Anton Azzopardi, S.J.

I happened to come across a report in The Times of London of 6 April 2009 which states that official Vatican researchers have uncovered evidence that the Shroud had been kept and venerated by the Knights Templar since the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

Four days later, Professor Ray Rogers, an original investigator on the authenticity of the Shroud, wrote in The Telegraph acknowledging that the Radio Carbon-14 dating performed in 1988 (to which most people bowed their head as infallible) was in fact flawed. The C-14 concluded that the relic could not have originated prior to 1260. However, shortly before his death Rogers stated that “the worst possible sample of the linen cloth had been taken for the testing and consequently the age we produced was inaccurate.” He ended by saying that “I am coming to the conclusion that it (the Shroud) has a very good chance of being the piece of cloth that was used to bury the historic Jesus.”

A recent study by the French scientist Professor Thierry Castex has revealed that on the shroud are traces of words in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. Dr Barbara Frale, a highly qualified scientist, graduate in Mediaeval Archaeology and a specialist in Palaeography, Archives and Historical Research, who is also a historian-on-staff at the Vatican Secret Archives, told Vatican Radio on 26 July, 2009 that her own studies suggested that the letters on the shroud were written more than 1,800 years ago.

Even more recently I was further intrigued by an article I read in the International issue of the Messenger of St Anthony for January 2010, by Renzo Allegri on an interview he gave to Dr Barbara Frale herself on the Holy Shroud of Turin. There you are, I said to myself, the controversy on the Shroud has surfaced up again! So I set myself to write the following article drawing largely on the report of the interview by Dr Frale to Allegri.

Dr Frale agrees that the Radio Carbon-14 test has proved faulty, for it has given divergent results. On the other hand she states that her discoveries of new documents prove that the linen cloth, alias the Shroud, originated in the first century of our era, nay even in its first 30 years.

“I know,” says Dr Frale, “practically every facet of all the scientific examinations conducted on the Shroud in the last 20 years, including the famous Carbon-14 which was used to proclaim to the world that the relic was nothing but a mediaeval forgery. I have also studied the claims of those who have tried to reproduce a similar relic in their laboratories using the same means and equipment that a mediaeval scientist had at his disposal. They claim that the Shroud could easily have been produced in a mediaeval laboratory. I can confirm to you and your readers that these claims are outdated. The latest discoveries on the relic turn the tables on these sceptics, and reaffirm what tradition has always maintained, that is, that the famous linen cloth kept in Turin really did cover the body of a man who lived at the beginning of our era.”

In her published volume (393 pages) called La Sindone di Gesù Nazareno, Dr Frale proves that the figure impressed on that linen cloth is actually that of a man who lived in the first 30 years of our era, who had been tortured (over 700 wounds visible), crowned with thorns and crucified. She also asserts that the words impressed round the face of the figure with letters hardly visible to the naked eye and only recently discovered, are those of a man called Jesus Nazarene. The question remains whether that man was the same Jesus Nazarenus of the Gospels.

Dr Frale is also an authority on the Knights Templar. Her book The Templars: The Secret History Revealed (published in English last year), tells the saga of this mysterious Order of Christian warrior-monks, an Order which was founded in circa 1116, an off-shoot of the Crusades just as also were the two other off-shoot Orders, the Knights Hospitallers of St John (1113) and the Teutonic Knights (1190). These Orders were founded with the aim of protecting militarily and caring medically for the pilgrims going on pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The Templars were renowned warriors, and presumably because of their bravery on the battlefield they received gifts of estates and money from all over Europe. In fact, they amassed great wealth and became extremely powerful. When the Crusades failed, the Hospitallers became a naval patrol in the East, but the Templars became more business-minded and decadent. No wonder that they created antagonism and even drew the hatred of various monarchs and princes in Europe.

In 1307, Philip IV (the Fair) of France needed money for his Flemish Wars, and being unable to obtain it elsewhere began a persecution against the Templars so as to seize their wealth. The Templars were charged with heresy and idolatry, and under pressure from King Philip, Pope Clement V disbanded the Order in 1312. (This Pope later secretly absolved the Templars of their alleged heresy.) These Knights dispersed in various States in Europe, were arrested, and under horrible torture confessed the charges brought against them. Many of them ended up on the stake (after having retracted their confessions). Much of their property theoretically designated for the Knights Hospitallers was in fact acquired by secular States.

Dr Frale’s book I Templari e la Sindone di Cristo published in 2008 sheds new light on the Shroud for it links the relic to the Templars. It tells that the most heinous crime the Templars were accused of was that of idolatry, heresy and worship of the pagan god Baphomet (a divinity unknown in Western demonology before the 14th century). This god was said to be represented by a figure of a head of a man with a beard, moustache and long hair. Dr Frale was able to show that this accusation of idolatry was totally groundless. She explains: “My studies of the trials of the Knights Templar brought to light a document in which a certain young Frenchman, Arnaut Sabbatier by name, who entered the Order in 1287, testified that as part of the initiation he was taken to ‘a secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access’ and there he was shown ‘a long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man.’ The young neophyte was instructed to venerate the image by kissing its feet three times.” So Dr Frale concludes that the Templars were venerating not a false god but the figure on the Shroud. The reference to the head is explained by the fact that the linen cloth when folded left only the head visible.

Dr Frale then passes on to the inscriptions discovered by her and by other scientists round the face of the man on the Shroud. She states that such “inscriptions are reminiscent of the graffiti found in the ancient city of Pompeii and in the papyri from the era of the Tiberius who was Emperor in Rome at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus.” In 1978, the chemist Piero Ugolini noticed on the negative photo of the Shroud strange signs that looked like letters. He consulted Aldo Marastoni, an expert in ancient languages, who confirmed that those signs were inscriptions in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. They were words of the type “Nazarenos”, “in nece(m)” meaning “to death”, “IBEP” which suggests (T)IBEP(IUS), and other words in Hebrew. The Shroud scholars were enthused by such findings, but their enthusiasm was abruptly slaughtered in 1988 when the results of the Radio Carbon-14 came to be known.

However, when six years later, i.e. in 1994, the Radio C-14 shortcomings came to light, scientists resumed their research on the Shroud. Professor Andrè Marion of the Institute Superieur d’Optique d’Orsay in Paris with his sophisticated equipment discovered that under the face of the figure on the Shroud there was the Greek word HOY which could be interpreted as IHOY, a Greek translation of the Semitic original Yeshua which stands for Jesus. When this word is placed next to the one deciphered by Marastoni it forms IHOY NAZAPHNO, that is, Jesus Nazarene.

Dr Frale continues saying that “Professor Castex asked her for her opinion on the Hebrew, Greek and Latin words he discovered on the figure of the Shroud.” She examined them thoroughly herself and then showed them to two renowned scholars of Hebrew. They all agreed that those inscriptions and the others with them, submitted to specialists of the Sorbonne University in Paris, refer to the burial of a man called Yeshua Nazarani, just as any inscription on a tomb refers to the person buried underneath it. Furthermore, that man on the Shroud underwent torture, died and was wrapped in a burial shroud, and this happened at the time of Emperor Tiberius, that is in the first 30 years of our era. Tiberius reigned from AD 13 to 37.

Dr Frale rightly concludes the interview by saying that “it is not her task nor in her competence as a historical scientist to determine whether that man Yeshua Nazarani is the same Jesus Nazarenus of the Gospels.” However, the multitude of details found in the Shroud corresponding to those given in the Gospels hardly leave room for doubt. The Church has not pronounced itself on it, for after all it is not a doctrinal matter. But the Church has recognised its value in enhancing the devotion of the faithful to the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

From 10 April to 23 May this year 2010, the Shroud, which has been jealousy preserved in the Cathedral of Turin since 1578, was solemnly exposed to the public in that same cathedral, and over a million pilgrims went to honour this sacred relic. Pope Benedict XVI visited the Shroud this past 2 May.