THE MADNESS OF KING CHARLES VI By 1395, the King of France was increasingly subject to bouts of mental disturbance. Three years previously he had suffered some unknown disease which made his hair and fingernails fall out, a few months after which, surprised on a military raid, he suddenly attacked his own men, killing four […]
It has become a staple of sindonological faith that the Sudarium of Oviedo has so many mathematical coincidences with the head on the Shroud that its correlation is “beyond reasonable doubt.” Without, at least to start with, criticising the work which has resulted in this conclusion, let’s examine the Sudarium without any preconceptions ourselves, and […]
In April 2025, Andrea Nicolotti published an article in Skeptic magazine called ‘The Fabric of Faith: Unravelling the Myths Surrounding the Shroud of Turin,’ a fairly conventional account of the Shroud from a medieval point of view, with a contemporary comment on the recently popularised WAXS dating, and a commentary on pseudo-science in general. In […]
I learnt a new word today! “Ultracrepidarian.” It comes from the quotation above, which in turn comes from the Latin writer Pliny’s extraordinary encyclopaedia on every subject under the sun, called Naturalis Historia, On Natural History. Book 35 is about painters and painting, and Chapter 36 lists several of the most prominent of the age. […]
A paper has recently been published at academia.edu by a Dental Surgeon,1 in which he thinks he can spot the line of the top of the lower teeth, which he calls the lower incisal plane. In a subsequent podcast on JP2 Catholic Radio,2 Dr John Sottosanti also observes the upper incisal plane, the line of […]
It is taking an inordinately long time for all the presentations to make it to the internet, and although all credit is due to those who are editing them and making them ‘fit to print’ as it were, it’s beginning to look as if some will never make it to the airwaves. As predicted, many, […]
On Sunday 23 November 2025, His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a worldwide sect of Islam some twenty million strong, opened its first purpose-built mosque in Wales, at a ceremony to which I had the honour of being invited, in connection with my research into the Shroud. I also […]
[Viewer discretion advised! In the comments below, John Loken has mentioned, quite correctly, that bloodstained fabrics of all kind bear witness to the fact that of course blood transfers from a body to cloth, and Teddi Pappas has sent me a couple of illustrations of a wound dressing, and the associated wound. Both comments are […]
Over the long weekend of 30 July – 3 August, the Shroud Educational Endeavors Corporation presented an extremely comprehensive survey of the current state of Shroud research to date at the Augustine Institute, St Louis, Missouri, “drawing more than 425 attendees and featuring 85 presentations from 49 global experts representing 10 countries,”1 presenting in 3 […]
I had been looking forward to this. Jack Markwardt is usually as thorough a researcher as one could wish to find, and his history of the Shroud before Lirey has been comprehensive and meticulously researched. Needless to say, I have been reviewing his presentations with equal rigour, and do not come to the same conclusions, […]