Word: cloth
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What D'Arcis's letter sketched out, documents left by 16th century nuns described in detail: the 14-ft.-long, herringbone-twill linen cloth of which the bishop spoke did bear the image of a naked and bearded man about 6 ft. tall, hair in a loose ponytail, back apparently scourged with a multithonged whip, hands crossed modestly before him. The figure was already faded then: a more recent witness described it as having "both the color and character of faint scorch marks on a well-used ironing cover." But not so faint that, D'Arcis excepted, people doubted...
...thoroughly modern invention: the camera. On May 28, 1898, a city councillor named Secondo Pia took the first photographs of the relic. One scholar recounts that as the negative image began to appear in his darkroom, Pia "nearly dropped the plate." Markings that had been faint on the cloth suddenly jumped out with such extraordinary clarity and added detail that "he felt certain he was looking on the face of Jesus." And, in subsequent exposures, his body. The lance wound in the chest and the bloody rivulets where a crown of thorns might have bitten were suddenly vividly manifest...
...certainly released a new wave of fascination, both popular and scientific. In the 100 years following Pia's epiphany, the cloth has been removed from its silver casket not just for the public but also to several waves of scientific observers. The trend's high point occurred in 1978, when the Roman Catholic Church allowed a five-day extravaganza during which more than two dozen scientists from the U.S., Italy and Switzerland performed a battery of tests on the shroud and also used pieces of tape to lift material from its surface for later study. The tests included photo...
...wouldn't shake my faith," says Ian Wilson from his home near Brisbane, Australia. "The fact that it might have touched the body of Christ doesn't move me at all. It's just knowing that the image exists. I would be as interested in a 14th century cloth if I could find the artist who made...
...stone slab," he wrote in his 1978 best seller The Shroud of Turin. "Suddenly there is a burst of mysterious power from it. In that instant the blood dematerializes, dissolved perhaps by the flash, while its image and that of the body becomes indelibly fused onto the cloth, preserving for posterity a literal 'snapshot' of the Resurrection...