R.I.P. Barrie Schwortz

In 2019, as part of the Post-Graduate Certificate in Shroud Studies, I listed the founding of shroud.com as the first of my three “most important events in Sindonology since 1981,” and the death of its founder, Barrie Schwortz, on 21 June, has plunged its future, and the future of Shroud Studies in general, into serious jeopardy.

Since before the birth of Google, as Barrie was proud to proclaim, shroud.com has epitomised not only a well-nigh perfect example of how a comprehensive on-line library on any subject should be organised and maintained, but it also characterised its founder and administrator, in terms of his dedication to research on every aspect, and his generosity in helping others to further their own studies, even if they diametrically contradicted his own beliefs.

I first met Barrie in 2015, when we were both invited to the Jalsa Salana, or annual gathering, of the world-wide Ahmadiyya Muslim community, in Hampshire, UK. Through the good offices of Arif Khan and Amer Safir, of the ‘Review of Religions’ publication, a remarkable collection of disparate opinions on the Shroud were gathered in friendly disagreement under Barrie’s benevolent aegis. The Ahmadiyya Muslims thought the Shroud was genuine but showed a living man, David Rolfe and Pam Moon, Christian, thought it showed a dead man and was evidence of the resurrection, Barrie, Jewish, thought it showed a dead man who stayed dead, and I thought it was medieval.

Facing the camera, left to right: David Rolfe, Arif Khan, Barrie Schwortz, Amer Safir, Hugh Farey
and Simon Brown, with Pam Moon in red, behind, in the Hospitality Tent of the Jalsa Salana.

It was one of Barrie’s greatest boasts that he was invited, by his Holiness Caliph Mirza Masroor Ahmad, to address the entire congress on the subject that year, where he summed up the spirit of ‘Love for all, Hatred for none’ by delighting that a Jew should be invited to speak at a Muslim conference about a Christian relic. His speech, treading delicate ground amongst the sincerity of the different beliefs he represented, was such a model of humble diplomacy that it deserves to be reproduced in full:

“Your Holiness, my brothers and sisters of the Ahmadiyya community, and distinguished guests, I’m greatly privileged to be here. I have spent the last twenty years travelling the world, lecturing about the Shroud of Turin. I have travelled to, and spoken to, every Christian denomination, to secular audiences, to scientific audiences, but never have I ever been to a Muslim organisation. This is my first time.

In the United States, of course, the Ahmadiyya community is not well known, and I must admit that when I was invited I was a little bit apprehensive. I normally don’t get nervous but I was a little concerned. My role was to come here and to share with you my knowledge of the Shroud of Turin, but I have to admit, in the three days that I’ve been here, I’ve learned far more from you than you will ever learn from me. As I stand here, and I look at your motto, ‘Love for all, Hatred for none,’ I can only look at myself as a shining example of your creed that the Muslim community, the Ahmadiyya community, would invite a Jewish man to discuss a Christian relic at a Muslim organisation.

And so I’m very grateful for that. I’m also very grateful that the other day Your Holiness took the time to come to our exhibition of the Shroud, and give us a few minutes of his very valuable time, and discuss it with us so that we could share the information.

And so I am simply here to say thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. I will go back to America, and I will start to speak about the Ahmadiyya community, because we don’t know about you, and we should. We never hear the good news; we only hear the bad news. And you are the Good News. Thank you very much.”

It must have been the shortest speech Barrie ever made – he often used to begin lectures by saying that it was easy to get him to speak but very difficult to get him to stop – but surely one of the most powerful and most influential.

For all his being the most recognised figure in Shroud studies today, Barrie was deeply suspicious of the media and most of the publicity given to the Shroud over the years. He founded shroud.com to make primary sources, especially the STuRP scientific papers, freely available, so that common mistakes could be avoided, and lent his own expertise to discussions and TV documentaries, almost always coming away disappointed, not necessary in the conclusions they came to, but in their debonaire attitude to the facts. He rarely entered online or email discussions, and when he did, it was invariably only to ‘put the record straight,’ and never to impose his own views. Another of his often-repeated quotes refers to the man who said, “Mr Schwortz, you’ll never convince me the Shroud is authentic,” to which he replied, “What makes you think I want to convince you; I only want to give you the information. What you decide is between you and God.”

This is not to say that Barrie didn’t have opinions, only that he didn’t want to impose them. As a technical photographer he very much tended towards the scientific approach to the Shroud (although he never described himself as a scientist), and did not accept hypotheses that involved the supernatural, however well reasoned. Barrie’s sindonological champions were the chemists John Heller and Alan Adler, and especially Ray Rogers, and he supported the latter’s attempts to describe a naturalistic cause for the image via a Maillard reaction. He had met, and personally disliked, Walter McCrone, and was scathing of the 1988 radiocarbon tests, specifically in the persons of Michael Tite and Edward Hall, but in general he was extremely tolerant of all sorts of people and all sorts of attitudes, authentic or medieval, supernatural or naturalistic.

To say that a friend or acquaintance will be sadly missed is a truism, and of course all Barrie’s friends and acquaintances will miss him personally in their own ways, but there are few people whose passing affects an entire academic discipline. Barrie’s death will rock the whole of sindonology to its core, and we can only pray that his legacy of honesty and generosity and the open door of shroud.com will continue to flourish in the years ahead.