Word: linen
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...shroud. They are to be venerated, not worshipped; valued not for their own divinity but because they turn believers' souls toward that which is truly holy. At the time of the radiocarbon dating, Peter Rinaldi, an American priest known as "Mr. Shroud" for his devotion to the linen sheet, wrote several letters to other devotees. In one he quoted St. Paul: "Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth." In another Rinaldi explicated, "If the shroud does have a meaning, it is because it speaks to us of his sufferings as no other image does...
...Shroud of Turin happens to be a letter declaring it a fraud. In 1389 Pierre d'Arcis, then Bishop of Troyes, described a "twofold image of one man, that is to say, the back and the front...thus impressed together with the wounds which he bore." The linen cloth had occupied a place of honor in a church in the tiny French town of Lirey since the 1350s; D'Arcis, who was writing to his Pope, complained that "although it is not publicly stated to be the true shroud of Christ, nevertheless this is given out and noised abroad...
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...
...April 21, 1988, under the gaze of Anastasio Cardinal Ballestrero of Turin and a video camera, Italian microanalyst Giovanni Riggi cut a 1/2-in. by 3-in. strip of linen from the shroud, well away from its central image and any charred or patched areas. He divided the strip into three postage stamp-size samples and distributed them to representatives of laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and the University of Arizona in Tucson. Each then performed at least three radiocarbon measurements on its sample...
Radiocarbon dating works by measuring an artifact for an isotope called carbon 14, traces of which are contained in all organic substances, including the flax plants from which the shroud's linen was made. Carbon 14 is unstable and decays over time into another isotope. The amount present in living organisms remains nearly constant because it is continually replaced through the intake of food and air. But when animals and plants die, their level of carbon 14 begins to decrease at a known, fixed rate. Thus the amount of residual carbon 14 in an object provides a measurement...