April - Grand Encampment of Knights Templar, USA

Close-up of a portion of the “L-shaped” burnholes on the dorsal view of the Shroud of Turin.The cloth was folded in quarters when theseholes were made and this is the 1 st or toplayer of the four. (c) 1978 Barrie M. Schwortzcollection, STERA, Inc. All rights reserved.knight templarlike, it seems that these images musthave been copied from a single source,and the Shroud is one of them. The realquestion is, “Is the Shroud the originalsource of this familiar face?”This is the line of thinking that mightlead us to discredit the carbon 14 datingconclusion of the age of the Shroud,because if it is the source, some of theother images are much older than thescientist’s oldest date of 1260 A.D. Soif you have two images of the sameface, then how do you determinewhich is the copy and which is the copied,particularly if you know the age ofonly one of them? We might be able toanswer that question.There are many works of art whichare obviously copies of the image onthe shroud. Some are depictions of theShroud being displayed by Church officialsor its owners and are documentedas less than 600 years old. How dowe know that these are images of theShroud? Well, some show a double fullbody image front and back orientedhead to head like the Shroud. These areobvious, but some are only facial images.If you observe the Shroud withthe naked eye from a distance asmany of the ancient artists wouldhave, it is easy to mistake some ofthe unrelated markings and stainson the cloth as facial features.For instance, in the center of theforehead on the frontal image is ablood flow that some have said isin the shape of a “3.” In much ofthe art that has been copied fromthe Shroud, you will find two straylocks of hair hanging down wherethis blood flow is on the original. Itwas obviously thought by the artistto have been a feature of the imageof the man. Another dead giveawayis the presence on the copy of the “L”shaped so called “poker” holes on thepainted copies. You can understand whyan artist, in an attempt to be accurate,would paint these “L” shaped markingson his copy, but it is difficult to believethat someone copying a painting onto a“fake Shroud” would think to burn holesin the cloth rather than just place similarmarks on it.The problem is that there are manyof these little features including the forkin the beard, the swelling of one eye,and the creases in the cloth that appearon objects known to be older that thecarbon dating process indication of theage of the Shroud. In my mind, this isthe most compelling evidence that theshroud is older than 600 years. Let megive you a few examples.An example of a painting done afterthe Shroud is known to have been ondisplay is one by Della Rovere in the 17 thcentury named “iL VERISSIMO RITRATTODEL SANTISSIMO SVDARIO DEL NOS-TRO SALVATORE GIESV CHRISTO” showingthe full length image and actually29