I’ve been brought up short a couple of times recently in discovering areas of Shroud research that have been around for a while but are completely new to me. One of these is the website of Marco Corvaglia (https://www.marcocorvaglia.com/en), called ‘Miracles and Historical Criticism,’ whose main focus seems to be the Marian apparitions at Medjugorge, but who has also investigated the Tilma of Guadalupe and the Shroud.
Corvaglia’s Shroud investigations are discussed in four articles, and what makes them particularly appealing to me is his recourse to primary sources, and the sheer number of experts whose views he quotes. Many are well known, but I have yet to discover Nicolas Sarzeaud’s book, Les Suaires du Christ en Occident, among others.
In the article ‘Sindone: la storia vera e la storia infondata,’ translated as ‘The Shroud: The True and the Unfounded History,’ Corvaglia mentions a possible interpretation of the term ‘tetradiplon’ which was wholly unknown to me. Ernst von Dobschütz, in his monumental work Christusbilder, mentions that the veil of Veronica has been referred to as a ‘velum triplicatum,’ or folded in three, which he attributes to a desire to authenticate all three of the most famous versions of this relic, in Rome, Jerusalem and Jäen. Although this idea in the case of the Veronica dates from about 1390, Corvaglia suggests that a similar idea might have inspired the 6th or 7th century “tetradiplon” to authenticate four simultaneous versions of the image of Edessa.
In his discussion of the Pray Codex, and whether a medieval artist would ever have presented Jesus naked, Corvaglia presents some more ‘naked’ Christs than were known to me, and also gives an interesting chronography of the “Pray Codex illusion,” from Ian Wilson noting the nudity and crossed hands in 1978, to the comparison of a bit of foxing on an eyebrow with the epsilon bloodstain in 1993.
The last article handsomely places the Shroud into its late medieval context, in terms of its Passion iconography, and of course, the Easter Sepulchre and the Quem Quaeritis trope. Again Corvaglia introduced me to an unfamiliar source, Les Saints Sépulcres Monumentaux, by Sylvie Aballéa, which focusses on south western Germany, and illustrates many more of the statues of Jesus lying in his tomb than were previously known to me.
I commend this website to other researchers.