The Shroud Codex (35 page)

Father Morelli jumped in. “If you will permit me, I want to add an important point here, before we leave the issue of the coins, even if it means raising some questions about what Dr. Middagh has just explained.”

“By all means, go ahead,” Middagh said graciously.

“In recent years, Dr. Jackson has come to doubt whether the coin information is verifiable. He has raised the question whether minor marks or imperfections seen in the weaving of the fabric might be misinterpreted as having significance—such as seeing coins, or traces of letters and writing of various kinds on the Shroud. Moreover, Dr. Jackson’s wife, Rebecca, a Jew by birth, has objected, pointing out that Jews in the first century would have considered it a religious violation to place anything so crassly related to civil government as a coin on the body of a Jew being buried in accordance with Jewish law.”

“Whether or not there really were ancient coins on the eyes of the dead man in the Shroud seems irrelevant to me,” Gabrielli said.

“Why is that?” Father Morelli asked.

“Simple.” Gabrielli began explaining. “Putting ancient coins on the eyes of a dead Jew could easily have been the work of a brilliant forger. In a curious way, I almost think the Roman coins,
if they are over the eyes, prove the Shroud is a fake. Maybe the forger didn’t know Jews in the first century did not put coins on the eyes of dead people being buried. Probably the forger was calculating that someday, someone in the future would discover the coins and be tricked into arguing the Shroud had to be real because no forger would have ever had the forethought to put them there. But if the coins are there and they violate Jewish burial traditions in the first century, then the Shroud has to be a fake.”

Castle thought Gabrielli had a good point.

“In my next attempt to duplicate the Shroud”—Gabrielli said, wanting to make sure his bottom-line point was clear—“I could easily replicate the coins over the eyes, or just about anything else the scientists end up finding microscopically on the Shroud.”

Castle figured that in the final analysis Dr. Jackson was right about the coins. “I’m not sure Gabrielli is right here that the coins prove the Shroud had to be forged,” he said. “But if I follow the discussion, the coins are capable of being seen only through a high-powered microscope and I agree it would be easy to see subjectively what you wanted to see. The weave of the linen appears very coarse. I think that with a microscopic image you could imagine seeing anything you wanted to see.”

Castle once again reached the conclusion that all the research regarding the Shroud, regardless of how scientifically conducted or academically verified it was, was still subject to debate and argumentation, especially by a scientist as clever as Gabrielli.

Friday

Turin Cathedral, Turin, Italy

Day 30

For days, the staff of the Turin Cathedral worked in a side chapel specially designed for displaying the Shroud in private viewings. With the greatest of care, the Shroud was removed from the case in the cathedral where the Shroud is preserved in an atmosphere of inert gas scientifically designed to preserve the Shroud from deterioration. Visitors to a private showing are permitted to see the Shroud directly in front of them, stretched on a frame built to display it, without the bulletproof glass covering that is used to protect the Shroud at public exhibitions.

On Thursday, the day before the private showing arranged for Father Bartholomew, the Turin Cathedral museum staff ushered Fernando Ferrar and his video crew into the side chapel. Cardinal Giovanni Bionconi had given Ferrar permission to bring in high-definition cameras to film the Shroud in advance of the private showing planned for the next day.

On Friday morning at 10
A.M.
, the hour appointed for the
private viewing to begin, the cathedral staff first ushered into the private chapel Dr. Castle and Anne Cassidy, followed by Father Middagh and Professor Gabrielli.

Castle was amazed at how overwhelmed he felt viewing the Shroud in person for the first time. He had expected that seeing so many photographs of the Shroud since taking on Father Bartholomew as a patient would have jaded him to the experience. But standing in front of the actual Shroud for the first time, Castle was impressed.

To begin with, the size of the cloth made the object in real life appear much bigger than the photographs had suggested. Somewhat larger than fourteen feet long and three feet wide, the Shroud seen in real life was an impressive relic. It stretched vertically along the full length of the display frame that filled the back wall of the specially designed side chapel, with its blacked-out windows.

Castle’s next impression was that the image seen in real life was much more subtle than he had imagined. For what seemed like several minutes, Castle had to adjust his eyes and strain to make out the subtle reddish brown lines of the figure’s full-length frontal and dorsal images. Then, as he studied the Shroud inch by inch, the image became gradually more distinct.

When he was finally able to clearly make out all the lines in the body, including the scourge marks front and back, Castle was hit with the emotional impact of the image. Here in front of him was the full-body image of a man who had been tortured and crucified two thousand years ago. Yet the face looked serene, as if finally at peace in death. The arms crossed modestly in front of what was obviously a nude body reinforced the impression of serenity, at least until Castle allowed himself to appreciate the brutality of the nail wounds on the wrists and the evidence of blood flows along the arms. Was it possible he was looking at a true image of the
crucified Christ? Even though he was a committed atheist, the thought still crossed Castle’s mind as he looked on the Shroud for the first time in person.

Marveling at the Shroud in front of him, Castle concluded that if the object were a fake, this was very possibly the most magnificent and most subtle painting ever done. He had seen many Leonardo paintings, including the
Mona Lisa
and the
John the Baptist
in the Louvre and the
Last Supper
in Milan. Yet no Leonardo painting held a candle to the Shroud. The Shroud, if Leonardo truly had painted it, was Leonardo’s crowning achievement.

Leonardo’s sfumato style required a subtle touch, such that brushstrokes were not evident at all. Leonardo’s drawings in his notebook sketches were intricate in their detail and fidelity to nature. But the delicacy with which this brutal image of a crucified man had been left on cloth was breathtaking. Perhaps no artist who ever lived had done more to bring anatomy to life than Leonardo, but the detail of the body of the man in the Shroud defied comprehension. Somehow Castle had the feeling the man in the Shroud was yet alive, only sleeping, or that had just died an instant earlier and the naked body enclosed in the burial cloth would still be warm to the touch.

Anne was equally moved. For her the yellow-straw colors of the linen itself and the subtle brownish red lines of the body created a feeling of warmness she had never before felt looking at art. She felt an immediate attachment to the life of the man in the Shroud as she began to read his struggles and hardships in the dark shadows that defined the closed eyes and in the blood soaking his brow and hair from the crown of thorns. Yet there was a quiet dignity in the soft but firm line that formed his mouth and the elegant nose that gave his face a look of majesty, despite the obviously cruel death he suffered. Looking on the Shroud for the first time in person, Anne felt certain that Jesus had defied his
crucifiers by living even to this day in the preservation of this serene image stretched before her.

Father Middagh crossed himself and said a quiet prayer. He had first seen the Shroud in person during the 1998 exhibition, but the impact it made on him today was double the initial impression. After decades of study, spending every waking hour poring over the available evidence in his attempt to prove the Shroud of Turin was the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ, Middagh felt his life was now fulfilled. He thanked God he was given the chance to see the Shroud one more time in person before the publication of his two-volume treatise. Studying the Shroud at this moment, Middagh felt he had been blessed to proclaim correctly, in the most appropriate title he could have chosen for his life’s work,
Behold the Face of Jesus
.

After a few minutes, Cardinal Bionconi accompanied Pope John-Paul Peter I into the room. They were joined by a delegation of clerical dignitaries from both the Vatican and the Archdiocese of Turin. Entering the room, each of these top clerics of the Catholic Church hierarchy paused in their conversation as soon as they came into the presence of the Shroud. Castle contemplated that this private viewing of the Shroud had a special feeling of reverence about it. Having toured the Sistine Chapel many times, Castle was always struck at how the Michelangelo frescos on the ceiling and walls had inspired conversation along with awe. Here, in this private chapel, it was different. The Shroud inspired an awe that was heightened by silence as onlookers stood before the centuries-old cloth stretched out full-length for viewing.

The last to enter the room was Father Bartholomew, in a wheelchair gently pushed forward by Father Morelli.

Ferrar’s eyes followed Father Bartholomew into the room, waiting to see what would happen. Looking to his camera crew
chief, he got a nod of confirmation that they were capturing every detail.

Father Morelli wheeled Father Bartholomew to the front and center of the group. He was speechless like everyone else in the room, soaking in every detail of the Shroud.

Seeing the Shroud in person, even Father Bartholomew was struck by how precisely his body had come to resemble the man in the Shroud. The hair and beard, the square and serene look of the face, the wounds in the wrists and feet, the scourge marks that crisscrossed the body—every mark had been duplicated on his body, with precision. Father Bartholomew realized his long white robe hid from the others in the room the evidence of the injuries that marked the body of Christ as seen in the Shroud. But what he did not fully appreciate was how the robe itself intensified the immediate impression of those in the private chapel with him that in truth Father Bartholomew had become Jesus.

“Father Bartholomew, here is the Shroud of Turin,” Pope John-Paul Peter I proclaimed loud enough for all to hear. “Now what is the demonstration you asked us here to witness? You can be assured you have our full attention.”

Rather than answer directly, Father Bartholomew motioned to Father Morelli to lock the wheels of his wheelchair and place up the footrests, so he could stand to his full height in front of the Shroud. Taking his time to lift himself so as not to fall, Father Bartholomew rose from his chair and turned to face the group. “This is the moment God promised if I agreed to return to life,” he said quietly and respectfully to the pope. “I am honored that you and the others are here to share the moment with me.”

Then, with his back to the Shroud, Father Bartholomew lifted his arms perpendicularly to his sides, as if he were being crucified on the cross. At the same time, he kicked from his feet his shoes. He stood up from the wheelchair and bent his left knee so
he could twist his body just right to lift his left foot on top of his right.

A
T THAT INSTANT
, Bartholomew’s mind tripped and he was back at Golgotha, struggling to take his last breaths on the cross. The pain in his feet and wrists from the nails had caused him to hallucinate. He had screamed out loud, but in vain, to the prophet Elijah, whom he had imagined seeing right there at the foot of the cross, standing in front of him, waiting patiently to deliver his spirit to God, their Father.

As his last instants grew near, the skies around Jerusalem darkened suddenly, as if a great and unexpected storm had arisen. The light of late afternoon receded instantly into the twilight of early evening. Storm winds swirled the dust around them as an unearthly cool hung in the air at this lonely hill where he was about to die. Twisting on the cross to exhale what might be his last breath, Bartholomew felt a final burst of cold energy shoot up and down his spine. In the corner of his eye, he saw a lone centurion approach his cross with a spear.

I
N THE PRIVATE
chapel at the Turin Cathedral, everyone in the room felt paralyzed as they stood watching Father Bartholomew’s body twist before them into the final death throes of crucifixion. His body, unsupported by any footrest on the cross, sagged, with his knees jutting even more sharply and outward to the right as his body weight shifted down.

Then in shock, Dr. Castle and the others realized the stigmata wounds had opened again and had begun bleeding profusely on both Father Bartholomew’s wrists and feet. The long white robe hid what Dr. Castle was sure were the reopened scourge wounds. His suspicion was confirmed as the bleeding from an unseen crown of thorns began to flow heavily into the hair on the crown
of Bartholomew head, with streams of blood pouring down his forehead into his eyes and soaking the long hair Bartholomew wore down to his shoulders.

Then the wound opened on his right side. Seeing this, Castle’s mind immediately made the connection. Father Bartholomew had just suffered the final wound of Christ’s passion and death. The centurion on Golgotha had just pierced his right side with his spear, puncturing his heart to make sure the crucified man was truly dead. A mixture of blood and clear fluid poured from Father Bartholomew’s right side, producing a large, bloody stain—precisely where the spear mark was also evident in the man on the Shroud stretched behind the priest. Bartholomew suffered in his own body the final death throes of Christ, crucified two thousand years before.

B
ACK ON THE
hill of his death outside Jerusalem, Bartholomew felt nothing form the spear, but he heard, as if his soul were receding rapidly out of his body, another centurion proclaim, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” The earth shook from a sudden earthquake and the sky turned to pitch black as lightning and thunder framed the horizon. The last person Bartholomew saw before his spirit completely departed his wrecked and twisted body was his mother, standing in tears at the foot of the cross. At that instant the veil of the temple was rent in two, from the top to the bottom.