What is the Shroud of Turin?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Clearly, the image arose from neutron emissions interacting with the cloth as the body was converted to energy. :winking_face_with_tongue:

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By Jove! I think you’ve got it! :laughing:

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I think one should review the pro-Jesus-shroudites in those discussions to see the models and explanations they thought held weight.

Neutron emission was invoked to explain the image and the discordant C14 dates …

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They don’t intend to. They serve only to show that Calvin’s argument against the shroud is not very good.

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Whilst a Christian for 50 years, I believed many bizarre things. The Turin Fraud wasn’t one of them.

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In spite or their intent, they add another layer of doubt to the shroud having anything to do with Jesus.

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Yes, that is one of the strangest amalgams of zany physics and mysticism I’ve encountered. Here is the Robert Rucker paper for his presentation to the International Society of Christian Apologetics.

Solving the Carbon Dating Problem for the Shroud of Turin

After introducing some history and tutorial on carbon dating, he launches into a critique of the 1988 dating by the three independent labs, where he complains that effort did not meet his soon to be forgotten exacting scientific standards. Then he proposes that C14 was produced on the Shroud by neutron absorption, which could have shifted the carbon date from the time of Jesus’ death, about 33 AD, to 1260-1390 AD, conveniently just when relics were popping up everywhere and the shroud made its debut.

While this sort of razzle dazzle has some precedent with the inventiveness of YEC’s accelerated radioactive decay, there is actually more difficultly. The standard modes for isotope decay towards greater stability are alpha (Helium nucleus), beta (electron or positron), and gamma (photon), which all occur in the human body due to carbon, potassium, and radon, ect. To get neutrons requires fission, which has no such appreciable source. Which is why Rucker goes on to posit Deuterium, the heavy form of hydrogen, which is present in the body. After copious yammering about the effect of neutrons on the shroud, with respect to the source of these neutrons he states ever so briefly

This would occur, for example, if only 0.0004% of the deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, atoms in the body were to fission. Deuterium is of special interest because it requires the least energy input to fission

But Deuterium is not fissile at all. It’s spontaneous direction is the opposite, fusion. Now with sufficient kinetic force, the strong force can be overcome and Deuterium made to fission, but the energy input required represents temperatures which would vaporize the shroud, tomb, and…whatever, we have long long long left the world of science. Who needs physics?, it is far less of a miracle just to form the image by fiat.

That is not all. Rucker states that the front and dorsal images on the Shroud were
probably formed by an extremely brief, extremely intense burst of vertically collimated radiation
emitted in the body. But radioactive processes emit in every which direction. Even if there was an electromagnetic field collimating charged particles, neutrons, as the name tells, are neutral.

So the whole thing, despite probably appearing scientifically convincing to many, is founded on nonsense. Of course one can believe the shroud is authentic without accepting any of Rucker’s explanation, but his paper is often cited by shroud advocates and is indicative of what passes for serious research in that crowd.

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I think a fair summary of current Shroud understanding is here. It also drives home a major issue: Pending further release of samples from the artifact or clear details about its provenance, the story remains undemonstrated. Can’t be ruled out but can’t be shown true at this point.

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Yes, proposals about neutron bombardment, nuclear fission and X-rays are “out there”. Contamination is a more realistic (and known) possibility.

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I’m a definite team medieval fabrication, but here is another more ambiguous perspective from Dan Porter who has moved from authentic advocate to much more uncertain.

After 23 Years Studying the Shroud, This Is What I Think

After studying the Shroud of Turin for nearly 25 years—much of that time arguing it was probably Jesus’ burial shroud—I undertook a rigorous reexamination of the facts. This process compelled me to change my position. Though I no longer believe the Shroud is authentic, I respect it as though it were.

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Strangely, I like that. Others’ totems must be respected. Unless they’re overtly evil, and even then one can say ‘I understand’. I’m a non-believer who works fully, perfectly respectfully for a church after all.

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Surely you are expressing your own thoughts. They certainly aren’t mine.

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If it was obvious, someone would be able to explain hos it was done and why anyone in the fourteenth century would have made a photographic negative image with 3D information contained in the image.

We don’t know what the custom was for individuals who had to be practically thrown in the tomb before the Sabbath.

I second that notion.

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Or as the shroud collapsed through a body being transformed, or as the body rose up through the cloth, or . . . .
If it’s the real deal, I wanna hear from Jesus what happened.

You keep saying sensible things. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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They didn’t. That would require supernatural intent. So it remains as obvious as it was over 600 years ago.

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Shroud of Turin Used to Create 3D Copy of Jesus

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No it isn’t. He wasn’t a long haired pretty boy. And why didn’t rigor wear off? Another ‘miracle’. Or was it to pose [as] a corpse so that the hands covered the uncircumcised penis?

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Prompt to ChatGPT: “Does Nicole Oresme mention anything about the D’Arcis story about the anonymous painter of the Shroud of Turin?”

Short answer: no—at least in the document that’s just been published, Oresme does not mention anything like d’Arcis’s story about an anonymous painter who confessed.

A bit more detail:

  • The newly discovered Oresme text (studied by Nicolas Sarzeaud) is a treatise on mirabilia written between 1355 and 1382, probably after about 1370. In it, Oresme cites the Lirey Shroud as a “clear/patent example” of clerical fraud, used to drum up offerings for a shrine. (Scimex)

  • Oresme does not:

    • give a place of fabrication for the cloth,

    • name any artist or painter, or

    • quote any confession of having painted the image.

    That absence is explicitly noted in modern commentary: his text has “no place of fabrication, no names of any painters or artists, no quotations of any confessions (as were alleged in the later d’Arcis Memorandum…).” (medievalshroud.com)

  • Pierre d’Arcis’s famous memorandum to Clement VII is from 1389, and it is the document that talks about Oresme’s successor-bishop Henri de Poitiers allegedly identifying an artist who confessed to painting the image. (shroud.com)

So:
Oresme is earlier than d’Arcis and independently skeptical. He denounces the Lirey Shroud as a fraud, but he does not repeat or anticipate the specific “anonymous painter’s confession” story that appears later in the d’Arcis memorandum.

Prompt to ChatGPT: “The relationships between Nicole Oresme, Henri de Poitiers, and Pierre d’Arcis and their proximities to each other and the Shroud.”

Short version:
All three are 14th-century French bishops, but only Henri de Poitiers and Pierre d’Arcis actually had jurisdiction over Lirey (and thus over the Shroud). Nicole Oresme was geographically further away in Normandy but intellectually close to the case and very likely knew of Henri’s earlier investigation.

Who’s who

Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382)

  • Role: Scholar, royal counsellor to the French king, later Bishop of Lisieux (Normandy, from 1377). (Wikipedia)

  • Location: Lisieux is ~300 km northwest of Troyes; not in the Champagne/Troyes ecclesiastical orbit. (Distance From To)

  • Connection to the Shroud:

    • In a treatise on mirabilia written sometime between ~1355 and 1382, he cites the Lirey “shroud of the Lord Jesus Christ” as a clear example of a fraudulent relic promoted by clergy to attract offerings. (Medievalists.net)

    • He doesn’t name a painter or describe a formal investigation, but he is aware of the Lirey shrine and treats it as a notorious deception.

Henri de Poitiers (d. 1370)

  • Role: Bishop of Troyes from 1353 until his death in 1370. (Catholic Hierarchy)

  • Location / jurisdiction: Troyes is the diocesan seat; Lirey is a small village about 20 km south-west of Troyes, so the Lirey church (where the Shroud was displayed) fell directly under his authority. (Troyes Champagne Tourism)

  • Connection to the Shroud:

    • The Shroud (then the “Shroud of Lirey”) appears in the record around 1354–1355, when Geoffroi de Charny exhibited it in the new collegiate church at Lirey. (Wikipedia)

    • In Pierre d’Arcis’s later 1389 memorandum, Henri is said to have carried out an inquiry around 1355, discovered that the cloth was “cunningly painted,” and obtained a confession from the artist; he then ordered the exhibition suppressed. (shroud.com)

    • Independent documents also show Henri corresponding about the Lirey church; one 1356 letter of praise to Geoffroi de Charny shows he was closely engaged with the new foundation. (shroud.com)

Pierre d’Arcis (d. 1395)

  • Role: Bishop of Troyes from 1377 to 1395, i.e., Henri de Poitiers’s successor, with the same jurisdiction over Lirey. (medievalshroud.com)

  • Connection to the Shroud:

    • In 1389, he wrote his famous memorandum to Antipope Clement VII, denouncing the Lirey cloth as a forgery and explicitly recalling Henri de Poitiers’s earlier investigation and the claimed painter’s confession. (Wikipedia)

    • Clement VII allowed the Lirey canons to continue exhibiting the cloth, but only as a “representation” of the Passion, not as the true shroud, and ordered d’Arcis to keep silent. (Shroud of Turin Information)

How they relate to each other and to the Shroud

Chronological & ecclesiastical chain

  1. c. 1354–1355 – First Lirey exhibitions

    • Shroud displayed at Lirey under Bishop Henri de Poitiers. He is the local ordinary with direct jurisdiction. (Wikipedia)

  2. c. 1355 – Henri’s investigation (as later reported)

    • According to Pierre d’Arcis (writing in 1389), Henri investigates, learns it is a painted cloth, hears the artist’s confession, and suppresses the cult. (shroud.com)

  3. 1350s–1370s – Oresme’s perspective

    • Nicole Oresme, then a Paris master and later royal counsellor, is working within the same French ecclesiastical world; he likely hears of the Lirey affair through court and church networks.

    • In his mirabilia treatise (dated broadly 1355–1382), he uses the Champagne/Lirey shroud as a paradigmatic case of clerical fraud—independent confirmation that the Lirey relic already had a reputation problem while Henri was bishop and before d’Arcis’s letter. (Medievalists.net)

  4. 1377–1395 – D’Arcis’s episcopate

    • After Henri’s death (1370), several bishops later, Pierre d’Arcis becomes bishop of Troyes (1377). (Catholic Hierarchy)

    • When the Shroud is once again attracting crowds and money at Lirey in the 1380s, d’Arcis revives the earlier objections, explicitly citing Henri de Poitiers as his predecessor who had already exposed the fraud. (Wikipedia)

Geographical “proximity”

  • Lirey → Troyes: About 20 km; the Shroud’s first documented home is essentially in the “suburbs” of the Troyes diocese. (Troyes Champagne Tourism)

  • Troyes → Lisieux (Oresme’s see): Roughly 300+ km apart as the crow flies; different regions (Champagne vs Normandy). (Distance From To)

  • So:

    • Henri & d’Arcis: spatially and juridically closest—they are the bishops whose diocesan territory contains the Lirey church and the Shroud.

    • Oresme: physically more distant, but as a top Paris theologian and later bishop of Lisieux, he’s still “close” in intellectual and political networks, and aware enough to single the Lirey shroud out as a notorious example of clerical deception.

One-sentence synthesis

  • Henri de Poitiers is the first local bishop to investigate and (per later testimony) condemn the Lirey Shroud;

  • Nicole Oresme, operating mainly in Paris and later Lisieux, cites that same Lirey shroud as a classic clerical fraud;

  • Pierre d’Arcis, Henri’s successor in Troyes, reopens the controversy in 1389, explicitly leaning on Henri’s earlier inquiry and asserting the cloth was a painted forgery—all three together forming a chain of 14th-century French skepticism centered on a single rural shrine 20 km from Troyes.

Prompt to ChatGPT: “What explicitly did Henri de Poitiers write about the Shroud?”

ChatGPT: “Short answer:
From Henri de Poitiers himself, we only have one known document that touches the Lirey situation at all: a letter dated 28 May 1356 to Geoffroi I de Charny. And it does not condemn the Shroud or call it a painting; it does the opposite—he formally approves what Geoffroi has done.

What the 28 May 1356 letter says

The letter survives in the diocesan collection published by Camuzat and is summarized by Fossati and others. In it Henri:

  • Says he has read and carefully considered Geoffroi’s letters about the new church at Lirey and Geoffroi’s devotion to the “divine cult”.

  • States that the cult and arrangements described in Geoffroi’s documents have been canonically and ritually prescribed, according to legitimate documents.

  • Then he declares that he “praises, ratifies and approves” (“laudamus, ratificamus, approbamus”) everything in those letters, and formally gives his consent, authority and decree, sealing the letter as a permanent record. (Shroud)

Modern Shroud historians point out:

  • This 1356 letter is “the only extant document of Bishop Henri de Poitiers which bears upon the question” of the Lirey relic. (Shroud)

  • There is no surviving document from Henri:

    • setting up an inquiry into the cloth,

    • recording an artist’s confession,

    • or describing the Shroud as a painting or fraud. (Shroud)

All of those details—“cunningly painted,” “artist confessed,” etc.—come only from Pierre d’Arcis’s memorandum written about 34 years later, and are thus second-hand claims about what Henri supposedly did, not Henri’s own explicit words. (Wikipedia)

So, “explicitly,” what did Henri write about the Shroud?

  • Positively: He explicitly approved Geoffroi de Charny’s Lirey foundation and its cult, after examining Geoffroi’s documents, and formally “praises, ratifies, approves” them.

  • Negatively: He never, in any surviving text, calls the Shroud a painting, forgery, or fraud, nor does he mention any painter or inquiry.

Everything else about Henri’s supposed condemnation of the Shroud comes from later writers (mainly d’Arcis), not from Henri’s own pen.”

Prompt to ChatGPT: “Given your last post, why did you write: “Henri de Poitiers is the first local bishop to investigate and (per later testimony) condemn the Lirey Shroud;”? According to whose testimony did Henri de Poitiers condemn the Lirey Shroud?”

ChatGPT: “Good catch, and thank you for pressing on that.

I should not have written:

“Henri de Poitiers is the first local bishop to investigate and (per later testimony) condemn the Lirey Shroud…”

as if “investigate and condemn” were an established historical fact. That wording blurs an important distinction between:

  • What we have from Henri himself, and

  • What Pierre d’Arcis later claims Henri did.

What we actually have

From Henri de Poitiers’s own hand, the only known document related to Lirey is his 28 May 1356 letter praising and approving Geoffroi de Charny’s foundation and its cult. It does not condemn the Shroud.

Where the “investigate and condemn” story comes from

The whole “Henri discovered the fraud, found it was cunningly painted, and the artist confessed” narrative comes only from Pierre d’Arcis’s 1389 memorandum to Clement VII. In that memo, d’Arcis says (about Henri):

“…after diligent inquiry and examination, he discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it…”

So when I said:

“Henri de Poitiers is the first local bishop to investigate and (per later testimony) condemn the Lirey Shroud…”

what I should have said was something like:

“Henri de Poitiers is reported by Pierre d’Arcis to have investigated and condemned the Lirey Shroud…”

because:

  • The only testimony for that investigation/condemnation is d’Arcis’s, written ~34 years later.

  • There is no surviving document from Henri that records such an inquiry or condemnation.

So to answer your explicit question:

According to whose testimony did Henri de Poitiers condemn the Lirey Shroud?

Only according to Pierre d’Arcis’s testimony in his 1389 memorandum—not according to Henri’s own extant writings.

That was my mistake in phrasing, and you were right to call me on it.”

Prompt to ChatGPT: “By the way, what position did Oresme take regarding the Geocentric Earth in writing?”

ChatGPT: “In writing, Oresme ends up officially geocentrist / geostationary, but only after giving a remarkably strong, systematic case for a rotating Earth.

In his French Livre du ciel et du monde (his commentary on Aristotle’s De caelo), he:

  1. Presents the Heraclides-style view
    He explicitly describes the opinion that:

    the earth is moved circularly and the heavens are at rest.

  2. Argues it cannot be disproved by observation
    He says you can’t show by experience that the heavens move rather than the Earth, because:

    • if an observer were on the heavens looking at Earth, Earth would appear to move;

    • if the observer is on Earth, the heavens appear to move.
      In other words, the phenomena are observationally equivalent.

  3. Defends Earth’s rotation on physical and simplicity grounds
    He:

    • rejects the usual medieval “huge wind” argument (if Earth moved, air would be left behind), by saying Earth, water, and air could share the same motion;

    • notes that having the small Earth rotate is simpler than making the whole immense heavens spin daily.

  4. But then explicitly reaffirms the traditional geocentric stance
    After all that, he concludes that:

    • reason doesn’t yield a decisive verdict (the evidence is inconclusive);

    • Scripture and tradition teach that the heavens move and the Earth is at rest;

    • therefore he adheres to the prevailing view: the heavens rotate daily around an immobile Earth.

So, in short:

  • Methodologically, Oresme is shockingly modern: he shows that a rotating Earth is logically and observationally defensible, and that the geocentric vs rotating-Earth choice is underdetermined by appearances.

  • Formally and explicitly, he does not abandon geocentrism; on the written record he ends by affirming an Earth at rest and moving heavens, subordinating reason to revelation and tradition.”

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Prompt to ChatGPT: “Did any pope or authority over Henri de Poitiers, Pierre d’Arcis, or Nicole Oresme limit or forbid public display or the Shroud anywhere? If so, who, when, and where?”

ChatGPT: “Short answer:

  • Yes, there was a higher authority who limited how the Shroud could be publicly displayed, and that was Avignon Pope (Antipope) Clement VII in 1389–1390, in relation to Lirey (the de Charny church in the diocese of Troyes).

  • No, we have no evidence of any superior over Henri de Poitiers, Pierre d’Arcis, or Nicole Oresme issuing a blanket ban on the Shroud or forbidding Oresme personally to say anything about it.

Let me separate this by person and authority.

1. Over Pierre d’Arcis (Bishop of Troyes)

Clement VII’s intervention

When Pierre d’Arcis complained to Clement VII in 1389 that the Lirey cloth was a fraud, Clement did not ban the cloth. Instead he:

  1. Letter of 28 July 1389 (Avignon)

    • Refers to the cloth as a “figure or representation of the Shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ” (figura seu representacio sudarii Domini Nostri Iesu Christi).

    • Treats it as an object that may be displayed and venerated, but as an image, not explicitly as the true burial sheet.

  2. Bull of 6 January 1390 (Avignon)

    • This is the key “restrictive” document. According to the text analyzed in Shroud Spectrum International:

      • Clement VII forbids the use of the full liturgical solemnities normally granted to relics when the cloth is shown.

      • He requires that, whenever the Shroud is displayed, it must be clearly announced in a “loud and intelligible voice” that the linen is not the true shroud but a figure or representation.

    • He threatens Pierre d’Arcis with excommunication if the bishop tries to prevent exposition of the cloth as long as these conditions are observed.

    So Clement is doing two things at once:

    • Limiting the way the Shroud may be presented (no relic-level solemnities; must be called a representation).

    • Limiting d’Arcis himself by ordering him not to interfere with those regulated expositions.

  3. Bull of 1 June 1390

    • Reiterates the language “figure or representation of the Shroud of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” and grants indulgences to pilgrims coming to Lirey because “the Shroud with the imprint of Our Lord Jesus Christ is there preserved with veneration.”

    • The original register text’s phrase “pictura seu tabula” (“picture or painting”) from the earlier bull is crossed out and replaced with figura seu representacio, showing some papal hesitation about simply calling it a painting but still insisting it be treated as an image, not proclaimed as the actual shroud.

Bottom line for d’Arcis:

  • Yes, Clement VII (Avignon) acted as a superior authority and limited public display at Lirey (diocese of Troyes, Champagne).

  • He did not forbid showing the cloth; he regulated it and forbade presenting it as the true burial shroud.

2. Over Henri de Poitiers (Earlier Bishop of Troyes)

Henri (bishop 1353–1370) is earlier than Clement VII’s bulls. We have:

  • A 1356 letter from Henri approving Geoffroi de Charny’s foundation at Lirey and its cult, not condemning it.

  • Later reports (coming from Pierre d’Arcis and some modern reconstructions) that Henri ordered the display stopped in the 1350s, which, if true, would have been Henri himself, not a superior, limiting exhibition in his own diocese.

However:

  • There is no surviving evidence that any pope or higher authority over Henri ordered him, in his time, to forbid or limit the display.

  • All the documented higher-order regulation comes later, with Clement VII responding to d’Arcis decades after Henri’s death.

So for Henri:

  • Any prohibition of display in the 1350s is local episcopal action, not imposed from above.

  • No known papal decree in Henri’s lifetime deals with the Shroud.

3. Over Nicole Oresme (Bishop of Lisieux, royal counsellor)

For Oresme:

  • His treatise on mirabilia (written ca. 1355–1382) uses the Lirey shroud as a “clear” and “patent” example of clerical fraud—an illustration of how clergy invent false relics to raise offerings.

  • There is no record of any pope, metropolitan, or royal order:

    • censoring him for this opinion,

    • or issuing any rule about displaying the Shroud in his diocese (Lisieux, in Normandy),

    • or limiting him personally with respect to the Shroud.

Oresme isn’t in the direct jurisdictional chain over Lirey. He is part of the intellectual conversation and a critic, but there is no evidence that any superior over him issued a decree about the Shroud’s public display.

4. Secular authority: King Charles VI (over the clergy in France)

One more “authority above” the local clerics is the French crown:

  • King Charles VI of France (r. 1380–1422) reportedly ordered the Shroud moved to Troyes from Lirey in 1389, citing impropriety; the order proved unenforceable when local officials could not carry it out.

That’s a secular attempt to control the Shroud’s location and effectively its display, though it didn’t succeed.

So, to answer your question directly

Did any pope or authority over Henri de Poitiers, Pierre d’Arcis, or Nicole Oresme limit or forbid public display of the Shroud anywhere? If so, who, when, and where?

  • Over Pierre d’Arcis (Bishop of Troyes):

    • Yes.

    • Who: Avignon Pope Clement VII.

    • When: Letter of 28 July 1389, Bull of 6 January 1390, Bull of 1 June 1390.

    • Where: The collegiate church at Lirey in the diocese of Troyes (Champagne).

    • What: Allowed the Shroud to be shown but limited the display—no full relic solemnities, and it must be publicly described as a “figure or representation”, not as the actual burial shroud.

  • Over Henri de Poitiers:

    • No clear evidence of any pope or higher authority ordering him to limit or forbid the Shroud’s display during his episcopate. Any suppression in the 1350s appears to be Henri’s own action, if it happened as later claimed.

  • Over Nicole Oresme:

    • No evidence of any superior (pope or otherwise) issuing orders about the Shroud’s display in his sphere or curbing his right to denounce it. His critique is a scholarly one, not part of a legal intervention.

And outside the strictly ecclesiastical hierarchy:

  • King Charles VI tried (unsuccessfully) in 1389 to have the Shroud removed to Troyes, which would have affected its public display at Lirey, but that order seems never to have been effectively carried out.”
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