PHOTOGRAPH OF CHRIST

Evening Star, Issue 21746, 14 June 1934, Page 14

PHOTOGRAPH OF CHRIST

HOLY SHROUD OF TURIN Mgr. A. S. Barnes adds the weight of his testimony to the growing belief that in the Holy Shroud of Turin, which is in the possession of the King of Italy, we have an authentic photograph of Christ. In “ The Holy Shroud of Turin ” (writes C. B. Mortlock. in the London ‘ Daily Telegraph ’) he holds it to be beyond dispute that the relic preserved at Turin is the veritable linen cloth in which the body of our Lord was wrapped after it has been taken down, from the Cross. He goes fully and scientifically into the grounds for believing that the full-length image impressed upon it is a chemically produced likeness of Christ, and that every detail of the scourgings, the crowning with thorns, the wounds, and the nailing to the Cross may be discerned. Indeed, he goes further and suggests that we have what is virtually a fifth Gospel of the Passion, since a minute examination of the markings of the linen affords new knowledge of the torture which preceded our Lord’s death. Hitherto the Shroud has been suspect. The leading upholder of its authenticity was, ironically enough, the agnostic Professor Delage. But against him was arrayed the adverse opinion of the bulk of the Roman Catholic clergy led by Canon Chevalier. The scientific arguments were disregarded in face of the discovery that in the fifteenth - century the Shroud was said to be merely a piece of painted linen. Examination by photo-micrography shows that it is not a painting, for there is not a single particle of colouring matter on the threads. Noi is there any trace of outline or shading inseparable from human work. Moreover the anatomical detail and proportion are exact, and the details of the blood-flow true to nature as unknown in the Middle Ages. The most convincing argument lies in the fact that the image is negative. Mgr. Barnes doubts whether the most expert retoucher of photographs could produce a negative image which, upon being reversed, would preserve so delicate a thing as the expression of tlje human face. It is, ho further holds, inconceivable that any forger would have thought of producing a negative image. The possibility that the impression on the Shroud was nothing other than a photograph was suggested when it was photographed in 1878, and the developed negative revealed a face of striking beauty and majesty. French scientists at the Sorbomie satisfied themselves that the combination of aloes, with which the body was anointed, and the ammoniac exhalations of tho body would produce just such an image. Mgr. Barnes’s careful study of all the facts is an absorbing narrative. It is informed throughout with tho scientific spirit of research, and should, result in the genuineness of the relic being openly accepted by the Roman Catholic Church.