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.
Marco and Hugh,
Good point about the d’Outremeuse text of 1390. Sorry for the mistake. I was so busy trying to understand von Dobschuetz’s complicated text on his page 225, which Marco had cited first in his article, that I forgot about that second quotation, which he, von Dob., the great authority, did not quote or paraphrase, though he did ambiguously allude to it. But Marco had specifically written of the three Veils in “Rome, Jerusalem, and Jaen,” so that was the context I focused on, one which von Dobschuetz credited first to Salmeron in the 16th century: “die Bezeihung auf die drei Bilder von Rom, Jerusalem und Jaen hat erst Salmeron….” Von Dob’s brief reference to 1390 was so vague that I thought I couldn’t follow up on it without doing a search. He did not list a page reference himself (thanks, Hugh, for adding one). I had never accessed his Christusbilder online, either. He also crams a lot of citations and digressions into his pages. Confusing.
Besides all that, Marco’s website has no comments box, so I felt rushed to squeeze in more comments about his articles on Hugh’s blog, but even there necessarily quickly because the box will close in about 5 more days. I only first heard of Marco and his Shroud writings last November when he posted a comment on Hugh’s blogpost of October 31 and we then got into an interesting exchange about Robert de Clari and French crusaders. And I hadn’t returned to Marco’s website till Hugh’s very recent “Marco Corvaglia” blogpost of this April 23. Many other priorities or distractions in life, you know.
In any case, between the 11th or 12th century, that is, when the earliest mentions of the Veil of Veronica occurred, and the year 1390, some 200 to 300 years elapsed, still a long, long time. I’m assuming for now that 1390 is the earliest date you know for such a reference to a three-times-folded Veil. But if you know of an earlier one, please say so. If not, my point about the long delay before the introduction of that clever three-fold face impression miracle still seems a fairly valid one. There was apparently no such long delay in the case of the tetradiplon that was first mentioned in Acts of Thaddaeus.
Also with regard to the 1390 passage in d’Outrement, he specifies that Jesus himself folded the cloth three times and left three impressions of his face. That’s different from the bald, unexplained word “tetradiplon” in the Acts of Thaddaeus.
Marco may well be correct in his answer to Hugh’s question about von Dob’s sentence on the “common thought among the Greeks.” But I also see another possibility: Von Dobschuetz may be contrasting (“aber”) the older “wunderbar” “Kopien” (miraculous copies) with the “ganz jung” (quite recent) idea of multiple miraculous originals. Who knows?
John L.
Hi Hugh,
on the basis of historical data, we can indubitably infer that, according to Dobschutz, the idea “so common to the Greeks” (and Latins, I’d add) is that divine icons/objects can appear miraculously (with no reference neither to copies neither to folding up).
I would add that myth is not history. Different legends can coexist to “explain” the origin of the very same copy.
Hi John,
I think the expression “ganst jung” is a relative term and actually refers to 1390 being, as you say, much more recent than any of the Veronicas, but certainly not as late as the 16th century. The footnote in which the term “velum triplicatum” is mentioned actually refers to a French work by Jean d’Outremeuse, or Jean des Pries, who died in 1400. In it he says, “Adont prist-ilh le drap, et le ploiat en trois et le jondit à sa noble fache; si fut sa fache oussi proprement enprintée oultre les trois draps que chu fust-ilh luy-meisme.” “Then he took the sheet, and folded it in three and held it to his noble face; thus was his face was as accurately imprinted onto the three sheets as if you were looking at him personally.” [The paper trail for this is quite complicated: start with Von Dobschütz’s footnote, where he gives the date 1390 and the reference (71). This can be found on page 312*, and the bit about Veronica on the next page. It is quite difficult to read, but the whole story can be found at “JEAN D’OUTREMEUSE, MYREUR DES HISTORS, I, p. 427b-439a,” at https://bcs.fltr.ucl.ac.be/MYREUR/My001-586/My427b-439a.htm. The translation into English is mine.]
It may be that Salmeron was the first to use the Latin form, or the first to catalog the three images by city, but Jean d’Outremeuse certainly pre-dated him.
What I’d like to know is what Von Dobschütz meant by “Wir erwarten Kopien des römischen Originales, womöglich wuderbar entstandene Abdrücke desselben zu finden. Aber der letzere den Griechen so geläufige Gedanke…” What idea was “so common to the Greeks”? Was it just that miraculous images often occurred in multiple copies, or was it the idea that they were made by folding up a sheet… tetradiplon….
Hi John,
honestly I can’t understand where the problem lies. I say that “the legendary tradition at a certain point speaks of a velum triplicatum” and six lines below I quote a text from 1390 in old French, thus specifying what I mean by “a certain point”. Obviously, everyone can present is or her objections, but I think I have presented the data in a complete and correct manner.
Hi Marco, Hugh, and All,
The “tetradiplon” question calls again, however briefly before the Comments box closes.
Marco’s speculation in his article “The Shroud” that the Greek word tetradiplon in Acts of Thaddaeus referred to four (or vaguely several) separate versions of the Image of Jesus, and not to the long shroud cloth folded up to show only the face of Jesus, was based on a passage he found in von Dobschuetz’s famous 1899 work Christusbilder. Marco kindly provided a link to the relevant page, 225. I did not think to follow that link when first commenting, but I’ve finally checked it and found some possible ambiguities in the fuller passage. Marco quoted two of von D.’s sentences in support of his own theory, but he did not quote the sentences before and after those two. They may be relevant.
Von Dobschuetz indicates, in the sentence before the two that Marco quoted, that the “velum triplicatum” description of the Veil of Veronica was a “quite young/new” one (“ganz jung”) and was also an “apparently/obviously erudite-artificial” one (“gelehrt-kuenstlich”), that is, overly contrived. Now, the Veil had been documented ever since about the 11th /12th century. Marco in his article wrote of the triplicatum term being used of the Veil merely “at one point,” but von D. writes that it was actually first attested for the three versions at a rather late point in time, the 16th century.
Von Dobschuetz also relates there that the Veronica image/version in Jaen (Spain) dated from “1376” and was a copy of the much earlier Roman original. He writes in a footnote on p. 225 that “Salmeron” [Spanish biblical scholar and early Jesuit, 1515-1585] was the originator of the velum triplicatum term as applied to the three Veronicas. (Wikipedia has an article on Salmeron.) Von D. also notes that Salmeron’s theory did not survive long. It was officially rejected by Pope Benedict XIV (1675-1758). This presumably occurred after decades of quiet disbelief or lack of credibility, perhaps even in Salmeron’s time.
So, the triplicatum term seems to have been coined or applied only well after the existence, the fabrication, of such additional Veils of Veronica, not vice-versa. (A native German speaker could provide some helpful translation tips on von D.’s sometimes complicated text, which I hope I’m not misrepresenting.) In the case of the word tetradiplon and the Image/s of Jesus (or “of Edessa”), however, the word was used very early in its history, in the 7th or 8th century, in the Acts of Thaddaeus. One wonders if the “several” (say Marco, Hugh) copies of the Image itself existed so early. If they did not, that “tetradiplon” could not have referred to such versions. For example, did the Alexandria version that Marco mentions exist already in the 7th century? When is it first attested? Was it on cloth? Linen cloth? (Or was that “Alexandria image of Jesus” a mistaken later interpretation of the Sudarium of Oviedo, which, if authentic, was briefly first taken from Jerusalem to Alexandria in 614?) These questions are complex, of course, and I can’t research them all on my own. At the moment, though, there seems new reason to doubt the velum triplicatum explanation or analogy for the meaning of tetradiplon, even apart from the other problems with it that I mentioned earlier.
In his article, Marco also writes of the Image of Edessa as having “variously originated copies.” How does he mean “variously”? The manner of their origin? Did one or two of them “originate” by means of deliberate contact with a prior original and thus receive a miraculous dose of identification? That was a common claim for other relics. If so, if such contact means were used, why did Acts of Thaddaeus introduce the new word tetradiplon, which, according to Marco, implies no mere contact with the “original,” but rather four/several original versions to begin with? Could someone clarify this point?
As mentioned in my first comment on Hugh’s “Marco Corvaglia” blogpost, many other points in Marco’s Shroud articles seem to me questionable, though many also valid. But there is no time or space to discuss more than a fraction of them here.
John L.
Hi Marco,
Thank you for your latest thoughts. They are well worth considering. Here are some additional thoughts of mine in response:
1) The case for the authenticity of the Turin Shroud is not at all dependent on a Pray Codex-Shroud identification. The Codex illustrations are just a couple of pieces of evidence among many others out there.
2) Your current objection mainly refers to the 4 L-shaped holes and the herringbone-like design of the empty sepulchre details on the Codex illustration, because they seem out of place there. (By the way, how do you interpret the two parallel wavy red lines, if they do not reflect the “blood-belt” on the Shroud?)
3) It’s clear that the Hungarian artist of the Codex had a highly creative, imaginative mind, with a fluid perception of reality not at all bound by facts. I can easily see him taking elements from the Shroud and adding them to his illustration in odd places in a process of free association. You described the artist as merely “mediocre,” but I wrote earlier that he was “somewhat loopy” (un po’ pazzo).
4) A case can also be made for a deliberate disguise of the Shroud details in the Codex illustrations, such that the sarcophagus lid was used in a sense to quietly represent the Shroud (even though the burial shroud is also depicted lying on the lid).
5) The artist may well have begun illustrating the Codex with a plan to depict the traditional “3 Marys at the tomb” scene, and so he just built on that, not wanting to depict yet another scene, for example, with the Shroud of Jesus fully unfurled. He may have preferred to conserve his efforts and energy thereby (due piccioni con una fava, or “combine and conquer,” as it were).
6) He might also not have wanted to depict the image of Jesus on the Shroud because that could have been mistaken for a depiction of the real Jesus, thus contradicting the empty tomb / empty sarcophagus scenario.
7) Artists of all periods and places have typically borrowed motifs and then moved them around, in order to claim new creations. “Artistic freedom,” as they say.
8) Both the sepulchre lid and the Shroud are coverings, so they have that common purpose and can thus be identified with each other to that extent.
9) Maybe further evidence in this question of the Pray Codex will surface in the next few years, helping us all to better estimate its possible connection – or lack of connection – to the Turin Shroud, even if still not with finality. Let’s hope some progress will be made soon.
Tanti auguri,
John L.
John,
I deeply respect your thoughts and think you are a smart man, but I also think that before making conjectures to solve a problem, it is necessary to establish whether a problem exists at all.
As Prof. Nicolotti and Hugh already demonstrated before me, what is depicted in the Pray Codex is a tomb, not a shroud. Should we therefore think that the mediocre Hungarian miniaturist represented a tomb with elements (“the four L-holes and the herringbone-like zigzag design”) taken from a shroud? Theorically, everything is possible, but a glaring evidence would be needed. And it does not exist.
As for the figure of Jesus, the Pray Code is historically placed in the initial phases of an artistic trend. If you believe that the (few and vague) analogies that can be selected demonstrate something, I respect your thought, but I cannot agree with you.
Hugh
Czy mógłbyś mi na maila wysłać swój adres mailowy ? Bo chciałbym Ci zadać jedno pytanie po rozmowie z moim rodakiem Łukaszem Wybrańczykiem – dlatego też piszę po polsku – ale zaraz skorzystam z google translator – jako że mój angielski jest dosyć słaby… -:) -:)
Could you send me your email address? Because I would like to ask you one question after talking to my compatriot Łukasz Wybrańczyk – that’s why I’m writing in Polish – but I’ll use Google Translator soon – because my English is quite poor… -:) -:)
Best regards
Jarek
In his April 23 post, Hugh also mentioned Marco Corvaglia’s skeptical article on the Pray Codex illustrations of circa 1192.
With regard to the figure therein of the the dead Jesus being anointed, Marco certainly seems correct and perceptive about the reddish “foxing” mold defect on the forehead above one eye as only coincidentally similar to the bloodstain on the forehead of Jesus on the Turin Shroud. And a search of shroud.com yields no relevant results for “foxing,” so Marco may be the first to mention it, at least in English. If so, bravo, Marco.
On other such points, however, he seems only half persuasive to me, not refuting them but instead offering plausible alternative explanations, especially in preexisting if rare artistic traditions of the crossed hands, the hidden or missing thumbs, etc.
As Hugh wrote, Marco gives a very useful chronology of the Shroud field’s increasing (and possibly obsessive) interest in the Jesus anointment and empty tomb/sacrophagus illustrations in the Pray Codex.
Marco begins his examination with the question of the nudity of Jesus in the codex illustration and on the Shroud. He relates several new examples of a naked or near-naked Jesus in Medieval art and literature. However, the written examples are obviously less daring and thus much less relevant for us. And of the artworks he shows (all small, none life-size, be it noted), all or almost all are from Western European lands, not from the East. Also, almost all are from the 13th and 14th centuries, and we know that art styles changed considerably between the late 12th century (time of the Pray Codex) and the late 13th century, becoming more realistic, more anatomically accurate, though still highly stylized. As for the lack of blood on the Jesus figure, that was typical of Byzantine depictions of Jesus. Maybe Hungarian too.
Moreover, the Pray Codex-Turin Shroud artistic similarities really should be evaluated collectively. We should not do so only individually, one-by-one, discarding each if an equally plausible alternative explanation appears and quickly moving on to the next. That seems unfair. Together they carry a collective weight. Is it likely that a half dozen and more similarities between the codex and the Turin Shroud could all be purely coincidental? Personally I don’t think so. I tend to think that at least two or three are due to a direct knowledge of the Shroud when it was in Constantinople, perhaps passed by hearsay to the artist in Hungary, where he merged them with his own ideas or existing traditions. Such a dual sourcing would not be at all surprising. It happens all the time in art and literature.
Incidentally, I seem to notice yet another Codex-Shroud similarity or two that I haven’t read of before. Although lying dead, Jesus in the codex is pictured with his face and chest turned outward toward the viewer, just as on the Turin Shroud. That posture is rare among the other artistic examples Marco provides. The codex also pictures Jesus’ hands not only crossed (at the wrists) but also both in full view, their backs facing the viewer, again as on the Turin Shroud. Most other artistic scenes of him in the tomb show his hands in profile or 3/4 profile. This Codex version calls more attention to them, for some reason.
Also, Marco has left history and geography out of consideration. Hungary was relatively close to Constantinople, about 800 miles (1300 km) to the northwest. It was also a major power in the 12th century, larger in territory than it is today. In religious terms it was a mix of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief, and it directly bordered the Byzantine Empire. The two realms had close political and royal ties. A quick look at the (complicated) Wikipedia article on King Bela III of Hungary (circa 1148 to 1196), who spent several years on and off in Constantinople in his late teens and early twenties, is instructive. He was also energetic, successful, and cultured. He must have had his Hungarian retinue with him there. And he was apparently keen on the faith, so he may well have asked questions about relics there. “Please, Basil, tell me something new.” These personal connections may already have been examined more closely by someone in the Shroud field. Oddly, though, a search of shroud.com just today for “King Bela III” or “Bela III” or just “Bela” yields zero results. Zero. A fertile field yet to be plowed? If so, Marco has not been the only one to forget poor Bela.
Adding those factors of time and place to the several pictorial similarities, one arrives at a total of around ten intriguing points of affinity, an impressive total and, to me at least, a persuasive one. I don’t believe all of the pictorial similarities are directly due to the (Turin) Shroud, but yes, some of them, including the four L-holes and the herringbone-like zigzag design, both rather centrally situated in that Codex illustration, with the angel shunted off to the left side. Also intriguing are the two parallel red squiggly lines, rather reminiscent of the “blood belt” on the Shroud. I do not recall ever seeing the like elsewhere.
If a few traces of the Shroud are to be seen in the codex, why not more, you may ask. But the artist was not thinking of you, or of me, or of anyone in the distant 20th and 21st centuries. He had no concerns about systematically proving the provenance of the Shroud. He was just doing his job, and amusingly, too, in his own somewhat loopy style.
At the very least, it seems incorrect for any Shroud skeptic to declare that the two relevant Pray Codex Jesus scenes could not have been influenced by the Turin Shroud. And if they truly were not, their similarities to it certainly seem a case of extraordinary coincidence.
John L.
Hi John,
I think it’s necessary not to conflate the different accounts of the Image of Edessa, and the reasons for them. As I understand it, Marco Corvaglia’s hypothesis is that Acts of Thaddeus may have been written with a purpose to reconcile several known different portraits of Christ, giving them all “authentic” status, while the Narratio was about a single image, with a purpose to emphasise its exclusivity.
I’m glad that you qualified, “When one considers…” and “one finds a strong collective case…” with “That’s my belief, anyway.” That’s completely fine by me. When others have considered the very same data, they have found the reverse.
Best wishes,
Hugh
Hugh writes that the Narratio de Imagine Edessena (AD 945) scene with Jesus specifically in Gethsemane is a “completely different scenario” from the one in Acts of Thaddaeus involving him wiping his face with water vaguely somewhere in Jerusalem or Judea (which is also repeated by the author of the Narratio, acknowledging a second version).
But to me it’s clear that the same basic experience is being described. And the Narratio even says that they “agree on the main fact, that the form on the cloth was miraculously transferred from the Lord’s face. They disagree on some details, such as when this took place” (Guscin, Image, p. 25). Those words are not Guscin’s, but are in the Narratio itself.
The scene set in Jerusalem or Judea served to explain the sweat-like image coloring (also hinted at in the Narratio with the words “a faint shadow”). The Gethsemane scene then gently, gingerly acknowledged the blood stains on the face image, either discovered or made more known (among clerics anyway) in 944 when the Image of Edessa was transported to Constantinople. The guardians of the Image (now the “Mandylion”) had to find a way to ease the faithful into the idea that the cloth was actually a burial cloth. To break the bad news softly, as it were. They may never have done so completely, but retained the two versions to the end, 1204 or so.
The Narratio says that (obviously in Gethsemane), “he took this piece of cloth … and wiped off the streams of sweat on it,” sweat which just one line earlier was said to be “like drops of blood.” And “The figure of his divine face … was immediately transferred to it.”
But back to the tetradiplon now. It’s been nearly 50 years now since Ian Wilson first proposed the tetradiplon folding solution to the Edessa Image/Turin Shroud connection. That’s a long time. In all those decades, what have the Shroud skeptics said about that word “tetradiplon”? Maybe Marco could give us another time-line of researcher thoughts and interpretations. In any case, this latest one is rather late in the game. If correct, it certainly took quite a while. But it’s remarkable. That must be granted. “Tetradiplon” not as a code word for one long folded shroud with a full-body image, but as a code word for multiple versions of a fake facial image. Hmm.
Hugh writes, “The point of the story was … to try to reconcile the various copies of the face all claimed to be from the same source.” But there is actually no “story” or “trying” involved, no miracle, no explanation, no “fire” as found in the story of the duplication on tile of the face image in a later version of the Abgar legend. It’s just a single word, tetradiplon, with no attempt to back it up. And it’s never been found outside of the Abgar legend, so it surely wasn’t based on any common four-ply towels used back then.
There are other discrepancies, though I’m not capable of laying them all out here. Jack Markwardt offers a different interpretation in his book, but even there it still involves one authentic, imaged, folded shroud of Jesus, not multiple fake facial images. One wonders, too, how equally your “several” copies of the Image were really regarded. Were they even known about in Constantinople or wherever in the Greek world the author of Acts of Thaddaeus wrote his text? One also asks how well known the alleged or apparent copy in Alexandria was. Since the Image of Edessa was far more famous, did the author of Acts of Thaddaeus even know about that Alexandria version? And did the “dueling Images” in Edessa receive equal acknowledgment outside of Edessa? From the accounts of the handing over of the Image by the Muslim rulers of Edessa in 944, it seems clear that the Constantinople authorities were very wary of any fakes, any mere copies that were not up to an extraordinary standard. And they paid a ransom for the real one, a huge ransom, after close scrutiny of it.
When one considers that unique word “tetradiplon,” four-doubled in some way or other, along with other words that so frequently crop up in those centuries, shroud and long cloth, and then also the several ancient references to a full-body image of Jesus, all of them occurring in the Abgar legend narratives, one finds a strong collective case for the presence of the (Turin) Shroud in Constantinople by around the year 1000. That’s my belief, anyway, unless otherwise persuaded.
Maybe it’s time to move on and look at some of Marco’s other interpretations on his website. I’ll do so with regard to the Hungarian Pray Codex in a comment later today or tomorrow. I trust Marco will not mind the feedback. It may be useful.
John L.
Hi John, and Marco,
I think Marco has answered your first point.
The next few seem muddled. I think the possible interpretation of both the tetradiplon and the triplicata incidents are clear. Jesus was given a single piece of cloth folded into four or three layers, pressed his face on to it, and left four or three images, which were later cut up and distributed. Your jest: “Was the writer trying to tell his readers that the cloth had just been removed from a towel rack at home and was therefore still folded up before Jesus used it?” is entirely correct. That is exactly what the writers were saying, although I have wondered if in fact folding a cloth into four-ply might not have been a common way of making a better towel than a single layer of cloth, in which case the layers might even have been sewn together. The point of the story was not to discuss bathroom textiles, but to try to reconcile the various copies of the face all claimed to be from the same source.
You do make a valid point in wondering why there are so few accounts of these images which refer to multiple images, but that may be because most sources were very much attached to one particular image, which brooked no comparison. Interestingly I know of only one single site which tries to do the same with all the ‘genuine’ burial cloths – calling them all authentic, while very few others would contemplate any such possibility. See http://manoppello.eu/eng/index.php?go=sudarium.
The mention of Gethsemane may have been a ‘tiny mistake,’ but it was of significant significance. Jesus being offered a cloth by his apostles in order to assuage his suffering is a completely different scenario from Jesus asking for a cloth with the specific intention of leaving an image on it.
Best wishes,
Hugh
Hi Marco,
It’s good to hear from you. Please feel free to explain your tetradiplon theory regarding Acts of Thaddaeus in more detail here. I’m sure others would like to read it too. It still eludes me, unfortunately. I’m sorry I can’t comment directly on your website, but you have no comments box. Hugh does, and he also mentioned your site, so I felt obliged to pipe up here.
By the way, since writing this morning, I’ve checked and discovered that the word tetradiplon was actually used twice about the cloth with which Jesus wiped his face. The best known account is in Acts of Thaddaeus, as mentioned, but a lesser known account is in the 10th century Synaxarion. See Guscin, Image of Edessa, pp. 94-95. How many other accounts, both full and fragmentary, use different words? 10? More? Less?
John L.
Hi Hugh and hi John.
Not at all, John. I was simply providing evidence of how common it was in the Middle Ages to create copies of the alleged acheiropoieta and to invent stories about them. If it can be misunderstood, I‘m going to clarify it in the text. Thank you.
Hi Hugh,
Here is Marco Corvaglio’s relevant “tetradiplon” passage from his article “The Shroud” on his website (reprinted here mostly for your readers, since you already know it):
“Sources tell us of several copies … of the Mandylion (two in Edessa according to the Narratio de Imagine Edessena [Guscin, The Image of Edessa, p. 47], one was in Alexandria, Egypt, around the 7th century [cf. Nicolotti, From the Mandylion of Edessa to the Shroud of Turin, p. 79, n. 5), and one was presumed to have been obtained miraculously by contact in Constantinople in the 10th century….”
That certainly sounds to me like Marco was equating the “tetra-” (four) in Acts of Thaddaeus with those four copies.
Your “in neither case is there any suggestion that anything other than his face was imaged on the cloth” seems weak to me. The very words “tetradiplon” and “sindon” both suggest or, I should say, could very easily hint at, a longer cloth. And why would a bath-towel-length cloth be used to wipe just a face?
Yes, I mistakenly wrote “Gethsemane,” because, as you know, some later versions of the face-imaging scene did set it in Gethsemane, though the earlier Acts of Thaddaeus did not. A tiny mistake.
Diplo- in Greek still seems ambiguous, as I wrote citing Liddell and Scott’s Greek English-Lexicon. Anyone can read the dozen or so instances with various renderings cited there (and another dozen or more under “dipl-” with another vowel instead of the -o-). Maybe we need a real expert in Greek, a university professor (or ten), also unbiased on the subject of the Turin Shroud if that is possible, to “settle” the question. In any case, as I wrote, the author of Acts of Thaddaeus may not have seen the Mandylion himself and may well have been slightly misinformed or slightly mistaken in his “tetra-” if he truly meant four folding actions or four creases.
I also don’t follow your logic where you say “the cloth itself was big enough to be referred to as a sindon when unfolded.” Why use “tetradiplon” at all in that case? Was the writer trying to tell his readers that the cloth had just been removed from a towel rack at home and was therefore still folded up before Jesus used it? I jest, but It seems to me your scenario has its oddities.
None of the other Byzantine accounts of the face-imprinting scene, including the same basic scene when later set in Gethsemane, use that word “tetradiplon.” So the word seems to have “leaked out” only in this one case, never to be used again. Instead, simply “cloth” or “linen” (Greek othone, etc.) became the standard term, perhaps to avoid raising questions. But if the tetradiplon explanation is as simple and innocent as Marco and you claim, why wasn’t the word used again, so more people would know? There would not have been any secret involved.
But Marco has my thanks and support for his skepticism about, and diligent research into, the Medjugorje and Tilma claims.
John L.
Hi John,
I don’t think Marco is beginning with four known copies of the Image of Edessa, because we don’t know if there were four, although there certainly seem to have been at least two. I think he was simply trying to account for why Jesus was supplied with a piece of “four-ply” to wipe his face with, and finding a parallel, many years later, with him also being offered a piece of “three-ply.” Neither instance demands three or four separate pieces of cloth. ‘diplon’ in Greek, and ‘plicatus’, in Latin, both imply folding rather than separate pieces. But in neither case is there any suggestion that anything other than his face was imaged on the cloth.
I think you’re a bit muddled in your second paragraph. The term tetradiplon does not refer to anything that happened in Gethsemane. It refers to an occasion when Jesus specifically intended to leave an image of himself of a cloth. He asked for water, washed, and was given a tetradiplon, which he applied to his face. The passage certainly implies that the cloth itself was big enough to be referred to as a sindon when unfolded, but does not suggest that Jesus’s whole body was imprinted on it, in fact it specifically suggests the opposite.
There has been a lot of unnecessary origami in the attempt to make sense of “doubled in four,” which I don’t think is what tetradiplon means.
The diplon bit just means folded. Fold a cloth in half, fold it again, and you’ve got a bit of “four-ply.”
I don’t think Corvaglia sounds “desperate” at all. I think he’s found a very plausible explanation for the word tetradiplon and I agree with him. We don’t know, and we haven’t proved anything, but I think it’s better than supposing Jesus was handed a folded cloth, then unfolded it and had it laid over him, then had it folded up again to turn into the Image of Edessa. To be honest, I think the whole Shroud = Image of Edessa thing is pretty well discredited now.
But hey, what do I know?
Best wishes,
Hugh
Re: Tetradiplon
Hi Hugh,
Marco Corvaglia’s article “The Shroud: The True and the Unfounded History” seems to contain a number of possibly valid points but also a number of weak ones.
Your longest paragraph focuses on his speculation about the mysterious Greek word “tetradiplon” used in the ancient Byzantine story Acts of Thaddaeus. It’s the only known instance of that word in all of ancient Greek literature. Marco suggests it was based on “four simultaneous versions of the Image of Edessa” in the 6th or 7th century. That notion seems to me a stretch. To begin with, were there even four such supposedly miraculous Images of Jesus’ face in the 6th or 7th century? Marco writes that there were two in Edessa, one in Alexandria “around the 7th century,” and a fourth in Constantinople in the “10th century.” If so, counting that latter image as number “four,” as in the Greek word for four, “tetra,” may be a slight exaggeration, not exactly “simultaneous” with the others. Or is the reference to “four” in the centuries-earlier Acts of Thaddaeus supposed to include a prophesy, a foreshadowing, of that 10th century one? Not likely.
Besides that problem of timing, the Latin word Marco mentions, velum triplicatum, used for the late medieval Veil of Veronica, apparently referred to three separate objects, whereas the Greek word tetradiplon in Acts of Thaddaeus referred to only one object (often translated simply “towel”) that was somehow or other “four-fold.” Or does Marco suppose that Jesus, in the Gethsemane scene of Thaddaeus, was handed four separate towels, one atop the other, on which he imprinted four separate images of his face? Such a scenario seems highly unlikely even as a fiction. And the scene actually involves Jesus then giving back the object, now called a “sindon” (singular), a long cloth or fine linen cloth. The same word is used in three of the gospels for the burial shroud of Jesus, so its long length seems implied in Thaddaeus.
Moreover, “tetradiplon” does not seem to me inapplicable to a possible folding of a long shroud into a smaller one bearing a face-only image (with the neck showing in some early artistic versions, even the one Marco reprints in his article). Folding the cloth three times yields eight separate layers, yes, but also four double layers or double panels. So, tetra-diplon, four-double/d. Ancient peoples had various ways of counting, of course. Think of our old “three score and ten” in English, using twenty, a “score,” as a basic unit. Besides, in Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (Internet Archive) one finds diplo- in its various forms often meaning not folded but “double” or “doubled” or “twice.” The words folded and double are not synonymous, though related. Also, in English we have several dozen vivid expressions which have the word “double” in them, and even more which use the word “two.” It’s probably a common human way of phrasing or counting things. “2, 4, 6, 8….”
One also asks if the author of Acts of Thaddaeus even saw the Image of Edessa (later the “Mandylion”) himself. Did someone instead describe it to him in an inexact way? Or in an exact way which he misunderstood? After all, some references to the Turin Shroud even in its historically certain form as the Lirey Shroud were inaccurate. Surely we should cut the author of Acts of Thaddaeus some slack, not toss out his tetradiplon testimony completely.
In any case, as Guscin wrote (The Tradition of the Image of Edessa, pp. 132-33), the implication of that word tetradiplon is that the cloth was originally long, not a little face cloth or hand towel. Corvaglia quotes Nicolotti briefly arguing against this point, but I can’t understand Nicolotti’s skeptical “before not after” logic, nor Corvaglia’s attempt at explaining it. In all, Corvaglia seems to me a bit desperate to explain away that unique and intriguing word tetradiplon.
If someone ever suggests that tetra- is a complete mistake, an ancient scribal error, we would still have the -diplon to deal with. And vice-versa. Each one suggests that something unusual or complex is meant.
The apparent lack of a few related creases in the actual Turin Shroud do seem cause for some skepticism about the tetradiplon theory (first advanced by Ian Wilson). Would anyone know more about that creases question today? Maybe any such ancient “folds” were not sharp, not true creases on the cloth, but only soft, rounded folds, leaving no deep, permanent traces lasting into the 20th century. Or maybe the shroud wasn’t really kept folded continuously for centuries, but was only periodically folded up for brief public displays of its face, while its very few select guardians knew its true length. Perhaps they even did so specifically to avoid creasing such a precious cloth. After all, the Middle East is the land of carpets, and their merchants have always kept them (including narrow runner carpets, quite like the Turin Shroud) rolled up, not folded up.
Then somehow, from an insider, word could have reached the author of Acts of Thaddaeus, wherever he was located, that a certain “tetradiplon” effect was involved in the Image of Jesus, though he did not learn exactly what effect, and he added it to the story.
Other thoughts, anyone?
John L.
Hi Tom,
How good of you to get in touch. I too am a Catholic, and I’m also British, and I find that British Catholics are rather less likely to accept the authenticity of the Shroud than American Catholics, and even they are less likely to accept it than some of the more evangelical sects of Christianity. Having said that, the biggest group of disbelievers is the number of King James Bible literalists, who accept young-earth creationism and all the New Testament miracles at face value, but reject the Shroud because it conflicts with the Gospel of John and the prophesies of Isaiah.
I used to be a fairly severe critic of Robert Spitzer (Catholic, Jesuit, American), who has done minimal research on the Shroud and gets all his facts from popular books rather than primary sources, but since I have understood that he is almost or completely blind now (literally, not figuratively), I have backed off. I think he has done a lot to proselytise for the overall rationality of Catholicism as an interpretation of Christianity – as has been increasingly emphasised by the last three popes – and is in general a worthy spokesperson among the public; he’s just wrong about the Shroud!
One of the difficulties of conversing with friends – or conversing friendlily with anybody, I should say – is that positions on the Shroud are often deeply held, so contrary views can be genuinely upsetting. Besides which, unless one or both parties are better informed, they reduce quite quickly to the kind of “I’m right you’re wrong” argument mostly seen in school playgrounds. I find the best thing is to focus on details, but I can’t find the interview between Michael Knowles and Fr Spitzer. Recently the new go-to “expert” is Jeremiah Johnson, who also makes up for not really knowing anything by enthusiastic exaggeration. He has recently done an interview with Michael Knowles; could it have been that one you were referring to?
Anyway. Walter McCrone was by a long way the best qualified scientist to work on the Shroud in 1978. The second was Ray Rogers, who had been McCrone’s pupil on a microscopy course. McCrone was however quite an eccentric, which endeared him to his students but apparently engendered suspicion among people who didn’t know him well. He worked pretty well every day of the year (he started looking at the Shroud on Christmas Day), and for very long hours. He was the first to look at the sticky-tape slides, but when his preliminary observations were fairly comprehensively rejected by a bunch of people who hadn’t looked at them at all, he and they developed an antagonism which rapidly became an irreparable breach. I cover McCrone quite comprehensively in “The evil that men do lives after them…” There are numerous tributes to him on the internet, all referring to his kindness and social conscience, and although it’s true that Heller and Adler denigrated him, they were men of fairly robust egos themselves, and there was obviously a personal antagonism between them. On the other hand Barrie Schwortz, who I knew well and was the most generous of of people and with no ego about him at all, also didn’t like McCrone, which is something that must be taken into account.
I don’t remember what specifically I mentioned on the Reason to Doubt podcast, but it is true that McCrone changed his mind during the course of his investigations, from thinking that the image was entirely made of red ochre, to mostly made of the medium in which the red ochre was carried. He fluctuated between the two. And I wonder why he didn’t think of yellow ochre, which I have found a worthwhile possibility.
Do contact me again if you’d like to discuss anything more. My email address is hughfarey@hotmail.com.
Mr. Farey,
I caught your presentation on the Reason to Doubt YouTube channel and was thoroughly pleased to hear and find your work.
I’m in an ongoing battle with a fellow Catholic regarding the Shroud and not being a scientist (only a civil engineer) I struggle to swat away the obvious false claims they make. I’m often challenged to explain claims made by Father Spitzer or the recent Michael Knowles guest that spent over an hour laying the claims on thick. All of their words smack of “science sounding” but incorrect or falsely presented. You do not sound like that and I thank you for it.
One question. You mentioned that Walter McCrone was wrong about something on the Youtube post. Can you clarify or point to a blog regarding this. He has come up in several of my debates. My opponent doesn’t think of highly of him, as I do, so this piqued my interest. Thank you for your time.