The Shroud of Turin is the most studied piece of cloth in history.  Some claim it is the actual cloth that wrapped the body of Jesus Christ after his death and others claim that it is an elaborate hoax…and science can’t tell us which is right!—which leads to it being a great mystery.  The historian John Walsh puts it quite succinctly: “It is either the most awesome and instructive relic of Christ in existence or it is one of the most ingenious, most unbelievably clever products of the human mind and hand on record. It is either one or the other, there is no middle ground”, and he’s absolutely right.  Either the Shroud of Turin wrapped the dead body of God and the Resurrection took place inside of it, or it is a huge sophisticated fake.  The piece of cloth has attracted attention, devotion, and criticism for centuries and yet many people know very little about it.  So…in an effort to eliminate ignorance of this fascinating artifact we present the top ten amazing things about the Shroud!

1. If the Shroud is real, it truly would be the most awesome relic in history. 

We need to have a little understanding of what relics are to appreciate this.  Saving actual parts or pieces of clothing of the venerated dead is a practice that predates Christianity.  It is said that the Greeks would keep pieces of Oedipus and venerate them in a semi-religious ceremony.  Other cultures would also engage in similar practices.  But for Christians, this practice became the norm when Masses would be celebrated on altars built on top of tombs in the Roman Catacombs thus showing the greatest veneration for the bodies of those saints who went before us.  It was only a short leap to begin collecting the clothing and other objects of the saints and venerating these objects.  The Shroud of Turin, if it is real, would be a relic not of a saint, but of Jesus Christ himself.  Think about it, if the Shroud is real, it is a witness of the Resurrection.  Even the Blessed Virgin was not granted the grace to witness the Resurrection.

2. The Shroud has a history that includes both East and West

In the Eastern Church there are documents that reference what is known as “Image Not Made by Hands” which was discovered in the year 544.  This image is believed to be the same Shroud and became the basis for all Eastern and Orthodox icons and images of Jesus Christ.  And why not?  If it truly is the actual image of Jesus Christ, it should be the basis of every image we use of him.

3. The Shroud has not always been in Turin

Although today the Shroud is associated with the Italian city of Turin, it has only been there for the last 400 years.  Before that it was in France—and before that, the history gets a little foggy.  The discovery of a Hungarian document from 1192 confirms that the Shroud was in Constantinople and captured in the Fourth Crusade.  It is said that the Knights Templar would venerate it.  When Constantinople was burned and looted, a letter of protest was sent to the Pope which claimed that among the things stolen was “the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death…”

4. Since 1450 the Catholic Church has owned the Shroud for only 33 years

The Savoy family of Italy owned the Shroud, although they entrusted the Church to take care of the Shroud until 1982.  In 1982, with the death of Humberto II, the former king of Italy, the Shroud was willed to the Church from the Savoy family.

5. The Image on the Shroud is Actually a Negative

In 1898 the Shroud was photographed for the first time and it was discovered that the image on the Shroud is in fact a negative.  This means that it needs to be put through the photographic process in order to produce the image we associate with Christ.  This is consistent with a belief that at the moment of Resurrection a great light caused the image to be created on the Shroud itself.  The technology for creating a negative wasn’t around at the time of Christ, and wasn’t around when we know for sure the Shroud had this image.  This leads people to believe that the image is not man-made.

6. It would take 34 Trillon Watts of Light to create the image in a single instant

That’s a lot—certainly, when you consider that at the time of Christ electricity was still only in lightning and not in the home.  This lends even further evidence that the Shroud could not be made by human hands, and certainly not human hands with the technologies present 2000 years ago.

7. There is Pollen Residue on the Shroud

From 28 different types of plants actually.  Some of the plants are native to Turkey (where the Shroud was discovered) and Constantinople (where it was held for a long period of time) but some of the plants that have pollen on the Shroud are native only to the area around Jerusalem.  This is significant because in the tracked history of the Shroud it has not been in Jerusalem to collect the pollen…unless it actually originated from there!

8. The Radiocarbon dating that “disproved” the Shroud has been disproved itself

With the advent of radiocarbon dating, the test was done on a piece of the Shroud and the results suggested that the Shroud was from the 12th or 13th century, and certainly not from the first century.  Many took this as evidence that the Shroud is a fake, made by some artist over a thousand years after Christ.  However, further testing has been done and shown that the radiocarbon testing was actually done on pieces of cloth that were added to the original Shroud to try to repair damage that the Shroud suffered due to fire.  Thus the repairs are from the 12th or 13th century, but the original material of the Shroud is still untested.

9. Scientists of Human Anatomy Claim that the Image is Correct

With knowledge of what happens to a human body after death by crucifixion that was not present in the first century and even in the 12th century, scientists today say that the image conforms to what they know would happen to a human body after death by crucifixion.  If the Shroud was created by an artist, that artist knew human anatomy to a level beyond every single other human being on the planet at the time…knowledge that wouldn’t be discovered for hundreds of years.

10. The Blood Stains are Real

Scientists have also determined that the stains from the blood could not have been made by any kind of paint, that they display characteristics that only could have been made by human blood.  So…the shroud wrapped some human bleeding from wounds in the same places Jesus Christ had them. A bit far to go for a fake I think.

Hopefully, you didn’t know all these things before now.  But they simply add evidence to the belief that the Shroud is real.  However, we are not bound by faith to believe that the Shroud is real…but it certainly would be cool if it is!

Do you believe the Shroud is real?