One of the problems we have in understanding the image on the Shroud is that the better the photograph, the more the vagaries of the cloth interfere with the image itself. Attempts to “remove the weave” have been more or less successful, but invariably involve an element of subjectivity that cannot be verified for accuracy. […]

[ADDENDUM: Since this article was first published, Michael Kowalski has kindly made some significant corrections, for which I am very grateful. They concern the dates when critics of the radiocarbon results first raised their objections, and a numerical error on my part which I certainly shouldn’t have made. I could have made these corrections invisibly, […]

THE SHROUD OF JESUS: AND THE SIGN JOHN INGENIOUSLY CONCEALEDby Gilbert Lavoie, MD, published by the Sophia Institute Press, 2023. Gilbert Lavoie is a practising medical physician whose association with the Shroud goes back to 1978 and the STuRP investigation, some of whose lead scientists he knows well. However he has very much ploughed his […]

A recent update at academia.edu details Joe Marino’s latest research into his “invisible mending” hypothesis. ‘Further Empirical Data Indicating Repairs in the C-14 Sample Area of the Shroud of Turin,’ drags in the Bayeux Tapestry, Roman tunics, and Medieval tapestries, Joe’s pet peeves (that everybody who disagrees with him is either a lunatic or a […]

For many years, students of the Shroud have been using a group of microphotographs included in the “Image Library” of the website shroud.com, taken from the “Mark Evans Collection,” and individually labelled “ME-02” to “ME-32,” although not consecutively, as not all the micrographs are included. Twenty-four of them can be seen on sindonology.com. There is […]

Dissing d’Arcis is a popular pastime among those who cling to the historical authenticity of the Shroud as the burial cloth of Jesus. His famous, undated, unsigned, amended and corrected memorandum has been roundly denounced as a deliberate falsification of the Shroud of Lirey, driven by his need to stimulate pilgrimage to Troyes, whose partly-built […]

On a “Reason to Doubt” podcast recently I demonstrated, as I have done before, that the alleged wrist wound was demonstrably through the ‘palm’ of the hand rather than the ‘wrist,’ although these areas are sometimes difficult to distinguish, so I refined my demonstration to show that the nail was between the metacarpals, not among […]

A common comment regarding the unlikelihood of a medieval provenance for the Shroud is that the figures of Jesus are naked, which some people think would have been anathema to medieval sensibilities. This is due to ignorance rather than research. Jesus is typically depicted nude as an infant, almost always at his baptism, and occasionally […]

An essay in fiction inspired by an idea from Joe Marino. 2025. The first year of the pontificate of the controversially named Pope Christopher has been marked by a succession of sweeping changes in the Catholic Church, stimulating enthusiasm and dismay in almost equal measure. Some of his reforms have followed precipitately from his predecessor’s […]

In 685 AD, at the age of sixteen, Justinian II became the sole emperor of the Byzantine Empire, and coins began to be struck bearing his image and name. However, it is unlikely that they bore the image of Christ as well. That had to wait until 692 AD, and the Trullan Ecumenical Council, whose […]