so remarkable as the likeness of the body of our Lord remaining on its wrapping sheet?" He also noted that, according to St. John, there was one sheet covering Jesus's body, and a separate cloth covering his head. He then stated that "either St. John is a liar," or else anyone who promotes such a shroud is "convicted of falsehood and deceit".[40]

16th century to present

See also: Conservation of the Shroud of Turin

In his painting of the shroud in a Descent from the cross scene, Giulio Clovio made an error and showed the right hand crossed over the left, c. 1540.

The history of the shroud from the middle of the 16th century is well recorded. The existence of a miniature by Giulio Clovio, which gives a good representation of what was seen upon the shroud about the year 1540, confirms that the shroud housed in Turin today is the same one as in the middle of the 16th century. In 1578 the House of Savoy took the shroud to Turin and it has remained at Turin Cathedral ever since.

In 1532, the shroud suffered damage from a fire in the chapel where it was stored. A drop of molten silver from the reliquary produced a symmetrically placed mark through the layers of the folded cloth. Poor Clare Nuns attempted to repair this damage with patches. Some have suggested that there was also water damage from the extinguishing of the fire. However, there is some evidence that the watermarks were made by condensation in the bottom of a burial jar in which the folded shroud may have been kept at some point. In 1578, the shroud arrived again at its current location in Turin. It was the property of the House of Savoy until 1983, when it was given to the Holy See, the rule of the House of Savoy having ended in 1946.

In 1988, the Holy See agreed to a radiocarbon dating of the relic, for which a small piece from a corner of the shroud was removed, divided, and sent to laboratories. The radiocarbon dating tests established that the shroud was from the Middle Ages, between the years 1260 and 1390.[44] Another fire, possibly caused by arson, threatened the shroud on 11 April 1997, but fireman Mario Trematore was able to remove it from its heavily protected display case and prevent further damage. In 2002, the Holy See had the shroud restored. The cloth backing and thirty patches were removed. This made it possible to photograph and scan the reverse side of the cloth, which had been hidden from view. Using sophisticated mathematical and optical techniques, a ghostly part-image of the body was found on the back of the shroud in 2004. Italian scientists had exposed the faint imprint of the face and hands of the figure. The Shroud was publicly exhibited in 2000 for the Great Jubilee, and in 2010 with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, and in 2015 with the approval of Pope Francis. Another exhibition is scheduled for 2025.

Detailed comments on this operation were published by various Shroud researchers.[45] In 2003, the principal restorer Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, a textile expert from Switzerland, published a book with the title Sindone 2002: L'intervento conservativo – Preservation – Konservierung (ISBN 88-88441-08-5). She describes the operation and the reasons it was believed necessary. In 2005, William Meacham, an archaeologist who has studied the Shroud since 1981, published the book The Rape of the Turin Shroud (ISBN 1-4116-5769-1) which is fiercely critical of the operation. He rejects the reasons provided by Flury-Lemberg and describes in detail what he calls "a disaster for the scientific study of the relic".

Historical attributions

Christian iconography

Similarities between traditional icons of Jesus and the image on the shroud have been suggested. This image shows the mosaic Christ Pantocrator from the Daphni Monastery in Athens.

Art historian W.S.A. Dale proposed that the Shroud was an icon created for liturgical use, and suggested an 11th-century date based on art-historical grounds.[46]

Analysis of proportion

The man on the image is taller than the average first-century resident of Judaea and the right hand has longer fingers than the left, along with a significant increase of length in the right forearm compared to the left.[47]

Analysis of optical perspective

Further evidence for the Shroud as an art object comes from what might be called the "Mercator projection" argument. The shroud in two dimensions presents a three-dimensional image projected onto a planar (two-dimensional) surface, just as in a photograph or painting. This perspective is consistent with both painting and with image formation using a bas relief.

Variegated images

Banding on the Shroud is background noise, which causes us to see the gaunt face, long nose, deep eyes, and straight hair. These features are caused by dark vertical and horizontal bands that go across the eyes. Using enhancement software (fast Fourier transform filters), the effect of these bands can be minimized. The result is a more detailed image of the shroud.

Burial posture

The burial posture of the shroud, with hands crossed over the pelvis, was used by Essenes (2nd century BC to the 1st century AD), but was also found in a burial site under a medieval church with skeletons which were dated pre-1390 and post Roman.

Leonardo da Vinci

In June 2009, the British television station Channel 5 aired a documentary that claimed the shroud was forged by Leonardo da Vinci.[51]

Recently a study stated that the shroud of Turin had been faked by Leonardo da Vinci. According to the study, the Renaissance artist created the artifact by using pioneering photographic techniques and a sculpture of his own head, and suggests that the image on the relic is Leonardo's face which could have been projected onto the cloth, The Daily Telegraph reported.

History Today article

In an article published by History Today in November 2014, British scholar Charles Freeman analyses early depictions and descriptions of the Shroud and argues that the iconography of the bloodstains and all-over scourge marks are not known before 1300 and the Shroud was a painted linen at that date, with the paint having disintegrated leaving a discoloured linen image underneath. He also argues that the dimensions and format of the weave are typical of a medieval treadle loom. As it was unlikely that a forger would have deceived anyone with a single cloth with images on it, Freeman seeks an alternative function. He goes on to argue that the Shroud was a medieval prop used in Easter ritual plays depicting the resurrection of Christ. He believes it was used in a ceremony called the 'Quem Quaeritis?' or 'whom do you seek?' which involved re-enacting gospel accounts of the resurrection, and is represented as such in the well-known Lirey pilgrim badge. As such it was deservedly an object of veneration from the fourteenth century as it is still is today.[52]

Depiction of Jesus

The depiction of Jesus in pictorial form was controversial in the early Church.[1][2] The depiction of him in art took several centuries to reach a conventional standardized form for his physical appearance, which has subsequently remained largely stable since that time. Most images of Jesus have in common a number of traits which are now almost universally associated with Jesus, although variants are seen.

The conventional image of a fully bearded Jesus with long hair emerged around AD 300, but did not become established until the 6th century in Eastern Christianity, and much later in the West. It has always had the advantage of being easily recognizable, and distinguishing Jesus from other figures shown around him, which the use of a cruciform halo also achieves. Earlier images were much more varied.

Images of Jesus tend to show ethnic characteristics similar to those of the culture in which the image has been created. Beliefs that certain images are historically authentic, or have acquired an authoritative status from Church tradition, remain powerful among some of the faithful, in Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Roman Catholicism. The Shroud of Turin is now the best-known example, though the Image of Edessa and the Veil of Veronica were better known in medieval times.

There is only one description of the physical appearance of Jesus given in the New Testament, which is in the Book of Revelation 1:12-16.

Early Christianity

Before Constantine

Incised sarcophagus slab with the Adoration of the Magi from the Catacombs of Rome, 3rd century. Plaster cast with added colour.

Except for Jesus wearing tzitzit—the tassels on a tallit—in Matthew 14:36[3] and Luke 8:43–44,[4] there is no physical description of Jesus contained in any of the canonical Gospels. In the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus is said to have manifested as a "light from heaven" that temporarily blinded the Apostle Paul, but no specific form is given. In the Book of Revelation there is a vision the author had of "someone like a Son of Man" in spirit form: "dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head were white like wool, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like burnt bronze glowing in a furnace (...) His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance" (Revelation 1:12–16, NIV). Use in art of the Revelation description of Jesus has generally been restricted to illustrations of the book itself, and nothing in the scripture confirms the spiritual form's resemblance to the physical form Jesus took in his life on Earth.

Jesus in the Catacombs of Rome. Third-century fresco from the Catacomb of Callixtus of Christ as the Good Shepherd.

Exodus 20:4–6 "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image" is one of the Ten Commandments and made Jewish depictions of first-century individuals a scarcity. But attitudes towards the interpretation of this Commandment changed through the centuries, in that while first-century rabbis in Judea objected violently to the depiction of human figures and placement of statues in Temples, third-century Babylonian Jews had different views; and while no figural art from first-century Roman Judea exists, the art on the Dura synagogue walls developed with no objection from the Rabbis early in the third century.[5]

During the persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire, Christian art was necessarily furtive and ambiguous, and there was hostility to idols in a group still with a large component of members with Jewish origins, surrounded by, and polemicising against, sophisticated pagan images of gods. Irenaeus (d. c. 202), Clement of Alexandria (d. 215), Lactantius (c. 240–c. 320) and Eusebius of Caesarea (d. c. 339) disapproved of portrayals in images of Jesus.[citation needed] The 36th canon of the non-ecumenical Synod of Elvira in 306 AD reads, "It has been decreed that no pictures be had in the churches, and that which is worshipped or adored be not painted on the walls",[6] which has been interpreted by John Calvin and other Protestants as an interdiction of the making of images of Christ.[7] The issue remained the subject of controversy until the end of the 4th century.[8]

The earliest surviving Christian art comes from the late 2nd to early 4th centuries on the walls of tombs belonging, most likely, to wealthy Christians in the catacombs of Rome, although from literary evidence there may well have been panel icons which, like almost all classical painting, have disappeared.

The Healing of the Paralytic – one of the oldest possible depictions of Jesus,[10] from the Syrian city of Dura Europos, dating from about 235

Initially Jesus was represented indirectly by pictogram symbols such as the ichthys (fish), the peacock, or an anchor (the Labarum or Chi-Rho was a later development). The staurogram seems to have been a very early representation of the crucified Jesus within the sacred texts. Later personified symbols were used, including Jonah, whose three days in the belly of the whale pre-figured the interval between Christ's death and resurrection; Daniel in the lion's den; or Orpheus charming the animals.[11] The image of "The Good Shepherd", a beardless youth in pastoral scenes collecting sheep, was the most common of these images, and was probably not understood as a portrait of the historical Jesus at this period.[12] It continues the classical Kriophoros ("ram-bearer" figure), and in some cases may also represent the Shepherd of Hermas, a popular Christian literary work of the 2nd century.[13]

Among the earliest depictions clearly intended to directly represent Jesus himself are many showing him as a baby, usually held by his mother, especially in the Adoration of the Magi, seen as the first theophany, or display of the incarnate Christ to the world at large.[14] The oldest known portrait of Jesus, found in Syria and dated to about 235, shows him as a beardless young man of authoritative and dignified bearing. He is depicted dressed in the style of a young philosopher, with close-cropped hair and wearing a tunic and pallium—signs of good breeding in Greco-Roman society. From this, it is evident that some early Christians paid no heed to the historical context of Jesus being a Jew and visualised him solely in terms of their own social context, as a quasi-heroic figure, without supernatural attributes such as a halo.[15]

The appearance of Jesus had some theological implications. While some Christians thought Jesus should have the beautiful appearance of a young classical hero,[16] and the Gnostics tended to think he could change his appearance at will, for which they cited the Meeting at Emmaus as evidence,[17] others including the Church Fathers Justin (d. 165) and Tertullian (d. 220) believed, following Isaiah:53:2, that Christ's appearance was unremarkable:[18] "he had no form nor comeliness, that we should look upon him, nor beauty that we should delight in him." But when the pagan Celsus ridiculed the Christian religion for having an ugly God in about 180, Origen (d. 248) cited Psalm 45:3: "Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, mighty one, with thy beauty and fairness"[19] Later the emphasis of leading Christian thinkers changed; Jerome (d. 420) and Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) argued that Jesus must have been ideally beautiful in face and body. For Augustine he was "beautiful as a child, beautiful on earth, beautiful in heaven."

Bearded Jesus between Peter and Paul, Catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter, Rome. Second half of the 4th century. Such works "first present us with the fully formed image of Christ in Majesty that will so dominate Byzantine art"[20] For detail of Christ, see this file.

Christ Pantocrator in a Roman mosaic in the church of Santa Pudenziana, Rome, c. 400–410 AD during the Western Roman Empire

From the 3rd century onwards, the first narrative scenes from the Life of Christ to be clearly seen are the Baptism of Christ, painted in a catacomb in about 200,[21] and the miracle of the Raising of Lazarus,[22] both of which can be clearly identified by the inclusion of the dove of the Holy Spirit in Baptisms, and the vertical, shroud-wrapped body of Lazarus. Other scenes remain ambiguous—an agape feast may be intended as a Last Supper, but before the development of a recognised physical appearance for Christ, and attributes such as the halo, it is impossible to tell, as tituli or captions are rarely used. There are some surviving scenes from Christ's Works of about 235 from the Dura Europos church on the Persian frontier of the Empire. During the 4th century a much greater number of scenes came to be depicted,[23] usually showing Christ as youthful, beardless and with short hair that does not reach his shoulders, although there is considerable variation.[24]

Jesus is sometimes shown performing miracles by means of a wand, as on the doors of Santa Sabina in Rome (430–32). He uses the wand to change water to wine, multiply the bread and fishes, and raise Lazarus. When pictured healing, he only lays on hands. The wand is thought to be a symbol of power. The bare-faced youth with the wand may indicate that Jesus was thought of as a user of magic or wonder worker by some of the early Christians. No art has been found picturing Jesus with a wand before the 2nd century. Some scholars suggest that the Gospel of Mark, the Secret Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John (the so-called Signs Gospel), portray such a wonder worker, user of magic, a magician or a Divine man. Only the Apostle Peter is also depicted in ancient art with a wand.

Another depiction, seen from the late 3rd century or early 4th century onwards, showed Jesus with a beard, and within a few decades can be very close to the conventional type that later emerged.[30] This depiction has been said to draw variously on Imperial imagery, the type of the classical philosopher,[31] and that of Zeus, leader of the Greek gods, or Jupiter, his Roman equivalent, and the protector of Rome. According to art historian Paul Zanker, the bearded type has long hair from the start, and a relatively long beard (contrasting with the short "classical" beard and hair always given to St Peter, and most other apostles);[33] this depiction is specifically associated with "Charismatic" philosophers like Euphrates the Stoic, Dio of Prusa and Apollonius of Tyana, some of whom were claimed to perform miracles.[34]

After the very earliest examples of c. 300, this depiction is mostly used for hieratic images of Jesus, and scenes from his life are more likely to use a beardless, youthful type.[35] The tendency of older scholars such as Talbot Rice to see the beardless Jesus as associated with a "classical" artistic style and the bearded one as representing an "Eastern" one drawing from ancient Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia seems impossible to sustain, and does not feature in more recent analyses. Equally attempts to relate on a consistent basis the explanation for the type chosen in a particular work to the differing theological views of the time have been unsuccessful. From the 3rd century on, some Christian leaders, such as Clement of Alexandria had recommended the wearing of beards by Christian men. The centre parting was also seen from early on, and was also associated with long-haired philosophers.

Christ as Emperor, wearing military dress, and crushing the serpent representing Satan. "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6) reads the inscription. Ravenna, after 500

After Constantine

From the middle of the 4th century, after Christianity was legalized by the Edict of Milan in 313, and gained Imperial favour, there was a new range of images of Christ the King,[38] using either of the two physical types described above, but adopting the costume and often the poses of Imperial iconography. These developed into the various forms of Christ in Majesty. Some scholars reject the connection between the political events and developments in iconography, seeing the change as a purely theological one, resulting from the shift of the concept and title of Pantocrator ("Ruler of all") from God the Father (still not portrayed in art) to Christ, which was a development of the same period, perhaps led by Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373).[39]

Another depiction drew from classical images of philosophers, often shown as a youthful "intellectual wunderkind" in Roman sarcophagii; the Traditio Legis image initially uses this type.[40] Gradually Jesus became shown as older, and during the 5th century the image with a beard and long hair, now with a cruciform halo, came to dominate, especially in the Eastern Empire. In the earliest large New Testament mosaic cycle, in Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna (c. 520), Jesus is beardless though the period of his ministry until the scenes of the Passion, after which he is shown with a beard.[41]

The Good Shepherd, now clearly identified as Christ, with halo and often rich robes, is still depicted, as on the apse mosaic in the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in Rome, where the twelve apostles are depicted as twelve sheep below the imperial Jesus, or in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna.

Christ in Majesty, still with no beard, from an English 12th-century illuminated manuscript.

Once the bearded, long-haired Jesus became the conventional representation of Jesus, his facial features slowly began to be standardised, although this process took until at least the 6th century in the Eastern Church, and much longer in the West, where clean-shaven Jesuses are common until the 12th century, despite the influence of Byzantine art. But by the late Middle Ages the beard became almost universal and when Michelangelo showed a clean-shaven Apollo-like Christ in his Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel (1534–41) he came under persistent attack in the Counter-Reformation climate of Rome for this, as well as other things.[42]

French scholar Paul Vignon has listed fifteen similarities ("marks", like tilaka) between most of the icons of Jesus after this point, particularly in the icons of "Christ Pantocrator" ("The all-powerful Messiah"). He claims that these are due to the availability of the Image of Edessa (which he claims to be identical to the Shroud of Turin, via Constantinople) to the artists. Certainly images believed to have miraculous origins, or the Hodegetria, believed to be a portrait of Mary from the life by Saint Luke, were widely regarded as authoritative by the Early Medieval period and greatly influenced depictions. In Eastern Orthodoxy the form of images was, and largely is, regarded as revealed truth, with a status almost equal to scripture, and the aim of artists is to copy earlier images without originality, although the style and content of images does in fact change slightly over time.[45]

The oldest surviving panel icon of Christ Pantocrator, encaustic on panel, c. 6th century, showing the appearance of Jesus that is still immediately recognised today.

As to the historical appearance of Jesus, in one possible translation of the apostle Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul urges Christian men of first-century Corinth not to have long hair.[46] An early commentary by Pelagius (c. AD 354 – c. AD 420/440) says, "Paul was complaining because men were fussing about their hair and women were flaunting their locks in church. Not only was this dishonoring to them, but it was also an incitement to fornication." Some have speculated that Paul was a Nazirite who kept his hair long even though such speculation is at odds with Paul's statement in I Corinthians 11:14 that long hair for men was shameful at the time. Jesus was a practicing Jew so presumably had a beard.

Later periods

Christ Carrying the Cross, 1580, by El Greco, whose art reflects both his roots in Greek Orthodox traditions and the Catholic Counter-Reformation

By the 5th century depictions of the Passion began to appear, perhaps reflecting a change in the theological focus of the early Church. The 6th-century Rabbula Gospels includes some of the earliest surviving images of the crucifixion and resurrection. By the 6th century the bearded depiction of Jesus had become standard in the East, though the West, especially in northern Europe, continued to mix bearded and unbearded depictions for several centuries. The depiction with a longish face, long straight brown hair parted in the middle, and almond shaped eyes shows consistency from the 6th century to the present. Various legends developed which were believed to authenticate the historical accuracy of the standard depiction, such as the image of Edessa and later the Veil of Veronica.

Partly to aid recognition of the scenes, narrative depictions of the Life of Christ focused increasingly on the events celebrated in the major feasts of the church calendar, and the events of the Passion, neglecting the miracles and other events of Jesus' public ministry, except for the raising of Lazarus, where the mummy-like wrapped body was shown standing upright, giving an unmistakable visual signature.[50] A cruciform halo was worn only by Jesus (and the other persons of the Trinity), while plain halos distinguished Mary, the Apostles and other saints, helping the viewer to read increasingly populated scenes.[50]

The period of Byzantine Iconoclasm acted as a barrier to developments in the East, but by the 9th century art was permitted again. The Transfiguration of Jesus was a major theme in the East and every Eastern Orthodox monk who had trained in icon painting had to prove his craft by painting an icon of the Transfiguration.[51] However, while Western depictions increasingly aimed at realism, in Eastern icons a low regard for perspective and alterations in the size and proportion of an image aim to reach beyond earthly reality to a spiritual meaning.[52]

The 13th century witnessed a turning point in the portrayal of the powerful Kyrios image of Jesus as a wonder worker in the West, as the Franciscans began to emphasize the humility of Jesus both at his birth and his death via the nativity scene as well as the crucifixion. The Franciscans approached both ends of this spectrum of emotions and as the joys of the Nativity of were added to the agony of crucifixion a whole new range of emotions were ushered in, with wide-ranging cultural impact on the image of Jesus for centuries thereafter.

After Giotto, Fra Angelico and others systematically developed uncluttered images that focused on the depiction of Jesus with an ideal human beauty, in works like Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, arguably the first High Renaissance painting.[58][59] Images of Jesus now drew on classical sculpture, at least in some of their poses. However Michelangelo was considered to have gone much too far in his beardless Christ in his The Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel, which very clearly adapted classical sculptures of Apollo, and this path was rarely followed by other artists.

The High Renaissance was contemporary with the start of the Protestant Reformation which, especially in its first decades, violently objected to almost all public religious images as idolatrous, and vast numbers were destroyed. Gradually images of Jesus became acceptable to most Protestants in various contexts, especially in narrative contexts, as book illustrations and prints, and later in larger paintings. Protestant art continued the now-standard depiction of the physical appearance of Jesus. Meanwhile, the Catholic Counter-Reformation re-affirmed the importance of art in assisting the devotions of the faithful, and encouraged the production of new images of or including Jesus in enormous numbers, also continuing to use the standard depiction.

During the 17th century, some writers, such as Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica criticized depictions of Jesus with long hair. Although some scholars believed that Jesus wore long hair because he was a Nazarite and therefore could not cut his hair, Browne argues "that our Saviour was a Nazarite after this kind, we have no reason to determine; for he drank Wine, and was therefore called by the Pharisees, a Wine-bibber; he approached also the dead, as when he raised from death Lazarus, and the daughter of Jairus.”

By the end of the 19th century, new reports of miraculous images of Jesus had appeared and continue to receive significant attention, e.g. Secondo Pia's 1898 photograph of the Shroud of Turin, one of the most controversial artifacts in history, which during its May 2010 exposition it was visited by over 2 million people. Another 20th-century depiction of Jesus, namely the Divine Mercy image based on Faustina Kowalska's reported vision has over 100 million followers. The first cinematic portrayal of Jesus was in the 1897 film La Passion du Christ produced in Paris, which lasted 5 minutes. Thereafter cinematic portrayals have continued to show Jesus with a beard in the standard western depiction that resembles traditional images.

A scene from the documentary film Super Size Me showed American children being unable to identify a common depiction of Jesus, despite recognizing other figures like George Washington and Ronald McDonald.[69]

Conventional depictions

Conventional depictions of Christ developed in medieval art include the narrative scenes of the Life of Christ, and many other conventional depictions:

Common narrative scenes from the Life of Christ in art include:

Nativity of Jesus in art

Adoration of the Shepherds

Adoration of the Magi

Finding in the Temple

Baptism of Jesus

Crucifixion of Jesus

Descent from the Cross

Last Judgement

Devotional images include:

Madonna and child

Christ in Majesty

Christ Pantokrator

Sacred Heart

Pietà (mother and dead son)

Lamb of God

Man of sorrows

Pensive Christ

Range of depictions

See also: God the Father in Western art

An 18th-century Ethiopian image of Jesus

Certain local traditions have maintained different depictions, sometimes reflecting local racial characteristics, as do the Catholic and Orthodox depictions. The Coptic Church of Egypt separated in the 5th century, and has a distinctive depiction of Jesus, consistent with Coptic art. The Ethiopian Church, also Coptic, developed on Coptic traditions, but shows Jesus and all Biblical figures with the Ethiopian appearance of its members. Other traditions in Asia and elsewhere also show the race of Jesus as that of the local population (see Chinese picture in the gallery below). In modern times such variation has become more common, but images following the traditional depiction in both physical appearance and clothing are still dominant, perhaps surprisingly so. In Europe, local ethnic tendencies in depictions of Jesus can be seen, for example in Spanish, German, or Early Netherlandish painting, but almost always surrounding figures are still more strongly characterised. For example, the Virgin Mary, after the vision reported by Bridget of Sweden, was often shown with blonde hair, but Christ's is very rarely paler than a light brown.

Some medieval Western depictions, usually of the Meeting at Emmaus, where his disciples do not recognise him at first (Luke.24.13–32), showed Jesus wearing a Jewish hat.[70]

The CGI model created in 2001 depicted Jesus' skin color as being darker and more olive-colored than his traditional depictions in Western art.

In 2001, the television series Son of God used one of three first-century Jewish skulls from a leading department of forensic science in Israel to depict Jesus in a new way.[71] A face was constructed using forensic anthropology by Richard Neave, a retired medical artist from the Unit of Art in Medicine at the University of Manchester.[72] The face that Neave constructed suggested that Jesus would have had a broad face and large nose, and differed significantly from the traditional depictions of Jesus in renaissance art.[73] Additional information about Jesus' skin color and hair was provided by Mark Goodacre, a New Testament scholar and professor at Duke University.[73]

Using third-century images from a synagogue—the earliest pictures of Jewish people—Goodacre proposed that Jesus' skin color would have been darker and swarthier than his traditional Western image. He also suggested that he would have had short, curly hair and a short cropped beard.[75] Although entirely speculative as the face of Jesus,[72] the result of the study determined that Jesus' skin would have been more olive-colored than white or black,[73] and that he would have looked like a typical Galilean Semite. Among the points made was that the Bible records that Jesus's disciple Judas had to point him out to those arresting him in Gethsemane. The implied argument is that if Jesus's physical appearance had differed markedly from his disciples, then he would have been relatively easy to identify.[75]

Miraculous images of Jesus

Main articles: Acheiropoieta, Divine Mercy image, and Head of Christ

Secondo Pia's negative of his photo of the Shroud of Turin. Many Christians believe this image to be the Holy Face of Jesus.

There are, however, some images which have been claimed to realistically show how Jesus looked. One early tradition, recorded by Eusebius of Caesarea, says that Jesus once washed his face with water and then dried it with a cloth, leaving an image of his face imprinted on the cloth. This was sent by him to King Abgarus of Edessa, who had sent a messenger asking Jesus to come and heal him of his disease. This image, called the Mandylion or Image of Edessa, appears in history in around 525. Numerous replicas of this "image not made by human hands" remain in circulation. There are also icon compositions of Jesus and Mary that are traditionally believed by many Orthodox to have originated in paintings by Luke the Evangelist.

A currently familiar depiction is that on the Shroud of Turin, whose records go back to 1353. Controversy surrounds the shroud and its exact origin remains subject to debate. The Shroud of Turin is respected by Christians of several traditions, including Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Orthodox, Pentecostals, and Presbyterians. It is one of the Catholic devotions approved by the Holy See, that to the Holy Face of Jesus, now uses the image of the face on the shroud as it appeared in the negative of the photograph taken by amateur photographer Secondo Pia in 1898. The image cannot be clearly seen on the shroud itself with the naked eye, and it surprised Pia to the extent that he said he almost dropped and broke the photographic plate when he first saw the developed negative image on it in the evening of 28 May 1898.

Before 1898, devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus used an image based on the Veil of Veronica, where legend recounts that Veronica from Jerusalem encountered Jesus along the Via Dolorosa on the way to Calvary. When she paused to wipe the sweat from Jesus's face with her veil, the image was imprinted on the cloth. The establishment of these images as Catholic devotions traces back to Sister Marie of St Peter and the Venerable Leo Dupont who started and promoted them from 1844 to 1874 in Tours France, and Sister Maria Pierina De Micheli who associated the image from the Shroud of Turin with the devotion in 1936 in Milan Italy.

"The Saviour Not Made by Hands", a Novgorodian icon from c. 1100 based on a Byzantine model

A very popular 20th-century depiction among Roman Catholics and Anglicans is the Divine Mercy image,[80] which was approved by Pope John Paul II in April 2000.[81] The Divine Mercy depiction is formally used in celebrations of Divine Mercy Sunday and is venerated by over 100 million Catholics who follow the devotion.[65] The image is not part of Acheiropoieta in that it has been depicted by modern artists, but the pattern of the image is said to have been miraculously shown to Saint Faustina Kowalska in a vision of Jesus in 1931 in Płock, Poland.[81] Faustina wrote in her diary that Jesus appeared to her and asked her to "Paint an image according to the pattern you see".[81][82] Faustina eventually found an artist (Eugene Kazimierowski) to depict the Divine Mercy image of Jesus with his right hand raised in a sign of blessing and the left hand touching the garment near his breast, with two large rays, one red, the other white emanating from near his heart.[82][83] After Faustina's death, a number of other artists painted the image, with the depiction by Adolf Hyla being among the most reproduced.[84]

Warner Sallman stated that The Head of Christ was the result of a "miraculous vision that he received late one night", proclaiming that "the answer came at 2 A.M., January 1924" as "a vision in response to my prayer to God in a despairing situation." The Head of Christ is venerated in the Coptic Orthodox Church,[86] after twelve-year-old Isaac Ayoub, who diagnosed with cancer, saw the eyes of Jesus in the painting shedding tears; Fr. Ishaq Soliman of St. Mark's Coptic Church in Houston, on the same day, "testified to the miracles" and on the next day, "Dr. Atef Rizkalla, the family physician, examined the youth and certified that there were no traces of leukemia".[87] With episcopal approval from Bishop Tadros of Port Said and Bishop Yuhanna of Cairo, "Sallman's Head of Christ was exhibited in the Coptic Church", with "more than fifty thousand people" visiting the church to see it.[87] In addition, several religious magazines have explained the "power of Sallman's picture" by documenting occurrences such as headhunters letting go of a businessman and fleeing after seeing the image, a "thief who aborted his misdeed when he saw the Head of Christ on a living room wall", and deathbed conversions of non-believers to Christianity.[88] As an extraordinarily successful work of Christian popular devotional art,[89] it had been reproduced over half a billion times worldwide by the end of the 20th century.

Seamless robe of Jesus

Pilgrims view one of the claimed Seamless Robes (Trier, April 2012).

Collar-less neck of the seamless robe of Jesus

The Seamless Robe of Jesus (also known as the Holy Robe, Holy Tunic, Holy Coat, Honorable Robe, and Chiton of the Lord) is the robe said to have been worn by Jesus during or shortly before his crucifixion. Competing traditions claim that the robe has been preserved to the present day. One tradition places it in the Cathedral of Trier, another places it in Argenteuil's Basilique Saint-Denys, and several traditions claim that it is now in various Eastern Orthodox churches, notably Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, Georgia.

Bible passage

According to the Gospel of John, the soldiers who crucified Jesus did not divide his tunic after crucifying him, but cast lots to determine who would keep it because it was woven in one piece, without seam. A distinction is made in the New Testament Greek between the himatia (literally “over-garments”) and the seamless robe, which is chiton, (literally "tunic" or "coat").

Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments (ta himatia) and divided them into four parts, to every soldier a part, and the coat (kai ton chitona). Now the coat was without seam, woven whole from the top down. Therefore, they said among themselves, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it will become. Thus the saying in Scripture was fulfilled: they divided My raiment (ta imatia) among them, and upon My vesture (epi ton himatismon) did they cast lots.

— John 19:23–24; quoting the Septuagint version of Psalm 21 [22]:18–19

Trier tradition

Sections of taffeta and silk on the right sleeve of the robe (Trier, 14 April 2012)

According to legend, Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, discovered the seamless robe in the Holy Land in the year 327 or 328 along with several other relics, including the True Cross. According to different versions of the story, she either bequeathed it or sent it to the city of Trier, where Constantine had lived for some years before becoming emperor. (The monk Altmann of Hautvillers wrote in the 9th century that Helena was born in that city, though this report is strongly disputed by most modern historians.)

Holy Tunic stamp, Germany, 1959

The history of the Trier robe is certain only from the 12th century, when Archbishop Johann I of Trier consecrated an altar which contained the seamless robe in early 1196. Although biographies of Johann I state that this was not the first time the robe was displayed, there are no historical dates or events presented which predate 1196. Sections of taffeta and silk have been added to the robe, and it was dipped in a rubber solution in the 19th century in an attempt to preserve it. The few remaining original sections are not suitable for carbon dating. The stigmatist Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth declared that the Trier robe was authentic.

The relic is normally kept folded in a reliquary and cannot be directly viewed by the faithful. In 1512, during an Imperial Diet, Emperor Maximilian I demanded to see the Holy Robe which was kept in the Cathedral. Archbishop Richard von Greiffenklau arranged the opening of the altar that had enshrined the tunic since the building of the Dome and exhibited it. The people of Trier heard about that and demanded to see the Holy Robe. Subsequently, pilgrimages took place at irregular intervals to view the garment: 1513, 1514, 1515, 1516, 1517, 1524, 1531, 1538, 1545, 1655, 1810, 1844, 1891, 1933, 1959, 1981, 1996, and 2012. The 1844 exhibition of the relic, on the instructions of Wilhelm Arnoldi, Bishop of Trier, led to the formation of the German Catholics (Deutschkatholiken), a schismatic sect formed in December of that year under the leadership of Johannes Ronge. The 1996 exhibition of the tunic was seen by over one million pilgrims and visitors. Since then, the Bishopric of Trier has conducted an annual ten-day religious festival called the "Heilig-Rock-Tage".

Argenteuil tradition

According to the Argenteuil tradition, the Empress Irene made a gift of the seamless robe to Charlemagne in about the year 800. Charlemagne gave it to his daughter Theocrate, abbess of Argenteuil,[3] where it was preserved in the church of the Benedictines. In 1793, the parish priest, fearing that the robe would be desecrated in the French Revolution, cut the robe into pieces and hid them in separate places. Only four of the pieces remain. They were moved to the present church of Argenteuil in 1895.

The earliest document referring to the robe at Argenteuil dates from 1156, written by Archbishop Hugh of Rouen. He described it, however, as the garment of the child Jesus. A long-running dispute claims that the Argenteuil cloth is actually not the seamless robe worn by Jesus during the crucifixion, but the garments woven for him by the Virgin Mary and worn his entire life. Advocates of the theory that the Argenteuil cloth is the seamless robe claim that the Trier robe is actually Jesus's mantle.[3]

Eastern traditions

The Eastern Orthodox Church has also preserved a tradition regarding the clothing of Jesus which was divided among the soldiers after the crucifixion.

According to the tradition of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the chiton was acquired by a Jewish Rabbi from Georgia named Elioz (Elias), who was present in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion and bought the robe from a soldier. He brought it with him when he returned to his native town of Mtskheta, Georgia, where it is preserved to this day beneath a crypt in the Patriarchal Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. The feast day in honor of the "Chiton of the Lord" is celebrated on October 1.

Coat of arms of Kingdom of Georgia depicting Holy Tunic, 1711

A portion of the himation was also brought to Georgia, but it was placed in the treasury of the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, where it remained until the seventeenth century. Then the Persian Shah Abbas I, when he invaded Georgia, carried off the robe. At the insistence of the Russian ambassador and Tsar Michael Feodorovich, the Shah sent the robe as a gift to Patriarch Philaret (1619–1633) and Tsar Michael in 1625. The authenticity of the robe was attested by Nectarius, Archbishop of Vologda, by Patriarch Theophanes of Jerusalem and by Joannicius the Greek. Reports also circulated at that time of miraculous signs being worked through the relic.

Later, two portions of the robe were taken to Saint Petersburg: one in the cathedral at the Winter Palace, and the other in St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. A portion of the Robe was also preserved at the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow, and small portions at Kiev’s Sophia Cathedral, at the Ipatiev monastery near Kostroma and at certain other old temples.

The Russian Orthodox Church commemorates the Placing of the Honorable Robe of the Lord at Moscow on July 10 (July 25 N.S.). At Moscow annually on that day, the robe is solemnly brought out of the chapel of the Apostles Peter and Paul at the Dormition cathedral, and it is placed on a stand for veneration by the faithful during the divine services. After the Divine Liturgy the robe is returned to its former place. Traditionally, on this day the propers chanted are of "the Life-Creating Cross", since the day on which the relic was actually placed was the Sunday of the Cross, during Great Lent of 1625.

Helena, mother of Constantine I

Helena, Helena Augusta, or Saint Helena (Greek: Ἑλένη, Helénē; AD c. 246/248 – c. 330) was an Empress of the Roman Empire and mother of Roman emperor Constantine the Great. She was born in the lower classes traditionally in the Greek city of Drepana, Bithynia, in Asia Minor, which was renamed Helenopolis in her honor, though several locations have been proposed for her birthplace and origin.

Helena ranks as an important figure in the history of Christianity. In her final years, she made a religious tour of Syria Palaestina and Jerusalem, during which ancient tradition claims that she discovered the True Cross. The Eastern Orthodox Church, Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and Anglican Communion revere her as a saint, and the Lutheran Church commemorates her.

Early life

Helena was a Greek, however her birthplace is not known with certainty. The name Helena appears in all areas of the Empire. Joseph Vogt suggested that the name Helena was typical for the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire and that therefore her place of origin should be looked for in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. The 6th-century historian Procopius is the earliest authority for the statement that Helena was a native of Drepanum, in the province of Bithynia in Asia Minor. However, the name Helena wasn't epigraphically attested in inscriptions of Bithynia (Helena's proposed region of origin) and it was also common in Latin-speaking areas. Procopius lived much later than the era he was describing and his description may have been actually intended as an etymological explanation about the toponym Helenopolis. On the other hand, her son Constantine renamed the city "Helenopolis" after her death around 330 AD, which supports the belief that the city was indeed her birthplace. The Byzantinist Cyril Mango has, however, argued that Helenopolis was refounded to strengthen the communication network around Constantine's new capital in Constantinople, and was renamed simply to honor Helena, not to necessarily mark her birthplace. There was also a Helenopolis in Palestine and a Helenopolis in Lydia. These cities, and the province of Helenopontus in the Pontus, were probably all named after Constantine's mother. Two other locations in France and the Pyrenees have been named after Helena. Equally uncertain to Drepanum and without strong documentation suggestions about her birthplace are: Naissus (central Balkans), Caphar or Edessa (Messopotamia), Trier.

The bishop and historian Eusebius of Caesarea states that Helena was about 80 on her return from Palestine. Since that journey has been dated to 326–28 AD, she was probably born around 246 to 249 AD. Information about her social background universally suggests that she came from the lower classes. Fourth-century sources, following Eutropius' Breviarium, record that she came from a humble background. Bishop Ambrose of Milan, writing in the late 4th century was the first to call her a stabularia, a term translated as "stable-maid" or "inn-keeper". He makes this comment a virtue, calling Helena a bona stabularia, a "good stable-maid".[13] Other sources, especially those written after Constantine's proclamation as emperor, gloss over or ignore her background.

Both Geoffrey of Monmouth and Henry of Huntingdon promoted a popular tradition that Helena was a British princess and the daughter of "Old King Cole" from the area of Colchester. This led to the later dedication of 135 churches in England to her, many in around the area of Yorkshire,[14] and revived as a suggestion in the 20th century in the novels of Evelyn Waugh.

Marriage to Emperor Constantius

It is unknown where she first met Constantius.[15] The historian Timothy Barnes has suggested that Constantius, while serving under Emperor Aurelian, could have met her while stationed in Asia Minor for the campaign against Zenobia. It is said that upon meeting they were wearing identical silver bracelets; Constantius saw her as his soulmate sent by God. Barnes calls attention to an epitaph at Nicomedia of one of Aurelian's protectors, which could indicate the emperor's presence in the Bithynian region soon after 270 AD. The precise legal nature of the relationship between Helena and Constantius is also unknown. The sources are equivocal on the point, sometimes calling Helena Constantius' "wife", and sometimes, following the dismissive propaganda of Constantine's rival Maxentius, calling her his "concubine". Jerome, perhaps confused by the vague terminology of his own sources, manages to do both.

Some scholars, such as the historian Jan Drijvers, assert that Constantius and Helena were joined in a common-law marriage, a cohabitation recognized in fact but not in law. Others, like Timothy Barnes, assert that Constantius and Helena were joined in an official marriage, on the grounds that the sources claiming an official marriage are more reliable.

Helena gave birth to the future emperor Constantine I on 27 February of an uncertain year soon after 270 AD (probably around 272 AD). At the time, she was in Naissus (Niš, Serbia). In order to obtain a wife more consonant with his rising status, Constantius divorced Helena some time before 289 AD, when he married Theodora, Maximian's daughter under his command. (The narrative sources date the marriage to 293 AD, but the Latin panegyric of 289 AD refers to the couple as already married). Helena and her son were dispatched to the court of Diocletian at Nicomedia, where Constantine grew to be a member of the inner circle. Helena never remarried and lived for a time in obscurity, though close to her only son, who had a deep regard and affection for her.

After Constantine's ascension to the throne

Constantine was proclaimed Augustus of the Roman Empire in 306 AD by Constantius' troops after the latter had died, and following his elevation his mother was brought back to the public life in 312 AD, returning to the imperial court. She appears in the Eagle Cameo portraying Constantine's family, probably commemorating the birth of Constantine's son Constantine II in the summer of 316 AD.[a] She received the title of Augusta in 325 AD. According to Eusebius, her conversion to Christianity followed her son becoming emperor.

Pilgrimage and relic discoveries

See also: Early centers of Christianity § Jerusalem

Helena finding the True Cross, Italian manuscript, c. 825

St Helena in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

Constantine appointed his mother Helena as Augusta Imperatrix, and gave her unlimited access to the imperial treasury in order to locate the relics of the Christian tradition. In 326–28 AD Helena undertook a trip to Palestine.[26] According to Eusebius of Caesarea (260/265 AD – 339/340 AD), who records the details of her pilgrimage to Palestine and other eastern provinces, she was responsible for the construction or beautification of two churches, the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, and the Church of Eleona on the Mount of Olives, sites of Christ's birth and ascension, respectively. Local founding legend attributes to Helena's orders the construction of a church in Egypt to identify the Burning Bush of Sinai. The chapel at Saint Catherine's Monastery—often referred to as the Chapel of Saint Helen—is dated to the year 330 AD.

The True Cross and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Helena of Constantinople by Cima da Conegliano, 1495 (National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.)

Saint Helena with the Cross, Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1525 (Cincinnati Art Museum)

Jerusalem was still being rebuilt following the destruction caused by Titus in 70 AD. Emperor Hadrian had built during the 130s AD a temple to Venus over the supposed site of Jesus's tomb near Calvary, and renamed the city Aelia Capitolina. Accounts differ concerning whether the temple was dedicated to Venus or Jupiter.[27] According to Eusebius, "[t]here was a temple of Venus on the spot. This the queen (Helena) had destroyed."[28] According to tradition, Helena ordered the temple torn down and, according to the legend that arose at the end of the 4th century, chose a site to begin excavating, which led to the recovery of three different crosses. The legend is recounted in Ambrose, On the Death of Theodosius (died 395 AD) and at length in Rufinus' chapters appended to his translation into Latin of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, the main body of which does not mention the event. Then, Rufinus relates, the empress refused to be swayed by anything short of solid proof and performed a test. Possibly through Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem, she had a woman who was near death brought from the city. When the woman touched the first and second crosses, her condition did not change, but when she touched the third and final cross she suddenly recovered, and Helena declared the cross with which the woman had been touched to be the True Cross.

On the site of discovery, Constantine ordered the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Churches were also built on other sites detected by Helena.

The "Letter From Constantine to Macarius of Jerusalem", as presented in Eusebius' Life of Constantine, states:

"Such is our Saviour's grace, that no power of language seems adequate to describe the wondrous circumstance to which I am about to refer. For, that the monument of his [Christ's] most holy Passion, so long ago buried beneath the ground, should have remained unknown for so long a series of years, until its reappearance to his servants now set free through the removal of him who was the common enemy of all, is a fact which truly surpasses all admiration. I have no greater care than how I may best adorn with a splendid structure that sacred spot, which, under Divine direction, I have disencumbered as it were of the heavy weight of foul idol worship [the Roman temple]; a spot which has been accounted holy from the beginning in God’s judgment, but which now appears holier still, since it has brought to light a clear assurance of our Saviour’s passion."[29]

Sozomen and Theodoret claim that Helena also found the nails of the crucifixion. To use their miraculous power to aid her son, Helena allegedly had one placed in Constantine's helmet, and another in the bridle of his horse. According to one tradition, Helena acquired the Holy Tunic on her trip to Jerusalem and sent it to Trier.

Cyprus

Several relics purportedly discovered by Helena are now in Cyprus, where she spent some time. Among them are items believed to be part of Jesus Christ's tunic, pieces of the holy cross, and pieces of the rope with which Jesus was tied on the Cross. The rope, considered to be the only relic of its kind, has been held at the Stavrovouni Monastery, which was also said to have been founded by Helena. According to tradition, Helena is responsible for the large population of cats in Cyprus. Local tradition holds that she imported hundreds of cats from Egypt or Palestine in the fourth century to rid a monastery of snakes. The monastery is today known as "St. Nicholas of the Cats" (Greek Άγιος Νικόλαος των Γατών) and is located near Limassol.[30]

Rome

Helena left Jerusalem and the eastern provinces in 327 AD to return to Rome, bringing with her large parts of the True Cross and other relics, which were then stored in her palace's private chapel, where they can be still seen today. Her palace was later converted into the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. This has been maintained by Cistercian monks in the monastery which has been attached to the church for centuries.

Death and burial

Helena died around 330 AD, with her son at her side. She was buried in the Mausoleum of Helena, outside Rome on the Via Labicana. Her sarcophagus is on display in the Pio-Clementine Vatican Museum, although the connection is often questioned. Next to her is the sarcophagus of her granddaughter Constantina (Saint Constance).

Helena's sarcophagus in the Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican Museums, Rome

Sainthood

Eastern Orthodox Bulgarian icon of Saint Constantine and Saint Helena

Helena is considered by the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern and Roman Catholic churches, as well as by the Anglican Communion and Lutheran Churches, as a saint. She is sometimes known as Helen of Constantinople to distinguish her from others with similar names, and is "Ilona" in Hungarian, and "Liena" in Malta.

Her feast day as a saint of the Eastern Orthodox Church is celebrated with her son on 21 May, the "Feast of the Holy Great Sovereigns Constantine and Helena, Equal to the Apostles".[31] Her feast day in the Roman Catholic Church falls on 18 August. Her feast day in the Coptic Orthodox Church is on 9 Pashons. Anglican churches, and some Lutheran churches, keep the 21 May date.

Her discovery of the Cross along with Constantine is dramatised in the Santacruzan, a ritual pageant in the Philippines. Held in May (when Roodmas was once celebrated), the procession also bears elements of the month's Marian devotions. Helena is the patron saint of new discoveries.

In the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches, the feast of Meskel, which commemorates her discovery of the cross, is celebrated on 17 Meskerem in the Ethiopian calendar (September 27, Gregorian calendar, or on 28 September in leap years). The holiday is usually celebrated with the lighting of a large bonfire, or Demera, based on the belief that she had a revelation in a dream. She was told that she should make a bonfire and that the smoke would show her where the true cross was buried. So she ordered the people of Jerusalem to bring wood and make a huge pile. After adding frankincense to it the bonfire was lit and the smoke rose high up to the sky and returned to the ground, exactly to the spot where the Cross had been buried.[32]

Helena is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 21 May.[33]

Baroque statue of "Santa Liena" in the 2011 village festa procession of Birkirkara, Malta

Relics

Her alleged skull is displayed in the Cathedral of Trier, in Germany. Portions of her relics are found at the basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli in Rome, the Église Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles in Paris, and at the Abbaye Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers.

The church of Sant'Elena in Venice claims to have the complete body of the saint enshrined under the main altar. In 1517, the English priest, Richard Torkington, having seen the relics during a visit to Venice described them as follows: "She lith in a ffayr place of religion, of white monks, ye may see her face perfythly, her body ys covered with a cloth of whith sylke ... Also there lyes upon her breast a lytell crosse made of the holy crosse ..."[34] In an ecumenical gesture, these relics visited the Orthodox Church of Greece and were displayed in the church of Agia Varvara (Saint Barbara) in Athens from 14 May to 15 June 2017.[35]

Helena's skull relic in the crypt of Trier Cathedral

So-called "cup of Saint Helena" in the Treasury of Trier Cathedral

Later cultural traditions

In British folklore

In Great Britain, later legend, mentioned by Henry of Huntingdon but made popular by Geoffrey of Monmouth, claimed that Helena was a daughter of the King of Britain, Cole of Colchester, who allied with Constantius to avoid more war between the Britons and Rome. Geoffrey further states that she was brought up in the manner of a queen, as she had no brothers to inherit the throne of Britain. The source for this may have been Sozomen's Historia Ecclesiastica, which however does not claim Helena was British but only that her son Constantine picked up his Christianity there.[36] Constantine was with his father when he died in York, but neither had spent much time in Britain.

The statement made by English chroniclers of the Middle Ages, according to which Helena was supposed to have been the daughter of a British prince, is entirely without historical foundation. It may arise from the similarly named Welsh princess Saint Elen (alleged to have married Magnus Maximus and to have borne a son named Constantine) or from the misinterpretation of a term used in the fourth chapter of the panegyric on Constantine's marriage with Fausta. The description of Constantine honoring Britain oriendo (lit. "from the outset", "from the beginning") may have been taken as an allusion to his birth ("from his beginning") although it was actually discussing the beginning of his reign.[37]

At least twenty-five holy wells currently exist in the United Kingdom dedicated to a Saint Helen. She is also the patron saint of Abingdon and Colchester. St Helen's Chapel in Colchester was believed to have been founded by Helena herself, and since the 15th century, the town's coat of arms has shown a representation of the True Cross and three crowned nails in her honour.[38] Colchester Town Hall has a Victorian statue of the saint on top of its 50-metre-high (160 ft) tower.[39] The arms of Nottingham are almost identical because of the city's connection with Cole, her supposed father.[40]

Filipino legend and tradition

Flores de Mayo honors her and her son Constantine for finding the True Cross with a parade with floral and fluvial themed parade showcasing her, Constantine and other people who followed her journey to find the True Cross. Filipinos named the parade sagala. [No reference cited]

Medieval legend and fiction

In medieval legend and chivalric romance, Helena appears as a persecuted heroine, in the vein of such women as Emaré and Constance; separated from her husband, she lives a quiet life, supporting herself on her embroidery, until such time as her son's charm and grace wins her husband's attention and so the revelation of their identities.[41]

Modern fiction

Helena is the protagonist of Evelyn Waugh's 1950 novel Helena. She is also the main character of Priestess of Avalon (2000), a fantasy novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Diana L. Paxson. She is given the name Eilan and depicted as a trained priestess of Avalon.

Helena is also the protagonist of Louis de Wohl's novel The Living Wood (1947) in which she is again the daughter of King Coel of Colchester. In the 2021 novel Eagle Ascending by Dan Whitfield she is depicted as having lived to age 118 as result of the powers of the True Cross.[42]

Blood of Christ

Blood of Christ in Christian theology refers to (a) the physical blood actually shed by Jesus Christ primarily on the Cross, and the salvation which Christianity teaches was accomplished thereby; or (b) the sacramental blood present in the Eucharist or Lord's Supper, which some Christian denominations believe to be the same blood of Christ shed on the Cross.

The Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches, Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox churches, the Assyrian and Ancient Churches of the East, and Lutherans, together with High church Anglicans, know this as the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Catholic Church uses the term "transubstantiation" to describe the change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The Eastern Orthodox Churches used the same term to describe the change, as in the decrees of the 1672 Synod of Jerusalem,[1] and the Catechism of St. Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow.[2]

The Lutheran churches follow the teaching of Martin Luther in defining the presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements as sacramental union (often misconstrued as consubstantiation), meaning that the fundamental "substance" of the body and blood of Christ are literally present alongside the substance of the bread and wine, which remain present. Lutherans too believe in and teach the Real Presence. Other Protestant churches reject the idea of the Real Presence; they observe eucharistic rites as simply memorials.

History

In the early Church, the faithful received the Eucharist in the form of consecrated bread and wine. Saint Maximus explains that in the Old Law the flesh of the sacrificial victim was shared with the people, but the blood of the sacrifice was merely poured out on the altar. Under the New Law, however, Jesus's blood was the drink shared by all of Christ's faithful. St. Justin Martyr, an early Church Father of the 2nd century, speaks of the Eucharist as the same body and blood of Christ that was present in his Incarnation.

The tradition continued in the Church in the East to commingle the species of bread and wine, whereas in the West, the Church had the practice of communion under the species of bread and wine separately as the custom, with only a small fraction of bread placed in the chalice. In the West, the communion at the chalice was made less and less efficient, as the dangers of the spread of disease and danger of spillage (which would potentially be sacrilegious) were considered enough of a reason to remove the chalice from common communion altogether, or giving it on only special occasions. However, it was always consecrated and drunk by the priest, regardless of whether or not the laity partook. This was one of the main issues of the Protestant Reformation. As a consequence, the Catholic Church first wanted to eliminate ambiguity, reaffirming that Christ was present both as body and as blood equally under both species of bread and wine. As time went on, the chalice was made more available to the laity. After the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church gave a full permission for all to receive communion from the chalice at every Mass involving a congregation, at the discretion of the priest.

Theology

Main article: Eucharistic theology

Roman Catholic

Holy Blood relic in Santa Maria della Scala, Siena.

The Catholic Church teaches that the bread and wine, through transubstantiation, become the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ—in other words, the whole Christ—when consecrated.

Devotion to the Precious Blood was a special phenomenon of Flemish piety in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that gave rise to the iconic image of Grace as the "Fountain of Life," filled with blood, pouring from the wounded "Lamb of God" or the "Holy Wounds" of Christ. The image, which was the subject of numerous Flemish paintings, was in part spurred by the renowned relic of the Precious Blood, which had been noted in Bruges at least since the twelfth century,[3] and which gave rise, from the late thirteenth century, to the observances, particular to Bruges, of the procession of the "Saint Sang" from its chapel.[4]

Until its removal from the General Roman Calendar in 1969, the Feast of the Most Precious Blood was assigned to July 1.

Various prayers are part of the Roman Catholic devotion to the Precious Blood. Those that mention the Blood include the Anima Christi, the Chaplet of Mercy of the Holy Wounds of Jesus, and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.

Eastern Orthodox

The Orthodox teach that what is received in Holy Communion is the actual Resurrected Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. In the West, the Words of Institution are considered to be the moment at which the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. But for the Orthodox there is no one defined moment; rather, all that Orthodox theology states is that by the end of the Epiklesis, the change has been completed. The Orthodox also do not use the Latin theological term Transubstantiation to define the conversion from bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, they use the word metaousia without the precise theological elaboration that accompanies the term transubstantiation.

According to Saint John Damascene, the Sacred Mysteries (under the form of bread and wine) do not become incorruptible until they are actually received in faith by a believing Christian in a state of grace.

Devotion

In the Eastern Orthodox churches, and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite, there is no individual devotion to the Blood of Christ separate from the Body of Christ, or separated from the reception of Holy Communion.

When receiving Holy Communion, the clergy (deacons, priests and bishops) will receive the Body of Christ separately from the Blood of Christ. Then, the remaining portions of the consecrated Lamb (Host) is divided up and placed in the chalice and both the Body and Blood of Christ are communicated to the faithful using a liturgical spoon (see also Intinction).

Artistic depictions

The blood shed by Christ was a common theme in early modern Italian art. Paintings of Christ depicted on the cross and as the Man of Sorrows have consistently been some of the bloodiest images in Christian art. The blood of Christ was a compelling artistic symbol of his incarnation and sacrifice. As a theme for contemplation, it provided worshippers with a means articulate their devotion.

Relics of the Blood around the world

See also: Relics associated with Jesus

Basilica of the Holy Blood, Bruges, Belgium

Weingarten Abbey, Germany

Abbey of the Holy Trinity, Fécamp, France

St. James's Church, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany

Basilica di Sant'Andrea di Mantova, Mantua, Italy

The Sudarium of Oviedo

The Shroud of Turin

The Relic of the Holy Blood, Westminster, England

Relics associated with Jesus

A number of claimed relics associated with Jesus have been displayed throughout the history of Christianity. While some individuals believe in the authenticity of Jesus relics, others doubt their validity. For instance, the sixteenth-century philosopher Erasmus wrote about the proliferation of relics, and the number of buildings that could be constructed from wooden relics claimed to be from the crucifixion cross of Jesus. Similarly, at least thirty Holy Nails were venerated as relics across Europe in the early 20th century. Part of the relics are included in the so-called Arma Christi ("Weapons of Christ"), or the Instruments of the Passion.

Some relics, such as remnants of the crown of thorns, receive only a modest number of pilgrims, while others, such as the Shroud of Turin, receive millions of pilgrims, including Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis.[3]

As Christian teaching generally states that Christ was assumed into heaven corporeally, there are few bodily relics. A notable exception is the Holy Foreskin of Jesus.

The True Cross

Discovery of the True Cross, by Tiepolo, 1745

The "True Cross" refers to the actual cross used in the Crucifixion of Jesus. Today, many fragments of wood are claimed as True Cross relics, but it is hard to establish their authenticity. The story of the fourth-century discovery of the True Cross was reported in Jacopo de Voragine's The Golden Legend published in 1260, that included the lore of saints venerated at the time.[4]

Tradition and legend attribute the discovery of the True Cross to Saint Helena, mother of Constantine the Great who went to Palestine during the fourth century in search of relics. Eusebius of Caesarea was the only contemporary author to write about Helena's journey in his Life of Constantine. But Eusebius did not mention the True Cross, although he dwelt on the piety of Helena and her reporting the site of the Holy Sepulchre.[5] In the fifth century writings by Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen and Saint Theodoret report on the finding of the True Cross.

Pieces of the purported True Cross, including half of the INRI inscription tablet, are preserved at the basilica Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome. Other small pieces of the True Cross are reportedly preserved in hundreds of other European churches. The authenticity of the relics and the accuracy of reports of finding the True Cross is not accepted by all Christians. The belief in the Early Christian Church tradition regarding the True Cross is generally restricted to the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. The medieval legends of the True Cross provenance differ between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition. These churches honour Helena as a saint, as does also the Anglican Communion.[6]

Acheiropoieta

A number of acheiropoieta (i.e. not made by hand) images reported to be of the face or body of Jesus impressed on cloth have been displayed. In most cases these images are subject to intense debate and speculation. Although devotions to the face of Jesus are practiced, the term "Holy Face of Jesus" relates to the specific devotions approved by Pope Leo XIII in 1895 and Pope Pius XII in 1958 for the image from the Shroud of Turin.[7]

Shroud of Turin

Main article: Shroud of Turin

A recent photo of the Shroud of Turin face, positive left, negative on the right having been contrast enhanced

The Shroud of Turin is the best-known and most intensively studied relic of Jesus.[8]

The validity of scientific testing for the authenticity of the Shroud is disputed. Radiocarbon dating in 1988 suggests the shroud was made during the Middle Ages.[9] Arguments against the 1988 carbon dating results include conflicts in the interpretation of the evidence, samples being from a non-representative corner, and the presence of additional carbon content because of fire damage.

Pollen residues on the Shroud provide evidence for an origin in the Jerusalem area before the 8th century.[16]

Both skeptics and proponents have entrenched positions on the Shroud's authenticity, often pitting science against divine formation preventing a dialogue to resolve the issue to the satisfaction of all.[17][18]

Sudarium of Oviedo

The Sudarium of Oviedo.

The Sudarium of Oviedo is a bloodstained cloth, measuring c. 84 × 53 cm, curated in the Cámara Santa of the Cathedral of San Salvador, Oviedo, Spain.[19] The Sudarium (Latin for "sweat cloth") is claimed to be the cloth wrapped around the head of Jesus Christ after he died, noted in the Gospel of John (20:6–7).[20]

The Sudarium is soiled and crumpled, with dark flecks that are symmetrically arranged but do not form an image as with the Shroud of Turin. Proponents for the relic's authenticity, such as Vatican archivist Msgr Giulio Ricci,[21] contend that both cloths covered the same man.

Image of Edessa

The Holy Face of Genoa

The Image of Edessa is also known as the Mandylion. Two images are claimed to be the Mandylion: the Holy Face of Genoa at the Church of St. Bartholomew of The Armenians in Genoa and the Holy Face of San Silvestro, curated in the Church of San Silvestro in Capite in Rome until 1870, and now in the Matilda Chapel of the Vatican Palace.[22] That the Mandylion is in fact the Shroud of Turin is the subject of debate.[23]

Veil of Veronica

The Veil of Veronica, used to wipe the sweat from Jesus' brow as he carried the cross, is claimed to bear the likeness of the face of Christ. Today, several relics are claimed to be the Veil of Veronica.

An image kept in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome is purported to be the Veil of Veronica revered in the Middle Ages. The most detailed recorded inspection in the 20th century occurred in 1907 when Jesuit art historian Joseph Wilpert inspected the image.

The Hofburg Palace in Vienna has a copy of the Veil of Veronica, identified by the 1617 AD signature of the secretary of Pope Paul V, during whose reign a series of six copies of the veil were made.[24]

The image at the Monastery of the Holy Face in Alicante, Spain was acquired by Pope Nicholas V from relatives of the Byzantine Emperor in 1453 and placed in Alicante in 1489.

The Jaén Cathedral in Spain has a copy of the Veronica which probably dates from the 14th century Siena, known as the Santo Rostro and acquired by Bishop Nicholas de Biedma.[25]

In 1999, Father Heinnrich Pfeiffer announced at a press conference in Rome that he had found the Veil in the Capuchin monastery in the village of Manoppello, Italy, where it had been since 1660.[26] This Veil is discussed in Paul Badde's 2010 book The Face of God.[27]

Advocates of the Shroud's authenticity claim that the face of the Manoppello Image corresponds to the face presented on the Shroud of Turin and the blood stains on the Sudarium of Oviedo.

Characteristics evidenced during 3D processing of the Manoppello Image have been reported.[29]

The Vatican Veil of Veronica

The Manoppello Image

Superposition of the Veil of Manoppello on a negative of the Shroud of Turin

Other relics

Nativity and childhood

Reliquary of the Holy Crib

Wooden pieces claimed to be remnants of the manger of the baby Jesus reside in the Holy Crib reliquary at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. In 2019 a fragment of the crib was removed from the Holy Crib reliquary and placed on permanent display at the Church of Saint Catherine in Bethlehem.[30]

St. Paul's Monastery on Mount Athos claims to have relics of Gifts of the Magi, while Dubrovnik's Cathedral, Croatia, claims to have the swaddling clothes the baby Jesus wore during the presentation at the Temple.[31]

The Last Supper

The knife used by Jesus during the Last Supper was also a matter of veneration in the Middle Ages, according to the 12th-century Guide for Pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela.[32] According to French traveler Jules-Léonard Belin the knife used by Jesus to slice bread was permanently exhibited in the Logetta of St Mark's Campanile in Venice.[33]

Holy Chalice (Holy Grail)

Main article: Holy Chalice

The Holy Chalice is the container Jesus used at the Last Supper to serve wine (see Gospel of Matthew (26:27–28)).[34]

Several Holy Chalice relics are reported in the legend of Holy Grail, though not part of Catholic tradition.[35] Of the existing chalices, only the Santo Cáliz de Valencia (English: Holy Chalice of the Cathedral of Valencia) is recognized as a "historical relic" by the Vatican,[36] although not as the actual chalice used at the Last Supper.[37] Though not claiming the relic's authenticity, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have venerated this chalice at the Cathedral of Valencia.[38]

Crown of Thorns

Main article: Crown of thorns

The relics of the Passion presented at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris include a piece of the True Cross from Rome as delivered by Saint Helena, along with a Holy Nail and the Crown of Thorns. Saint John tells that, in the night between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, Roman soldiers mocked Jesus by placing a thorny crown on his head (John 19:12). The crown is a circle of cane bundled together and held by gold threads. The thorns were attached to this braided circle, which measures 21 centimetres in diameter. The seventy thorns were reportedly divided up between the Byzantine emperors and the Kings of France.

The accounts of pilgrims to Jerusalem report the Crown of Thorns. In 409, Saint Paulinus of Nola states the Crown was kept in the basilica on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. In 570, Anthony the Martyr reports the Crown of Thorns in the Basilica of Zion. Around 575, Cassiodorus wrote, "Jerusalem has the Column, here, there is the Crown of Thorns!" Between the 7th and the 10th centuries, the Crown of Thorns was moved to the Byzantine emperors' chapel in Constantinople for safekeeping. In 1238, the Latin Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople pawned the relics for credit to a Venetian bank.

Saint Louis, the king of France redeemed the Crown from the Venetian Bank. On 10 August 1239, the king deposited 29 relics in Villeneuve-l'Archevêque. On 19 August 1239, the relics arrived in Paris. Wearing a simple tunic and with bare feet, the King placed the Crown of Thorns and other relics in the palace chapel in a structure he commissioned. During the French revolution, the relics were stored in the National Library. After the Concordat in 1801, the relics were given to the archbishop of Paris who placed them in the Cathedral treasury on 10 August 1806. Since then, these relics have been conserved by the canons of the Metropolitan Basilica Chapter, who are in charge of venerations, and guarded by the Knights of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. Napoleon I and Napoleon III each offered reliquaries for the crown of thorns. They were on display at Notre-Dame Cathedral during scheduled religious ceremonies, until a serious fire struck the cathedral on 15 April 2019.[39][40]

Crucifixion

Relic with a holy nail at the Bamberg Cathedral

Many relics currently displayed result from the journey of Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, to Syria Palaestina in the fourth century. The authenticity of many of these relics is questioned. For instance, the Holy Nails brought back by Saint Helena, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes are problematic based on the number of claimed relics:[2]

Very little reliance can be placed upon the authenticity of the thirty or more holy nails which are still venerated, or which have been venerated until recent times, in such treasuries as that of Santa Croce in Rome, or those of Venice, Aachen, Escurial, Nuremberg, Prague, etc. Probably the majority began by professing to be facsimiles which had touched or contained filings from some other nail whose claim was more ancient.

Many churches claim to have relics from the Crown of Thorns placed on the head of Jesus by the soldiers prior to his crucifixion.

The Scala Sancta, the stairs from Pontius Pilate's praetorium, ascended by Jesus during his trial were also reportedly brought to Rome by Saint Helena of Constantinople in the 4th century.

The Basilica of the Holy Blood in Bruges, Belgium, claims a specimen of Christ's blood on a cloth in a phial, given by Thierry of Alsace after the 12th century.

Other claimed relics, based on the Crucifixion of Christ include:

The Holy Coat: The possession of the seamless garment of Christ (Latin: tunica inconsultilis; John 19:23), for which the soldiers cast lots at the Crucifixion, is claimed by the cathedral of Trier, Germany, and by the parish church of Argenteuil, France. The Argenteuil church claims that their Holy Coat was brought by Charlemagne.

The crucifixion site called Golgotha, is in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Inside the church the crucifixion site consists of a pile of rock about 7 metres (23 ft) long by 3 metres (9.8 ft) wide by 4.8 metres (16 ft).

The Iron Crown of Lombardy and Bridle of Constantine are allegedly made from the Holy Nails.

The Holy Lance is the spear used by the Roman soldier Longinus to pierce Jesus' side when he was on the cross.

The Holy Sponge, is reported to be in church Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome.

The Column of the Flagellation, which Jesus was tied to during the Flagellation of Christ, is reportedly in the Basilica of Saint Praxedes in Rome.

Bodily relics

Christian teaching states that Christ ascended into heaven corporeally. Therefore, the only parts of his body available for veneration are those obtained prior to the Ascension. At various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to possess the Holy Prepuce, Jesus' foreskin from his Circumcision. A section of the Holy Umbilical Cord believed to remain from the birth of Christ is currently in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.

Crown of thorns

"Crowning with Thorns" redirects here. For other uses, see The Crowning with Thorns.

Christ carrying the cross with the crown of thorns, as painted by El Greco

According to the New Testament, a woven crown of thorns was placed on the head of Jesus during the events leading up to his crucifixion. It was one of the instruments of the Passion, employed by Jesus' captors both to cause him pain and to mock his claim of authority. It is mentioned in the gospels of Matthew ("And when they had plaited a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee and mocked him, saying Hail, King of the Jews!" 27:29), Mark (15:17) and John (19:2, 5), and is often alluded to by the early Church Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen and others.

Relic of the crown of thorns, received by French King Louis IX from emperor Baldwin II.[1] It was preserved at Notre-Dame de Paris until April 2019, when it was moved to the Louvre.

Since at least around the year 400, a relic believed by many to be the crown of thorns has been venerated. At the time of the Crusades, the Latin Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople yielded the relic to French King Louis IX. It was kept in the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris until 15 April 2019, when it was rescued from a fire and moved to the Louvre Museum.[2]

As a relic

Jerusalem

The three Biblical gospels that mention the crown of thorns do not say what happened to it after the crucifixion. The oldest known mention of the crown already being adored as a relic was made by Paulinus of Nola, writing after 409,[3] who refers to the crown as a relic that was adored by the faithful (Epistle Macarius in Migne, Patrologia Latina, LXI, 407). Cassiodorus (c. 570) speaks of the crown of thorns among other relics which were “the glory” of the city of Jerusalem. "There", he says, "we may behold the thorny crown, which was only set upon the head of Our Redeemer in order that all the thorns of the world might be gathered together and broken" (Migne, LXX, 621). When Gregory of Tours in De gloria martyri[4] avers that the thorns in the crown still looked green, a freshness which was miraculously renewed each day, he does not much strengthen the historical authenticity of a relic he had not seen, but the Breviary or Short Description of Jerusalem[5]: 16 ) (a short text dated to about 530 AD[5]: iv ), and the itinerary of Antoninus of Piacenza (6th century)[6]: 18  clearly state that the crown of thorns was then shown in the "Basilica of Mount Zion," although there is uncertainty about the actual site to which the authors refer.[6]: 42 et seq.  From these fragments of evidence and others of later date (the "Pilgrimage" of the monk Bernard shows that the relic was still at Mount Zion in 870), it is shown that a purported crown of thorns was venerated at Jerusalem in the first centuries of the common era.

Constantinople

Some time afterwards, the crown was purportedly moved to Constantinople, then capital of the empire. Historian Francois de Mély supposed that the whole crown was transferred from Jerusalem to Constantinople not much before 1063. In any case, Emperor Justinian is stated to have given a thorn to Germain, Bishop of Paris, which was long preserved at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, while the Empress Irene, in 798 or 802, sent Charlemagne several thorns which were deposited by him at Aachen. Eight of these are said to have been there at the consecration of the basilica of Aachen; the subsequent history of several of them can be traced without difficulty: four were given to Saint-Corneille of Compiègne in 877 by Charles the Bald; Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks, sent one to the Anglo-Saxon King Athelstan in 927, on the occasion of certain marriage negotiations, and it eventually found its way to Malmesbury Abbey; another was presented to a Spanish princess about 1160; and again another was taken to Andechs Abbey in Germany in the year 1200.

France

In 1238, Baldwin II, the Latin Emperor of Constantinople, anxious to obtain support for his tottering empire, offered the crown of thorns to Louis IX, King of France. It was then in the hands of the Venetians as security for a great loan of 13,134 gold pieces, yet it was redeemed and conveyed to Paris where Louis IX built the Sainte-Chapelle, completed in 1248, to receive it. The relic stayed there until the French Revolution, when, after finding a home for a while in the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Concordat of 1801 restored it to the Catholic Church, and it was deposited in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.[7]

The relic that the church received is a twisted circlet of rushes of Juncus balticus,[8] a plant native to maritime areas of northern Britain, the Baltic region, and Scandinavia;[9] the thorns preserved in various other reliquaries are of Ziziphus spina-christi,[8] a plant native to Africa and Southern and Western Asia,[10] and had allegedly been removed from the Crown and kept in separate reliquaries since soon after they arrived in France.[8] New reliquaries were provided for the relic, one commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte, another, in jeweled rock crystal and more suitably Gothic, was made to the designs of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. In 2001, when the surviving treasures from the Sainte-Chapelle were exhibited at the Louvre, the chaplet was solemnly presented every Friday at Notre-Dame. Pope John Paul II translated it personally to Sainte-Chapelle during World Youth Day. The relic can be seen only on the first Friday of every month, when it is exhibited for a special veneration Mass, as well as each Friday of Lent.[11] See also Feast of the Crown of Thorns.

Members of the Paris Fire Brigade saved the relic during the Notre-Dame de Paris fire of April 15, 2019.[12]

The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

Authorities are agreed that a sort of helmet of thorns must have been plaited by the Roman soldiers, this band of rushes being employed to hold the thorns together. It seems likely according to M. De Mély, that already at the time when the circlet was brought to Paris the sixty or seventy thorns, which seem to have been afterwards distributed by St. Louis and his successors, had been separated from the band of rushes and were kept in a different reliquary. None of these now remain at Paris. Some small fragments of rush are also preserved ... at Arras and at Lyons. With regard to the origin and character of the thorns, both tradition and existing remains suggest that they must have come from the bush botanically known as Ziziphus spina-christi, more popularly, the jujube tree. This reaches the height of fifteen or twenty feet and is found growing in abundance by the wayside around Jerusalem. The crooked branches of this shrub are armed with thorns growing in pairs, a straight spine and a curved one commonly occurring together at each point. The relic preserved in the Capella della Spina at Pisa, as well as that at Trier, which though their early history is doubtful and obscure, are among the largest in size, afford a good illustration of this peculiarity.

Third-class relics

Nuremberg 16th-century silver medal of Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns by Valentin Maler.

Not all of the reputed holy thorns are first-class relics, that is, relics of the original crown. M. de Mély was able to enumerate more than 700. The statement in one medieval obituary that Peter de Averio gave to the cathedral of Angers, "unam de spinis quae fuit apposita coronae spinae nostri Redemptoris" ("one of the spines which were attached to the thorny crown of our Redeemer") (de Mély, p. 362) indicates that many of the thorns were relics of the third class—objects touched to a relic of the first class, in this case some part of the crown itself. (In Roman Catholic tradition, a relic of the first class is a part of the body of a saint or, in this case, any of the objects used in the Crucifixion that carried the blood of Christ; a relic of the second class is anything known to have been touched or used by a saint; a relic of the third class is a devotional object touched to a first-class relic and, usually, formally blessed as a sacramental.) Again, even in comparatively modern times, it is not always easy to trace the history of these objects of devotion, as first-class relics were often divided and any number of authentic third-class relics may exist.

Purported remnants

Christ Carrying the Cross by Andrea Solario, 1513, portrays the crown of thorns

Caravaggio - The Crowning with Thorns, 1603

During a crusade to the Holy Land, French King Louis IX bought what was venerated as Jesus’ Crown of Thorns. It is kept in Paris to this day, in the Louvre Museum. Individual thorns were given by the French monarch to other European royals: the Holy Thorn Reliquary in the British Museum, for example, containing a single thorn, was made in the 1390s for the French prince Jean, duc de Berry, who is documented as receiving more than one thorn from Charles V and VI, his brother and nephew.[14]

Two "holy thorns" were venerated, one at St. Michael's church in Ghent, the other at Stonyhurst College, both professing to be thorns given by Mary, Queen of Scots to Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland.[15][13]

The "Gazetteer of Relics and Miraculous Images" lists the following, following Cruz 1984:

Belgium: Parochial Church of Wevelgem: a portion of the crown of thorns (since 1561)[16]

Belgium: Ghent, St. Michael's Church: A thorn from the crown of thorns.[17]

Czech Republic: Prague, St. Vitus Cathedral: A thorn of the crown of thorns, in the cross at the top of Crown of Saint Wenceslas, part of the Bohemian Crown Jewels

France: Notre-Dame de Paris: The crown of thorns brought from the Holy Land by Louis IX in the 12th century, from which individual thorns have been given by the French monarchs to other European royals; it is displayed the first Friday of each month and all Fridays in Lent (including Good Friday)

France: Sainte-Chapelle: A portion of the crown of thorns, brought to the site by Louis IX.

Germany: Cathedral of Trier: A thorn from the crown of thorns

Germany: Cologne, Kolumba: A thorn from the crown of thorns, given by Louis IX to the Dominicans of Liège, and a second thorn from the treasure of St. Kolumba, Cologne

Germany: Elchingen: Church of the former Benedictine Abbey Kloster Elchingen: a thorn brought to the church in 1650/51[18]

Italy: Rome, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme: Two thorns from the crown of thorns.

Italy: Rome, Santa Prassede: A small portion of the crown of thorns

Italy: Pisa, Chiesa di Santa Chiara: A branch with thorns from the crown of thorns

Italy: Naples, Santa Maria Incoronata: A fragment of the crown of thorns

Italy: Ariano Irpino, Cathedral: Two Thorns from the crown of thorns

Portugal: Lisbon, Museum of St. Roque, SCML, Reliquary of the Holy Thorn

Spain: Oviedo, Cathedral: Five thorns (formerly eight) from the crown of thorns

Spain: Barcelona, Cathedral: A thorn from the crown of thorns

Spain: Seville, Iglesia de la Anunciación (Hermandad del Valle): A thorn from the crown of thorns

United Kingdom: British Museum: Holy Thorn Reliquary (see above), Salting Reliquary, each with a thorn

United Kingdom: Stanbrook Abbey, Worcester: A thorn from the crown of thorns

United Kingdom: Stonyhurst College, Lancashire: A thorn from the crown of thorns.[19]

United States: St. Anthony's Chapel, Pittsburgh: A thorn from the crown of thorns

Ukraine: Odessa, St. Prophet Elijah Monastery: A fragment of a thorn of the crown of thorns

Iconography

The appearance of the crown of thorns in art, notably upon the head of Christ in representations of the Crucifixion or the subject Ecce Homo, arises after the time of St. Louis and the building of the Sainte-Chapelle. The Catholic Encyclopedia reported that some archaeologists had professed to discover a figure of the crown of thorns in the circle which sometimes surrounds the chi-rho emblem on early Christian sarcophagi, but the compilers considered that it seemed to be quite as probable that this was only meant for a laurel wreath.

The image of the crown of thorns is often used symbolically to contrast with earthly monarchical crowns. In the symbolism of King Charles the Martyr, the executed English King Charles I is depicted putting aside his earthly crown to take up the crown of thorns, as in William Marshall's print Eikon Basilike. This contrast appears elsewhere in art, for example in Frank Dicksee's painting The Two Crowns.

Carnations symbolize the passion as they represent the crown of thorns.

Anglican doctrine

Anglican doctrine (also called Episcopal doctrine in some countries) is the body of Christian teachings used to guide the religious and moral practices of Anglicans.

Approach to doctrine

Anglicanism does not possess an agreed-upon confession of faith, such as the Presbyterian Westminster Confession, nor does it claim a founding theologian, such as John Calvin or Martin Luther, or a central authority, such as the Roman Catholic magisterium, to set the parameters of acceptable belief and practice. The universally agreed-upon foundations of Anglican doctrine are the three major creeds of the early ecumenical councils (the Apostles', Nicene and Athanasian creeds), the principles enshrined in the "Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral" and the dispersed authority of the four instruments of Communion of the Anglican Communion.

Additionally, there are two parallel streams informing doctrinal development and understanding in Anglicanism. Firstly, there is an appeal to the historical formularies, prayer-books, ordinals and the "standard divines". Most prominent of the historical formularies are the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, principally authored by Thomas Cranmer. These are divided into four sections, moving from the general (the fundamentals of the faith) to the particular (the interpretation of scripture, the structure and authority of the church, and the relationship between church and society). Anglicans also take the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi seriously, regarding the content, form and rubrics of liturgy as an important element of doctrinal understanding, development and interpretation. Secondly, Anglicans cite the work of the standard divines, or foundational theologians, of Anglicanism as instructive. Such divines include Cranmer, Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes and John Jewel.

The second stream of doctrine is contained in the formally adopted doctrinal positions of the constitutions and canon law of various national churches and provinces of the Anglican Communion. These are usually formulated by general synods of national or regional churches and interpreted and enforced by a bishop-in-council structure, involving consultation between the bishops and delegated lay and clerical leadership, although the extent of the devolution of authority from the bishops varies from place to place. This stream is the only binding and enforceable expression of doctrine in Anglicanism, which can sometimes result in conflicting doctrinal understandings between and within national churches and provinces.

Interpretation of doctrine

The foundations and streams of doctrine are interpreted through the lenses of various Christian movements which have gained wide acceptance among clergy and laity. Prominent among those in the latter part of the 20th century and the early 21st century are Liberal Christianity, Anglo-Catholicism and Evangelicalism. These perspectives emphasise or supplement particular aspects of historical theological writings, canon law, formularies and prayer books. Because of this, these perspectives often conflict with each other and can conflict with the formal doctrines. Some of these differences help to define "parties" or "factions" within Anglicanism. However, with certain notable exceptions that led to schisms, Anglicans have grown a tradition of tolerating internal differences. This tradition of tolerance is sometimes known as "comprehensiveness".

Origins

Anglican doctrine emerged from the interweaving of two main strands of Christian doctrine during the English Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries. The first strand comes from the Catholic doctrine taught by the established church in England in the early 16th century. The second strand represents a range of Protestant Reformed teachings brought to England from neighbouring countries in the same period, notably Calvinism and Lutheranism.

At the time of the English Reformation, the Church of England formed the local expression of the institutional Roman Catholic Church in England. Canon law had documented the formal doctrines over the centuries and the Church of England still follows an unbroken tradition of canon law today. The English Reformation did not dispense with all previous doctrines. The church not only retained the core Catholic beliefs common to Reformed doctrine in general, such as the Trinity, the virginal conception of Mary, the nature of Jesus as fully human and divine, the resurrection of Jesus, original sin and excommunication (as affirmed by the Thirty-Nine Articles), but also retained some historic Catholic teachings which Protestants rejected, such as the three orders of ministry and the apostolic succession of bishops. For this reason Anglican doctrine is often said to tread a middle path, or via media, between Roman Catholic and Protestant perspectives.

Foundational elements

Scripture, creeds and ecumenical councils

Central to Anglican doctrine are the foundational documents of Christianity – all the books of the Old and New Testaments are accepted, but the books of the Apocrypha, while recommended as instructive by Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, are declared not "to establish any doctrine".

Article VIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles declared the three Catholic creeds – the Apostles', the Nicene and the Athanasian – to "be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture" and were included in the first and subsequent editions of The Book of Common Prayer. All Anglican prayer books continue to include the Apostles' and Nicene Creed. Some — such as the Church of England's Common Worship or A New Zealand Prayer Book — omit the Athanasian Creed, but include alternative "affirmations". This liturgical diversity suggests that the principles enunciated by the Apostles' and Nicene creeds remain doctrinally unimpeachable. Nonetheless, metaphorical or spiritualised interpretations of some of the creedal declarations – for instance, the virgin birth of Jesus and his resurrection – have been commonplace in Anglicanism since the integration of biblical critical theory into theological discourse in the 19th century.

The first four ecumenical councils of Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon "have a special place in Anglican theology, secondary to the Scriptures themselves." [2] This authority is usually considered to pertain to questions of the nature of Christ (the hypostasis of divine and human) and the relationships between the Persons of the Holy Trinity, summarised chiefly in the creeds which emerged from those councils. Nonetheless, Article XXI of The Thirty-Nine Articles limit the authority of these and other ecumenical councils, noting that "they may err, and sometimes have erred." In other words, their authority being strictly derivative from and accountable to scripture.

Thirty-Nine Articles

Main article: Thirty-Nine Articles

Thomas Cranmer

Reformed doctrine and theology were developed into a distinctive English form by bishops and theologians led by Thomas Cranmer and Matthew Parker. Their doctrine was summarised in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion which were adopted by the Parliament of England and the Church of England in 1571.

The early English Reformers, like contemporaries on the European continent such as John Calvin, John Knox and Martin Luther, rejected many Roman Catholic teachings. The Thirty-Nine Articles list core Reformed doctrines such as the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation, the execution of Jesus as "the perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world", Predestination and Election. Some of the articles are simple statements of opposition to Roman Catholic doctrine, such as Article XIV which denies "Works of Supererogation", Article XV which implicitly excludes the Immaculate Conception, and XXII which explicitly rejects the concept of Purgatory. Catholic worship and teaching was at the time conducted in Latin, while the Articles required church services to use the vernacular. The Articles reveal Calvinist influence, but moderately (double predestination is rejected; God has willed some to redemption because of foresight, but does not will any to perdition), and reject other strands of Protestant teachings such as the corporeal Real Presence of Lutheranism (but agree on Justification by Faith alone), Zwinglianism, such as those of the doctrine of common property of "certain Anabaptists". Transubstantiation is rejected: i.e. the bread and wine remain in their natural properties. However, the real and essential presence of Christ in the eucharist is affirmed but "only after a heavenly and spiritual manner."

Unlike the Scottish Reformers the Articles hew out a via media between Roman Catholic and extreme Protestant views, alluded to above. For example, in contrast to Calvin, the Articles did not explicitly reject the Lutheran doctrine of Sacramental Union, a doctrine which is often confused with the medieval doctrine of Consubstantiation. The Articles also endorse an Episcopal polity, and the English monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England to replace the Bishop of Rome. The Articles can also be read as permitting the acceptance of the five so-called "non-dominical" sacraments of private confession, marriage, ordination, anointing of the sick, and confirmation as legitimately sacramental, in addition to Baptism and the Eucharist. The Sacrifice of Masses is rejected. The doctrine of the eucharistic as the Church's sacrifice or oblation to God, dating from the second century A.D., is rejected but the Holy Communion is referred to as the Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving in an optional Prayer of Oblation after the reception of Communion.

The Church of England has not amended the Thirty-Nine Articles. However, synodical legislators made changes to canon law to accommodate those who feel unable to adhere strictly to the Thirty-Nine Articles. The legal form of the declaration of assent required of clergy on their appointment, which was at its most rigid in 1689, was amended in 1865 and again in 1975 to allow more latitude. Outside of the Church of England, the Articles have an even less secure status and are generally treated as an edifying historical document not binding on doctrine or practice.

Homilies

Main article: Anglican Homilies

Title page of Cranmer's book of Homilies

The Homilies are two books of thirty-three sermons developing Reformed doctrines in greater depth and detail than in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. During the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth I, Thomas Cranmer and other English Reformers saw the need for local congregations to be taught Christian theology and practice. Sermons were appointed and required to be read each Sunday and holy day in English. Some are straightforward exhortations to read scripture daily and lead a life of faith; others are rather lengthy scholarly treatises directed at academic audiences on theology, church history, the fall of the Christian Empire and the heresies of Rome.

The Homilies are noteworthy for their beautiful and magisterial phrasing and the instances of historical terms. Each homily is heavily annotated with references to scripture, the church fathers, and other primary sources. The reading of the Homilies in church is still directed under Article XXXV of the Thirty-Nine Articles.

Prayer books

Main article: Book of Common Prayer

The original Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England was published in 1549, and its most recently approved successor was issued in 1662. It is this edition that national prayer-books (with the exception of Scotland's) used as a template as the Anglican Communion spread outside England. The foundational status of the 1662 edition has led to its being cited as an authority on doctrine. This status reflects a more pervasive element of Anglican doctrinal development, namely that of lex orandi, lex credendi, or "the law of prayer is the law of belief".

Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral

Main article: Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral

The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral is a summation of the Anglican approach to theology, worship and church structure and is often cited as a basic summary of the essentials of Anglican identity. The four points are:

The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as "containing all things necessary to salvation," and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.

The Creeds (specifically, the Apostles' and Nicene) as the sufficient statement of Christian faith;

The dominical sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion;

The historic episcopate locally adapted.

The four points originated in resolutions of the Episcopal Church in the United States of 1886 and were (more significantly) modified and finalised in the 1888 Lambeth Conference of bishops of the Anglican Communion. Primarily intended as a means of pursuing ecumenical dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, the Quadrilateral soon became a "sine qua non" for essential Anglican identity.

Standard divines

As mentioned above, Anglicanism has no theologian comparable to the founding theologians of eponymous schools, like Lutheranism, Calvinism, or Thomism. Nonetheless, it has writers whose works are regarded as standards for faith and doctrine. While there is no definitive list, such individuals are implicitly recognised as authoritative by their inclusion in Anglican liturgical calendars or in anthologies of works on Anglican theology. These include such early figures as Lancelot Andrewes, John Cosin, Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker, John Jewel, Matthew Parker, and Jeremy Taylor; and later figures such as Joseph Butler, William Law, John Wesley, and George Whitefield. The 19th century produced several prominent Anglican thinkers, notably John Keble, Frederick Denison Maurice, John Henry Newman, Edward Pusey, and John Charles Ryle. More recently, Charles Gore, Michael Ramsey, and William Temple have been included among the pantheon. While this list gives a snapshot, it is not exhaustive.

Doctrinal development

Given that the foundational elements of Anglican doctrine are either not binding or are subject to local interpretation, methodology has tended to assume a place of key importance. Hence, it is not so much a body of doctrinal statements so much as the process of doctrinal development that is important in Anglican theological identity.

Lex orandi, lex credendi

Main article: Lex orandi, lex credendi

Anglicanism has traditionally expressed its doctrinal convictions based on the prayer texts and liturgy of the church. In other words, appeal has typically been made to what Anglicans do and prescribe in common worship, enunciated in the texts of the Book of Common Prayer and other national prayer books, to guide theology and practice. Applying this axiom to doctrine, there are three venues for its expression in the worship of the Church:

The selection, arrangement, and composition of prayers and exhortations;

The selection and arrangement of the lectionary; and

The rubrics (regulations) for liturgical action and variations in the prayers and exhortations.[3]

The principle of lex orandi, lex credendi functions according to the so-called "three-legged stool" of scripture, tradition, and reason attributed to Richard Hooker.[4] This doctrinal stance is intended to enable Anglicanism to construct a theology that is pragmatic, focused on the institution of the church, yet engaged with the world. It is, in short, a theology that places a high value on the traditions of the faith and the intellect of the faithful, acknowledging the primacy of the worshipping community in articulating, amending, and passing down the church's beliefs. In doing so, Anglican theology is inclined towards a comprehensive consensus concerning the principles of the tradition and the relationship between the church and society. In this sense, Anglicans have viewed their theology as strongly incarnational – expressing the conviction that God is revealed in the physical and temporal things of everyday life and the attributes of specific times and places.

This approach has its hazards, however. For instance, there is a countervailing tendency to be "text-centric", that is, to focus on the technical, historical, and interpretative aspects of prayer books and their relationship to the institution of the church, rather than on the relationship between faith and life. Second, the emphasis on comprehensiveness often instead results in compromise or tolerance of every viewpoint. The effect that is created is that Anglicanism may appear to stand for nothing or for everything, and that an unstable and unsatisfactory middle-ground is staked while theological disputes wage interminably. Finally, while lex orandi, lex credendi helped solidify a uniform Anglican perspective when the 1662 Prayer Book and its successors predominated, and while expatriate bishops of the United Kingdom enforced its conformity in territories of the British Empire, this has long since ceased to be true. Liturgical reform and the post-colonial reorganisation of national churches has led to a growing diversity in common worship since the middle of the 20th century.

Process of doctrinal development

John Henry Newman

The principle of lex orandi, lex credendi discloses a larger theme in the approach of Anglicanism to doctrine, namely, that doctrine is considered a lived experience; since in living it, the community comes to understand its character. In this sense, doctrine is considered to be a dynamic, participatory enterprise rather than a static one.

This inherent sense of dynamism was articulated by John Henry Newman a century and a half ago, when he asked how, given the passage of time, we can be sure that the Christianity of today is the same religion as that envisioned and developed by Jesus Christ and the apostles. As indicated above, Anglicans look to the teaching of the Bible and of the undivided Church of the first five centuries as the sufficient criterion for an understanding of doctrine, as expressed in the creeds. Yet they are only a criterion: interpretation, and thus doctrinal development, is thoroughly contextual. The reason this is the case is chiefly due to three factors:

Differing theories of interpretation of scripture, developed as a result of the symbolic nature of language, the difficulty of translating its cultural and temporal aspects, and the particular perceptual lenses worn by authors;

The accumulation of knowledge through science and philosophy; and

The emerging necessity of giving some account of the relationship of Christ to distinct and evolving cultural realities throughout the world, as Christianity has spread to different places.

Newman's suggestion of two criteria for the sound development of doctrine has permeated Anglican thinking. These are, first, that development must be open and accessible to the faithful at every stage; and second, that it must be subject to appeal to scripture and the precedents of antiquity through the process of sound scholarship. The method by which this is accomplished is by the distillation of doctrine through, and its subordination to a dominant Anglican ethos consisting of the maintenance of order through consensus, comprehensiveness, and contract; and a preference for pragmatism over speculation.[5] In other words, the former — experience — flows from the latter — method. Anglican doctrinal methodology means concurrence with a base structure of shared identity: An agreement on the fundamentals of the faith articulated in the creeds; the existence of Protestant and catholic elements creating both a via media as well as a "union of opposites";[Note 4] and the conviction that there is development in understanding the truth, expressed more in practical terms rather than theoretical ones.[6] In short, the character of Anglicanism is that the church "contains in itself many elements regarded as mutually exclusive in other communions."[7]

Formal doctrine

Anglican churches in other countries generally inherited the doctrinal apparatus of the Church of England, consisting most commonly an adaptation of the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Quadrilateral into general principles. From the earliest times, they have adapted them to suit their local needs.

Constitutions and canon law

Canon law in the churches of the Anglican Communion stem from the law of the patristic and Medieval Western church which was received, along with the limiting conditions of the English Reformation. Canon law touches on several areas of church life: ecclesiology, that is, the governance and structure of the church as an institution; liturgy; relationships with secular institutions; and the doctrines which implicitly or explicitly touch on these matters. Such laws have varying degrees and means of enforcement, variability, and jurisdiction.

The nature of canon law is complicated by the status of the Church of England as subordinate to the crown; a status which does not affect jurisdictions outside England, including those of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Church of Ireland, and the Church in Wales. It is further complicated by the relationship between the autonomous churches of the Communion itself; since the canon law of one jurisdiction has no status in that of another. Moreover, there is — as mentioned above — no international juridical system which can formulate or enforce uniformity in any matter. This has led to conflict regarding certain issues (see below), leading to calls for a "covenant" specifying the parameters of Anglican doctrinal development (see Anglican realignment for discussion).

Instruments of unity

Main article: Anglican Communion

As mentioned above, the Anglican Communion has no international juridical organisation. The Archbishop of Canterbury's role is strictly symbolic and unifying, and the Communion's three international bodies are consultative and collaborative, their resolutions having no legal effect on the independent provinces of the Communion. Taken together, however, the four do function as "instruments of unity", since all churches of the Communion participate in them. In order of antiquity, they are:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, as the spiritual head of the Communion, is the focus of unity, since no church claims membership in the Communion without being in communion with him.

The Lambeth Conference is a consultation of the bishops of the Communion, intended to reinforce unity and collegiality through manifesting the episcopate, to discuss matters of mutual concern, and to pass resolutions intended to act as guideposts. It is held roughly every ten years and invitation is by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Anglican Consultative Council meets usually at three year intervals. Consisting of representative bishops, clergy, and laity chosen by the thirty-eight provinces, the body has a permanent secretariat, the Anglican Communion Office, of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is president.

The Primates' Meeting is the most recent manifestation of international consultation and deliberation, having been first convened by Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan as a forum for "leisurely thought, prayer and deep consultation."[8]

Since there is no binding authority in the Communion, these international bodies are a vehicle for consultation and persuasion. In recent years, persuasion has tipped over into debates over conformity in certain areas of doctrine, discipline, worship, and ethics.

Controversies

Historical background

The effect of nationalising the Catholic faith in England inevitably led to conflict between factions wishing to remain obedient to the Pope, those wishing more radical reform, and those holding a middle ground. A range of Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist and other Puritan views gained currency in the Church in England, Ireland, and Wales through the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Although the Pilgrim Fathers felt compelled to leave for New England, other Puritans gained increasing ecclesiastical and political authority, while Royalists advocated Arminianism and the Divine Right of Kings. This conflict was one of the ultimate causes of the English Civil War. The Church of England, with the assistance of Presbyterian Church of Scotland theologians and clergy, set down their newly developed Calvinist doctrines in the Westminster Confession of 1648, which was never formally adopted into church law. After the Restoration of 1660 and the 1662 Act of Uniformity reinforced Cranmer's Anglicanism, those wishing to hold to the stricter views set out at Westminster either emigrated or covertly founded non-conformist Presbyterian, Congregational, or Baptist churches at home.

The 18th century saw the Great Awakening, the Methodist schism, and the identification of the Evangelical party among the many conservatives who remained in the Anglican churches. The schism with the Methodists in the 18th century had a theological aspect, particularly concerning the Methodist emphasis on personal salvation by faith alone, although John Wesley continued to regard himself as a member of the Church of England. The same period also saw the emergence of the High Church movement, which began to identify with the Catholic heritage of Anglicanism, and to emphasise the importance of the Eucharist and church tradition, while mostly rejecting the legitimacy of papal authority in England. The High Churchmen gave birth to the Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholicism in the 19th century, which also saw the emergence of Liberal Christianity across the Protestant world.

The mid-19th century saw doctrinal debate between adherents of the Oxford Movement and their Low Church or Evangelical opponents, though the most public conflict tended to involve more superficial matters such as the use of church ornaments, vestments, candles, and ceremonial (which were taken to indicate a sympathy with Roman Catholic doctrine), and the extent to which such matters ought to be restricted by the church authorities. These conflicts led to further schism, for example in the creation of the Reformed Episcopal Church in North America.

Doctrinal controversies in the 20th century

William Temple, a leading figure of liberal social thought in Anglicanism in the early 20th century

Beginning in the 17th century, Anglicanism came under the influence of latitudinarianism, chiefly represented by the Cambridge Platonists, who held that doctrinal orthodoxy was less important than applying rational rigour to the examination of theological propositions. The increasing influence of German higher criticism of the Bible throughout the 19th century, however, resulted in growing doctrinal disagreement over the interpretation and application of scripture. This debate was intensified with the accumulation of insights derived from the natural and social sciences which tended to challenge literally read biblical accounts. Figures such as Joseph Lightfoot and Brooke Foss Westcott helped mediate the transition from the theology of Hooker, Andrewes, and Taylor to accommodate these developments. In the early 20th century, the liberal Catholicism of Charles Gore and William Temple attempted to fuse the insights of modern biblical criticism with the theology expressed in the creeds and by the Apostolic Fathers, but the following generations of scholars, such as Gordon Selwyn and John Robinson questioned what had hitherto been the sacrosanct status of these verities. As the century progressed, the conflict sharpened, chiefly finding its expression in the application of biblically derived doctrine to social issues.

Anglicans have debated the relationship between doctrine and social issues since its origins, when the focus was chiefly on the church's proper relationship to the state. Later, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the focus shifted to slavery. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Anglicans fiercely debated the use of artificial contraception by Christian couples, which was prohibited by church teaching. In 1930 the Lambeth Conference took a lone stand among major Christian denominations at the time and permitted its use in some circumstances (see also Christian views on contraception).

The 20th century also saw an intense doctrinal debate among Anglicans over the ordination of women, which led to schism, as well as to the conversion of some Anglican clergy to Roman Catholicism. Even today, there is no unanimity of doctrine or practice in the Anglican Communion as it relates to women's ordination. Finally, in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s Anglican churches wrestled with the issue of the remarriage of divorced persons, which was prohibited by dominical commandment. Once again, there is presently no unanimity of doctrine or practice.

Current controversies

Peter Akinola, former Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Nigeria and a principal figure in debates about homosexuality

The focus of doctrinal debate on issues of social theology has continued into the 21st century. Indeed, the eclipse of issues of classical doctrine, such as confessions of faith, has been exemplified by the relatively non-controversial decisions by some Communion provinces to amend the Nicene Creed by dropping the filioque clause, or supplementing the historic creeds with other affirmations of faith.[Note 5] As of 2016, the prominent doctrinal issue being actively debated in Anglican synods and convocations across the world is the place of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church — specifically with respect to same-sex unions and ordination (see Homosexuality and the Anglican Communion).

The consecration of bishops and the extension of sacraments to individuals based on gender or sexual orientation would ordinarily be matters of concern to the synods of the autonomous provinces of the Communion. Insofar as they affect other provinces, it is by association — either the physical association between the individuals to whom the sacraments have been extended and those who oppose such extension; or the perceptual association of Anglicanism generally with such practices. Regardless, these issues have incited debate over the parameters of domestic autonomy in doctrinal matters in the absence of international consensus. Some dioceses and provinces have moved further than others can easily accept, and some conservative parishes within them have sought pastoral oversight from bishops of other dioceses or provinces, in contravention of traditional Anglican polity (see Anglican realignment). These developments have led some to call for a covenant to delimit the power of provinces to act on controversial issues independently, while others have called for a renewed commitment to comprehensiveness and tolerance of diverse practice.