The Thousand Pound Challenge

Make a piece of Shroud-like textile – on a warp-weighted loom.

Let’s forget about the image, which may or may not be miraculous, and focus on the cloth, which is surely mostly thought of as an entirely man-made product. It’s a fine, linen, 3/1 chevron twill, and all the textile experts to study it have leant towards a four-shaft treadle loom as the means of weaving it. I say leant towards, as some, believing the Shroud to be authentic, have postulated the possibility of its having been made on a warp-weighted loom, more typical of the technology of the first century Middle East.

Some years ago I had a piece of cloth made to Gabriel Vial’s specifications, and very Shroud-like it seems to be, but it was woven on a treadle loom. The only attempt I know of to use a warp-weighted loom resulted in an article by Antoinette Merete Olsen on Exarc.net (exarc.net/issue-2020-4/at/shroud-turin-and-extra-sheds-warping-threads), which concluded: “My test results, as I have described them in this article, tells me that the Shroud of Turin cannot have been woven on a warp-weighted loom. The Shroud of Turin must have been woven on a treadle loom.”

However, I’m aware that other weavers disagree, and of course, those who are sure that the Shroud is authentic more or less have to disagree, but on ideological rather than practical grounds.

So here’s the challenge. A piece of Shroud-like fabric, minimum 50cm x 50cm, woven on a warp-weighted loom. The thread must be linen, minimum 20 threads per centimetre. It is a 3/1 chevron twill (i.e. symmetrical across the ‘spine’ so technically not ‘herringbone,’ which is not symmetrical), with the chevrons pointed along the warp direction. Each each ‘zig’ and ‘zag’ should be 40 threads wide. (Vial calls this “41 threads in the straight series, 39 threads in the return series, repeat: 80 threads and 4 passes.”)

For true verisimilitude, the warp threads should be about 38 per cm, and the weft about 26 per cm, but I am more interested in proof of concept than extreme precision.

Anybody who can weave me some cloth to those specifications can have £1000 plus up to £1000 expenses, and welcome. I’d like the cloth, and sufficient photographic documentation to show that a warp-weighted loom was indeed used, and how it was set up.

=======

Since David Rolfe’s Million Pound Challenge was issued a few years ago, the lack of response has led several of the more extreme authenticists to make statements along the lines of, “If you haven’t done it, that proves it can’t be done.” Presumably I’m allowed a similar response if no one rises to this challenge?

Comments

  1. Hullo Hugh,

    That “Challenge” you’ve issued for weaving a Shroud (or portion of one) sounds fair enough, for all I know. Admittedly, I know nothing about weaving or looms or even fabrics. Anyway, let’s hope you attract some experts who will try. Allow me to add a thousand dollars to the pot for more enticement.

    Your focus on the Turin Shroud itself purely as a cloth, apart from the blood or mysterious image on it, brought to mind another Shroud cloth question that has long puzzled me. You may remember my raising it in an online exchange some years ago.

    A little background first: Many Shroud authenticity supporters have claimed over the years that the Shroud is of typical ancient Jewish proportions. However, they seem to have been mistaken in making that claim, for there are no extant ancient Jewish shrouds or descriptions of them to compare it with. (Or perhaps one badly tattered ancient shroud, I forget where, which can hardly be an authoritative standard to compare it with and which does not have the same proportions.) So the anti-authenticists can claim the upper hand in that particular proportions debate. Good for them!

    However, several years ago I realized that the opposite claim may be stronger, involving the apparent complete lack of any burial shrouds from the European Middle Ages that have the same or similar proportions – very long and very narrow – as the Turin Shroud. And this, despite the existence of many illustrations and descriptions of medieval shrouds, which are all more squarish in shape.

    So, unless I am sadly mistaken, it would seem that no 14th century French forger would ever have thought of using such proportions for a fake shroud, since his audience of mostly peasants would not have recognized it as any normal shroud. They might have scoffed at the weird sight, not paid money as pilgrims to view it. Or so it seems to me. I haven’t seen this point made anywhere before, but it may be a valid one.

    The observation would apply even if you propose, as you often have, that the Lirey/Turin Shroud was originally created somewhere merely and honestly as a liturgical cloth (an altar frontal cloth? an Easter ritual prop?), with the image of Jesus put on it by artisans, but was later moved to Lirey and there dishonestly claimed to be the real burial shroud of Jesus. In that case, pilgrims to Lirey, not knowing its origin, might still have been skeptical of it as a real burial shroud due to its freakish proportions, so long and so narrow, besides the image bizarrely pictured on it. Even any profiteering schemers (relic hucksters) before them would have realized the foolishness of claiming that such an oddly shaped cloth was the authentic burial shroud of Jesus. It would not have helped to say that it was so different in size because it was an ancient Jewish shroud from Palestine. There were no records then to indicate such ancient proportions. (Only if the authorities who showed it at Lirey knew something of its history and were convinced it was genuine would they have dared to claim it as such.)

    Nor could any forgers or artisans in any “medieval shroud” scenario have easily claimed, to excuse its shape, that Jesus’ body was laid in it only first inside the tomb, not carried in it to the tomb. All four gospels of the New Testament relate the wrapping of the body in a shroud before its laying in a tomb. (They were actually mistaken in that, if the Shroud is authentic, but no one in medieval France knew better.) See, e.g., Matthew 27:59-60: “he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and [then] laid it in his own new tomb.” The implication of those gospel accounts is that the body was carried in its shroud to the tomb. But the merely three-feet wide Lirey/Turin Shroud was too flimsy to carry a body, as all could see. Moreover, none of the blood stains on it are smeared from such carrying, as they would have been. These major discrepancies would have posed an obstacle to any such 14th century dishonest repurposing of a long narrow liturgical cloth. Perhaps they were even factors behind the great skepticism of Bishop Pierre d’ Arcis in his Memorandum of 1389 claiming it a fraud. He does not mention such matters, but perhaps he thought of them.

    From everything I have read and seen (though it’s hard to find much information), the standard medieval European burial shroud was more squarish in shape, like a bedsheet and indeed often an actual bedsheet. The corpse seems to have been laid in the middle of the sheet, and the sides of the sheet were then wrapped over the sides of the corpse, first one side and then the other. Finally the two ends, top and bottom, were each gathered and tied, for use as handles to carry the deceased to the grave and lower him or her down into it. The general effect, which can be seen in a number of medieval illustrations, was like a long piece of candy wrapped in foil that is twisted at the ends, but a human-sized version of it.

    In fact, I don’t think I’ve read or seen a picture of a burial shroud with proportions like the Lirey/Turin Shroud from anywhere in the world. So again, one asks why any “medieval artists,” who allegedly came up with the idea, would have conceived it, whether originally or secondarily (later in Lirey). Why would they have used such a highly unusual, unconvincing shape of shroud?

    Anyway, given your recent Shroud weaving challenge, I thought I might present my own related yet also different challenge or invitation. If you, Hugh, or anyone else reading this post, can find a reliable medieval picture or description of a European burial shroud shaped like the Turin Shroud, some 3 feet wide by 14 feet long (about 1 by 4 meters), I would be happy to provide a reward of $1000 (once, not repeatedly). No handiwork involved at all. No bulky loom. No time-consuming fabrication of the cloth itself.

    Yet, it seems just possible that someone, somewhere in Western Europe in the years or decades after about 1355, when the Lirey/Turin Shroud was first exhibited in northeast France, could have copied its proportions for another, custom-made shroud and depicted it or written about it. So, we might best limit the eligible time-frame from circa AD 500 to only 1350, no later. I trust you agree.

    I realize that the question of typical Jewish shroud proportions in 1st century Palestine is not yet answered. But it doesn’t have to be answered here. Maybe the 4 to 1 proportions of the Turin Shroud were typical, perhaps meant to resemble a long scroll of holy scripture. Or maybe they were used at least for tomb burials, the sides left open to aid rapid decomposition of the body, its bare bones to be gathered in an ossuary only one year later. Or maybe the 4 to 1 proportions were highly unusual, even ad hoc in this one case due to the impending onset of the Sabbath, preventing further burial work on that first Good Friday, such that the people involved used whatever serviceable piece of cloth they could buy in that urgent situation. But no 14th century French forger or church artisan would have worked under such extreme urgency and had to use the nearest piece of cloth available. So such an “urgent” scenario would not fit any medieval Turin Shroud claim. Or do you see another solution, Hugh? I’d be glad to consider it.

    John Loken

  2. Hi Mario,

    Thanks very much for pointing that out. It was news to me, as no doubt it will be to may others. I have written to Agnete Wisti Lassen to ask her to make me some Shroud, and will be very happy to pay her if she obliges.

    Best wishes,
    Hugh

  4. brilliant suggestion! I’m sure this will spark a new cottage industry of excuse making amongst Shroudies

  5. Hi, Hugh,

    A clever challenge! BUT, some inherent, practical problems: one would need to have a loom that is consistent with a first century one. Next, one would need to have the skill that a professional would have that manufactures fine linen cloth by first century standards.

    What impediment do you think exists to a weaver’s being able to make a 3:1 twill like what we see on the Shroud on a hand loom?

    Just because one weaver can’t accomplish this task does not necessarily mean another (perhaps better) weaver could not.

    For example, there can be quite a startling range in skill even among professionals. And, I think this point applies to “invisible reweavers, as well!” The quality of invisible reweaving that I have access to locally is almost certainly not of the caliber that French or Italian royalty could both access and afford.

    There are, for example, amateurs as well as professionals who can build a log cabin, and there are masters who can build Notre Dame Cathedral!

    Best regards,

    Teddi