It’s mentioned in the Bible!

Comments

1. Hugh,

   Correction: my “d’Arcy” in a few spots should of course read “d’Arcis.” Pardon!

   JL

2. Hi Hugh,

   Just a quick last thought before the comments box on your blogpost closes.

   It seems to me and probably at least some other readers that the crucial context of d’Arcy’s memorandum leans rather heavily in the “cunning conspiracy direction.” Besides, the translation of Latin “artificiose” as English “ingenious” is itself a loaded one, as you surely know. Borderline “nefarious.”

   The brief and very sketchy comment by the French philosopher Nicole Oresme, who mentioned the Shroud in a sentence circa 1370 and whose skeptical quotation, however weak, was recently rediscovered and received great attention here back in August 2025, may be relevant. Oresme declared the Lirey (or “Champagne” region, as he wrote) shroud of Jesus to be a clerical fake, and a typical one: “many clergymen deceive others,” (for example) “it was said that there was the shroud of the Lord Jesus Christ….” Not a word by Oresme here of any innocent artist who had been exploited by such clergymen who had misrepresented any honest liturgical cloth creation of his. Oresme seems to suggest that the whole matter appeared to him simply another case of relic fraud by clerics.

   So the correct translation of that Latin word “artificiose” may be more ambiguous than you tend to think.

   In any case, thanks very much for the discussion!

   John L.

3. Hi Dan,

   I’m so glad you’re reading my blog! If it wasn’t for you none of this would have happened, and I go back to the discussions on shroudstory at least weekly to check on something somebody might have said before. Sadly there are very few such discussions nowadays, and I’m very glad that people like John are prepared to examine my little bits and pieces in forensic detail rather than just tell me I’m wrong because of some spurious factlet they’ve picked up on the internet.

   Best wishes,
   Hugh

4. How right you are, Hugh, when you write: “there is a distressful tendency among most authenticists to leap in a single bound from ‘just possible’ to ‘absolutely proven’ without the slightest qualm.” I know; I was once like that myself. And, as you probably suspect, it is very hard to see from the inside.

5. Hi John,

   I ‘m not going to the stake claiming that d’Arcis didn’t think the artisan who made the Shroud was duplicitious, only pointing out that the usual meanings of those artificiose and subtile words does not imply anything pejorative, so to impute a more malicious meaning to them requires special evidence, which I don’t think can be claimed from the d’Arcis memorandum. There are several good reasons why the Shroud was probably not orginally made to deceive people into thinking it was a genuine relic, and the more usual meanings of artificiose and subtile fit into that hypothesis.

   I know that you personally like to explore all the possibilities of a historical and/or scientific enquiry and keep an open mind, but there is a distressful tendency among most authenticists to leap in a single bound from “just possible” to “absolutely proven” without the slightest qualm. The Galatians reference is a good example of that.

   Best wishes,
   Hugh

6. Hello again Hugh,

   Many thanks for following up on the meaning of Latin “artificiose.” I must say you are “ingenious,” however you may wish to take that. Hah.

   It’s good to know your interpretation. But I’m not yet sure how solid it is. The first passage you quote, with “that ingenious man’s wickedness…,” seems to me perfectly capable of also reading “that cunning man’s wickedness.” Are there several other translations of that Aeneid passage out there which we/you can find within some days, without Herculean labors?

   Also, Lewis and Short were no mere schoolboys. They knew their Latin, and they had their expert Latinist helpers too. In several cases they included “cunning” or a similar word in their translations of those 4 very closely related Latin words.

   Thurston and, very recently, Nicolotti both gave d’Arcy’s “artificiose” as “cunningly.” They are your fellow skeptics within the Shroud field. Who else? I notice that Gary Vikan oddly completely omitted the Latin word and any English translation of it from his 2020 (?) skeptical book on the Shroud.

   Maybe we should convene a conference on the subject, focusing especially on the use of Latin “artificiose” in the region of Champagne and especially during the decade of the 1380s. There must be numerous specialists in that area. A Ph.D. candidate may be writing a dissertation on it at this very moment.

   You also haven’t established that the artist or artisan supposedly meant by d’Arcy really was an innocent, guileless person. D’Arcy writes nothing to that effect, and it would have been easy for him to do so if he had wanted to.

   You’ve often said, in countering other objections to your medieval Shroud creation scenario, that it would have been no trouble at all to make the Lirey/Turin Shroud. An easy job, “all in a day’s work,” or maybe a quick week. If so, why would d’Arcy bother to use the term “skillfully” and then also “subtle,” both implying some or much careful, laborious effort?

   So we may still need several neutral Latinists to chime in, if any at all can be found without prejudice one way or the other in the matter of the Shroud.

   Best wishes,

   John L.

7. Hi John,

   Thanks for that, and for sending me around the literature to see if I’ve got it all wrong! But I don’t think I have. We have to trawl through several inches of Lewis and Short to reach a pejorative interpretation of ‘artifex,’ and when we get there, we find a quote from the Aeneid, in which a spy called Sinon denounces his king, Ulysses, in order to gain the trust of the Trojans. He says: “et mihi jam multi crudele canebant artificis scelus,” of which one translation is: “Many were already cruelly prophesying that ingenious man’s wickedness towards me.” In other words, the context is defining the meaning, not the meaning the context.

   If it were already established that the artifex who made the Shroud was cunning and deceitful, then it would be natural to translate the word in a pejorative light, but I contend that it isn’t, and that the word itself is being used by you and others to create a context which we have otherwise no reason to suppose.

   At the bottom of the defintions of ‘artificium’ are a battery of quotations in similar vein, such as Caesar’s complaining that he had been defeated not by “Non virtute neque in acie vicisse, sed artificio quodam et scientia oppugnationis,” “not by valour or in pitched battle, but by a certain skill and expertise in siege warfare.” Again, the context helps to define the word, not the other way about.

   Maybe nudge towards 85-15 in my favour?

   Best wishes,
   Hugh

8. Hi Hugh,

   Your current blogpost “It’s Mentioned in the Bible” has not prompted many comments as of Sept. 25. So I might offer a few just to keep the ball rolling.

   It’s good that you exposed that Ark of the Covenant fantasy and one specific Shroud fantasy of recent years too. The Galatians 3.1 fans out there really should wise up. Your skeptical blogpost of Sept. 5, 2020 on the Gal. 3.1 subject, titled “proegraphe,” helped greatly to set the record straight, if they would read it. I also seem to recall an article in the BSTS Newsletter in 2024 titled “Paul’s Galatians 3.1: An Allusion to the Turin Shroud – or Not?” It likewise refuted that Gal. 3.1 Shroud claim.

   Yet your sweeping rejection of all ancient textual similarities to the Shroud as clues may be excessive.

   Meanwhile, with your permission, here is a belated “catch-up” comment on a very recent statement you made:

   In your comment on Aug. 30 (2026), replying to a comment of my own about your blogpost (Cyrillic title) “Typnnskaya” dated Aug. 12, you wrote that Bishop d’Arcy’s 1389/90 word “artificiose,” used about the Lirey (Turin) Shroud, merely meant “skillfully” depicted or portrayed, not “cunningly” as earlier often translated. And so, you wrote, d’Arcy did not mean an actual shroud image forger, but merely an innocent artisan who did not commit any forgery, any dishonesty, in producing his (merely liturgical prop, you say) product.

   Well, maybe the word meant skillfully, but maybe something else, more negative, indeed “cunningly,” as it was famously translated by the Shroud skeptic Herbert Thurston (a Jesuit scholar) in 1903 and then again very recently, as I must now note, by the major Shroud skeptic Prof. Nicolotti in his 2019 book The Shroud of Turin (p. 99, Baylor U. Press). They both knew Latin rather well. Or would you disagree?

   I’ve also checked a few Latin-English dictionaries. One is a pocket book edition, common in the U.S., publisher Bantam, New College (1966/1995, 664 pages). It lists several apparently relevant entries and their various definitions. The options include, pp. 66-67, “artifex” (when used as adj) … cunningly wrought; “artifex” noun … contrived; “artificiosus” adj … artificial; and “artificium” noun … cleverness, cunning. The second source is Cassell’s Latin Dictionary (online at Internet Archive, 953 pages), where we similarly find, on p. 54, “artifex” noun … contriver; “artificium” noun … cleverness, cunning. More authoritative yet is a third dictionary which you are familiar with, Lewis and Short’s Latin English Dictionary (2019 pages, available on Internet Archive). There, on pp. 181-82 digital (but 168 print), one finds: “artifex. I. noun … also for a sly, cunning contriver; then “artificium,” noun, II.C. skill … and in a bad sense, craft, cunning; finally, “artio/ire” … 2. endowed with cunning.

   It seems to me that these very closely related words may be relevant to the question, even if “artificiose” itself is only defined, very briefly, as “skillfully” in those sources.

   I’d certainly not claim that your translation is wrong, simply that it may not be the only possible one for that word as used by d’Arcy and in the particular context he was writing, alleging a fraud at least by the Lirey clerics. It’s a 50-50 case, I’d estimate, at the moment, or maybe 75-25 in your favor, until or unless several more expert views are heard on that word, publicly pronouncing otherwise. But maybe you know more. Can we finally know what he meant?

   John Loken

9. A prominent version appears in a 2012 essay by political commentator Ann Althouse regarding Mitt Romney:
   “Romney does not suffer fools gladly—he does suffer them, though, because there are a lot of fools out there, and he has put himself in the fool-suffering business.”

   AI has some uses Hugh !

10. Oh, but I do, or at least try. I’ve long aspired to live up to the maxim, “He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but he does suffer them,” which I’m sure I’ve read somewhere but cannot for the life of me find out where.

    Best wishes,
    Hugh

11. Hugh, forgive them, for they know not what they do.