Why don’t you start with the Bible itself:
1.It is clear from the Bible and from Jewish burial customs that several pieces of cloth bound Christ at His burial — not one large sheet like the shroud.
2.In John 20:5-7 we find there was a separate piece wrapped around Christ’s head. Yet the Shroud of Turin depicts a face on the sheet.
3.The size of the shroud is 14 feet 3 inches by 3 feet 7 inches (434 centimetres by 109 centimetres). But the Bible says linen strips bound Jesus, not an enormous cloth (see John 19:40).
Walter C. McCrone, head of a Chicago research institute and a specialist in authenticating art objects, examined the shroud. He found a pale, gelatin-based substance speckled with particles of red ochre on fibres from the part of the cloth that supposedly showed the figure of Christ. He also found that fibers from the “wounds” had stains, not of blood, but of particles of a synthetic vermilion developed in the Middle Ages. He said the practice of painting linen with gelatin-based temperas began in the late thirteenth century and was common in the fourteenth.McCrone concluded that a fourteenth century artist had forged the shroud, and defended this view right up until he died on July 10, 2002.
In the 1980s, Jesuit priest Robert A. Wild expressed surprise that the bloodstains, if they were blood, showed no trace of smearing after all the movement and transport the body would have endured. Wild also noted that the hands of the body masked the genitals. He said this couldn’t be right. No matter how you arrange a body after rigor mortis, he said, the hands cannot cover the genitals unless you prop up the elbows on the body and bind the hands tightly in place. Yet this is not what the shroud’s image shows.
7.The first record of the shroud’s appearance was in 1353, when Geoffrey de Charny presented it to the small local church in the French town of Lirey. Three years later, in 1356, the bishop of the region wrote to the pope, in Latin, telling of his annoyance that certain people wanted this “painted” cloth displayed as the burial cloth of Christ. The bishop added that his predecessor, Henry of Poitiers, “after diligent inquiry and examination,” had found the artist who painted it. The artist testified that “it was the work of human skill and not miraculously wrought.”
Interestingly, this date accords with the carbon-14 tests, which dated the shroud to about the first quarter of the 1300s. It also agrees with art expert Walter McCrone’s estimate of the age based on known painting styles
9.The verses that tell of Joseph of Arimathea’s wrapping Jesus in linen cloth are Matthew 27:59, Mark 15:46, Luke 23:53, and John 19:40. Look in Vine’s Expository Dictionary, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, and the Ryrie Study Bible. They all tell us the Greek words used in Matthew, Mark, and Luke (entulisso and eneileo) mean “to roll in, wind in”, “to twist, to entwine”, “to enwrap”, “to wrap by winding tightly”. Winding, twisting and entwining imply wrappings, or strips of bandage, rather than a single shroud.
But if they did mean a single sheet, then Matthew, Mark, and Luke would conflict with John 19:40, which is clearer by using the Greek word othonion, meaning “linen bandage” (Strong’s concordance). If the Bible writers had meant a single linen sheet like the shroud, the word used should have been othone (a single linen cloth, a sail, or a sheet). From this, it seems that all four Gospel writers were telling us that normal long strips of linen covered Jesus.
The Ronman Catholic Church itself does not accept the shroud as authentic. In May 2008, the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on the Shroud of Turin stated there was good reason to doubt its authenticity. These included:
•the awkward fact that many similar shrouds existed which their owners claimed showed the genuine image of Christ
•a pope in the 1300s issued a pronouncement that when the shroud was exhibited, the priest must “declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ”
•the admission that “no intelligible account, beyond wild conjecture, can be given of the previous history of the Shroud” before it appeared at Lirey around 1353
•this shroud, like the others, “was probably painted without fraudulent intent to aid the dramatic setting” at Easter
Close but no cigar. The Sudarium of Oviedo is the other cloth mentioned in John 20. It's image matches the Shroud's image perfectly.
2.In John 20:5-7 we find there was a separate piece wrapped around Christ’s head. Yet the Shroud of Turin depicts a face on the sheet.
See no. 1 above. Your fallacy lies in assuming that the Shroud advocates are claiming that the Shroud is the only burial cloth of Jesus. They've never claimed that. They claim that it is is one of the two mentioned in John 20.
3.The size of the shroud is 14 feet 3 inches by 3 feet 7 inches (434 centimetres by 109 centimetres). But the Bible says linen strips bound Jesus, not an enormous cloth (see John 19:40).
Same fallacy. The claim that the Shroud is the burial Shroud by no means excludes the use of linen strips at some other point in the deposition from the Cross and preparation of the body for burial. And John 19:40 doesn't say "strips" but "piece" (bandage, large strip"). If this is the of analysis you have been dpeending on, it's not very reassuring.
Walter C. McCrone, head of a Chicago research institute and a specialist in authenticating art objects, examined the shroud. He found a pale, gelatin-based substance speckled with particles of red ochre on fibres from the part of the cloth that supposedly showed the figure of Christ. He also found that fibers from the “wounds” had stains, not of blood, but of particles of a synthetic vermilion developed in the Middle Ages. He said the practice of painting linen with gelatin-based temperas began in the late thirteenth century and was common in the fourteenth.McCrone concluded that a fourteenth century artist had forged the shroud, and defended this view right up until he died on July 10, 2002.
In the 1980s, Jesuit priest Robert A. Wild expressed surprise that the bloodstains, if they were blood, showed no trace of smearing after all the movement and transport the body would have endured. Wild also noted that the hands of the body masked the genitals. He said this couldn’t be right. No matter how you arrange a body after rigor mortis, he said, the hands cannot cover the genitals unless you prop up the elbows on the body and bind the hands tightly in place. Yet this is not what the shroud’s image shows.
Ah, the McCrone thesis. McCrone was not some great head of a research laboratory but a decent chemist who made some decent contributions in his area of expertise. His investigations deserve real consideration and have been given such. Read the scientific counter-claims to McCrone and get back to me. He's the odd-man out on the pigment question and after his initial chemical analysis of the blood stains, he became as impassioned an anti-Shroudie as others are Shroudies. His chemical work deserves consideration; his painted cloth thesis is amateurish. If your forensic case rests on McCrone, it's by no means a clear-cut, "best-evidence," slam-dunk. But I give you credit for citing one piece of evidence better that the first three or so.
Hands over genitals? Can't be done, dear Fr. Wild says, unless the hands were bound in place. And how are you going to prove that they were not bound? But, okay, for now let's stipulate that Wild is right.
Oh, and, by the way, your numbering skips from 3 to 7 (the next item). Which website did you cut and paste this from? Trying to backpeddle and cobble together some stuff to back up your global slam-dunk claims?
7.The first record of the shroud’s appearance was in 1353, when Geoffrey de Charny presented it to the small local church in the French town of Lirey. Three years later, in 1356, the bishop of the region wrote to the pope, in Latin, telling of his annoyance that certain people wanted this “painted” cloth displayed as the burial cloth of Christ. The bishop added that his predecessor, Henry of Poitiers, “after diligent inquiry and examination,” had found the artist who painted it. The artist testified that “it was the work of human skill and not miraculously wrought.”
I've dealt with the pedigree issue elswhere on this thread and will not repeat it--go look it up. New documentary evidence of the pedigree is constantly being discovered. As historical artifacts go, this one has a damn good pedigree. It did not pop up at Lirey in 1353. This is not only "best evidence," this is stinkingly bad evidence. It's one of the ancient canards. If I were you, I'd have skipped from 3 to 8, if your goal is to show that the "best evidence" overwhelmingly screams "fake."
Interestingly, this date accords with the carbon-14 tests, which dated the shroud to about the first quarter of the 1300s. It also agrees with art expert Walter McCrone’s estimate of the age based on known painting styles
Next time you cut and paste from a website, you might take care to cut out the stuff that has already been refuted on this thread. Walter McCrone had no expertise in art. Whomever you cribbed this from reveals his lack of awareness with the immense forensic evidence and with McCrone's role in the whole controversy if he charactizes McCrone as an art expert, and he's badly informed about the last 15 years of Shroud research. You'd make a better case if you went to an up-to-date Anti-Shroud site.
9.The verses that tell of Joseph of Arimathea’s wrapping Jesus in linen cloth are Matthew 27:59, Mark 15:46, Luke 23:53, and John 19:40. Look in Vine’s Expository Dictionary, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, and the Ryrie Study Bible. They all tell us the Greek words used in Matthew, Mark, and Luke (entulisso and eneileo) mean “to roll in, wind in”, “to twist, to entwine”, “to enwrap”, “to wrap by winding tightly”. Winding, twisting and entwining imply wrappings, or strips of bandage, rather than a single shroud.
But if they did mean a single sheet, then Matthew, Mark, and Luke would conflict with John 19:40, which is clearer by using the Greek word othonion, meaning “linen bandage” (Strong’s concordance). If the Bible writers had meant a single linen sheet like the shroud, the word used should have been othone (a single linen cloth, a sail, or a sheet). From this, it seems that all four Gospel writers were telling us that normal long strips of linen covered Jesus.
Again, close but no cigar. By this logic, then John 20 needs to mention strips of linen left behind in the grave, but it doesn't. This is the most convoluted, entwined piece of exegesis of these passages imaginable. Mt. 27:69 mentions a cloth and no strips. The author has to resort to a tendentious reading of the verb here to try to argue that the "cloth" in Mt. 27:59 is actually strips. Mark and Luke also do not explicitly say "strips." So the whole case rests on John 19:40 and the othonion. The author of your crib has to mangle the verbs of the synoptics to support his 'strips' theory of othonion. But othonion is singular, is it not? Where do you get the strips in the plural? Bandage in archaic English can refer to a large piece of cloth because it's referent is the size of the object it needs to "bandage" not the size of the cloth per se.
If this is "best evidence," I've got some oceanfront property in Arizona for you. This is tendentious evidence in the extreme. If you are going to put this up against the forensic evidence from the Shroud iteself, you need a more water-tight argument from the philology here.
The Ronman [sic] Catholic Church itself does not accept the shroud as authentic. In May 2008, the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on the Shroud of Turin stated there was good reason to doubt its authenticity. These included:
•the awkward fact that many similar shrouds existed which their owners claimed showed the genuine image of Christ
•a pope in the 1300s issued a pronouncement that when the shroud was exhibited, the priest must “declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ”
Perfectly consistent with the state of knowledge at that time--the evidence in favor of the Shroud comes from the late 1900s. Catholics before then were skeptical. Those who believe it authentic today have been convinced by the recent evidence. Citing a 14th-century pope on this issue now is evidence that the website you cribbed this from is clueless about the issues invovled here.
•the admission that “no intelligible account, beyond wild conjecture, can be given of the previous history of the Shroud” before it appeared at Lirey around 1353
Same silly fallacy.
•this shroud, like the others, “was probably painted without fraudulent intent to aid the dramatic setting” at Easter
Is this still the same 14th century pope or just some Numbnut's general statement? "Probably" -- best evidence for sure. This last one is the kind of wild handful of crap one throws up to see if it will stick to the wall.
You know, this last series of supposedly official Church stuff takes the cake. First off, the Catholic Encyclopedia is not The Roman Catholic Church. The fool whose website you cribbed is an ignoramus. Encyclopedia articles are written by scholars. They do not speak for the Church. Relics are authenticated, largely by pedigree, by the Congregation for the Rites (before 1983) and now by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Individual cases like the Shroud may or may not have statements made about them by the bishops of the local diocese. None of these pronouncements are binding on Catholics.
But this does not come even from one of the Vatican offices or from any bishop. This is "best evidence"? It's garbage. There are two Catholic Encyclopedias, the original one in 1908, the New Catholic Encyclopedia of the 1960s, which was redone around 2003. I don't know where this is actually from. If it's from 1908, it's perfectly consistent with the state of knowledge about the Shroud in 1908. But most of the persuasive forensic and historical evidence comes from the last half of the 1900s.
If this is from the New Catholic Encyclopedia in the 1960s, it's perfectly imaginable that the author took a skeptical position; much of the forensic scientific evidence was in the future and the authors, like bishops, have an obligation to lean over backwards to be skeptics on issues like this. But the statements above sound a lot more like consensus of pious Catholic scholars ca. 1908. If so, it's just plain irrelevant. Yet you think it's "best evidence."
Apparently you've not been following the Shroud evidence very carefully or very long. You ought to avoid "best evidence shows it's a fake" until you've actuall read McCrone's arguments and then read the responses to them. He may be right, of course. But anyone whose case rests on McCrone (and of all that you adduced above, it's all laughable except McCrone who's not laughable but refuted nonetheless.
Now, do you want to go to another website and crib some more "best evidence"? Or perhaps actually read the evidence pro and con and perhaps, to your surprise, end up "thrilled" that the preponderence of evidence points overwhelmingly toward authenticity?
True. 1st Century Jews used several cloths in burial. Two small ones or ropes were used to bind the wrists and ankles to prevent the limbs from flopping out of the niche. A third cloth or binding was used to go around the head (under the chin and over the crown) to bind the mouth shut. If it could be afforded because they were very expensive, a large sindon or Shroud. If not, then they used modesty cloths over the genitals and face. These were often sudarions, sweat cloths that had been used to wipe the sweat from the face, or to bind around the forehead to prevent sweat from dropping into the eyes. In toto, these were othonia, grave clothes.
2.In John 20:5-7 we find there was a separate piece wrapped around Christ’s head. Yet the Shroud of Turin depicts a face on the sheet.
Both true. And that separate piece was wrapped around Jesus head... first when he was dead, but still on the Cross, and then while he was carried to the tomb, as a modesty cloth to hide the face of the dead man from onlookers.
That cloth still exists. It is called the Sudarium of Oviedo, and has been in a Cathedral in Oviedo, Spain since the sixth century. The Sudarium has a bloody handprint on it that matches someone carrying a supine body, with the hand over the downward facing nose in support of the head. The blood stains on the Sudarium match the blood stains on the head of the Shroud image with over 75 points of congruence.
After the body was brought to the tomb, this temporary modesty cloth on the head was removed and then rolled diagonally into a kerchief rope and used to bind the jaw closed by passing it under the beard below the chin and up, and over the crown where it was tied, a known Jewish burial custom.
I would conjecture that after the resurrection, with Christ arising from the shroud, he stood and found his jaw still bound shut. As he walked out of the tomb, He removed the sudarium from about his head and either dropped it or placed it apart from the other grave clothes he left lying in the niche. This rolled (wrapped) sudarium was sufficiently far enough away from the other grave clothes to indicate to observers that it was a secondary act to removing the other grave clothes, the shroud, and the wrist and ankle bindings.
3.The size of the shroud is 14 feet 3 inches by 3 feet 7 inches (434 centimetres by 109 centimetres). But the Bible says linen strips bound Jesus, not an enormous cloth (see John 19:40). . .
9.The verses that tell of Joseph of Arimathea’s wrapping Jesus in linen cloth are Matthew 27:59, Mark 15:46, Luke 23:53, and John 19:40. Look in Vine’s Expository Dictionary, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, and the Ryrie Study Bible. They all tell us the Greek words used in Matthew, Mark, and Luke (entulisso and eneileo) mean “to roll in, wind in”, “to twist, to entwine”, “to enwrap”, “to wrap by winding tightly”. Winding, twisting and entwining imply wrappings, or strips of bandage, rather than a single shroud.
But if they did mean a single sheet, then Matthew, Mark, and Luke would conflict with John 19:40, which is clearer by using the Greek word othonion, meaning “linen bandage” (Strong’s concordance). If the Bible writers had meant a single linen sheet like the shroud, the word used should have been othone (a single linen cloth, a sail, or a sheet). From this, it seems that all four Gospel writers were telling us that normal long strips of linen covered Jesus.
See above: Linen strips probably did bind the ankles and wrists as well as the jaw closed. As to the large sheet like shroud, The King James Bible states:
As for Strong's Concordance, it was compiled at a time when the Egyptian mummies and their burial practices were all the rage. Many thought that all middle eastern burials were handled in a similar fashion. As a result, the interpretations of the original Greek were distorted by that awareness of Egyptian burial practices. It is not Biblical. If you note, the definition of the Greek words "entulisso and eneileo" are fixated on the more extreme meanings rather than the more common original Greek meaning of "to enwrap," which is easily understood if you place the body on a cloth and pull the rest over the head and down over the feet... you enwrap it. However, given the period, and the state of scientific archaeology, this is understandable. Archaeology was concentrated on Egypt and that is what the saw in Egyptian burials: tight wrappings entwined around the body binding it. At the time Strongs was compiles, no serious archaeology had been done to unearth 1st Century Jewish burials in Jerusalem to find out just exactly HOW Jews were buried. It was prohibited by the Muslims who were in control of that area.
You, and the skeptics page that you cut and paste this entire post from, choose to ignore the clear meaning of the word "σινδονι", sindoni, which is quite explicitly a large cloth, which the synoptic Gospels of Matthew and Mark both use in the original Greek. They also choose to ignore the plurailty of Grave Clothes which is another meaning to the word "οθονιοις ," othonia, plural and colloquially used for the multiple cloths in a set of grave clothes used for Jewish Burial.
Walter C. McCrone, head of a Chicago research institute and a specialist in authenticating art objects, examined the shroud. He found a pale, gelatin-based substance speckled with particles of red ochre on fibres from the part of the cloth that supposedly showed the figure of Christ. He also found that fibers from the “wounds” had stains, not of blood, but of particles of a synthetic vermilion developed in the Middle Ages.
Walter C. McCrone is the ONLY researcher of the Shroud who REFUSED to have his work peer-reviewed despite his agreement to do so in order to be given samples. His ONLY publications on the Shroud were in his own vanity press magazine The Microscopist published by McCrone Research Inc., and sometimes edited by Walter C. McCrone. His findings (the shroud was painted with vermilion [HgS] and red ochre/iron oxide [Fe2O3] paint in a dilute egg albumin solution) have been completely DISPROVED in peer-reviewed scientific journals by scientists using far more sensitive instruments that McCrone's optical microscope.
NOT ONE other researcher looking at what McCrone looked at has seen what McCrone claims to have seen. While there are scattered Fe2O3 and HgS particles on the shroud, they are randomly scattered, contaminating both image and non-image areas. At no time are there sufficient concentrations of either to rise to visibility.
McCrone sees "paint". This cannot possibly be in agreement with what we now KNOW forms the image:
The substance is a dried carbohydrate mixture of starch fractions and various saccharides (sugars). It is as thin (180 to 600 nanometers) as the wall of a soap bubble. It is thinner than the invisible glare proof coating on modern eyeglasses. . . In some places the coating has turned a golden brown. This is the result of a chemical change: the formation of a complex carbon-carbon double molecular bond within the coating. There are two ways this could have happened chemically: 1) caramelization, whereby heat caused molecular breakdown into other volatile compounds and 2) a Maillard reaction in which a carbonyl group of sugars reacted with an amino group producing N-substituted glycosylamine. An unstable glycosylamine undergoes Amadori rearrangement, forming ketosamines, which then form nitrogenous polymers and melanoidins. Voila, pictures of Jesus.There is a problem with caramelization. The amount of heat required for browning would also heat the cellulose fiber sufficiently to change its crystalline structure and cause it to change color as well. That has not happened. Where a picture bearing bit of coating is removed, either with adhesive or with a reducing agent such as diimide, the fiber beneath is clear and un-ablated.
A Maillard reaction seems more promising because of the presence of amines needed for a Maillard reaction. Of course, it didn't need to be Jesus; at least chemically. It could have been any recently deceased person.
Ergo, NO paint! No Pigments! This alone discredits McCrone.
Microscopist McCrone claims "No Blood on the Shroud" McCrone goes further and baldly states the "blood stains" are merely a Vermillion (HgS) and Iron Oxide paint mixture. He also states categorically that the Iron Oxide is "earthen" in nature and could not come from blood. Yet world renowned experts on blood, blood fractions, blood remnants, and forensic blood disagree.
Let's look at other tests done by scientists who don't rely on what they can see through a microscope, say the pyrolysis mass spectrometer tests and micro X-Ray spectroscopy and electron microscopy—much more discriminating instruments that reveal much more than what can be seen through a light microscope—that show that what vermillion (HgS) exists on the shroud is again, random, insufficient to be visible, and not associated with the blood stains.
Instead of discredited McCrone, take the testimony of chemist Dr. Alan Adler and biophysicist Dr. John Heller, experts on blood and blood fractions, who state categorically in peer-reviewed scientific Journals, that the blood stains consist of hemoglobin and its derivatives. Aside from light microscopy, Heller and Adler tested for:
Ergo, according to some of the world's top experts on blood, the blood stains on the Shroud of Turin, are exactly that... blood stains. Again McCrone's bald statements are refuted. I could also go into McCrone's attempts to sabotage other researcher's work including preventing his own colleagues from having access to the samples of Shroud threads he had.
You want sources?
Adler, Alan. "The origin and nature of blood on the Turin Shroud" in Turin Shroud - Image of Christ? William Meacham, ed. (Hong Kong: Turin Shroud Photographic Exhibition Organising Committee, 1987), 57-9.In the 1980s, Jesuit priest Robert A. Wild expressed surprise that the bloodstains, if they were blood, showed no trace of smearing after all the movement and transport the body would have endured. Wild also noted that the hands of the body masked the genitals. He said this couldn’t be right. No matter how you arrange a body after rigor mortis, he said, the hands cannot cover the genitals unless you prop up the elbows on the body and bind the hands tightly in place. Yet this is not what the shroud’s image shows.Adler, Alan." Updating Recent Studies on the Shroud of Turin" Archaeological Chemistry: Organic, Inorganic, and Biochemical Analysis, American Chemical Society Symposium Series No. 625, Chapter 17 (1996), 223-8.
Ford, David. "The Shroud of Turin 'Blood' Images: Blood or Paint? A History of Science Inquiry" University of Maryland Baltimore (2000), PDF file, "http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ford1.pdf", 2/17/2005. Heller, J.H. and A.D. Adler, "Blood on the Shroud of Turin", Applied Optics 19:2742-4 (1980).
Heller, J.H. and A.D. Adler, "A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin", Canadian Society of Forensic Sciences Journal 14: 81-103 (1981).
Porter, Daniel. "The Chemical Nature of the Shroud" http://www.shroudstory.com/faq-chemistry.htm/ (2005), 2/17/2005.
Rogers, Raymond N. "New Tests Prove 1988 Carbon 14 Dating Invalid: Shroud of Turin Shown to be Much Older". Thermochimica ActaVolume 425: 189-194, (2005).
Both of Father Wild's conjectures turned out to be false when work was done by real scientists, not Jesuit Priests. As for the hands being in an unnatural position, the body was in rigor and somewhat hunched. And as noted above, the Jewish practice WAS to bind the wrists in place. However, the hands DO NOT cover the genitals. The image on the Shroud's penis is visible under computer enhancement. If you're wondering, he was circumcised. The authority on this is Barrie M. Schwartz, the principle light photographer of the Shroud of Turin Research Project.
7.The first record of the shroud’s appearance was in 1353, when Geoffrey de Charny presented it to the small local church in the French town of Lirey. Three years later, in 1356, the bishop of the region wrote to the pope, in Latin, telling of his annoyance that certain people wanted this “painted” cloth displayed as the burial cloth of Christ. The bishop added that his predecessor, Henry of Poitiers, “after diligent inquiry and examination,” had found the artist who painted it. The artist testified that “it was the work of human skill and not miraculously wrought.”
There is a clear documentary record of the permissions vis-a-vis the Shroud granted to de Charny and to his wife extant in the Papal records. De Charny requested permission of the Pope to build his chapel to house and display the Shroud. It is HE who suggested restrictions on its display and assured the Pope that he would not accept donations or charge admission. This is a very rare request... most people who possessed a "relic" merely opened up shop and started accepting donations from the public.
There are also records in the Regency files about the rente De Charney paid to support the church in Lirey out of his own coffers. There are also the records of the Bishop of Troyes. They are in agreement about the nature of the exhibitions of the Shroud before de Charny's death. It is only after his death and his wife's and daughter's determination to display the shroud as an object of veneration did controversy arise. The one letter which raises the question of "the painter who painted it" is merely a draft—indicating it is a letter the Bishop intended to send—with marginalia indicating changes and deletions. This draft copy exists only in the Bishop's files and there is no original "transmitted" letter in the Bishop's files, or any received copy in either Avignon or in Rome, which, given the completeness of the files in both locations, would tend to indicate it was never sent. It is worth noting that Pierre D'Arcis, the Bishop of Troyes who was supposedly writing the letter, only moved to Troyes AFTER the death of his predecessor, In other words, it is likely he never spoke to the man. There are no records, aside from the draft letter, in either D'Arcis' records or in Henri's archives or in the See of Troyes records of any such investigation left behind for D'Arcis to read. It is possible they existed but were destroyed... but that would be odd, considering everything else was kept. There is indication that the Pope was appraised of the situation because he issued a permission to de Charny's family to continue to display the Shroud AND ordered the Bishop to perpetual silence on the matter. The Pope, although never having seen the shroud, did order that it be displayed only as a "representation of the Shroud of Our Lord."