The Shroud Codex (18 page)

“But these are not the only type of bloodstain we see on the Shroud, right?” Morelli asked, prompting Middagh to elaborate.

“Right,” Middagh answered, picking up the discussion. “As I mentioned, the blood on the Shroud also gives a positive test for serum albumin. Under ultraviolet fluorescence photography, the serum separation shows up as a lighter ring around a darker blood center, very typical of postmortem blood flows. The serum stains were not visible to the naked eye but were clearly seen in the ultraviolet fluorescence photography. So, the bloodstains tell a very complex story of the wounds suffered by the man in the Shroud in life, as well as the blood that drained from the body after death.”

“So far, I think I follow what you are saying,” Castle said.

“Just to be sure, let me recap,” Middagh responded, wanting to make sure the discussion was clear to everyone. “The evidence suggests that the crucified man was laid on the Shroud almost immediately after death. The blood flows suggest the man was placed in the Shroud without being washed clean or in any way embalmed or otherwise prepared for burial. We see the same evidence on the front and back images of the man in the Shroud. Remember, the Shroud wrapped over the man’s head to cover his front side. This accounts for the head-to-head images of the
man’s front and backside we see on the Shroud’s approximately fourteen-foot full length.”

“Dr. Castle, as a physician, I’m sure you can appreciate what the presence of the hemoglobin and serum albumin on the Shroud mean,” Father Morelli said.

“I believe I’m following what’s been said so far,” Castle answered, “but why don’t you tell me what specifically you have in mind. I want to make sure I understand your point precisely.”

“Just this,” Morelli continued. “The blood evidence on the Shroud either means the image was imprinted on the linen of the Shroud by a body that had suffered the injuries we see, or by a forger who painted in blood and appreciated not only the anatomical nature of the wounds, but also the exact nature of the blood flow that would have resulted from crucifixion wounds while the victim was alive, as well as from the serum flow that would have continued even into death.”

“I don’t rule out an expert forger,” Castle said directly. Morelli had a point. “Many people in the Middle Ages were as brilliant as today, even if they lacked our modern technology.”

“The forger would have had to have been sufficiently brilliant to have painted onto the Shroud serum stains not visible to the naked eye, anticipating that in later centuries we would have and use the type of ultraviolet fluorescence technology we would need to check for serum in attempting to document the authenticity of the Shroud,” Morelli added.

“Are you saying Leonardo wasn’t that brilliant?” Castle countered.

“In Leonardo da Vinci’s day, the study of anatomy was pretty primitive and the understanding of blood composition and circulation was not well advanced,” Morelli responded.

Middagh interrupted this discussion to draw everyone’s attention to a point in the discussion he wanted to make sure no one
missed. “There’s an important conclusion we can draw about the blood we find on the Shroud,” Middagh said. “The bloodstains that penetrate through the Shroud and show up on the backside of the Shroud are very different from how the body image formed on the Shroud. We know the blood and serum inhibited the image formation on the Shroud. The Shroud of Turin Research Team in 1978 had instruments that could detect parts per billion of any substance on the Shroud, and the scientists concluded there is no body image under the blood and serum stains. What this means is that the blood flows from life and the blood serum draining from the body after death were both imprinted on the Shroud first, when the body was laid on the Shroud and it was pulled over the head to cover the front part of the body. The body image formed on the Shroud at a later time. In other words, frontal and dorsal body images appear to have been imprinted on the Shroud simultaneously, sometime after the body had rested in the Shroud and after all blood fluids had stopped draining from the body.”

“What exactly is your point?” Castle asked.

“My point is simple,” Middagh answered. “We know from studying the Shroud that there were two distinct steps in which the image was formed: first the blood was deposited by direct contact, then the body image was formed subsequently by a process we don’t understand.”

“What can you tell me about the wrist wounds?” Castle asked Middagh, wanting to know what the Shroud might tell him about Father Bartholomew’s stigmata.

Middagh searched through his slides until he found the one he wanted, a close-up of the wrist wounds on the man in the Shroud. The image he displayed on the projection screen showed somewhat more of the man’s body than did the close-up of the hands and wrists that Morelli had brought with him from the Vatican.

Middagh continued: “Most classical pictures of Jesus show him being crucified by being nailed through the palms of the hands. But as you can see here, the man in the Shroud appears to have been nailed through the wrists. It is an interesting detail, but none of the four gospels that discuss the crucifixion—Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John—say whether Christ was tied or nailed to the cross. Most of the ancient crucifixion nails recovered by archeologists in excavations throughout the wider regions of the Roman Empire give no indication what limb they had pierced. But we know the ancient Romans nailed people to the cross if they wanted the crucifixion to be particularly brutal or particularly short, and Church tradition supports that Christ was nailed to the cross.”

Castle wanted to make sure he understood the negative image he was looking at. “Don’t most negatives have a mirror effect in which, for instance, right is transformed to left in the negative?” he asked. “The negative shows the left arm crossed over the right arm. Is this really the other way around?”

“You’re right, in that sorting out the right/left orientations of various images of the Shroud is confusing, even for experts,” Middagh said. “But since the Shroud itself is a negative image, the mirror-effect reversal occurs in what we see in the Shroud with the naked eye. If you look at the Shroud, it appears the right hand is crossed over the left. I’m showing you a photographic negative, which once again reverses left to right and vice versa. In other words, the photographic negative has it right. In the corpse of the man in the Shroud, the left hand was crossed over the right. All the photographic negatives I am going to show you are correct for the left/right orientation of the man in the Shroud as he was buried.”

“Thank you for explaining that,” Castle said. “I’m beginning to get the point that the photographic negatives are perhaps the best way to see the crucified body of the man in the Shroud.”

“I agree,” Middagh said. “I’m showing you the negative photographs because the image is more clearly seen when the brownish-red image on the Shroud is transformed into the white and gray-tone shadings of the negative. Also, I’m showing you the negative photographs because the left/right orientations you see in the negative are true to the left/right orientation of the crucified man himself. If you don’t follow all this technical discussion precisely, it doesn’t matter. Just remember that the images I’m showing you have been flipped appropriately so you are looking at the body the way it would have looked in death.”

Studying the wrist and forearms image, Castle could see the wound in the wrist of the man in the Shroud correctly positioned in the carpal area, the right place for a crucifixion, and the absence of the thumbs in the image confirmed once again Castle’s presumption that driving a nail through the wrist in that location had probably damaged the median nerve, causing the thumb to bend back reflexively into the palm of each hand.
All this was consistent with his earlier discussion with Morelli and with Dr. Lin’s analysis of Father Bartholomew’s wrist wounds.

Looking closely at what appeared to be two streams of blood flow on the left forearm, Castle judged both streams of blood had come from the same puncture wound in the wrist. He estimated that the arms would have been extended at about a 65-degree angle with the horizontal to cause the blood to flow in the pattern he was observing on the forearms. The blood flows appeared to extend from the wrist to the elbow, which would have been consistent with the outstretching of the arm in crucifixion. Castle was beginning to have no doubt that in the Shroud he was looking at the image of a crucified man.

Whoever forged the Shroud in medieval times had to have a remarkable understanding of human anatomy and the mechanics of crucifixion to have produced an image that would stand up to current medical analysis confirmed by twenty-first-century technology.

“Again, we don’t know exactly what the cross that Christ died upon looked like,” Middagh said. “Typically the vertical beam of the cross stood permanently implanted at the place of execution. The victim often carried the crossbeam to the place of crucifixion, with the crossbeam carried on the shoulders, behind the nape of the neck, like a yoke. The Roman executioners pulled back the condemned man’s arms to hook them over the crossbeam to hold and balance it. At the place of crucifixion, the victim was nailed to the crossbeam at the wrists, or the arms were bound and tied to the crossbeam. The Roman executioners then used forked poles and maybe a pulley to lift the crossbeam up to where it could be slotted into a notch at the top of the vertical beam to form the cross. Depending on how deep the notch was cut, the crossbeam might have been flush with the vertical beam, like the cross-stroke
on the letter
T,
or maybe it fit into a deeper slot, forming the traditional four-point cross we see in most religious paintings from the Renaissance period until today.”

Castle listened, with his mind translating what he was hearing into medical detail. With the massive trauma the arms of a crucified man suffered from bearing the weight of his body, especially as the horizontal beam of the cross was lifted to the vertical beam, there was no doubt nails had to be placed through the wrist. Otherwise, the crucified man could fall off the crossbeam as it was being elevated to the vertical beam of the cross. If the crucified man were to stay on the cross any length of time, the arms would end up supporting his weight, so the wrists had to be pinned to the crossbeam firmly enough so as to not come loose. Had the Shroud of Turin demonstrated anything different, it could be disqualified immediately as an artist’s rendering. Whether Father Bartholomew appreciated the medical facts of crucifixion or whether he was merely manifesting what his subconscious recorded from the Shroud, Castle did not know. But Father Bartholomew’s stigmata were also in his wrists, not the palms of his hands.

Looking closely at the projected image, Castle clearly recognized what appeared to be the scourge marks he saw manifested on Bartholomew yesterday. Looking at the photographs of the Shroud that Morelli had shown him from the Vatican, Castle had not focused on the scourge wounds, although those were obviously apparent in the body above and below the crossed arms, once you began looking for them. “Are those the scourge wounds that appear to cover the body?” Castle asked Middagh.

“Yes,” Middagh said. “Let me show you a close-up image of the scourge wounds suffered by the man in the Shroud.”

Middagh projected onto the screen a dorsal image showing the scourge wounds on the shoulders and back of the body.

“As you can see, the man in the Shroud shows signs of an extensive beating from a whip. The scourge wounds are especially heavy on the shoulders and the backs, extending down the buttocks and the back of the legs. I have other images here that show the same pattern of scourge marks on the man’s front side, although there are not as many scourge wounds on the chest or front of the legs as there are on the backside.”

Seeing these wounds now, Castle could see the obvious resemblance to the wounds he saw on Bartholomew Sunday.

“We have to get detailed photos of Father Bartholomew’s wounds,” Father Morelli said insistently. “From what I saw of Father Bartholomew in the ER, I believe the wounds he suffered all over his body will match precisely what we are seeing as the scourge wounds on the Shroud.”