“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see.
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII
It is Easter weekend. Yesterday we commemorated the death of a man called Jesus two thousand years ago, his deposition in a cave tomb, and his envelopment in a cloth of fine linen; and tomorrow we will celebrate his Resurrection. Today, we may pause, and stop to consider the Shroud of Turin, as a graphic illustration of the occasion, speaking not only of events, but of their meaning and importance to a Christian.
The image on the Shroud is that of a man, and nothing more than a man. Gods and saints are universally recognised by their accompanying symbols, weapons, clothes, vehicles or companions, and Christ, in medieval imagery, is almost invariably equipped with a cruciform halo, but here is no more than the “poor, bare, forked animal” of King Lear, with nothing to identify him but himself. He has none of the trappings of wealth, power or authority, and cannot be placed in any particular time or in any particular place. He is, truly, a man for all seasons. He Is Who He Is.
He lies in defenceless, humiliating, nudity, but the expression on his face is one of dignity and nobility. His body is covered in injuries, but he shows no pain, fear or anger, but rather tolerance, fulfilment, and perhaps compassion; no anxiety, but fulfilment. One phase, at least, of his life is over, and he is content with it.
Alive, asleep, or dead? The Buddhist stupas of Nepal, and some of India, are cubes of stone on the top of vast white domes, surmounted by tall spires, symbolising Buddha’s eternal presence, linked to heaven above and earth below. Each face of the cube is painted with a pair of eyes, eternally watchful, in all directions. Christ Pantocrator, (the Ruler of All), occupies a similar position in Christian imagery, on the ceilings of innumerable domes, and the tympana of innumerable doors, of religious buildings in the Middle East and Europe. Gods do not, as a rule, sleep. They constantly watch over us, like nervous parents keeping an eye on their offspring.
But the eyes of the man in the Shroud are closed. He is not watching us. He is, at the very least, asleep. What does this tell us? The only other time Jesus is actually recorded as asleep is during a boat trip on the Sea of Galilee, in a storm so fierce it terrified the experienced sailors who were his companions (Matthew 8:23-27, Mark 4:35-41, Luke 8:22-25). How come Jesus was asleep? Explanations based on him being exhausted after a lot of preaching miss the episode’s real importance. Jesus’s sleep is the sleep of supreme confidence, and supreme authority. He does not need to fuss about the weather, and he does not need to fuss about people. And in his presence, people do not need to fuss either. Perhaps he will wake and calm the storm, as he is recorded doing in the gospels, and perhaps he won’t, but all shall be well nevertheless. “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” (Julian of Norwich).
Apart from the closed eyes, there is little to suggest death. There is no flaccidity, no loss of muscle tone or the relaxation of features seen in death, no rictus sardonicus. The arms appear abnormally long in order to cover the genitals, but they are comfortably bent, not stretched as they would have been in rigor mortis, had the artist intended to represent a body recently released from a cross. This is a body in repose.
But not, wholly, relaxed. The legs are crossed at the feet and held in position, not flopping apart, and the arms are held off the ground, and crossed at the wrist, as if tied in place. The head is symmetrically on the shoulders, the hair symmetrically on each side. This body has been positioned like this, by somebody else, and held in place, as if in a coffin. Dead then, but surely not departed. Dead, but with potential.
Dribbled over his hair, along his arms, down his chest, across his back and the sole of his foot is blood. Whether, on the Shroud, it is “real” or not, and absurdly, whether it is “human” or not, is trivial. It’s blood, and its precocity makes a stark contrast to the overall serenity of the image. It compels attention. It has significance. It is a mark of sacrifice, not only the self-sacrifice of the man himself, but also of the blood dribbled over the doorposts of the captive Jews in Egypt, marking them out as God’s own.
A ‘normal’ blood sacrifice had multiple meanings and achieved different ends. At its simplest, it was the giving up of something valuable, in simple atonement for wrong, or in exchange for redemption. On occasion, a biblical sacrifice was completely burnt to ashes (holocaust), but more usually, in practice a sacrifice (thysia) was seldom wasted. After being killed and roasted, the sacrifice was shared out among the deserving as a meal. The blood on the Shroud is therefore a visual reminder of Christ’s words: “This is my body,” which is to be shared out among his followers, and also of his subsequent instruction: “Do this in memory of me.” The Shroud therefore has an evangelical message, and is an evangelical instruction.
Regardless of what, exactly, it consists of, the Shroud image does not have the visual characteristics of a portrait, but of an imprint. When an artist produces a portrait, he reproduces what he sees in front of him, but an imprint has many things reversed, as in a mirror. When we look at the Shroud, we look at a kind of mirror. We stand, or lie, in exactly the same place he stood or lay, in an improbable superposition. This man is not just beside us, he is within us, an integral part of us, and, judging by the fact that we see no reflection of ourselves in the Shroud, he is the more significant part. Of our bipartite existence, we are the more evanescent.
Even so, the Shroud image is scarcely visible, bleached out, vague and indistinct. Pam Moon (and I agree with her) thinks this can be seen as an analogy of Paul’s description, “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” Actually the word Paul uses is αἰνίγματι, literally “enigmatically” rather than darkly, which fits the Shroud even better.
There is considerable debate, which I do not intend to explore here, about the method by which the image actually appeared on the Shroud, but however that was, we may be sure that it is not meant to represent a portrait. It is meant to represent a cloth enveloping a body back and front, on which traces of that body have produced an image. As such, it defines a specific occasion, with a specific date and time, in human history. This man has been flogged, crowned with spikes, crucified by nailing, and speared through the ribs. We know who it is, and when, and where, and how, he was tortured and died. This man, the Shroud tells us, is not a legend, like King Arthur or Robin Hood, and still less a myth, like Perseus or Thor. The Christian belief, that God and man were one in the person of Jesus, is not merely a concept, or abstraction, but a historical event. Although the Shroud only illustrates death, it implies birth, childhood, and adulthood, in a Roman-occupied Middle Eastern country, at a time of political and theological uncertainty, and hints – because the Shroud is otherwise undeteriorated – and the rapid removal of the body, and hence the Resurrection.
The complex and varied symbolism of the Shroud has been elegantly and comprehensively explored by Russ Breault, whose presentation “Hidden Secrets of the Sacred Shroud” (originally an alliterative Seven Secrets, then Seven more, and now, for all I know, Seventy) is thoroughly recommended. I could only think of one of my own, the oxymoron of the Crown of Thorns, which recalls to my mind the monologue of Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt, in Shakespeare’s play.
“Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children and our sins lay on the King!
He must bear all.”
With great authority comes great responsibility. The heavier and more elaborate the crown, the greater the pressure on the wearer. The Victor’s crown is light, symbolising the achievement of success through effort and pain; but the King’s crown is heavy, symbolising his ongoing care of all the troubles and hardships of his people.
Too often, and I am as much to blame as anybody, the archaeological mystery of the Shroud tends to smother its real purpose as a ‘relic,’ to illustrate and help to explain the origins and meaning of the Christian faith. Once in a while, and what day could be more appropriate, it seems good to put aside the uncertainties of knowledge, and look for wisdom instead.
Hi Hugh,
Thanks for your response. We share a skepticism toward those who have waved the Shroud around mostly, and inexpertly, for its possible authenticity, neglecting its homiletic usefulness. Thanks for pointing out that unfortunate imbalance. As an authenticist myself, however, and also an agnostic, I’m more concerned about all of the more daring claims that it shows a resurrection.
Of course, the non- or anti-authenticist camp does its share of crude promotions, too. Both camps reflect the democratization of knowledge via the Internet, with all its pros and cons.
I still question your words about the “abnormally long arms,” the body “not … in rigor mortis,” the arms being “held off the ground,” and other things. They seemed loaded to me – borderline provocative, suggesting a fake Shroud or one with no real human body involved, instead of expressing the purely evangelistic motive you say you had. I don’t really see the relevance. Those words have often been used in claims by skeptics of the Shroud’s authenticity. Maybe rephrasing a few of them would have better served a simple homiletic or evocative purpose.
Anyway, your post was certainly very interesting. It’s also good to know of your affection for Shakespeare. Happy 460th (?) birthday, Will, and good luck to you, Hugh, at that birthday/anniversary festival.
John L.
Hi John,
Thanks for that. For a few years now I’ve been mildly irritated when attending to “sermons from the pulpit” by Christian pastors of all denominations, with the Shroud as their subject. You’d have thought they would use the Shroud as an evangelistic opportunity, but almost invariably any Christian association gets smothered under attempts to demonstrate its authenticity, for which they are clearly wholly underequipped. Ecce Homo is my attempt to write such a homily for myself. As I acknowledge, it owes something to Russ Breault’s presentations, but it also owes much to Pope John-Paul’s address in 1998, which has paragraphs on the image of suffering, the image of love, the image of powerlessness and the image of silence.
My approach was simply to look at the Shroud as an image. The arms look long. For this purpose it doesn’t matter why they look long, only that their length contributes to the meaning. They are ‘comfortably’ positioned, and they enable the body not to be clothed. Similarly the blood. This is a man covered in blood. It’s obviously his. Trying to prove it’s human as opposed to, say, gibbon, is absurd in this context. It’s a valid scientific question, but detracts from its evangelical meaning. For a while, a valid catechistic point could be made from the blood type, as some people thought that AB made Christ the “universal donor,” shedding his blood for all mankind. However, since it was pointed out that in fact AB makes one unable to share one’s blood with anybody who isn’t AB, the blood type has become less relevant.
Part of Pope Benedict XVI’s sermon on the Shroud in 2010 includes “The Image impressed upon the Shroud is that of a dead man, but the blood speaks of his life. Every trace of blood speaks of love and of life. Especially that huge stain near his rib, made by the blood and water that flowed copiously from a great wound inflicted by the tip of a Roman spear. That blood and that water speak of life. It is like a spring that murmurs in the silence, and we can hear it, we can listen to it in the silence of Holy Saturday.” From a scientific perspective, this makes little sense. Was the man dead or alive when he bled onto the cloth? But to ask such a question completely misses the point of the sermon.
Thanks for mentioning Shakespeare too! He has long been a fascination of mine – I’m giving a keynote address to a little local literary festival on his birthday – and there has been some interesting research into whether he had any influence on the King James Bible, and if not, why not. At least, some say, the fact that his language, in his plays, has remained familiar to successive generations and is still taught in schools today, has helped to keep the language of the KJV alive and ‘familiar’ as well, in spite of endless re-translations since.
Best wishes,
Hugh
Greetings Hugh,
Your “Ecce Homo” post on Easter Weekend was largely a departure from your usual focus on scientific and historical questions about the Turin Shroud. It was meditative and conciliatory in its intention, with gracious nods to a couple of noted Shroud authenticity believers. Thanks for writing it. The Shakespeare quotations were moving, too.
Your second paragraph mentions that medieval European art depicting Jesus always shows some peripheral features, “accompanying symbols, … companions … halo.” That is also true of the art depicting his body laid out for burial or in the tomb, with angels hovering, women mourning, landscapes in the background, or floral designs framing the picture. As you note, the Turin Shroud shows none of those things, “nothing more than a man.” It is, I might add, barren of all artistic clutter. That fact is intriguing – very intriguing.
Here and there you did allude to some factual issues about the remaining body, as imaged on the Shroud cloth. Some of them, supporting your general “medieval shroud” stance, deserve further comment. You wrote:
“There is no flaccidity, no loss of muscle tone or the relaxation of features seen in death….”
That is true, and the body’s condition is consistent with a real human body, dying after enormous physical exertion on a cross, undergoing rigor mortis, and having been neatly placed on and within a shroud by burial servants.
“The arms appear abnormally long….”
The word “appear” here is the key one. The arms only appear so to some people, especially those skeptical of the Shroud’s authenticity as that of Jesus. Many of us others, who believe in the probable authenticity of the Shroud, have performed the simple experiment of lying down and positioning our hands as those of the man depicted on the Shroud. Many of us have no problem doing so with our normal-length arms. Of course, arm length varies widely by individual, and also by race. East Asians have shorter limbs in general, a vestige of old Ice Age days, when retaining body warmth was so crucial to survival and a compact body helped that cause. Likewise, the limbs of those humans who, ethnically Semites, evolved in the hot, arid environment of Arabia, are generally longer than others’, often by an inch or two, for a cooling effect. That could also be a factor in this “long arms” case, if that description is actually true.
“[The arms] are comfortably bent, not stretched [out] as they would have been in rigor mortis….”
Actually, the arms’ position is consistent with rigor mortis, perhaps as it was just beginning, in which case the burial servants could have slowly brought the arms’ downward from their outstretched position on the cross before rigor fully set in. Or, if rigor in the arms was already complete on the cross, it could have been “broken” by pressure and a repeated bending of the joints, a loosening action commonly performed by those tending the dead, even today.
“The arms are held off the ground and cross at the wrist, as if tied in place.”
This aspect, too, is consistent with a real corpse, and need not imply a medieval wooden statue or manikin such as you have often suggested. And I’m not familiar with any medieval depictions of Jesus in his tomb with such bands tied around his wrists to hold the hands and arms together. No such bands are evident on the Turin Shroud, either, and they may not even have been used on Jesus. His arms could have remained in place, not falling apart to the sides, merely if the thumb of the top hand were placed under the wrist of the bottom hand. The resulting pressure and friction would act as a mild natural “vise,” keeping the hands and arms from slipping apart. Try it yourself. You’ll see. I’ve never read it suggested elsewhere, but it seems valid to me. In addition, the slightly hunched posture of the man, as has been proven by careful measurements, would have helped keep the hands together, not pulling them apart.
“Dribbled … blood. Whether it is ‘real’ or not, and absurdly, whether it is ‘human’ or not, is trivial.”
Your word “absurdly” in this context seems slightly odd, Hugh. If you are referring to the question of the blood on the Shroud being human, and are judging that claim as absurd, your complaint seems misplaced here. I would agree that, based on the very latest science, the blood on the Turin Shroud cannot be determined, chemically, as human (but may indeed be human), though it has indeed been determined, chemically, to be real blood. But that would not make the question itself absurd. Far from it. However, I may have misunderstood you here. If so, sorry.
John Loken