Turin shroud 'probably was genuine'
Experts gathering in Vienna to compare evidence on the Turin Shroud have
been hearing it probably was genuine.
The congress was organised to try and decide if the shroud is a sacred relic
or a medireview fraud.
They heard the latest indications are the shroud, which is said to have
wrapped the body of Christ, was from that time period.
By comparing chemical and spectral analyses of the shroud, Professor Piero
Savarino told delegates he had proved the image of a man in the material
could not have been painted on.
He said: "The image is a result of oxidisation on the surface of the linen
and the dehydration of the individual threads at a low temperature. It is a
remarkable process and one that could not possibly have been recreated using
m edireview technology."
Swiss textile expert, Dr Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, said the weave and style
of material it was made from were the same as would have come from the Dead
Sea area at the time of Christ.
She said it could be clearly dated as having been woven in the period 40
years before the birth of Christ to up to 70 years after. She said: "There
is no way it could have been a forgery from the 13th or 14th centuries."
Pathologist Dr Pieluigi Baima Bollone, from Turin University, said the image
was identical to the way people looked at the time, as proven by Byzantine
coins and illustrations from the period. He also claimed there had been
traces of two coins from the time of Pontius Pilate on the shroud.
Austria's Archbishop Christoph Schoenborn said the history of the Turin
shroud was something for scientists to prove.
He added: "It certainly matches in every detail that we know of the passion
of Christ and the refore seems highly likely that it was indeed the burial
shroud that was used after the crucifixion."
Story filed: 14:29 Friday 31st May 2002
Shroud of germs
Stephen Mattingly believes the Turin shroud was 'painted' by bacteria from a dying man's body. Laura Spinney meets the Catholic microbiologist challenging the medieval hoax theory
Thursday June 12, 2003
The image of a tall, bearded man bearing the marks of crucifixion that adorn the Turin shroud has never been adequately explained. Those who have attempted to answer the vexed question of the shroud's origins have often found themselves accused of poor science, even vested interests. So it is a brave man who enters the fray with a new and ultimately unprovable theory. But a respected American microbiologist has done just that, and is so convinced he is right, he has lathered himself in germs and put his professional reputation on the line to persuade the rest of us.
Stephen Mattingly of the University of Texas Health Science Centre in San Antonio believes the image on the Turin shroud was created not by human hands or any mystical power, as has been suggested, but by bacteria. The humble microbes, he says, multiplied in the wounds of a person who died very slowly, and whose corpse was then washed and wrapped in a linen sheet in readiness for burial. Washing the body made the wounds sticky, so the cloth stuck fast and became impregnated with bacteria. Finally, says Mattingly, the bacteria died, shedding proteins that gradually oxidised, causing a stain in the cloth that turned yel low and darkened, like a slow developing photograph.
The theory may be simple, but persuading people he is right will not be easy. In 1989, three separate scientific teams published a study of the shroud in the journal Nature. Using radiocarbon dating, they claimed the shroud must have come into being some time between 1260 and 1390 -suggesting that it was a medieval hoax rather than the genuine article. Their paper spawned much speculation as to who might have created the image, including one theory that it was the handiwork of Leonardo da Vinci. Mattingly thinks the three teams got it wrong. Modern bacteria on the linen could have messed up the dating technique, producing a date that was far too recent. He doesn't claim that the individual wrapped in the linen shroud was necessarily Jesus, but he does think microbes, not Leonardo, were the real artists behind the image.
If he is right, his theory could clear up some long-standing mysteries about the image: its striking three-dimensional quality, which he accounts for by varying densities of bacteria accumulating in the nooks and crannies of the dying man's body; the fact that it only appears on one side of the cloth; and, perhaps most damning of all for the artist hypothesis, the complete absence of brushstrokes. "Bacteria do not need a paintbrush," he says.
Mattingly is a Catholic and believes the biblical account of Jesus' death. But he insists the Turin shroud is not the basis for his belief. His experiments are nevertheless based on a set of assumptions gleaned from the Bible and what is known historically about crucifixion. It was the preferred means of dispatching criminals in the first century AD and took as long as 72 hours to kill a man.
Mattingly realised that during those three days, the unfortunate would bleed and lose other body fluids, all of which would encourage bacteria to multiply to unusually high levels.
One of the most common types of bacteria found on the human skin is Staphylococcus epidermidis, usually present in harmless concentrations of around 10m clumps, known as "colony forming units", per square centimetre. Estimating that during crucifixion, this number might increase by up to a hundredfold, Mattingly took swabs of Staphylococcus epidermidis from his skin and grew them, forming a "biofilm", a sugary matrix of microbes which can absorb water, becoming extremely sticky. He then killed the bacteria with heat to avoid infection, and smeared the biofilm back on to his hands and face. Sure enough, Mattingly found that his skin became very sticky where he had smeared on the mixture.
Having lathered on the bacteria, Mattingly applied a damp linen cloth to his hands and face, allowed it to dry, and peeled it off - with no little difficulty. He found the linen bore a straw-yellow imprint of the matching body part that became bolder over subsequent weeks. The bacterial imprint revealed fingernails, a ring and facial features, very similar in quality to the image on the Turin shroud.
Mattingly's findings have yet to be published in a scientific journal, but have already sparked controversy - including a difference of opinion with his collaborator, Barrie Schwortz. Schwortz was the official documenting photographer for the Shroud of Turin Research Project (Sturp), set up by a group of US scientists in the late 1970s.
Schwortz cautions that there seem to be discrepancies between Mattingly's image and the shroud. For instance, the image of Mattingly's face is distorted by the wrap-around effect of the cloth, but the image on the shroud is not. Mattingly is defiant though: "I am convinced that bacteria painted the image," he says. "They would have to have, based on the conditions thatexisted during the crucifixion."
Having examined the shroud, Sturp concluded in 1981 that it contained no pigments, paints, dyes or stains, and that the image was probably created by oxidation and dehydration of the cellulose fibres of the linen itself. That is still the prevailing view, but according to Mattingly, there was not a single microbiologist on the Sturp team, and they only failed to find bacterial pigments because they did not look for them.
Even more contentious, however, is Mattingly's claim that microbes skewed the shroud's radiocarbon date - the claim on which his theory depends. The fragments of the shroud he has seen, he says, are "completely coated" with bacteria, just like any piece of dirty old linen might be. If the radiocarbon dating could be repeated on purified fragments, it might prove to have come from the first century AD, he says.
Robert Hedges at the University of Oxford's research laboratory for archaeology, who was part of the British effort to date the shroud, dismisses that as highly unlikely. "If the shroud was originally 2,000 years old, but is contaminated by modern material to give a date of AD1250, the labs must have measured material contaminated by 60% modern, 20th-century biofilm," he says. "I find this incredible. It would be more biofilm than cellulose."
New tests on purified linen would help to ascertain the truth, says Mattingly, but no further tests are planned. For now, the controversy is set to rage on. "Is this the burial linen of Jesus of Nazareth?" asks Mattingly. "We will never know for certain."
Also see:
All Copyrights © are acknowledged. Material reproduced here is for educational and research purposes only.
