But the one thing he cannot easily do is to perfectly reverse black and white and all the darker and lighter shades of grey while painting a face.īut imagine, for just a moment, that he could. And an artist, if he is imaginative, like Picasso, can alter that perception in stylistic ways. It is relatively easy, with talent and training, to paint a picture of what we see in the world. Our minds are programmed for the way we see things in the world a world where black is black and white is white. To do so is like trying to write your signature upside down and backwards. I was certain that no artist, no craftsman, no faker of relics, could possibly paint a negative of a human face. I was so convinced that the Shroud of Turin was a fake that I doubted the images were negatives. But rather than marveling at this fact, I doubted it. I knew something about the subject of negatives. And it would have likely remained that way were it not for a single enigmatic fact that Cahill mentioned: the picture on the Shroud of Turin was a negative. In metaphoric parlance, the Shroud of Turin was never a blip on my radar screen. But I had not noticed its history, either. Our knowledge of this time in history rightly conditions us to be suspicious of any relic that might appear in Europe at this time. And though the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, acknowledged the problem, church authorities did little to curb the market in them. In this climate of superstition, naiveté and disorder a lucrative market in false relics flourished. ![]() Indicative of the thinking in this age, some believed that the plague was God’s retribution on the whole world because the Pope was not in the eternal city. Adding to the political turmoil, the Pope was in Avignon, not Rome. The same year that the Shroud was first displayed publicly in the small French village of Lirey, nearby, at the battle of Poitiers, England’s Black Prince defeated the French and captured King John II. It was a time of extreme economic and political turbulence and of war. It was a time of frequent famine and the Black Death plague. The year 1356 was a time of unbridled superstition in demons, witches, magic, and miracle-working relics. Moreover, I am naturally skeptical about any relic with a historical footprint in medieval Europe. I did then, and more than ever, I do now. Had I, I would have certainly accepted the conclusion. It would have made sense to me.Ī decade later, when three radiocarbon dating laboratories, using carbon 14 dating, supposedly proved the Shroud of Turin was medieval, I didn’t notice. Had I noticed the story in 1979, I would have certainly accepted his conclusion. McCrone, having noted that the shroud had suddenly appeared in 1356 in the hands of a French knight who would not say where it came from and that a local bishop soon thereafter claimed that an artist “cunningly painted” it, declared it a painted fake. Thus, when in 1979, Walter McCrone, a world renowned forensic microscopist, claimed that he found paint on a few Shroud fibers, I didn’t notice the story. It was so far from being something I cared about that I never paid it any attention. I could not recall ever reading anything about the Shroud of Turin. Then in my mid-fifties, I had always been an avid reader of history, particularly early church history. I remember being surprised that I knew so little about the Shroud of Turin. It might have been a treasure of the early church, he thought. Suddenly, with no logical reason that I could see, Cahill introduced the Shroud of Turin. Having enjoyed Cahill’s previous best seller, The Gifts of the Jews, I thought I would enjoy his newest book. ![]() I was reading Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Thomas Cahill’s book about the apostolic era. How can anyone think the Shroud of Turin is real: the actual burial shroud of Jesus? The fact that the Shroud of Turin has an image on it, believed to be a picture of Christ, made it seem beyond preposterous. And when I first did read about it, while on a flight to Miami, I laughed out loud, something I rarely do alone in the company of strangers. I must admit, with some embarrassment, that until a few years ago I knew nothing about the Shroud of Turin.
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