Late addition (July 2019)
Please forgive this postscript, correction, “prescript”, correction, intrusion, added many years later – based on some 350 and more postings here and elsewhere.
That’s including some 7 years of my hands-on investigation into image-forming techniques, chosen to be credible with simple, indeed crude, medieval (14th century) technology etc etc.
(Oh, and yes, I accept the radiocarbon dating, despite it being restricted to a single non-random corner sample, making all the oh-so-dismissive, oh-so-derogatory statistics-based sniping totally irrelevant – a ranging shot being just that me dears- a single ranging shot, albeit subdivided into three for Arizona, Oxford and Zurich).
Sindonology (i.e. the “science” , read pseudoscience – of the so-called “Shroud ” of Turin) can be simply summed up. It’s a re-branding exercise, one designed to pretend that the prized Turin possession is not just J of A’s “fine linen”, described in the biblical account as used to transport a crucified body from cross to tomb.
Oh no, it goes further, much further, way way beyond the biblical account. How? By making out that it was the SAME linen as that described in the Gospel of John, deployed as final “burial clothes”. Thus the description “Shroud” for the Turin Linen, usually with the addition “burial shroud”. Why the elision of two different linens, deployed for entirely different purposes (transport first, then final interment)?
Go figure! Key words to consider are: authentic relic v manufactured medieval icon; mystique, peaceful death-repose, unlimited opportunity for proposing new and ever more improbable image-formation mechanisms etc. How much easier it is to attach the label “Holy” to Shroud if seen as final burial clothes, in final at-peace repose – prior to Resurrection- as distinct from a means of temporary swaying side-to-side transport in an improvised makeshift stretcher !
As I say, a rebranding exercise (transport to final burial shroud) and a very smart and subtle one at that . Not for nothing did that angry local Bishop of Troyes suddenly refer to a “sleight of hand” after allegedly accepting it when first displayed. Seems the script was altered, or as some might say, tampered with! It might also explain why there were two Lirey badges, not just one. Entire books could be written on which of the two came first… I think I know which, with its allusion (?) to the Veil of Veronica… yes, there are alternative views (the face above “SUAIRE” a visual link to the face-only display of the Linen as the “Image of Edessa” or as that on the then current “Shroud” per se.
Face shown (left) on mid- 14th century Machy Mould (recently discovered variant of the Lirey Pilgrim Badge) above the word “SUAIRE” (allegedly meaning “shroud”). Inset image on the right: one version among many of the fabled “Veil of Veronica” image. I say the two are related, and deliberately so, but this is not the time or place to go into detail.
No, NOT a resurrectional selfie, but instead a full size version of, wait for it, the legendary VEIL OF VERONICA , product of inital body contact – no air gaps- between body and fabric, but with one important difference. The Turin image was intended to look more realistic, less artistic.
How? By displaying a negative tone-reversed image implying IMPRINT (unless, that is, you’re a modern day sindonologist, in which case ‘resurrectional proto-photographic selfie” becomes the preferred, nay, vigorously proferred explanation assisted by unrestrained imagination, creation of endless pseudoscience etc etc, with resort to laser beams, corona discharges, nuclear physics, elementary particles, earthquakes etc etc – the list is seemingly endless!
Welcome to modern day sindonology.
Personally, I prefer no-nonsense feet-on-the-ground hypothesis-testing science, aided by lashings of, wait for it, plain down-to-earth common sense.
Start of original posting:
(Note: this follows on from the previous posting:
An attempt to invalidate my own “improved” thermal imprinting procedure: 1. Macroscopic level
Here again is a scorch onto linen from an “overheated template” held “excessively long” against linen to produce a intense scorch – one that folk would probably regard as too intense to stand comparison with the fainter more subtle sepia discoloration of the Shroud image.
From the previous posting: template compared with thermal imprint from the revised “linen-on-top” methodology.
Yet even STURP commented in its summary on the resemblance of the Shroud image to that of a scorch. So the modelling continues, now with what I consider an improved procedure with “linen-on-top”, one that may work not just by contact/conduction scorching, but via secondary effects more remote from the immediate site of contact due to superheated steam and perhaps pyrolysis gases. Maybe it’s better described as a conduction/convection model.
Regardless of mechanism, one needs to know how well or otherwise the appearance of both moderately and excessively scorched fibres compares with those of the Shroud. Here, without comment, is a series of x40 pictures of those excessively scorched fibres. Lower magnification pictures would have been better, say x32, but my microscope in USB-cable linkage to the laptop does not permit that. I tried Thibault Heimburger’s suggestion of replacing the USB attachment with a standard (x5 objective) lens to give an overall magnification of x20, and taking photographs through the eyepiece, but have so far seen little but bright circles of light!
Sorry about the stray curly blue strand in all the pictures. It’s some debris in the USB eyepiece which is a sealed unit.
So there we are are folks -the worst case scenario. The threads and fibres are unlikely to be much darker than the ones you see above, at least not at temperatures (220 to 315 degrees C we are told) that produces scorches vis pyrolysis of hemicelluloses, as distinct from the cellulose pyrolysis and progressive carbonisation that would occur at higher temperatures (315-400).
My answer to the steeped-in-mystique Turin Shroud - evolving gradually from some 10 years of science-based experimental modelling. 