Unraveling the Myths Surrounding the Shroud of Turin

Pseudoscience can often survive because of the continuous publication and dissemination of alleged new discoveries that cast doubt on the findings of “official science.” Mass media regularly republish these “discoveries,” which question otherwise clear and well-established findings. The Shroud of Turin is a perfect example: each year, new statements and new “studies” surface, and instill in the public the (false) idea that there is sufficient evidence to think that the relic is not medieval, but does in fact date back to the time of Christ.

For example, in recent weeks newspapers around the world have reported¹ that a group of Italian researchers discovered an innovative way to date the fabric of the Shroud of Turin, and that this dating disproved the results of radiocarbon dating carried out in 1988 (which had placed the creation of the Shroud to somewhere between the 13th and 14th centuries). According to these media reports, the cloth is likely to be around 2,000 years old.

However, this “information” is incorrect, and the media did not bother to check the reliability of what they published. If we examine the reports closely, here is what actually happened:

1. The article by the Italian scholars was published in 2022, so it is not new.² The simple facts are that a news outlet in the U.S. broke the news two years late—and then many others simply copied from it.
2. The proposed dating system is not normally used nor has it been validated by the scientific community. It is based on the use of X-rays (Wide- Angle X-ray Scattering, or WAXS), which are supposed to measure the degradation of cellulose fibers. This system was invented in 2019 by these very same authors, and for the purpose of dating the Shroud, and so is not used by anyone else.³
3. The method is highly unreliable, because tissue aging is strongly influenced by environmental factors, such as humidity, temperature, light exposure, storage conditions, and the possible presence of microorganisms or of various chemicals, all of which are unpredictable variables that can heavily alter the results. Thus, it cannot provide a reliable dating that is remotely comparable to that provided by the proven Carbon-14 method, which dates the Shroud as being of medieval origin.
4. The inventors of the WAXS method are not neutral scientists; they are sindonologists (i.e., people who study the Shroud of Turin from a believing perspective; from the Greek word sindòn, used in the Gospels to define the type of fine fabric, undoubtedly linen, with which the corpse of Jesus was believed to be wrapped), and who for years have been trying hard to prove that the Shroud is authentic. None of them are experts in either dating or textiles. The main proponents of the research are Giulio Fanti and Liberato De Caro. Both share the commonality of being followers of the Italian pseudomystic Maria Valtorta, who died in 1961, and who, bedridden by illness, told of receiving heavenly messages and seeing the entire life of Christ, which she described in many books. Although the Catholic Church has put these books on the Index (that is, a catalog of writings condemned as contrary to faith or morals), Fanti and De Caro believe in Valtorta’s visions. Fanti also believes he received personal messages from Jesus and Our Lady, and De Caro, a deacon, is known for his belief in creationism.
5. The authors were never allowed to extract material directly from the Shroud. What they used was a very small sample (approx. 0.5 mm × 1 mm), which they claim originally belonged to the Shroud.
6. Between 2014 and 2022, these two authors have already invented four different systems to date textiles in order to authenticate the Shroud: measurement of the mechanical properties of individual linen fibers, Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (Fanti), and WAXS (De Caro).
7. Their conclusions are considered so unreliable that even a journal published by the Center for Sindonology in Turin (which pursues proof of the Shroud’s authenticity) urged people to be cautious of their conclusions.⁴

Around that same time, an article published in The Telegraph⁵ (and later recycled by other outlets) garnered significant interest. It stated that “new research by Cicero Moraes, a world leader in forensic facial reconstruction software, showed it could not have enveloped a corpse.” In fact, “the expert found the image on the shroud could only be created if a cloth was placed over a bas-relief of a human figure, such as a shallow stone carving.” Cicero Moraes is right, but his research is not particularly groundbreaking. For at least four centuries, we have known that the body image on the Shroud is comparable to an orthogonal projection onto a plane, which certainly could not have been created through contact with a three-dimensional body.

Without any need for computer imaging, practical experiments of putting a piece of cloth on a statue or on a human body have been conducted and described in a book published exactly four hundred years ago by French historian Jean-Jacques Chifflet.⁶ A little over two hundred years later, in the 19th century, Italian historian Lazzaro Giuseppe Piano wrote: “Let the face of a statue be dyed with color and let a white cloth be applied to it; if, after having pressed it a bit by hand, the cloth is removed and spread out, one will see on it a distorted image, much wider than the face itself.”⁷ Cicero Moraes has certainly created some beautiful images with the help of software, and for that his efforts are to be appreciated, but he certainly did not uncover anything that we did not already know.

Why study a shroud?

I have devoted myself to studying the Shroud of Turin for over a decade,⁸ along with all the faces of sindonology, and the set of scientific disciplines tasked with determining the authenticity of such relics. My work began with an in-depth analysis of the theory linking the Knights Templar to the relic,⁹ and the theory according to which the Mandylion of Edessa (more on this below) and the Shroud are one and the same.¹⁰ Studying the fabric also revealed that the textile has a complex structure that would have required a sufficiently advanced loom, that is, a horizontal treadle loom with four shafts, probably introduced by the Flemish artisans in the 13th century, while the archaeological record provides clear evidence that the Shroud is completely different from all the cloths woven in ancient Palestine.¹¹

As a historian I was more interested in the history of the Shroud than in determining its authenticity as the burial cloth of Jesus, although the evidence is clear that it was not. That said, for a historiographical reconstruction seeking to address the history of the relationship between faith and science in relation to relics, the Shroud does offer a useful case for understanding how insistence on a relic’s authenticity, along with a lack of interest on the part of mainstream science, leaves ample room for pseudoscientific arguments.

Relics

The Christian cult of relics revolves around the desire to perpetuate the memory of illustrious figures and encourage religious devotion towards them. Initially limited to veneration of the (sometimes alleged) bodies of martyrs, over the centuries it extended to include the bodies of saints and, finally, objects that had come into contact with them. As Christianity spread, the ancient custom of making pilgrimages to the burial places of saints was accompanied by the custom of transferring their relics (or parts of them) to the furthest corners of the Christian world. These transfers, called “translations,” had several effects:

1. They increased devotion towards the person from whom the relic derived.
2. They were believed to protect against war, natural disasters, and disease, and to attract healings, conversions, miracles, and visions.
3. They heightened interest in the place hosting the relics, thus attracting pilgrims and so enriching both the church and the city that housed them.
4. They increased the prestige of the owners of relics.

Relics are objects without intrinsic or objective value outside of the specific religious environment that attributes a significance to them. In a religious environment, however, they become semiophores, or “objects which were of absolutely no use, but which, being endowed with meaning, represented the invisible.”¹² However, enthusiasm for relics tended to wane over time unless it was periodically reawakened through constant efforts or significant events, such as festivals, acts of worship, or translations, along with claims of healings, apparitions, and miracles. When a relic fails to attract attention to itself, or loses such appeal, it becomes nearly indistinguishable from any other object.

As the demand for relics grew among not only the faithful masses but also the fortunate abbots, bishops, prelates, and princes owning or associated with them, the supply inevitably increased. One of the effects of this drive was the frenzied search for ancient relics in holy places. Though the searches were often conducted in good faith, our modern perspective, equipped with greater historical and scientific expertise, can hardly consider most of these relics to be authentic. It was thus almost inevitable that relic intermediaries and dealers emerged—some honest, believing, brokers, but others outright dishonest fraudsters. There were so many of the latter that St. Augustine of Hippo famously spoke out against the trade in martyrs’ relics as early as the 5th century.

The Matter of Relic Authenticity

For a long time, many scholars did not consider relics to be objects deserving of interest to professional historians because the cult of veneration surrounding them was regarded as a purely devotional set of practices. Historians who study relics from the perspective of the history of piety, devotion, worship, beliefs, secular or ecclesiastical politics, and social and economic impact, should also speak to the origin of such relics, and hence their authenticity. In the case of relics of lesser value—those that have been downgraded, forgotten, undervalued, or removed from worship—the historian’s task is relatively simple.

By contrast, historians and scientists face greater resistance when dealing with fake relics that still attract great devotional interest. Many historians sidestep the authenticity issue by overlooking the question of the relic’s origin, instead focusing only on what the faithful have believed over time and the role of the relic in history. While this approach is legitimate, what people most want to know about holy relics like the Shroud of Turin today is their authenticity.

The Shroud of Turin is part of the trove of Christ-related relics that were never mentioned in ancient times. When the search for relics in the Holy Land began—with the discovery of the (alleged) true cross, belatedly attributed to Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine—no one at that time ever claimed to have found Jesus’ burial cloths, nor is there any record of anyone having thought to look for them.

There is more than one shroud.

The earliest travel accounts of pilgrims visiting the sites of Jesus in the 4th century show that people venerated various relics, but they do not mention a shroud. By the beginning of the 6th century, pilgrims to Jerusalem were shown what were claimed to be the spear with which Jesus was stabbed, the crown of thorns, the reed and sponge of his passion, the chalice of the Last Supper, the tray on which John the Baptist’s head was placed, the bed of the paralytic healed by Jesus, the stone on which the Lord left an imprint of his shoulders, and the stone where Our Lady sat to rest after dismounting from her donkey. But no shroud. It was not until the second half of the 6th century that pilgrims began to mention relics of Jesus’ burial cloths being in Jerusalem, albeit with various doubts as to where they had been preserved and what form they took.

The next step was the systematic and often unverified discovery of additional—and preposterous— relics from the Holy Land, including the bathtub of baby Jesus, his cradle, nappy, footprints, foreskin, umbilical cord, milk teeth, the tail of the donkey on which He entered Jerusalem, the crockery from the Last Supper, the scourging pillar, His blood, the relics of the bodies of Jesus’ grandparents and the Three Wise Men, and even the milk from the Virgin Mary and her wedding ring. Obviously, objects related to Jesus’ death and resurrection could easily be included in such a list. Predictably, the movement of such relics from Jerusalem—be they bought, stolen, or forged—reached its peak at the time of the Crusades.

The beginning of the 9th century was a time of intense traffic in relics. One legend, built up around no one less than Charlemagne himself, held that he had made a journey to Jerusalem and obtained a shroud of Jesus. According to this legend, the cloth was then taken to the imperial city of Aachen (in modern Germany), and then, perhaps, to Compiègne, France. There are accounts of a shroud in both cities, and Aachen still hosts this relic today.

The coexistence of these relics in two important religious centers has not prevented other cities from claiming to possess the very same objects. Arles and Cadouin (France), as well as Rome (Italy), all boast a shroud, although in 1933 the one in Cadouin was revealed to be a medieval Islamic cloth. There is an 11th-century holy shroud in the cathedral of Cahors (France) as well as in Mainz (Germany) and Istanbul (Turkey), and dozens of other cities claimed to possess fragments of such a relic.¹³ An 8th-century sudarium is still venerated in Oviedo, Spain, as if it were authentic.¹⁴

The Shroud of Turin

With this background it might not surprise readers to learn that the Shroud of Turin, in fact, is not one of the oldest but rather one of the most recent such relics. It is a large cloth that resembles a long tablecloth of over four meters in length, whose uniqueness is a double monochromatic image that shows the front and back of a man. The man bears marks from flagellation and crucifixion, with various red spots corresponding to where blows were received. The Turin Shroud first appeared in the historical record in France (a place that already hosted many competing shrouds) around 1355 CE. It is different from all the previous shrouds in that the others did not display the image of the dead Christ, and until then no source had ever mentioned a shroud bearing such an image (although Rome hosted the well-known Veil of Veronica, a piece of cloth said to feature an image of the Holy Face of Jesus). The explanation behind its creation can be found in the contemporary development of a cult of devotion centered on the representations of the physical suffering of Christ and His wounded body.

The Shroud of Turin made its first appearance in a small country church built in Lirey, France, and by an aristocratic soldier Geoffroy de Charny. As soon as this relic was put on public display, it immediately became the subject of debate. Two local bishops declared the relic to be fake. In 1389, the bishop of Troyes, France, wrote a letter to the Pope denouncing the falsity of the relic and accusing the canons of the Church of Lirey of deliberate fraud. According to the bishop, the canons had commissioned a skilled artist to create the image, acting out of greed and taking advantage of people’s gullibility. The Pope responded by allowing the canons to continue exhibiting the cloth, but simultaneously obliging them to publicly declare that it was being displayed as a “figure or representation” of the true Shroud of Christ, not the original.

Various erasures and acts of subterfuge were required to cover up these historical events and transform an artistic representation into an authentic shroud of Jesus. The process began after 1453, when the relic was purchased by a noble family, the House of Savoy (and which reigned as Kings of Italy from 1861 to 1946).

Historians loyal to the court constructed a false history of the relic’s origins, deliberately disregarding all the medieval events that cast doubt on its authenticity.

Interpretations of this first part of the history of the Shroud diverge significantly between those who accept the validity of the historical documents and those who reject it. However, the following developments are almost universally agreed upon. Deposited in the city of Chambéry, capital of the Duchy of Savoy, the Shroud became a dynastic relic, that is, an instrument of political-religious legitimization and referenced by the same symbolic language used by other noble European dynasties. After surviving a fire in 1532, the Shroud remained in Chambéry until 1578. It was then transferred to Turin, the duchy’s new capital, where a richly appointed chapel connected to the city’s cathedral was specially built to house it in the 17th century.

Historians loyal to the court constructed a false history of the relic’s origins, deliberately disregarding all the medieval events that cast doubt on its authenticity and attested to the intense reluctance of contemporary ecclesiastical authorities to accept it. In the meantime, the papacy and clergy abandoned their former prudence and began to encourage veneration of the Shroud, established a liturgical celebration, and initiated theological and exegetical debate about it. The court of the Duchy of Savoy, for its part, showed great devotion to its relic and at the same time used it as an instrument of political legitimization,^{15, 16} seeking to export the Shroud’s fame outside the duchy by gifting painted copies that were in turn treated as relics-by-contact (there are at least 50 such copies known to still exist throughout the world).

Having survived changes of fortune and emerging unscathed from both the rational criticism of the Enlightenment and the turmoil of the Napoleonic period, the Shroud seemed destined to suffer the fate of other similar relics, namely a slow decline. Following a solemn exhibition in 1898, however, the Shroud returned to the spotlight and its reputation began to grow outside Italy as well. Two very important events in the history of the relic took place that year: it was photographed for the first time, and the first historiographical studies of it were published.

Shroud Science

Photography made available to everyone what previously had been viewable by only a few: an image of the shape of Christ’s body and face, scarcely discernible on the cloth but perfectly visible on the photographic plate. It was especially visible in the negative image, which by inverting the tonal values, reducing them to white and black, and accentuating the contrast, revealed the character of the imprint.

Photographs of the Shroud, accompanied by imprecise technical assessments claiming that the photograph proved that the image could not possibly have been generated artificially, were circulated widely. This prompted scholars to seek through chemistry, physics, and, above all, forensic medicine an explanation for the origins of the image impressed on the cloth. More recently, these disciplines have been joined by palynology, computer science, biology, and mathematics, all aimed at demonstrating the authenticity of the relic experimentally, or at least removing doubts that it might have been a fake. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were many scientific articles published on the Shroud and discussions held in distinguished forums, including the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

The scientist associated with the birth of scientific sindonology is the zoologist Paul Vignon, while Ulysse Chevalier was the first to conduct serious historical investigations of the Shroud. Both were Catholics (the latter indeed being a priest), but they held completely contrasting positions: the former defended the Shroud’s authenticity while the latter denied it. Chevalier was responsible for publishing the most significant medieval documents on the early history of the Shroud, showing how it had been condemned and declarations of its falseness covered up, and wrote the first essays on the history of the Shroud to employ a historical-critical method (Chevalier was an illustrious medievalist at the time). The debate became very heated in the historical and theological fields, and almost all the leading history and theology journals of the time published articles on the Shroud.

After the early 20th century, almost no one applied themselves to thoroughly examining the entirety of the historical records regarding the Shroud (much less comparing it against all the other shrouds). After a period of relative lack of interest, new technologies brought the Shroud back into the limelight. In 1978, a group of American scholars, mostly military employees or researchers associated with the Catholic Holy Shroud Guild, formed the STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) and were allowed to conduct a series of direct scientific studies on the relic. They did not find a universally accepted explanation for the origin of the image. Some members of the group used the mass media to disseminate the idea that the image was actually the result of a supernatural event: in this explanation, the image was not the result of a body coming into contact with the cloth, perhaps involving blood, sweat, and burial oils (as believed in previous centuries) but rather caused by irradiation. At this time the two most popular theories formulated—despite their implausibility—as to the historical origin of the Shroud were:

1. The Shroud and the Mandylion of Edessa are one and the same object. (The Mandylion is another miraculous relic known to have existed since at least the 6th century BCE in the form of a towel that, according to the faithful, Jesus used to wipe His face, miraculously leaving the mark of His features on it).
2. The Knights Templar transported the Shroud from the East to the West. (It was based on statements extracted under torture from the Templars during their infamous trial of 1307–1312.)

The clash between sindonology and science reached its peak in 1988; without involving STURP but with permission from the Archbishop of Turin, the Holy See, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a radiocarbon examination was carried out that involved 12 measurements conducted in three different laboratories. As expected, the test provided a date that corresponds perfectly with the date indicated by the historical documents, namely the 13th–14th century. As often happens when a scientific finding contradicts a religious belief, however, from that moment on attempts to invalidate the carbon dating proliferated. These included conspiracy, pollution of the samples, unreliability of the examination, enrichment of the radiocarbon percentage due to the secondary effects of the resurrection, among others.

Dating the Shroud

In 1945, chemist Willard Libby devised the Carbon-14 (C14) radiocarbon dating method. Despite rumors that Libby was against applying the C14 method to the Shroud, I found proof that at least twice he stated precisely the opposite, declaring his own interest in performing the study himself.¹⁷ In the early 1970s, the test had been repeatedly postponed, first because it was not yet considered sufficiently reliable, and later because of the amount of cloth that would have to be sacrificed as the procedure is destructive. By the mid-1980s, however, C14 was accepted universally as a reliable system of dating, and was regularly used to date archeological artifacts as well as antiques. Several C14 laboratories offered to perform the testing for free, likely under the assumption that, whatever the result, it would bring them publicity.

The cloth of the Shroud can be assigned with a confidence of 95 percent to a date between 1260 and 1390 CE.

Once Cardinal Ballestrero, who was not the relic’s “owner” but only charged with the Shroud’s protection, had made the decision to proceed, he asked for the support and approval of the Holy See. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences was invested with the responsibility to oversee all operations. For the first time in its history, the papal academy was presided over by a scientist who was not a priest, biophysicist Carlos Chagas Filho. The scientists’ desire was to date the Shroud and nothing more, and they did not want the sindonologists to take part in the procedure. The Vatican’s Secretary of State and the representatives of Turin agreed to supply no more than three samples. Seven laboratories were proposed from which three selected: those at the University of Arizona, Tucson, the University of Oxford, and Zurich Polytechnic, because they had the most experience in dating small archaeological fragments.

The day chosen for the extraction was April 21, 1988. The textile experts examined the fabric and discussed the best place to extract samples; they decided to take a strip from one of the corners, in the same place in which a sample had already been taken for examination in 1973. The strip was divided into smaller pieces and each of the three laboratories received a sample. The procedure was filmed while being performed under the scrutiny of over 30 people.

The results were published in the world’s leading multidisciplinary scientific journal, Nature. Conclusion: the cloth of the Shroud can be assigned with a confidence of 95 percent to a date between 1260 and 1390 CE. In response, the Cardinal of Turin issued this statement:

I think that it is not the case that the Church should call these results into question…. I do not believe that we, the Church, should trouble ourselves to quibble with highly respected scientists who until this moment have merited only respect, and that it would not be responsible to subject them to censure solely because their results perhaps do not align with the arguments of the heart that one can carry within himself.¹⁸

Predictably, Shroud believers rejected the findings and started to criticize the Turin officials who had cut the material. Others preferred to deny the validity of the radiocarbon dating.

Sindonologists tried to discredit the result of the C14 testing by claiming the samples were contaminated. This hypothesis asserts that through the centuries the Shroud picked up deposits of more recent elements that would contain a greater quantity of carbon; the radiocarbon dating, having been performed on a linen so contaminated, would thus have produced an erroneous result. Candidates for the role of pollutants are many: the smoke of the candles, the sweat of the hands that touched and held the fabric, the water used to extinguish the fire of 1532, the smoggy Turin skies, pollens, oil, and many more.

On the surface, these may seem convincing, especially to those who do not know how C14 dating works; in reality, however, they are untenable. Indeed, if a bit of smoke and sweat were enough to produce a false result, the Carbon-14 method would have been almost completely useless and certainly not used still to this day to date thousands of objects every year. The truth is rather that the system is not significantly sensitive to any such pollutants.

So assume that the fabric of the Shroud dates back to the 30s of the first century and that the Shroud has suffered exposure to strong pollution (for example, around 1532, the year of the Chambéry fire). To distort the C14 dating by up to 1300 years, it would be necessary that for every 100 carbon atoms originally present in the cloth, another 500 dating to 1532 would have to have been added by contamination. In practice, in the Shroud, the amount of pollutant should be several times higher than the amount of the original linen, which is simply nonsensical.

If we assume that pollution did not happen all at the same time, but gradually over the centuries, there is still no mathematical possibility that pollution that occurred before the 14th century—even if tens of times higher than the quantity of the original material—could give a result of dating to the 14th century. It should be added, moreover, that all samples, before being radiocarbon dated, are subjected to cleaning treatments able to remove the upper patina that has been in contact with outside contaminants and this procedure was also used for the Shroud.

Those who allege that the Shroud was an object that could not be dated because it was subjected to numerous vicissitudes over the intervening centuries ignore the fact that often C14 dating laboratories work on materials in much worse condition, whether coming from archaeological excavations or from places where they have been in contact with various contaminants. For radiocarbon dating purposes, the Shroud is a very clean object.

A more curious variant of the pollution theory suggests that the radiocarbon dating was performed on a sample that was repaired with more recent threads. This would mean that the two (widely recognized) textile experts who were present on the day of the sampling were unable to notice that they had cut a piece so repaired, despite the fact that they had examined the fabric carefully for hours. To distort the result by 13 centuries, the threads employed in the mending would have had to have been more numerous than the threads of the part to be mended. To eliminate any doubt, in 2010 the University of Arizona reexamined a trace of fabric left over from the radiocarbon dating in 1988, and concluded:

We find no evidence for any coatings or dyeing of the linen…. Our sample was taken from the main part of the shroud. There is no evidence to the contrary. We find no evidence to support the contention that the 14C samples actually used for measurements are dyed, treated, or otherwise manipulated. Hence, we find no reason to dispute the original 14C measurements.¹⁹

Another possibility raised against C14 dating falls within the sphere of the supernatural. German chemist, Eberhard Lindner, explained to the 1990 sindonology convention that the resurrection of Christ caused an emission of neutrons that enriched the Shroud with radioactive isotope C14.²⁰ Miraculous explanations can be cloaked in scientific jargon, but they simply cannot be tested scientifically, given that there are no available bodies that have risen from the dead emitting protons and neutrons. They are, however, extremely convenient because they are able to solve any problem without having to submit the explanation to the laws of nature.

With all of the available evidence, it is rational to conclude—as some astute historians had already established more than a century ago—that the Shroud of Turin is a 14th century artifact and not the burial cloth of a man who was crucified in the first third of the 1st century CE.