The Shroud of Turin

25:02After taking the photograph, Secundo Pia rushes back to his studio with the glass plates to develop the photograph for the upcoming exhibition.

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27:17It is nighttime in Turin on May the 28th, 1898. Secundo Pia, dressed in a dark suit with a thick, full mustache, jumps into the carriage waiting outside Turin Cathedral.

27:33The vehicle begins to make its way through the dimly lit streets. The city is quiet at this hour, and dark except for the occasional gas lamp casting its wavering glow across the cobblestones. In a bag, clutched to his chest, are the glass plates, carefully wrapped in cloth. They are the key to the first ever photographs of the Shroud of Turin. He urges the driver to make haste. Every minute in this process counts. The plates need to be developed quickly to avoid losing the image.

28:11The carriage pulls up outside his apartment building, and he swiftly pays the driver before hopping out and letting the door swing firmly shut behind him. Now the amateur photographer hurries up to his apartment, which doubles as his studio. Crossing the cluttered room, the smell of chemicals still hanging in the air from his last job, he heads to the dark room. It's cool in here, lit only by a dim red bulb hanging from the ceiling. Pia works quickly, efficiently, as he prepares the materials. Then, when he is ready, he places the first plate into the tray of developing solution, the liquid hissing slightly as it meets the glass.

28:58Pocket watch in hand, he watches the chemicals swirl over the surface, counting impatiently while the minutes stretch out. As the plate sits in the solution, gradually a faint outline appears in metallic silver where light strikes the emulsion. It is slow at first, and then it starts to come into focus. Leaning closer, he watches as the image emerges. It's similar to the faint, blurry stain he has seen with his own eyes on the shroud itself, except in this negative, it's much, much clearer. A detailed, lifelike face. The face of a man with long hair, a full beard, and closed eyes. Pia's hands tremble slightly as he lifts the plate from the solution.

29:52And in his consternation, he almost drops it. Because if the stories about the relic are to be believed, he could be looking at something that hasn't been seen for almost two millennia, the face of Jesus Christ.

30:17In his memoir, Secundo Peer later describes the experience. He says he nearly dropped the glass plates because he was so shocked by what he saw. It was not what he expected. The image that appeared as the photographic negative was much more clear and distinct than what we see with the naked eye. And so what Secunda Pia realized is that the image that we see with the naked eye acts more like a photographic negative. So when he looked at the photographic negative, it acted more like a positive image. Pia's photograph of the Shroud of Turin in 1898 sends shockwaves across the world. It reveals so much previously invisible detail that some suggest he must have somehow tampered with the photo to create such a startling result.

31:08But it's not until 1931 when Giuseppe Enri, a professional photographer, gets his chance to photograph the shroud that the mystery is cleared up. Enri's own photo confirms beyond doubt what Pia's attempt seemed to reveal, that the negative image holds far more detail than we see in the shroud itself. people who understood photography and recognized that secundapia had not done anything to manipulate the image they became increasingly interested and intrigued by this mysterious image and it really set off a firestorm of research so some of the things that happened early on were forensic studies of the image on the shroud because it's so covered with wounds the wounds of the scourging the crowning with thorns, the crucifixion, and the forensic doctors wanted to understand were these wounds accurate for what we could expect from someone who had been subjected to these kinds of tortures.

32:19In the 1930s, Pierre Barbet, a French surgeon who had worked in the First World War, begins to research what are thought to be crucifixion wounds, somehow transferred onto the shroud. Using his medical expertise, he analyzes the anatomical details of the image. In medieval art, we're so used to seeing Jesus crucified on the cross with the wounds going through the palms of his hands. And the wound that is reflected on the shroud is actually in the wrist area. And so Pierre Barbet wanted to understand how someone would be crucified. And so he actually had access to cadavers. And so Pierre Barbet started doing experiments crucifying cadavers to see where a nail could be placed that would not break any bones, but would secure the body to the cross.

33:10And what he discovered is that nails placed through the palm of the hand would not hold the weight of the body. Barbet's research reveals that there is an area at the base of the palm where a nail could enter and which would result in an exit wound at the wrist. something that correlates with the wounds on the Shroud. It is another of many important discoveries about the Shroud which are revealed as it becomes one of the most scientifically studied objects in the world. But when the Second World War breaks out in 1939, the studies have to be paused. Led by Benito Mussolini, Italy sides with Nazi Germany, and Turin, like much of the country, faces the threat of bombing raids by the Allied forces.

33:58There is also the rumor that Adolf Hitler has a special interest in the shroud and wants to get his hands on it. With violence intensifying throughout Europe, the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, decides to move the shroud from Turin to Rome. He appeals to the Vatican to look after it, but is informed that even there it might not be safe, given Hitler's interest.

34:28In September 1939, a highly secretive transfer takes the shroud to the Benedictine Abbey of Montevergini, around 40 miles east of Naples.

34:44It is September 1943 at the Abbey of Montevergine, nestled high in the steep slope of a mountain. As the bells ring out, echoing down through the valley below, an elderly monk is preparing vestments in the softly lit chapel. But as the pealing finally stops, he pauses from his work. Locking eyes with another monk, he confirms his fear. That's the sound of boots, many pairs of them marching towards the abbey. Without speaking, the pair get to their feet and hurry through the complex to the chancel of the church. Very few know what is hidden here, but these two have been entrusted with a secret.

35:32The altar is overlooked by the Madonna de Montevergine, a famous icon of the Virgin Mary holding Christ on her lap. Known as the icon of the Black Madonna, she draws thousands of pilgrims to the abbey and is believed to work miracles. They need one today, because just below her, beneath the altar cloth, is hidden the Shroud of Turin, Christianity's most precious relic. The monks kneel and begin to pray for the safety of the shroud, but also for their community. Just days ago, the nearby city of Avellino was bombed by Allied planes. More than 3 ,000 people lost their lives. While they pray, the monks listen to the sound of the marching boots drawing closer until they are right outside.

36:23When the footsteps stop, there is a brief pause before the aggressive knocking begins.

36:33The two monks decide that one of them will go to the door, while the other will stay at his post. The older man gets up off his knees and makes his way through another part of the building to the main entrance, careful to keep his pace measured and calm. A couple of younger brothers are standing flustered at the entrance, trying to decide what they should do. Calmly, the older monk ushers them aside and opens the abbey's door. A thick oak groans, and outside, a phalanx of Nazi soldiers in grey-green uniforms stand to attention. A German officer steps forward and explains curtly that, after the bombing in Avellino, they have orders to search the building.

37:21Monasteries in Italy and elsewhere have become known as sanctuaries to resistance fighters. The monk steps aside, head bowed. Once the soldiers have filed in, their heavy boots loud against the flagstones, he heads as quickly as he can back to the chapel, gathering fellow monks with him on the way. Now the brothers file in, lining up at the altar. Though they appear deep in prayer, in reality, they are standing guard. eyes closed the old monk can almost feel the soldiers staring but he and his brothers do nothing to respond only the Latin murmur of their prayers fills the air as the Germans move about behind minutes pass and the prayer continues until eventually one of them gives an order in clipped German and the visitors finally retreat their heavy steps fade away and once Once again, the monks are alone in the Abbey.

38:27The elderly holy man lets out a long breath and makes a sign of the cross. Glancing up at the Madonna, he gives thanks, sure that he has witnessed a miracle today.

38:45After the war, the Shroud is returned to its home in Turin, but not before the monks who shielded it at Montevigeni are allowed a brief exhibition of their own. It is laid on a table in the abbey's reception hall with the strict orders that no one should touch it. The war's conclusion also marks the end of the Kingdom of Italy. In 1946, after the fall of Mussolini's fascist regime, a referendum is held and the Italian people vote to abolish the monarchy. This results in the establishment of the Italian Republic, with the king, Umberto II, being exiled. The Savoys, who have ruled Italy since 1861, lose their royal status and much of their property.

39:31So while the family still owns the shroud, because the chapel in Turin is part of the now state-owned royal palace, the relic is technically on Italian state territory. The Catholic Church begins to take on the responsibility for its preservation and display

39:54In 1958, the first major public exhibition of the Shroud after the war draws international attention And in the decades that follow, there are further scientific studies While interest in the question of the Shroud's authenticity intensifies In the early 1970s, Max Frey, a German microbiologist, studies pollen grains found on the shroud. His forensic analysis reveals they come from plants native to Palestine, particularly around Jerusalem. The same decade, another important discovery is made. There were two Air Force physicists who had access to a machine called a VP8 image analyzer. And this image analyzer could take the light and dark areas of a two-dimensional photograph and convert them into three-dimensional information.

40:49And so they had the idea of taking a photograph of the shroud and putting it into this VP8 image analyzer to see what result they might get. And just like when Secundapia took his photograph of the shroud, they got an amazing result. They put the image into the VP8 and what came out was a landscape of the face and the body of the man of the shroud.

41:18The image from the analyzer appears in three dimensions, much like a modern holograph. And the 3D mapping reveals anatomical accuracy. The depth variations in the image appear to correspond to real human body contours, including facial features, hands, and the overall shape, aligning with how a body would appear if it were lying in the shroud. The fact that the image also behaves like a photographic negative and contains three-dimensional data strengthens the idea that it would have been extremely difficult to fabricate, especially in medieval times. This discovery sparks what is known as the Shroud of Turin Research Project, or STERP.

42:03A team of around 33 scientists, engineers and photographers, mostly from the United States, are given unprecedented access to the shroud for five days in October 1978. They arrive in Turin with seven tons of equipment. They assembled their team of scientists, they raised the money through private donations to be able to fund this project, and they prepared down to the minute for the 120 hours that they would have with the shroud. They planned every minute of that time so that they could utilize every minute of it to do detailed studies. The team's goal is to analyze the relic using modern scientific tools, with no religious agenda, to determine how the image might have been formed and whether it could be a forgery.

42:54They use X-ray, ultraviolet, infrared imaging, microscopes and chemical testing.

43:04Though one popular theory amongst skeptics posits that medieval forgers might have rubbed or singed the cloth over a raised bar relief sculpture. Analysis now suggests that the shroud's image has not been painted, as there are no traces of pigments or dyes. But the team is not unanimous in its findings. One of the most famous skeptics was a man named Walter McCrone, and he said that he observed a piece of iron ochre on the shroud itself, which could have been from paint. So this is an argument that is often repeated that this was iron oxide, which could be a part of a paint pigment that was discovered on the shroud.

43:50People refute that by saying that it is recorded multiple times in the history of the shroud that paintings of the shroud were laid on the shroud to make them second class relics because they came in contact with what could be a first class relic because it contained the blood of Jesus. The scientists find that the image is only on the outermost surface fibers, just a few microns deep, less than the thickness of a human hair. The researchers unstitched the backing cloth that had been applied to the cloth after that fire, and they put a light between the backing cloth and the shroud itself, and they photographed the shroud using a backlight.

44:34And so this was when it was revealed to them that the image did not penetrate through the fabric. The blood penetrates through, the water stains, the burns, of course, go through the fabric. But the image is only on the very superficial part. It doesn't go through and it's not evident on the other side of the fabric. What they discovered when they did a chemical analysis of the image area was that the area where the image was had aged more rapidly than the surrounding fabric. So the image is actually a chemical change in the fibers where the cells are more dehydrated than the background linen.

45:14So they have the appearance of aging more rapidly than the background linen. That is what creates the image.

45:27Tests also identify blood components, including hemoglobin and serum, and the stains are confirmed as real human blood, type AB, though it has been noted that old blood often tests as that blood type. Ultimately, Sturpp concludes that the image is that of a real human form, of a man who had been scourged and crucified. They also state that no known technology or artistic method could explain how the image was formed or indeed forged. The mystery the researchers came to solve remains unsolved. But in another decade, science will promise to finally have the answer.

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47:02Try it, style it, make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Crocs store today. On March 18, 1983, the former King of Italy, Umberto II, dies in Cascais, Portugal. In his will, he bequeaths the Shroud to the Pope and his successors, with the proviso that it stays in Turin. In 1988, then, it is the Vatican that authorizes the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud to determine its age.

47:45All living things have a type of carbon in them called carbon-14. When that living thing dies, such as the flax plant that would have made the linen shroud, the carbon-14 slowly fades away. Scientists can measure how much carbon-14 is left to estimate how long ago the living thing died, which in the case of the shroud would tell us how old the cloth Small samples are taken from a corner of the fabric and sent to three laboratories at Oxford University in the UK, the University of Arizona in the United States and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. The Vatican and the Archdiocese of Turin appoint the British Museum as the neutral overseer of the process.

48:35All three laboratories work independently Using a technology known as accelerator mass spectrometry Through this process, they count the carbon-14 atoms left in the cloth And compare them to regular carbon atoms When the results come in, the shroud once again makes global headlines So in 1988, it was reported around the world that the dates for the radiocarbon dating showed that the age of the fabric was between 1260 and 1390, so that the fabric was only about 700 years old. And this news was reported around the world. Shroud of Turin proven to be a forgery, a medieval fake. And this was just devastating news to the people in the world of the Shroud.

49:34What makes the results more plausible are that the dates provided by the labs closely coincide with the first documented appearance of the Shroud of Turin in the 1350s. But since the 1988 tests, the carbon-14 dating results have become the focal point of another shroud controversy, with critics challenging its methodology and findings. In 2017, a French researcher, Tristan Casabianca, looks again at some of the British Museum's records of the radiocarbon dating study. What he finds is that while the data was averaged for the 1988 reports to get an age of around 700 years, there is a difference of more than 150 years in the raw data.

50:22The discrepancy suggests that the sample taken in 1988 was not homogenous Some also argue it was taken from a corner of the shroud likely to have been repaired over the centuries So the result is that in 2019 in this same journal that reported the original 1988 radiocarbon dating results a new article was published saying that the sample that was tested was not representative of the whole cloth, and therefore the results should not be included and there needs to be a new test. Now that was published in 2019. That was not reported around the world the way that the 1988 results were reported. To date, while the earlier results are still upheld as valid by many scientists, There have also been multiple peer-reviewed articles that have challenged the results of the carbon dating.

51:23Never a stranger to peril, the Shroud of Turin survives another fire in 1997 that requires an emergency rescue. And in 2002, a controversial restoration removes centuries-old patches and its backing cloth. Today, it is stored in a climate-controlled, fireproof case made of bulletproof glass. But despite extensive study, the exact method by which the faint image of a crucified man was formed on the Shroud of Turin still remains a mystery. Scientists have explored natural explanations, such as whether heat could have changed the cloth's fibers and made the image. but this isn't something that usually happens on burial cloths.

52:11Another theory is that the ammonia released from the breakdown of urea in sweat or during decomposition might be involved. But experiments have shown that this would likely produce a much blurrier picture than the one on the shroud. Italian chemist Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua has proposed that the image might have been burned into the upper layers of the cloth by a burst of so-called radiant energy, namely bright light emanating from the body itself. He cites the Gospel of Luke, which describes how Jesus was transformed or transfigured into radiant light. Fante has argued for tests to explore whether artificial sources of such radiation could produce a similar result on linen.

53:04To many, though, this is one of the more fringe theories. Indeed, the 16th century French theologian John Calvin argued that it was unlikely that a miracle as remarkable as an imprinted image would be omitted by the biblical historians. He also pointed out inconsistencies between the shroud and the biblical accounts of the burial of Jesus, noting that the Gospels mention one cloth covering the body and a separate cloth for the head. The search for answers continues to this day. Fascinated by the mystery of the shroud, filmmaker David Rolfe has offered a$1 million reward to anyone who could recreate the image using only medieval technologies.

53:50It has yet to be done. On one hand, skeptics highlight the results of radiocarbon dating tests conducted in 1988, dating the cloth to between AD 1260 and 1390, and suggesting it is a medieval forgery. The uncertainty around the location of the shroud before it turned up in the 1350s in Leray, France, also endures. On the other hand, for millions of Christians, the Shroud of Turin holds deep spiritual significance. It is often seen not only as a symbol of Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection, but as contemporary evidence of it. The Vatican, meanwhile, regards it as a powerful symbol of Christian faith, but not as a proven relic.

54:40Scientific opinion remains divided, with calls for new tests using modern techniques. But for now, questions around the Shroud's age and origins, as well as the identity of the man of the Shroud, remain unanswered. And despite the passing of many centuries of speculation, exploration, and fierce debate, our opinions on the Shroud of Turin must in many ways be a matter of belief.

55:09The interest in the Shroud today in 2025 is skyrocketing. People all over the world are wanting to know about the Shroud. And that's because we have new technology that allows us to explore and examine the Shroud in a greater detail than has ever been possible in the past. The Shroud can take it. The Shroud invites people to examine it. and to have science still be so baffled by this mysterious image and still not be able to explain it, it leads one to question, well, how could this image have been created? Could it be the natural effect of a supernatural event? And so today with our scientific ability, we have the ability to study and question and probe and learn, and yet we still have to have the answer that only our faith can provide.

56:14Next time on Short History, I will bring you a short history of the East India Company. You look at those famines in the latter half of the 18th century are really harrowing. But I think the general fairly safe interpretation is that the company bears quite a lot of responsibility for the response to it. But the fact of the matter is, that is the sort of neglect that can arise from saying profit matters first. And the problem is that the company got out of this in the end with quite a lot of money in pocket and very little accountability in terms of that sort of broader sense of responsibility, and a lot of people died for it.

56:46That's next time.

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