Shroudstory Adventures – 1. The Curious ‘a’.

Shroudstory was, as I have said before, most interesting and informative, but it from time to time it was also great fun. The prime instigator of this was one Max Patrick Hamon, a self-styled professional cryptosteganographer, whose overweening self-assurance, and indignation whenever it was queried, was so over the top it made us laugh more often than it frustrated us. Much of his dogmatism, almost invariably without any quoted source, sounded more fantastical than credible, but occasionally it seemed to have a grain or two of truth worth teasing out.

My first encounter with Max came with a query about a peculiar feature of the Pray codex ‘Three Marys’ image, not, for once, the little groups of circles that some people equate with the poker holes on the Shroud, but the large lowercase ‘a’, boldly placed in the middle of the picture, between the angel and the Three Marys, and above the sarcophagus, close to the crumpled shroud.

At least, I read it as an ‘a’. It could have been a ‘d’, or a ‘c-l’ or not a letter at all. I wondered what people thought.

Hugh Farey writes: “Has anybody any idea why there is a lowercase ‘a’ labelling the cloth/tomb so prominently in the lower picture?”

Some people suggested it stood for ‘Alpha’, as in “I am the Alpha and the Omega”, and Colin Berry suggested ‘anima’, the Latin for ‘life’ and ‘spirit’. We were, of course, all wrong.

Max Patrick Hamon says:
One must keep in mind that medieval Benedictine monk artists and/or scholars were well versed in the art of hiding (secret/sacred) information (e.g. in innocuous miniatures like we have here). This cryptographic art is known as steganography and dates back as early as the 5th century.
The Hungarian Benedictine monk artist’s steganographic signature appears at least twice within two of the five pen & ink miniatures in the Pray codex:

– First, in the upper picture (the anointing scene) in cursive uppercase letters (medieval script) embedded into the burial sheet lower semi-folded line, where it reads ‘Almos’.

[Really? There is ‘Almos’ hidden here (below)?

I don’t see it myself.]

– Then in cursive lowercase letters (medieval script) as ‘a-lmos’, made of the ‘a’ and the face in profile hidden into the first Mary’s sleeve’. There we can read a medieval-script styled ‘L’ in the shape of his forehead + his eyebrow line; an ‘m’ (in the shape of his mouth + nose-tip line); an ‘o’ in the shape of his lowered eye-lid line; and an ‘s’ in the shape of his nose + chin line.

[Like this?

I think this is getting far fetched.]

The face hidden in Mary‘s sleeve is to identify her as ‘Mary of Joseph’. Now in Hebrew, Yossef can mean ’(He) adds’, which is totally consistent here with both the face being ‘added’ to the sleeve and the Benedictine monk’s signature ‘Almos’ being ‘added’ to the scene in conjunction with the name ‘Jozsef’. The ‘Joseph’ hidden into the first Mary’s sleeve would be the Benedictine monk artist’s steganographic self portait.

[So all this is just the artist’s signature? No; there’s more.]

If we take a very close look, the face in the sleeve is seen with the eyes shut. This is the clincher confirming our decipher, as the surname Álmos is the Hungarian name of the legendary founder of Hungary, and means ‘dreamy or ‘sleepy’ or, according to folk etymology, ‘the dreamt-of one’ or ‘dreamt-of-child’. Hence, if my deciphering is correct, the miniaturist name would be no other than József Álmos.

[This, it turns out, contains truth. Álmos was the legendary head of the first federation of Hungarian states, and his name is often etymologically associated with a dream his mother had, of being impregnated by a hawk while she was pregnant – but is it relevant here?]

Benedictine monks’ and nuns’ main goal was the quest for God. As early as the age of twelve, Benedict of Nursia (Umbria, central Italy) who founded the Benedictine Order in the 6th century was familiar with Syrian monks leading an eremitic life in the valleys of Umbria. The Pray codex was prepared at the Boldva Benedictine Monastery (Hungary). One of the medieval Benedictine monks’ and nuns’ steganographic techniques consisted in scattering fragments of secret/sacred informative imagery into spy clues, inserted in a series of illustrations within the same manuscript.

[Is that mere speculation? There is a 16th century book by the German Benedictine abbot Johannes Trithemius called Steganographia, which is all about how to write secret messages within a piece of text, such as making every other letter or every other word the text of the secret message.

It is not impossible that messages could also be hidden in pictures; but then why is the ‘a’ so prominent?]

The cursive lowercase ‘a’ stands for the Latin ‘addendum’ or ‘added’. Cryptoliterally speaking the Bendictine monk steganographer ‘adds’ (a) ‘dreamer/sleepy (old man)’ into the scene, namely Yossef (Hebrew) Àlmos (Hungarian). It also stands for for ‘apocalypsis’ meaning ‘revelation’ and ‘anastasia’ ‘(resurrection’), and is ‘open’ [made of three strokes of the pen which do not quite meet] so it can be seen simultaneously as ‘a’ and ‘c i’. This can be read as both ‘anastasia Ihesu Christi’, ‘the Resurrection of Jesus Christ’ and ‘apocalipsi Ihesu Christi, ‘the Revelation of Jesus Christ’, the said revelation being to Joseph Almos the Elder.

[Joseph Almos the Elder? Is Joseph Almos a recognised name? Was there a Joseph Almos the Younger? I think we’ve drifted into guesswork again. And there’s more.]

The letter ‘a’ standing alone, drawn in three strokes that don’t run together, is not of really unusual appearance. As East Frankish 10th-13th century ‘post-Caroline’ hand, its form is fairly familiar to anybody used to reading medieval manuscripts. The scribe did not connect the three strokes so that the ‘open’ letter ‘a’ would echo the ‘open’ letter ‘o’ found in the lowered eyelid of Joseph. The oddity is that it is a ‘lettera discontinua’. The ’a’ reads in triangular conjunction with the angel/messenger’s right index fingertip and Joseph hidden face’s lowered left eyelid in the shape of the letter ‘o’. This draws the sagacious reader’s attention to the ‘a’ which is a ‘hidden revelation’/‘crypto-apocalypsis’.

[I don’t think we need an invisible triangle to have our attention drawn to the ‘a’. It is quite prominent.]

The first Benedictine miniature to feature Christ in conjunction with a herringbone-patterned cloth and the Book of ReVE(I)Lation is in the 8th century Trier-Echternach missal. As for the figure of Joseph appearing in the Virgin’s clothes, see his face in the 12th century ‘Assumption of the Virgin’ in the Chiesa di Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, Palermo, Sicily, where it appears as if in the very cloth of the Holy Virgin. Joseph’s face is here referring to the Latin apocrypha: ‘The Passing of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ (7th century), attributed to Joseph of Arimathea.

[Sadly I cannot identify the images referred to. The Trier Gospels were written in Echternach monastery, in the 8th century, but are Gospels, and do not contain the Book of Revelation. The nearest thing to a Missal is the Echternach Sacramentary, which is late 9th century, but also contains no image of Christ in the Revelation. The Church of St Mary of the Admiral has a lot of 12th century mosaics, but I cannot find an Assumption. I don’t think Max has made up these references, but I doubt if they as obviously reveal what he claims. Next, he moves on to the pointing hand of the angel, which appears to have six-fingers, although one of these is the thumb, which is out of sight.]

The angel/messenger points with his right hand, the first and fifth fingers raised, the thumb holding down the others against the palm, to represent horns. The hand gesture with six fingers evokes the passion of the Christ who in the sixth day, and at the sixth hour, was nailed to the Cross (see the Eastern monk’s prayer of the sixth hour + Origen + Hand gesture in medieval symbolism). In this way, the viewer can deduce that in all likelihood the ‘hidden revelation’ is not so much about Christ’s resurrection as it is about his passion and death.

The hand sign represents Victory over Shatan or Ba’al-Zebul, Hebrew for Lord-of-the-Flies, i.e. Death (see also the ram, also worshipped as Ba’al-Qarnaim; ’Lord-of-Two-Horns’). In the Shemokmedi Monastery, in the western Georgian province of Guria, you can find a 12th century wall painting of another six-fingered angel.

[Quite possibly. However, all this erudition got the better of Colin Berry.]

Colin S Berry says:
Some here might be interested to be made aware of the existence a little known branch of scholarship, devoted entirely to the shooting down of steganography (see above). It is called, er, stengunography.

Max Patrick Hamon says:
Most obviously this is too far beyond CB’s rampant arrognorant scope and his pseudoknowledge of Benedictine steganography.

[Did Max make his case? That the ‘a’ was part of the hidden signature of a Joseph Almos? Not for me, he didn’t. That the ‘a’ stood for ‘addendum’, apocalypses’ or ‘Anastasia’? I doubt it, no more than it stood for any other relevant possibility such as ‘Alpha’ or ‘animus’. It does not look contemporaneous with the rest of the drawing to me.]