Shroud of Turin description in Sermon from 944AD Constantinople!

A ". . . second paper is titled, "The Sermon of Gregory Referendarius, (PDF file, requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)" by Mark Guscin, a man familiar to many of you as the editor of the British Society for the Turin Shroud (BSTS) Newsletter. In this extremely important and just completed paper, Mark, an expert linguist and historian, translates (from the original Greek) the sermon given by Gregory Referendarius in 944. The sermon was pronounced on the occasion of the arrival of the Image of Edessa in Constantinople and was translated into English from the only known surviving manuscript of the sermon, recently rediscovered in the Vatican Archives by Italian classics scholar Gino Zaninotto. Not only are we extremely fortunate that Professor Zaninotto re-discovered the manuscript, but we are even luckier to have Mark Guscin, a truly brilliant classical scholar and linguist, working today in the world of Sindonology. There are very few people more skilled or better qualified to provide a trustworthy and accurate translation of such an important document. -- Barrie Schwortz, www.shroud.com

On 15th August 944, the Image of Edessa, the ¢ceiropoi»toj image (not made by human hands), came to the imperial capital Constantinople from Edessa (today's Sanli- Urfa in Turkey). The feast day of the event is celebrated in the Orthodox Church on the following day, 16th August, and is generally overshadowed by the Dormition of the Virgin, celebrated on the 15th.

A sermon pronounced by Gregory Referendarius, Archdeacon of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople on the occasion of the Image's arrival in the city survives in one known manuscript in the Vatican Archives, recently rediscovered by Italian classics scholar Gino Zaninotto. The codex dates from the eleventh century. I have worked with microfilm copies of the manuscript to produce this translation, kindly supplied by Professor Daniel Scavone. . .

It was Ian Wilson who first brought to the world at large the theory by which the Image of Edessa could in fact have been none other than the Turin Shroud. The reasons behind the theory are explained in Wilson’s books on the Shroud, and need no further comment here. The main objection to the theory, still made by many today, is that the Image of Edessa is generally recorded as a facial image of Christ formed in life, either when he met the messenger sent by King Abgar and wiped his face on a cloth, miraculously leaving an imprint on it, or when he wiped his face with a cloth in the garden of Gethsemane, while sweating blood. This second theory of the legend of the image, found in the Official History attributed to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, written on or shortly after the arrival of the Image in the imperial capital in August 944, is proof that blood had been seen on the Image as the author was trying to find an explanation for this . . .

. . . The Gregory Sermon is precisely one of these texts. The author quite obviously knew that the Image of Edessa had both bloodstains and a side wound. He does abandon the idea of Jesus pressing a cloth to his face in reply to Abgar's letter and messenger, because he knows there is blood on the cloth – the slightly later Official History of the Image of Edessa offers both possibilities, again aware that there is blood on the cloth. He therefore concludes that the image must have been impressed onto the cloth when Jesus' sweat ran down his face like drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane . . . However, this would not explain the blood from the side wound . . .

Introduction
# 1 A sermon by Gregory the Archdeacon and Referendarius of the great church at Constantinople, about how incredible things are not subject to the laws of praise, and about how three patriarchs have declared that there is an image of Christ which was brought from Edessa 919 years afterwards by the zeal of a pious emperor, in the year 6452 (944AD). Lord bless us. . . .

[Relating the legend and creation of the Image of Edessa to the congregation]
. . . .But Jesus, undergoing the passion of his own free will, believing that human nature fears death – indeed death comes upon the very nature that was made to live – taking this linen cloth he wiped the sweat that was falling down his face like drops of blood in his agony. And miraculously, just as he made everything from nothing in his divine strength, he imprinted the reflection of his form on the linen. . . .

. . . The Image of Edessa is not a painting
# 21 He will do this straight away for us if we so desire, if we look upon the reflection and the immense beauty it is depicted with. For this is not the art of painting, which provides a door for the mind to consider the original and depicts images. This reflection was imprinted from a living original. Painting establishes a complete form with various beautiful colours, representing the cheeks with a blooming red, the encircling of the lips with red, it paints the beard with flowery gold, the eyebrow with shining black, the whole eye in beautiful colours, the ears and nose in a different way, overshadowing the flanks of the imprint with a compound of qualities and showing the chin with hair.

#22 This reflection, however – let everyone be inspired with the explanation – has been imprinted only by the sweat from the face of the originator of life, falling like drops of blood, and by the finger of God. For these are the beauties that have made up the true imprint of Christ, since after the drops fell, it was embellished by drops from his own side. Both are highly instructive – blood and water there, here sweat and image. Oh equality of happenings, since both have their origin in the same person. The source of living water can be seen and it gives us water, showing us that the origin of the image made by sweat is in fact of the same nature as the origin of that which makes the liquid flow from the side . . . .

These are just excerpts from the paper and sermon. Please download the <a href="http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/guscin3.pdf>PDF file</a> and read the entire paper.

The description in this 10th-century sermon is of an image of Christ's face only made miraculously on a cloth, apparently from His blood. It is not a description of a cloth with an image of Christ's whole body, front and back.

Read it again, Dajjal. The Archdeacon speaks of the wound with a flow of blood and water... The Image of Edessa was understood to be ONLY a disembodied face on a cloth.

Another quotation from the Archdeacon's sermon:

"By the simple touching to the face of Christ, an image of his form was made, so that people would not think in a dangerous or perilous way that it never actually existed and has been invented."

Notice that the Archbishop believed the mere touching of his face resulted in the creation of an image of his FORM, not FACE, was made. In Greek, form and face are two completely different concepts... and this learned man did not make a mistake of definition... he uses the same word twice to indicate what is on the cloth. He tells us that the Image of Edessa is more than just a "disembodied" face on a small cloth, but an image of a form, implying much more.

Again, from the sermon:

"You wiped clean the sweat of the nature you had taken on and what was wiped clean was transformed into an image of your unchanging form, just like Adam's form was drawn out of the ground, like the eyes of nature in the folds of the kneaded earth."

Here we see the Archdeacon comparing the image of a "form" on the linen with the creation of Adam's body, his form not just his face, made from dust.

Further on we hear from the Archdeacon:

"For these are the beauties that have made up the true imprint of Christ, since after the drops fell, it was embellished by drops from his own side. Both are highly instructive – blood and water there, here sweat and image. Oh equality of happenings, since both have their origin in the same person. The source of living water can be seen and it gives us water, showing us that the origin of the image made by sweat is in fact of the same nature as the origin of that which makes the liquid flow from the side."

These are not mere metaphor or hyperbole but rather straighforward descriptions of what he sees on the cloth and his establishing an identity with the cloth's image and the dogma of the church.

"And for the prototype to be transferred to the likeness, he does this himself with the sweat of the human form he deigned to bear. . ."

Each time, when the Archdeacon refers to the image, he refers to the "form" rather than to the "face". "Face" is only used when he explains the myth of the formation of the image that was accepted for the Image of Edessa. He tells us the rest of the form was formed merely by the pressing of the face to the cloth. He also hints about something others have noticed... that the face has more detail and more definition than the other parts of the shroud.

"And best of all, honouring the top part of my body – for the most beautiful part is the face, not that which is below the armpits – I attribute the light shining out not to my own face but rather to the face of the one on the cloth".

The parenthetical aside in this quotation can be inferred to mean that there IS more image below the armpits.

Just after the Image of Edessa was transported to Constantinople, it disappeared from history... but a Holy Shroud appeared shortly thereafter in the inventories. It is a reasonable conclusion to make that the Image of Edessa was discovered to be more than a face and included the whole body.

In that the Archdeacon was describing the article that arrived in Constantinople, which was the Image of Edessa, you are correct, that is what the Archdeacon's sermon refers to.

However, the inclusion of the remarks on the side wound which has NEVER been associated with the Image of Edessa, the use of the Greek word for "form" when he refers to the image rather than "face," the reference to the creation of Adam's form (body) from dust, it is reasonable to conclude there is much more here than a mere facial portrait.

You have been added to the list.

I'd read that the Shroud does have middle-eastern pollen, quite possibly from ancient Israel.

The Shroud contains pollens from everywhere it has been... including places that it has NOT been since its revelation in that small wooden Chapel built by Geoffrey de Charnay in Lirey, France. Among these are pollens unique to the Jerusalem area, Sanli-Urfa (Edessa) in Turkey, and Istanbul (Constantinople). These are not defininitive because they could have been carried to the Shroud by dusty travelers.

A carbon-age dating, though, gave a date around 1400 A.D. Critics said that the date may have been inaccurate, because of some scorching of part of the Shroud, which might reset the carbon-age dating clock - or something like that.

Contrary to some wishful thinking, Fire does not alter the atomic isotope mix of the material burned. Nor would a sufficient quantity of 16th century wood smoke have infused the cloth of the Shroud to skew the dating so drastically. That does not mean, however, that the Carbon Dating is the final word on the authenticity of the Shroud. When ONE fact or test result says "A" and is in opposition to hundred or thousands of other facts and test results that say "B", one should question the reliability of that one test before tossing out the others.

The carbon dating was done in 1989 by three different laboratories and did come up with dates of 1233, 1238, 1326, and 1430(!) with a confidence of plus or minus 50 years. (The reason there are FOUR dates from THREE labs is that the Arizona Laboratory was given two samples.) Since these dates coincided so nicely with the skeptics viewpoint of a medieval origin, the news media trumpeted that the Shroud was a fake.

However, these dates were in cognitive dissonance with other facts known about the Shroud... for example a 10th century medallion with a representation of the Shroud showing the frontal and dorsal images... that Shroud scientists were astounded at the dates and began looking for reasons it was dated so young. The data from the dating had its own discrepancies... for example the Arizona Lab, arguably the most accurate of the three, showed results from its two samples that were at both extremes of the range: the 1430 and the 1233 datings. Not only were these at the extremes of the range, they were OUTSIDE of the +/- 50 year confidence for the tests... by a LOT.

Theories to account for the dates and the discrepancies ranged from fraud (someone switch samples) to the Shroud was irradiated by the resurrection to the scorch from the fire that damaged it in 1532 to bacteria and bacteria poop coating the fibers.

However, the theory that seems to have the most proof and evidence is that the portion of the Shroud where the C-14 samples were taken was a 16 Century invisible reweaving of a damaged area.

First of all, the sample was taken in violation of the established protocols which were changed unilaterally literally at the last hour. Instead of SEVEN samples from various areas of the Shroud, ONE was taken from the area the scientists had determined SHOULD NOT be sampled.

The sample itself was an 8 square centimeter strip cut from the end. This was reduced to 7 sq. cm because the sample contained "rogue fibers" with slightly different colors. One sq. cm was discarded as "contaminated." This should have raised HUGE red flags... but it didn't. This sample was then cut in half with half being retained as a control, and the other half spit among the three labs.

What went unnoticed in this sample taking is that the threads of the body of the shroud have a "Z" twist... but much of the sample threads have an "S" twist... just exactly opposite. In addition, the juncture between the threads ran diagonally through the half that was distributed to the labs... and the diagonally bifurcated portions of "Z" and "S" threads of each lab's sample is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE DATES REPORTED.

The latest research (on a previous thread on FreeRepublc) shows that Pyrolysis Mass Spectrometry conclusively proves that fibrils taken from an area adjacent to the 1989 sample are UNIQUE when compared fibrils taken from other areas of the Shroud. The Pyrolysis proved that the sample area fibrils contain a GUM coating not found on any other fibrils taken from the Shroud and that the Mass Spectrograph of the chemicals in the Shroud does not match those found in other areas, indicating a different strain of Flax may have been used to created the linen threads of the sampled area.

Other studies have demonstrated the reverse twist of the threads in the sample from one side to the other with a diagonal bifurcation, the existence of Cotton fibers in the sample are threads not found in other areas, the existence of "fullering" chemicals used in the 16th Century in the sampled area and not in other areas of the Shroud, and finally, the C-14 sample area fluoresces under a UV light and the rest of the Shroud does not.

I think the evidence is now overwhelming that the C-14 date was a dating of a combination of 16th Century Linen invisibly rewoven into the 1st Century Shroud. The math works out for the proportions in each sample of each lab to give the anomalous dates that seemed to fit the pre-conceived notions of the Skeptics.

The labs did accurate work with the sample(s) they were given... unfortunately, the breaking of protocol in taking that sample invalidates the entire test. We are almost back to square one.

I say almost because the C-14 testing DID provide some data... they did carbon date some original shroud material although it was unfortunately mixed with some 16th Century repair materials. We cannot know the EXACT proportions of each sample's mix but can estimate the proportions from the observed differences seen in the photos of the now destroyed in testing samples.

This does, however, come up with some interesting dates when you use the observed proportion in the mix of 16th Century materials and calculate for the unknown date of the original Shroud material. The date confidence is very wide because of the estimations, but the assuming all of the above, the Shroud material calculates out to sometime in the First Century AD (plus or minus a couple of centuries).

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