I would be intereted in what all you have read.
The Turin cloth first appeared in north-central France in the mid-fourteenth century. At that time the local bishop uncovered an artist who confessed he had “cunningly painted” the image. Subsequently, in 1389, Pope Clement VII officially declared the shroud to be only a painted “representation.” For 500 years the shroud was considered a fake.
At the end of the 19th century, Secundo Pia took photos of the shroud. He noticed that the negatives appeared to be a positive image and that the shroud was therefore a “negative” image. The myth grew that the image was a miracle because it was a negative image that could not have been faked (because photographic negatives didn’t exist in the Middle Ages) and that it is “anatomically perfect”. Both statements are wrong. The image isn’t a true negative (hair, eyebrows, and “blood” are positive images, and the picture is far from anatomically perfect.) One arm is longer than the other. The hair is wrong. Blood trickles on the head are wrong and the overall figures height to girth is wrong.
In 1972 a team was put together by the Vatican. They used very sophisticated tests for blood, but found none. Two of the experts declared it a painting. They were pressured into saying they weren’t sure because of the “miraculous’ negative properties and the alleged anatomical perfection.
During the later 70’s, a group that venerated the Shroud assembled a team called the Shroud of Turin Research Project, “STURP”. Several of the “scientists” were from Los Alamos. None had experience in forensics or art forgeries, so they brought in the world’s foremost microscopist and noted forensic art expert, Walter McCrone. McCrone also found no blood and identified paint and substances typical of the art of the middle ages. He said it was a fake dated around 1355.
The STURP dudes flipped. They took away McCrone’s samples and tried to ruin him.
STURP used less sensitive tests for blood, and shazzam, they found it! Around the STURP team grew up a circle of quacks that found all kinds of miraculous things. The real scientists never did.
In 1988, the Vatican had samples taken by experts under their supervision. Three labs in three different countries c-14 tested the samples and came up with dates consistent with Pope Clement, and McCrone. The Catholic **** hit the fan.
A papal representative named Gonella had a hissy fit calling the scientists who did the tests “dogs”. He set out to prove them wrong by releasing samples without the Vatican’s permission. Although there is no evidence except his word, he supposedly took a warp and weft thread from the samples that were used for dating (this was suspiciously convenient since the samples were destroyed in the testing). The sampling had been very closely scrutinized and no one confirms the existence of these threads and microphotographs of the samples do not show any missing threads. He did not have authority to distribute any samples.
A man named Rogers (of STURP who wasn’t supposed to be involved) supposedly tested these threads and said that they came from an “invisible patch”. This was based on a report by Benford and Marino who are two of the quacks mentioned earlier (they are famous for being experts on spontaneous human combustion and pyramid power).
Rogers wrote a paper that slipped through the peer review process and appeared in a real scientific journal. The press seized on it as proof that the c-14 tests were flawed. They weren’t. Rogers’ paper was nonsense covered in pseudoscience. Interestingly, he stole from McCrone in it making claims he had ridiculed earlier.
The shroud is a fake. It was a known fake for 500 years. Every team that has tested it had members that said so. The STURP true believers have lied, stolen, and violated Vatican rules to keep the myth alive. They have been aided by UFO, Bigfoot type wackos who make a living at such things