Folding Patterns

A review of ‘Folding Patterns of the Shroud of Turin,’ by Pam Moon, academia.edu, January 2025

The various marks left by adventitious damage to the Shroud demonstrate at least three different ways in which the Shroud has been folded, and throughout most of the twentieth century it has been rolled up. In her paper, Pam Moon describes the patterns left by these folds, suggests several more which are not so obvious, and thinks that the proliferation causes a “significant problem” to medievalists.

I disagree with the conclusions, of course, but a review of the folds is no bad thing, provided it is carried out with precision, especially if it is proposed that some of the creases are still visible. Unfortunately, this paper is rather sketchy in that regard, so that any attempt to match the diagrams provided to any putative remains on the Shroud will be seen to be fanciful rather than evidenced.

The chronology of the damage is not well understood, so for the sake of ready comparison I will treat the folds in the same order as Moon does.

ONE: The big water stains.
On an enhanced photo of the cloth, these look like this:

A cursory inspection of the central patches suggests two-fold symmetry, as if each stain represents an unfolded corner. This was thoroughly investigated by Aldo Guerreschi and Michele Salcito, who found that folding the Shroud in half lengthwise twice, and then concertina-style into thirteen layers of this four-layer strip, achieved a superposition of all the stains as if they all derived from a single event, except for the right hand edge, which is loose and indistinct, and the left hand edge, which is strongly skewed.¹ Their final model looked like bit this, a zig-zag pattern with collapsed ends:

The folding pattern of this configuration is this:

…which is a bit different from Pam Moon’s version.

TWO: The Image of Edessa
Next we move to the much discredited idea that the Image of Edessa was the Shroud, folded three times, which is a compromise interpretation of ‘tetradiplon,’ the word which occurs in one single document, referring to the towel Jesus was given to wipe his face.²

In Pam Moon’s paper, this is compared to an alleged pattern of creases observed by John Jackson:³

In fact, these creases are fanciful, as we shall see, but even if they existed, they do not properly match the required pattern. Jackson accounts for the greater distance between his folds and those derived from folding the Shroud by assuming that it was once several centimetres longer than it is now.

THREE: The Limburg Staurotheke
The third folding, in the paper, folds the Shroud into a small rectangle to fit into a 48 x 38 x 6cm reliquary called the Limburg Staurotheke. This is a particular whim of Pam Moon’s, and depends on this complete and well-understood artefact actually being the lid of another, deeper box where the Shroud was stored. There is zero possibility that this is true. But anyway “To fit the size of the Limburg Staurotheke exactly, the Shroud would need to be folded lengthways twice and then into a 10-fold concertina. Like this:

Actually, as Moon correctly calculates, this would result in rectangles 44cm long and 27.5cm wide, leaving generous space around the sides. If the box were bigger, speculates Moon, fewer folds would be necessary, and gives this as her interpretation. If.

FOUR: Folded in half
Number Four is a simple fold in half, one image on either side, which is not at all unlikely at any time or place.

FIVE: The “Poker Holes”
Number Five brings us to the “poker holes,” the four repeats of which, decreasing in size, suggest that the Shroud was folded in four when they appeared. Interestingly, the uppermost face of the cloth when these were made, assuming something dropped on it from above, was the left hand side of the man’s dorsal image. This seems an unlikely display position, so maybe either the Shroud was in the process of being folded further when the accident occurred, or perhaps was folded with the image inside, so the surface looked more or less uniform.

Edit! John Loken points out in a comment below that Moon associates this folding with an interpretation she makes of an illustration in the ‘Madrid Skylitzes,’ which is described in the text as “After Leo was put to death, his assassins callously dragged his corpse through the Skyla gate and brought it into the Hippodrome, fearing nothing because the imperial palace was guarded at all points by their own forces.” I discuss it more fully in a previous post, but it is worth showing the picture of the body of Leo V, which Moon thinks might be a representation of the Shroud folded in four:

I don’t think anything more needs to be said.

SIX: Blachernae
My views on Robert de Clari’s mention of the ‘sydoines’ of Blachernae Church are that he was mistaken, as I have explained elsewhere, but those who think it true have devised a complex piece of machinery to ‘raise itself upright’ every Friday, from some sort of storage box. John Jackson⁴ came up with this:

And here are the foldmarks he derives from this assemblage, compared to his earlier observation of the Shroud.

Moon only has a diagram of one small part of this…

SEVEN [and Eight? Why?]: Templecombe
In about 1943, a wooden panel firmly wired into the ceiling of an outhouse was discovered under the plaster which had covered it for unknown years.⁵ It was painted with the face of a man in a cartouche, although the top third was missing. Local attempts to clean it up removed much of the bright colour and detail, and it currently looks like this:

The exact dimensions of the panel are difficult to find. In an article by Ian Wilson we find: “Approx 57 inches wide by 33 inches high, and possibly two inches thick. Measured in centimetres in November 1986 as 141 x 74 .” 57 x 33 inches is actually 145 x 84cm, and Pam Moon has 144 x 83cm.

Whatever is more accurate, this clearly refers to the partial panel as it is today, not the original, which, from a cautious reconstruction made by professional conservator Eve Baker, must have been about 150 x 120cm or more.

The diagram above, by Eve Baker, was made by superimposing a sketch of the panel on top of itself to complete the missing upper section. The small scale bar at the top shows that this panel was 140cm x 110cm, but the cut-off floral decorations suggest that even this is not the full size of the panel.

Moon is certainly correct that this would hold the 8-fold version she describes in Fold Two above, but as a reliquary designed to hold the Shroud, it would be vastly oversized, and to describe it as the lid of “an unostentatious wooden chest,” is frankly ludicrous.

The Templecombe area was associated with the Templars, and this wooden panel is quite likely to have been associated with them too, but the idea that they had anything to do with the Shroud of Turin is largely fanciful. It depends on there being a close relationship between two men called Geoffrey de Charnay/Charny, which was far from a unique family surname, and on various other “supporting documents,” such as the alleged letter from Theodore Komnenos Doukas to Pope Innocent III, which are all probable forgeries. The passage quoted, for example, refers to “most sacred of all, the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death.” The shroud of Christ, or whatever simulacrum had been kept in Constantinople, was never considered, or described as, more precious, more significant, or more sacred, than several others of the Passion relics listed in various collections either in Constantinople or anywhere else.

Nor were the Knights Templar excommunicated “for their part in the Sack of Constantinople.” They weren’t even at Constantinople, and their excommunication did not occur for another hundred years.

NINE : The Fire of 1532
Returning at last to actual evidence, Moon now looks at the way the Shroud was folded before and after the fire which appears to have broken out in the Sacristy of the Chapel in Chambery where the Shroud. Aldo Guerreschi⁶ has demonstrated convincingly that a simple folding of the Shroud into uniform layers is untenable. Neither Ian Wilson’s version:

… nor Moon’s:

…are anything like accurate. This:

… is the only way to get the burn holes accurately registered.

After the fire, Moon guesses that that the top corners got folded together, and being still damp and ending up on the bottom of whatever new container the cloth was stored in, got mouldy and rotten, which is why they were cut away. I’m afraid, however, that I find her reconstruction confusing and contradictory. Here we go:

“This new folding pattern was first through the area above the head which means A
and B were next to each other.” OK…

“The second fold was probably lengthways, with any further folds along the width.” Like this?

“The corner D, with no carbon discoloration and little water stain damage, becomes distant from B.” Not in my reconstruction it doesn’t; it gets much closer, separated at most by two layers of cloth, and no horizontal distance at all.

Nor do I see any of the “speckled and blackened material, like the colour of treated mould,” near area B or anywhere else, and nor do I agree that areas C or D are less discoloured than A and B. I think an accurate characterisation of this sort of thing requires a better image of the Shroud even than Barrie Schwartz’s, or the post 2002 image used here, so here are the corners from Haltadefinizione’s Shroud 2.0, slightly contrast enhanced.

TEN: Rolled up
For over a hundred years, the Shroud has been rolled around a central cylinder. It is this, and almost this alone, which is responsible for the multitudinous wrinkles visible on the photos of Secondo Pia, Giuseppe Enrie, and Vernon Miller, created because of the difficulty of rolling two connected layers of fabric at the same time. Every ostentation, the Shroud was unrolled and smoothed out, removing some creases, and afterwards rolled up again, creating others.

Photos by Secondo Pia (1898), Giuseppe Enrie (1938) and Vernon Miller (1978)

This rather interesting image, from 1933, suggests that at that time there may not have been a central tube to roll the Shroud around, as it is so regularly creased at the ventral foot end:

from shroudsindonology.wordpress.com

Conclusion
Although I commend the idea that a careful analysis of the creases on the Shroud might in theory have provided some insight into ways in which it might have been folded, I’m afraid that no such analysis is possible, and that the only way we can find them out is by measuring the symmetrical marks of damage, of which there are only three sets. All the other possible ways derive from the reverse hypothesis, that because this or that configuration is plausible, some evidence of it should be found on the cloth today, and that therefore some of the multiplicity of wrinkles from one end of the Shroud to the other must bear witness to it.

The Conclusion includes a number of killer questions, which, assuming a medievalist can’t answer them, are supposed to demonstrate the truth of Moon’s authenticist claims, but they all return to face their interrogator. “Between 1355, when the Shroud was displayed at Lirey, and the fire of 1532, where is the evidence that it was stored vertically to allow for the diamond water pattern?” Where indeed, but then, where is the evidence that it was ever stored vertically? Just because a Palestinian water pot is big enough to hold the folded Shroud is no evidence that it was ever in one. “Where is the history for the incense damage?” There is none, before or after 1355, and guessing that incense might have fallen on the Shroud at any particular moment is not evidence, it’s speculation. History, she insists “demands written sources which can be examined.” Indeed it does, but no such sources for any of the folding patterns (except the fire damage of 1532) exist. For those who believe the Shroud is a medieval artistic creation, the folding patterns cause no significant problem whatsoever. It is simply unfortunate that there is no traceable history for much of the damage, be it ancient, medieval, or even modern.

BUT!
However, and it’s an important ‘however,’ Moon does make an important point that has nothing to do with any specific pattern, but the fact that there are so many, and so many wrinkles attesting to them. Had the Shroud been a conventional painting, it seems incredible that the pigment should not have been almost entirely eroded away. “If it is ‘art’ in the sense of the word understood in the fourteenth century,” says Moon, “then it would have been created by the use of pigments mixed in a binding medium.” I quite agree, but then, I also agree with her explanation: “The Shroud image is not created by paint.”

Sort of. It has long been my contention that pigment did play a significant part in the creation of the image, but that it actually has been almost entirely eroded away, leaving nothing but the faint stain, derived from the medium in which it was applied, which is what we see today. A telling comment in John Heller and Alan Adler’s Chemical Investigation paper seems to justify this: “We observed that the Spanish linen ‘khaki’ controls are microscopically and chemically identical to the birefringent red particulate coated fibrils.”

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1 Aldo Guerreschi and Michele Salcito, Photographic and Computer Studies Concerning the Burn and Water Stains Visible on the Shroud, and their Historical Consequences, 2002, at shroud.com.
Aldo Guerreschi and Michele Salcito, Further Studies on the Scorches and the Watermarks, 2005, at shroud.com.

2 John Jackson, ‘Fold Marks as a Historical Record of the Turin Shroud,’ Shroud Spectrum International, Issue 11, 1984

3 ‘The Acts of Thaddeus,’ a Greek translation of a Syriac text from the 3rd or 4th century. See Alberto Meouchi, The Legend of King Abgar Ukkāmā: the Syriac Icon that Inspired all Iconography in the East and the West, Syriac Press, 2020, at https://syriacpress.com/blog/2020/10/11/the-syriac-image-that-inspired-all-iconography-in-the-east-and-the-west-the-legend-of-king-abgar-ukkama. Interestingly, the author suggests that tetradiplon may be mistranslation anyway!

4 John Jackson, ‘New Evidence that the Turin Shroud was the Mandylion,’ Actes du Symposium de Rome, 1993. The lecture promoting this is at shrouduniversity.com/rome93.php. I don’t have a copy of the paper, but the diagrams above illustrating the foldmarks are derived from it via various intermediate stages.

5 Ian Wilson, ‘Templecombe Panel Painting: late 13th century?’ Newsletter of the British Society for the Turin Shroud, Issue 70, 2009

6 op. cit. Note 1.