As the meeting was about to begin, Archbishop Duncan sat at the head of the conference table, with his back to the window. Castle took the other end of the table.

To Castle's right was Father J. J. Middagh, an expert on the Shroud of Turin. Sitting to the archbishop's left, Father Middagh was the living embodiment of the happy friar. Middagh wore a looser, more obviously worn ca.s.sock than the archbishop, one that covered but did not completely hide his ample paunch. Nearly bald, Middagh had a round red face and small wire-framed scholarly gla.s.ses gave him the appearance of being a well-fed bookworm who needed only a stein of lager beer and a thick tome to sustain him until dinner. In front of him was his laptop computer and a stack of books Middagh had brought along to b.u.t.tress his presentation. As the meeting was getting ready to start, Middagh fiddled with a portable projector he had attached to his laptop for a presentation on a pulldown screen discreetly built into bookshelves that lined the far wall of the conference room.

Across the table from Middagh and to the right of the archbishop were Father Morelli and Anne. Morelli appeared to be wearing the same black suit and Roman collar that he wore the first time he meet Castle in the treatment room next door to explain his mission from the Vatican. He had his briefcase on the table and a stack of papers out for ready reference.

Archbishop Duncan started the discussion. "Pope John-Paul Peter I asked Father Middagh to join us here today because he is one of the top scholars on the Shroud of Turin. I have known Father Middagh for years and because he is a modest man, I will announce for him that his book on the Shroud will be published next week. Isn't that right, Father Middagh?"

"Yes, I have been working on what's going to turn out to be a two-volume treatise for more than a decade," Middagh confirmed. "My working t.i.tle, Behold the Face of Jesus, Behold the Face of Jesus, says it all. I am convinced the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ. I have brought with me some digital images that I used in the book." says it all. I am convinced the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ. I have brought with me some digital images that I used in the book."

"Father Middagh is a Benedictine priest and he works from a monastery located in White Plains, New York," Duncan explained. "By training, Father Middagh is a Ph.D. chemist who has taught chemistry at the university level. With that introduction, Dr. Castle, could you give us a brief update on Father Bartholomew's condition?"

"Yes," Castle said as he opened his medical file. "Father Bartholomew rested comfortably last night. He still has not recovered consciousness, yet I expect he will do so soon. From the CT scan and MRI tests that I had run yesterday, Father Bartholomew's wounds appear to be recovering remarkably fast, just as we saw with the stigmata on his wrists. We will know more in a few hours."

"Thank you," Archbishop Duncan said seriously. "Our prayers are with you, Dr. Castle, and with Father Bartholomew." Smoothly, Duncan shifted his attention to the subject of the meeting. "Dr. Castle, the pope has asked Father Middagh to join us as a resource to you on the Shroud. I suspect you can ask Father Middagh any question about the Shroud that you like. Where would you like to begin?"

"I want to start with the radioactive carbon-14 dating of the Shroud," Castle said immediately. He wanted to know if there was any proof the Shroud was a medieval fake. That would help him sort out whether there was any possibility Father Bartholomew was manifesting the authentic Jesus Christ, or just some medieval artist's idea of what Jesus looked like. "If I am correct, three separate carbon-dating tests have shown the Shroud was made somewhere around 1260 to 1390 A.D. A.D. If those results are correct, that would make the Shroud a medieval fake-maybe one of the best forgeries ever done in the history of art forgeries, but a medieval fake just the same." If those results are correct, that would make the Shroud a medieval fake-maybe one of the best forgeries ever done in the history of art forgeries, but a medieval fake just the same."

"You are right about the carbon-14 tests," Middagh said. "But there was an important study published posthumously in 2005 by Raymond Rogers, who was a chemist and thermal a.n.a.lyst at Los Alamos. That study gives us reason to doubt the reliability of the carbon-14 tests. Ray Rogers was the director of chemical research for the Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978. He was a personal friend of mine for many years. A year before he died, he submitted a paper to a peer-reviewed scientific journal; it was published after he died. Rogers basically argued that the cloth samples taken from the Shroud to be used in the radiocarbon testing were not representative of the main part of the Shroud, on which the image resides. Rogers argued that the 1988 samples came from a part of the Shroud that had been expertly rewoven sometime in the Middle Ages to repair damage to the Shroud."

"Was Rogers's a.n.a.lysis scientifically convincing?" Castle asked.

"Not everyone in the Shroud research community was persuaded, especially since Rogers dropped his opposition to the Shroud just before he died of cancer," Middagh answered honestly. "I had quite a few conversations with Rogers before he died and I am convinced he underwent a change of heart that was more than some sort of a religious conversion after he knew he was sick. Those who were on the Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978 remember Rogers as one of the original skeptics. Then, when the original carbon-14 tests were conducted, Ray was very outspoken that the tests proved the Shroud dated from the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. At the time of the carbon-dating tests, Roger openly announced he was confident the Shroud had been fabricated somewhere around 1260 to 1390 A.D. A.D."

"What changed his mind?" Castle asked.

"As I said, Rogers became convinced that the sample was not representative. In the past few years there has been a considerable scientific debate about how the cloth sample was taken from the Shroud for the carbon-dating tests. Pope John Paul II's decision to cut a piece of the Shroud for radiocarbon testing was very controversial. If the Shroud is the burial cloth of Christ, then cutting away a piece of the Shroud to destroy it in the burning process required by the carbon-14 test is almost a sacrilege. It's like destroying the only known artifact that may have had contact with the Savior. So the Church demanded the sample be cut from a corner of the Shroud that was already badly damaged."

"I understand," Castle said.

"Fellow Shroud researcher Barrie Schwortz recorded a video of Rogers just before he died, when Rogers knew he was close to losing his battle with cancer," Middagh said. "Schwortz is important because he was the official photographer on the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project. In the video, Rogers described how he became convinced the corner samples used for the radiocarbon tests came from a part of the Shroud that had been expertly repaired by the French Poor Clair nuns in to repair the damage from several fires the Shroud was in after it showed up in France in 1357. In one particularly threatening fire in 1532, the Shroud was nearly destroyed."

Middagh projected an image onto the screen that showed full-body views of the Shroud.

[image]

"You can see here the triangular patches that line each side of the body image along the length of the Shroud. The Shroud is a linen cloth that measures a little over fourteen feet in length. As you can see here, the body of the crucified man was laid with his back on the cloth. Then burial cloth was lifted over his head to cover his front side. That's why the image appears to have the two heads touching in the middle. The image appears that way when the cloth is once again stretched out full length."

"I understand," Castle said, letting Middagh know he was following the description.

"In a full-length view of the Shroud, there are sixteen triangular patches in total, eight on each side of the body," Middagh continued. "It's well doc.u.mented that the medieval French Catholic nuns sewed those patches on this pattern of burn holes that runs the length of the Shroud. They did so to preserve the Shroud from disintegrating. The two rows of triangular patch repairs running up the length of the Shroud were too big for the type of 'invisible weaving' that professional weavers in the Middle Ages had perfected. Invisible reweaving repairs only worked on smaller damaged areas. Rogers came to the conclusion that the corner of the Shroud from which the radiocarbon samples were taken in 1988 had been altered in 'invisible weaving' repairs done in the Middle Ages. The repairs in this one corner were done so well that the reweaving was not evident to the naked eye, as were the eight triangular patches."

"If I hear what you're telling me," Castle said, wanting to make sure he got it right, "you believe that Rogers had a change of heart based on these scientific concerns?"

"Yes, I do," Middagh said. "If you are asking me if Rogers changed his mind because he knew he was going to die and he didn't want to face his Creator having denied the Shroud, just in case the Shroud was authentic, that's not what I believe happened. Rogers began changing his mind when two nonscientists, Joseph Marino and Sue Benford, got textile experts to examine microscopic evidence that cotton had been woven into the linen fibers of that corner where the carbon-dating samples were taken, in a series of repairs made to the Shroud. After the repairs were made, the repair areas were dyed so the cotton would match the linen to fool the eye into not seeing the reweaving repair. Rogers concluded that someone using materials that were not used in making the original Shroud did the reweaving with great skill. Looking back at the 1978 photos of the Shroud, Rogers realized the area chosen for the carbon-14 samples was different from the rest of the Shroud in that the sample area did not fluoresce the same, for instance, under the ultraviolet tests."

"So how did Rogers prove the 1988 carbon-14 sample was different from the main body of the Shroud?" Castle asked. "What was the methodology?"

Middagh answered slowly, trying to make sure he explained what Rogers had done so everyone in the room would understand. "In the paper Rogers published posthumously, he argued the 1978 STURP tests showed that the chemistry of the linen fibers taken from the main part of the Shroud differed from the 1988 radiocarbon samples in that the 1978 samples showed no sign of cotton having been interwoven with the original linen. In other words, the main body of the Shroud is completely made up of the original linen, with no cotton included in the weaving at all. Since linen is dye-resistant and cotton is not, the dye saturating the cotton was apparent to the eye under microscopic a.n.a.lysis, once interwoven cotton and linen fibers were compared. That there was dyed cotton in the 1988 sample proved to Rogers that the corner used to cut out the radiocarbon samples included the medieval reweaving. In other words, in the repairs made through the 1500s, sixteenth-century cotton was interwoven into first-century linen. That was the hypothesis that raised the possibility that the result of the carbon dating was wrong. The medieval cotton fibers interwoven into the sample could well have accounted for the carbon-14 test result that dated the Shroud somewhere around 1260 to 1390 A.D. A.D."

"Weren't there any samples for carbon-14 testing taken by STURP in 1978?" Castle asked.

"In 1978, the Church did not allow the STURP scientists to take samples for radiocarbon testing," Middagh answered. "But Rogers applied a different test to determine the likely age of the linen in the main body of the Shroud. From the tests made on the Shroud's linen, Rogers evaluated the rate of loss of vanillin in the linen fibers. Vanillin disappears in the thermal decomposition of lignin, a complex polymer that is in the cells of the flax plants used to make linen. The Dead Sea scroll linens, for instance, have lost all traces of vanillin. From this a.n.a.lysis, Rogers concluded that the linen in the main body of the Shroud also had lost vanillin. Hence the Shroud itself was much older than the carbon dating suggested, very possibly reaching back two thousand years to the time of Christ."

"Why did Rogers wait so long after the 1988 radiocarbon tests were announced to publish his results?" Castle pressed. "I can understand why some in the Shroud research community may be having trouble with Rogers. I have to ask you again: How do you know Rogers didn't just have a convenient change of opinion just before he died, as if he didn't want to be on the wrong side of the bet just in case there was a G.o.d and the Shroud was authentic? Well-known atheists making similar conversions just before they die might not be as rare as you think."

"If you knew Rogers, that is an especially good question," Middagh said. "When Rogers was healthy, he was characteristically outspoken. Before his change of mind, Rogers had been famous for saying he did not believe in miracles that defied the laws of nature. So, when the carbon-14 results were first published, Rogers was happy to dismiss the Shroud as a hoax. Still, Rogers was a credible scientist and he published the results of his microchemical tests in a credible peer-reviewed journal, even if he published the results posthumously. In my mind, the questions Rogers raised still stand, at least until the Church allows other, more representative samples from the main body of the Shroud to be taken and carbon-14 tested."

Morelli decided to jump in here, to support what Middagh was saying. "When Rogers published his results posthumously, it made a huge impact on the entire scientific community studying the Shroud, including me. When an outspoken expert like Rogers, who played a lead role in the 1978 STURP chemical a.n.a.lysis of the Shroud, publicly changed his mind on the accuracy of the radiocarbon dating, I began to doubt whether the carbon-14 results were representative of the Shroud as a whole. If medieval reweaving tainted the sample and the carbon-dating tests were biased as a consequence, the possibility was open once again that the Shroud might date from the time of Christ. Before he died, Rogers wrote on the Internet unequivocally that, in his opinion, the sample chosen for dating was totally invalid for determining the true age of the Shroud."

Though he listened carefully to the arguments Middagh and Morelli were making, Castle was still not 100 percent convinced. He made a mental note that Rogers's change of heart would have been more convincing if he had done his studies immediately after the 1988 carbon tests were announced, not after he knew he had cancer and just before he died.

Considering the carbon-dating discussion over for now, Castle looked through the notes he had taken in his telephone discussion with Gabrielli. "What about this medieval letter Bishop Pierre d'Arcis wrote to the pope in 1389, claiming the Shroud was a painting and that he knew who the artist was?"

"Scholars have argued the letter was motivated by jealousy and money more than an honest desire to state the truth about the authenticity of the Shroud," Middagh explained. "At the time the letter was written, Pierre d'Arcis was the bishop of Troyes and the Shroud was being exhibited in the nearby town of Lirey. Pierre d'Arcis did not like the pilgrims with their bags of gold going to a neighboring town and bypa.s.sing him. I'm pretty sure the letter might never have been written if the Shroud had been shown in Troyes."

Castle, no stranger to charging fees, appreciated the motive.

"Besides, we know the image on the Shroud was not painted," Middagh said. "The Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978 tested on linen every painter's pigment known to have been used before 1532. Extensive tests were conducted on the samples to see how the pigments would have suffered the ma.s.sive fire of that year. The medieval paints were chemically modified in fire and would have been washed away in the water that was used to extinguish the fire. Medieval paints were water-soluble and the 1978 STURP tests showed that no part of the image currently on the Shroud is soluble in water."

Castle was beginning to conclude that for every argument the skeptics produced about the Shroud, the believers managed to concoct a response. He wondered if he would ever get to the bottom of the debate with definitive scientific proof, one way or the other. It amused Castle, but in a way the case for the authenticity of the Shroud was a lot like the question about G.o.d's existence. Logic and science were not going to prove the Shroud was authentic, but he wondered if logic and science might end up disproving the authenticity of the Shroud. That's what so fascinated Castle about the work Gabrielli was proposing to do.

"So, you are convinced the Shroud was not painted?" Castle asked Middagh.

"Yes, I am," Middagh answered. "The image does not penetrate into the linen fibers the way you would expect paint to penetrate the cloth. At best, the image is one fiber deep, almost as if the image lies on top of the linen fibers. No fibers are cemented together, as you would expect paint to do, and the image does not cross fibers. The image areas are very brittle, with the image on the surface like what you would expect from material that had oxidized by dehydration. All the colored fibers are evenly colored such that an exposed fiber is either colored or not colored. There is no density of coloration on the fibers. What shading is apparent comes from the number of colored fibers we observe microscopically in any given unit area of the Shroud, not from a deeper or denser coloration of the fibers. The colored fibers are very uniformly colored. None of these observations are what we would expect if an artist had painted the image on the linen. The body image rests only on the very top of the fibers. The way the image is placed on the Shroud is consistent throughout-on the full-body dorsal image that resulted from the body laid on the Shroud and the distinct full-frontal body image that resulted when the Shroud was folded lengthwise over the body's head. Even though the body rested on the Shroud, the dorsal body image is also very lightly placed on the top of the fibers."

"I'm not an expert on medieval painting," Castle said, "but I've studied a lot of medieval paintings in Italian museums. The painter of the Renaissance who most studied anatomy was Leonardo da Vinci. I've spent hours examining his Adoration of the Magi Adoration of the Magi at the Uffizi in Florence. There's never been a question Leonardo was a genius and he used a sfumato style of painting in which he lightly created his images. Why isn't Leonardo a candidate for having painted the Shroud?" at the Uffizi in Florence. There's never been a question Leonardo was a genius and he used a sfumato style of painting in which he lightly created his images. Why isn't Leonardo a candidate for having painted the Shroud?"

"He is a candidate," Middagh admitted. "One problem is that Leonardo wasn't born until 1452 and the Church can date the Shroud earlier than that, certainly to the fourteenth century. The doc.u.mented provenance of the Shroud that we know is the linen cloth in Turin goes back to the 1350s, when a descendant of Geoffrey de Charney, the Knight Templar who was burned at the stake with Jacques de Molay, the famous last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, had the Shroud first displayed to the public at a local church in Lirey, France. In other words, we can trace the history of the Shroud of Turin to a date before Leonardo was born."

Even that did not deter Castle. "There is one other possibility," he said. "Maybe the Savoy royal family who owned the Shroud in Lirey and brought it from France to Turin in Italy asked Leonardo to reproduce the Shroud to replace an earlier shroud that was an obvious forgery. Knowing Leonardo's expertise with human anatomy and the subtlety of his painting techniques, the Savoy family might have figured Leonardo's replacement forgery would be more convincing than their original. Why can't we a.s.sume Leonardo obtained a piece of linen made in the time frame of 1260 to 1390 A.D. A.D. that he thought would work? What if it turned out that Leonardo's shroud was so superior that the Dukes of Savoy destroyed the Shroud of Lirey and replaced it with Leonardo's duplicate? That would have allowed him to have been the artist in a theory consistent with the carbon-14-dating result." that he thought would work? What if it turned out that Leonardo's shroud was so superior that the Dukes of Savoy destroyed the Shroud of Lirey and replaced it with Leonardo's duplicate? That would have allowed him to have been the artist in a theory consistent with the carbon-14-dating result."

"I understand your point," Middagh said, "but there are several problems, not the least of which is that we have no doc.u.mentation historically that Leonardo ever worked in Turin or that he ever received a commission from the Savoy royal family."

"But it's an odd coincidence that the famous Leonardo self-portrait showing him as an old man with flowing hair down to his shoulders and a long beard ends up even today in Turin, one of the prize possessions of the Savoy family royal library in Turin," Castle added.

"I too once suspected Leonardo as the painter of the Shroud," Father Morelli interjected. "We also know Leonardo experimented with the camera obscura."

"How would a camera obscura be involved?" Castle asked.

"The camera obscura was a primitive light box that involved an early lens," Morelli explained. "The light box was constructed to capture through the lens an image from life that showed up upside down, with the top of the image showing up on the bottom, projected onto the back wall of the light box. The image could also be projected onto a cloth or canvas for painting. Leonardo also experimented with a wide variety of light-sensitive materials, including many wood resins and various tinctures made from plants and leaves."

Middagh jumped in. "But the theory is not that Leonardo painted the Shroud. I can't stress enough that the Shroud of Turin Research Project concluded in their 1981 final report that no pigments, paints, dyes, or stains were found on the Shroud's fibers. Over a five-day period in 1978, the Shroud of Turin Research Project did a definitive scientific a.n.a.lysis of the Shroud, using X-ray fluorescence a.n.a.lysis, ultraviolet fluorescence photography, and infrared photography, as well as microphotography and microchemical a.n.a.lysis. Their findings that there was no paint of any kind on the Shroud is still the definitive a.n.a.lysis."

"So why did you consider Leonardo a candidate?" Castle asked Morelli.

"The dates of the first known exhibitions of the Shroud in Lirey do rule out Leonardo," Morelli said. "But the most interesting theory is that Leonardo created the first photographic image when he produced the Shroud. The idea is that Leonardo may have coated the linen with a light-sensitive chemical mixture and projected the image onto the linen using a camera obscura. Books have been written arguing that the face of the man in the Shroud resembles images we have of Leonardo-most importantly the Leonardo self-portrait that is kept at the Biblioteca Reale in Turin. There have been a few books claiming that Leonardo used himself as the face in creating the Shroud as a photographic image. In other words, the authors argued that what we have in the Shroud is not the image of Jesus Christ, but a photographic image of Leonardo da Vinci."

"You reject that theory now?" Castle asked.

"I do," Morelli said. "There is no evidence in any of Leonardo's existing codex ma.n.u.scripts that indicate he experimented with photography. He writes extensively about using a camera obscura, but as far as I can figure out, Leonardo used the camera obscura to a.s.sist him in his drawing and painting. None of Leonardo's existing notebooks discuss any experimentation with plants or chemicals to produce light-sensitive formulas."

"Aren't some of Leonardo's codex notebooks missing?" Castle asked.

"Yes," Morelli said. "But there is no corroborating evidence from anything written in Leonardo's lifetime that he came up with anything resembling photography. No image survives from the fifteenth century that even remotely resembles photography. The modern attempts to produce a Shroud-like image by photographic methods that would have possibly been known in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries look crude, nothing like the Shroud. But still, the most important problem is that the dates don't work. No matter how you look at it, Leonardo was born after we can doc.u.ment that the Shroud had been exhibited at Lirey in France, and photography wasn't invented until about two hundred years ago."

"There's one more important piece of evidence," Middagh added.

"What's that?"

"There's human blood hemoglobin and blood serum on the Shroud, and the blood serum is only evident in ultraviolet fluorescence," Middagh said. "There is no way any artist in medieval times could have used ultraviolet fluorescence to paint human blood serum on the Shroud so it could be discovered centuries later, when UV fluorescence was invented. Besides, how would an artist paint blood serum that is invisible to the eye on specific places on the Shroud? Medical doctors examining the Shroud confirm the blood found on the Shroud, including the blood serum, is exactly where they would expect to find blood traces if the wounds displayed on the body of the man in the Shroud came from a crucifixion."

Castle, a medical doctor with extensive surgical experience, wanted to know more about the blood detected on the Shroud. "How exactly does the blood appear on the Shroud? Does the blood appear only on the top fibrils, as does the image of the body? Or does the blood saturate the Shroud?"

"Most of the blood we observe on the Shroud comes from direct contact the linen had with the body," Middagh answered. "The most prominent bloodstains appear as solid stains, for instance the blood streaming from the wrist wounds or the blood on the forehead from what would have been the crown of thorns. These bloodstains penetrate the Shroud, and so on the frontal image, the bloodstains from the crown of thorns show up on the part of the cloth resting on the body and bleed through to the top of the cloth. The same is the case with the dorsal image. Pools of blood resulting from direct contact with the body do saturate the Shroud. Even more interesting, the Shroud of Turin Research Project found that the bloodstains on the Shroud are composed of hemoglobin with high concentrations of bilirubin, which would suggest blood flows from wounds that were clotting. In other words, the blood flows that penetrated the Shroud occurred while the crucified man was yet alive. That these blood wounds show up on the Shroud means the crucified man was placed in the Shroud almost immediately after death, without being washed or embalmed."

"But these are not the only type of bloodstain we see on the Shroud, right?" Morelli asked, prompting Middagh to elaborate.

"Right," Middagh answered, picking up the discussion. "As I mentioned, the blood on the Shroud also gives a positive test for serum alb.u.min. Under ultraviolet fluorescence photography, the serum separation shows up as a lighter ring around a darker blood center, very typical of postmortem blood flows. The serum stains were not visible to the naked eye but were clearly seen in the ultraviolet fluorescence photography. So, the bloodstains tell a very complex story of the wounds suffered by the man in the Shroud in life, as well as the blood that drained from the body after death."

"So far, I think I follow what you are saying," Castle said.

"Just to be sure, let me recap," Middagh responded, wanting to make sure the discussion was clear to everyone. "The evidence suggests that the crucified man was laid on the Shroud almost immediately after death. The blood flows suggest the man was placed in the Shroud without being washed clean or in any way embalmed or otherwise prepared for burial. We see the same evidence on the front and back images of the man in the Shroud. Remember, the Shroud wrapped over the man's head to cover his front side. This accounts for the head-to-head images of the man's front and backside we see on the Shroud's approximately fourteen-foot full length."

"Dr. Castle, as a physician, I'm sure you can appreciate what the presence of the hemoglobin and serum alb.u.min on the Shroud mean," Father Morelli said.

"I believe I'm following what's been said so far," Castle answered, "but why don't you tell me what specifically you have in mind. I want to make sure I understand your point precisely."

"Just this," Morelli continued. "The blood evidence on the Shroud either means the image was imprinted on the linen of the Shroud by a body that had suffered the injuries we see, or by a forger who painted in blood and appreciated not only the anatomical nature of the wounds, but also the exact nature of the blood flow that would have resulted from crucifixion wounds while the victim was alive, as well as from the serum flow that would have continued even into death."

"I don't rule out an expert forger," Castle said directly. Morelli had a point. "Many people in the Middle Ages were as brilliant as today, even if they lacked our modern technology."

"The forger would have had to have been sufficiently brilliant to have painted onto the Shroud serum stains not visible to the naked eye, antic.i.p.ating that in later centuries we would have and use the type of ultraviolet fluorescence technology we would need to check for serum in attempting to doc.u.ment the authenticity of the Shroud," Morelli added.

"Are you saying Leonardo wasn't that brilliant?" Castle countered.

"In Leonardo da Vinci's day, the study of anatomy was pretty primitive and the understanding of blood composition and circulation was not well advanced," Morelli responded.

Middagh interrupted this discussion to draw everyone's attention to a point in the discussion he wanted to make sure no one missed. "There's an important conclusion we can draw about the blood we find on the Shroud," Middagh said. "The bloodstains that penetrate through the Shroud and show up on the backside of the Shroud are very different from how the body image formed on the Shroud. We know the blood and serum inhibited the image formation on the Shroud. The Shroud of Turin Research Team in 1978 had instruments that could detect parts per billion of any substance on the Shroud, and the scientists concluded there is no body image under the blood and serum stains. What this means is that the blood flows from life and the blood serum draining from the body after death were both imprinted on the Shroud first, when the body was laid on the Shroud and it was pulled over the head to cover the front part of the body. The body image formed on the Shroud at a later time. In other words, frontal and dorsal body images appear to have been imprinted on the Shroud simultaneously, sometime after the body had rested in the Shroud and after all blood fluids had stopped draining from the body."

"What exactly is your point?" Castle asked.

"My point is simple," Middagh answered. "We know from studying the Shroud that there were two distinct steps in which the image was formed: first the blood was deposited by direct contact, then the body image was formed subsequently by a process we don't understand."

"What can you tell me about the wrist wounds?" Castle asked Middagh, wanting to know what the Shroud might tell him about Father Bartholomew's stigmata.

Middagh searched through his slides until he found the one he wanted, a close-up of the wrist wounds on the man in the Shroud. The image he displayed on the projection screen showed somewhat more of the man's body than did the close-up of the hands and wrists that Morelli had brought with him from the Vatican.

[image]

Middagh continued: "Most cla.s.sical pictures of Jesus show him being crucified by being nailed through the palms of the hands. But as you can see here, the man in the Shroud appears to have been nailed through the wrists. It is an interesting detail, but none of the four gospels that discuss the crucifixion-Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John-say whether Christ was tied or nailed to the cross. Most of the ancient crucifixion nails recovered by archeologists in excavations throughout the wider regions of the Roman Empire give no indication what limb they had pierced. But we know the ancient Romans nailed people to the cross if they wanted the crucifixion to be particularly brutal or particularly short, and Church tradition supports that Christ was nailed to the cross."

Castle wanted to make sure he understood the negative image he was looking at. "Don't most negatives have a mirror effect in which, for instance, right is transformed to left in the negative?" he asked. "The negative shows the left arm crossed over the right arm. Is this really the other way around?"

"You're right, in that sorting out the right/left orientations of various images of the Shroud is confusing, even for experts," Middagh said. "But since the Shroud itself is a negative image, the mirror-effect reversal occurs in what we see in the Shroud with the naked eye. If you look at the Shroud, it appears the right hand is crossed over the left. I'm showing you a photographic negative, which once again reverses left to right and vice versa. In other words, the photographic negative has it right. In the corpse of the man in the Shroud, the left hand was crossed over the right. All the photographic negatives I am going to show you are correct for the left/right orientation of the man in the Shroud as he was buried."

"Thank you for explaining that," Castle said. "I'm beginning to get the point that the photographic negatives are perhaps the best way to see the crucified body of the man in the Shroud."

"I agree," Middagh said. "I'm showing you the negative photographs because the image is more clearly seen when the brownish-red image on the Shroud is transformed into the white and gray-tone shadings of the negative. Also, I'm showing you the negative photographs because the left/right orientations you see in the negative are true to the left/right orientation of the crucified man himself. If you don't follow all this technical discussion precisely, it doesn't matter. Just remember that the images I'm showing you have been flipped appropriately so you are looking at the body the way it would have looked in death."

Studying the wrist and forearms image, Castle could see the wound in the wrist of the man in the Shroud correctly positioned in the carpal area, the right place for a crucifixion, and the absence of the thumbs in the image confirmed once again Castle's presumption that driving a nail through the wrist in that location had probably damaged the median nerve, causing the thumb to bend back reflexively into the palm of each hand. All this was consistent with his earlier discussion with Morelli and with Dr. Lin's a.n.a.lysis of Father Bartholomew's wrist wounds.

Looking closely at what appeared to be two streams of blood flow on the left forearm, Castle judged both streams of blood had come from the same puncture wound in the wrist. He estimated that the arms would have been extended at about a 65-degree angle with the horizontal to cause the blood to flow in the pattern he was observing on the forearms. The blood flows appeared to extend from the wrist to the elbow, which would have been consistent with the outstretching of the arm in crucifixion. Castle was beginning to have no doubt that in the Shroud he was looking at the image of a crucified man.

Whoever forged the Shroud in medieval times had to have a remarkable understanding of human anatomy and the mechanics of crucifixion to have produced an image that would stand up to current medical a.n.a.lysis confirmed by twenty-first-century technology.

"Again, we don't know exactly what the cross that Christ died upon looked like," Middagh said. "Typically the vertical beam of the cross stood permanently implanted at the place of execution. The victim often carried the crossbeam to the place of crucifixion, with the crossbeam carried on the shoulders, behind the nape of the neck, like a yoke. The Roman executioners pulled back the condemned man's arms to hook them over the crossbeam to hold and balance it. At the place of crucifixion, the victim was nailed to the crossbeam at the wrists, or the arms were bound and tied to the crossbeam. The Roman executioners then used forked poles and maybe a pulley to lift the crossbeam up to where it could be slotted into a notch at the top of the vertical beam to form the cross. Depending on how deep the notch was cut, the crossbeam might have been flush with the vertical beam, like the cross-stroke on the letter T, T, or maybe it fit into a deeper slot, forming the traditional four-point cross we see in most religious paintings from the Renaissance period until today." or maybe it fit into a deeper slot, forming the traditional four-point cross we see in most religious paintings from the Renaissance period until today."

Castle listened, with his mind translating what he was hearing into medical detail. With the ma.s.sive trauma the arms of a crucified man suffered from bearing the weight of his body, especially as the horizontal beam of the cross was lifted to the vertical beam, there was no doubt nails had to be placed through the wrist. Otherwise, the crucified man could fall off the crossbeam as it was being elevated to the vertical beam of the cross. If the crucified man were to stay on the cross any length of time, the arms would end up supporting his weight, so the wrists had to be pinned to the crossbeam firmly enough so as to not come loose. Had the Shroud of Turin demonstrated anything different, it could be disqualified immediately as an artist's rendering. Whether Father Bartholomew appreciated the medical facts of crucifixion or whether he was merely manifesting what his subconscious recorded from the Shroud, Castle did not know. But Father Bartholomew's stigmata were also in his wrists, not the palms of his hands.

Looking closely at the projected image, Castle clearly recognized what appeared to be the scourge marks he saw manifested on Bartholomew yesterday. Looking at the photographs of the Shroud that Morelli had shown him from the Vatican, Castle had not focused on the scourge wounds, although those were obviously apparent in the body above and below the crossed arms, once you began looking for them. "Are those the scourge wounds that appear to cover the body?" Castle asked Middagh.

"Yes," Middagh said. "Let me show you a close-up image of the scourge wounds suffered by the man in the Shroud."

Middagh projected onto the screen a dorsal image showing the scourge wounds on the shoulders and back of the body.

[image]

"As you can see, the man in the Shroud shows signs of an extensive beating from a whip. The scourge wounds are especially heavy on the shoulders and the backs, extending down the b.u.t.tocks and the back of the legs. I have other images here that show the same pattern of scourge marks on the man's front side, although there are not as many scourge wounds on the chest or front of the legs as there are on the backside."

Seeing these wounds now, Castle could see the obvious resemblance to the wounds he saw on Bartholomew Sunday.

"We have to get detailed photos of Father Bartholomew's wounds," Father Morelli said insistently. "From what I saw of Father Bartholomew in the ER, I believe the wounds he suffered all over his body will match precisely what we are seeing as the scourge wounds on the Shroud."

Silently, Castle agreed.

"If this is the historical Jesus Christ we are looking at in the Shroud, then the wounds on the Shroud doc.u.ment exactly where Jesus was beaten," Morelli said. "I believe we are going to find one-for-one that Father Bartholomew has exactly the same wounds that we are seeing on this slide right here, not more and not fewer, but precisely these."

"I've already ordered Dr. Lin at Beth Israel Hospital to take very detailed examinations of Father Bartholomew's body wounds, not just photographic, but also CT scans, as well as a full-body MRI," Castle commented, "as soon as Father Bartholomew is strong enough to undergo that."

"We look forward to seeing the results of those tests," Archbishop Duncan said.

"My guess, Archbishop Duncan, is that Father Morelli's supposition is correct," Castle added. "I too suspect Father Bartholomew suffered these exact wounds Sunday night. Where we differ is most likely in the interpretation. Even if the wounds Father Bartholomew suffered are identical in every detail to the scourge wounds we appear to see on the man in the Shroud, that still does not prove Father Bartholomew is manifesting miraculously the wounds Christ suffered in his pa.s.sion and death. Father Bartholomew told me he has studied the Shroud for a long time. His years of study undoubtedly impressed on his subconscious all the details of the Shroud we are looking at today."

Archbishop Duncan was skeptical. "Do you really believe the subconscious is that powerful?"

"Yes, Archbishop Duncan, I do," Castle said without hesitation. "Your subconscious is what keeps your body going. You depend on your subconscious to keep your heart beating and your blood circulating. Your subconscious regulates your breathing. You have to consciously override your subconscious to hold your breath. I could go on. What do you think keeps you alive during the night? It isn't your conscious mind."

Anne was fixated on a more fundamental part of the discussion. "Does all this mean my brother was scourged exactly like Jesus was scourged at the pillar?" she asked, her voice giving away the horror she felt at the thought.