Secrets Of The Shroud (Conspiracy Documentary) | Timeline

it's June 2002 and technicians are moving the world's most revered religious relic the Shroud of Turin an ancient cloth that bears one of the most controversial images in existence is about to undergo an major restoration it will reveal secrets that once again forced the question is the Shroud a medieval fake or is it really the burial cloth of Jesus Christ [Music] the Turin Shroud measures just over 14 feet in length made from fine quality linen it's the most holy relic of the Christian faith many believe that after Christ was taken down from the cross the shroud was used to wrap his corpse and that his tortured body left the anatomically perfect straw colored image on the cloth the shroud is kept here in Turin northern Italy where it's remained for over four centuries [Music] [Music] in 1998 it was placed in a new high-tech container a hermetically sealed case of aluminium and glass from which the air is pumped out and the inert gas argon is pumped in sealed with the papal stamp the Catholic Church believed it was preserving the shroud for future generations but for millions their belief had already been shattered when scientists first dated the cloth as medieval [Music] had the scientists experiments uncovered an elaborate hoax perhaps the Shroud was nothing more than a forgery [Music] carbon-dating had been used to date the cloth back in the 1980s this new technology offered a seemingly foolproof way of fixing its age the expectation and my party love other people was that carbon dating would really resolve the issue of where this cloth was 1st century AD and therefore genuine of Christ so I was certainly pushing for it and the church certainly recognized that there was a dissonant case for the shroud to be carbon-dated on the 21st of April 1988 the shroud was ready to go under the knife but even at this final stage decisions about where to cut were still being debated what I find it quite incredible is that after all that had gone before and what that seemed a tremendous amount of delay but it's when they actually have got all the scientists in there actually they're that - they finally come to an argument between two Italians about where the sample should come from and apparently was very heated and went on for some considerable time before eventually a very bad decision was made about where the sample should be taken from it was taken from one corner a corner that we know historically was one of the corners that was used for holding up the shroud to the people in the time of these expeditions and therefore would have received more contamination than any other part of the shroud Oxford University was invited to date the shroud fragments one of the original team members was Professor Robert hedges the whole question of contamination is much more difficult to deal with and there are situations where dates have come out because of contamination right if one is trying to remove contamination from people touching their cloth then the procedures we use are pretty good but I would still prefer to have something that hasn't been touched rather than something that had been touched despite concerns that the sample was taken from the wrong place on the 13th of October 1988 the world's press gathered at the British Museum in London it was a very dingy room in the basement of a British Museum and when I went in there was this blackboard at the back of the scientists with the dates 1262 3090 exclamation mark professor Teddy Hall was one of the Oxford University team leaders remember Teddy writing out the dates in chalk on a backboard I think he actually enjoyed the fact that the child was you could say shown to be a fake are indeed still people who believe that the earth is flat there is still a Flat Earth Society going back to the time of Galileo but of course no sensible person listens to them at all and I'm sure there will be some set earth people on the floured as well the news flashed around the world and the shroud was dubbed a fake [Music] unraveling the precise origin of the shroud is difficult before the 16th century very little seems to be known about its past it was first brought to Turing in 1578 from the French Alpine town of Sean Barie [Music] Cardinal Charles Borromeo was on a pilgrimage from plague-ridden Milan and the shrouds owner Duke Emmanuel filiberto had agreed to send the cloth to meet him halfway [Music] baura mayose viewing captured the imagination of Turin's people [Music] emanuelle filiberto ordered a public display in the Piazza del Castillo 1578 and Duke manual filiberto had brought the Shroud to here in Turin for the very first time he said of a beautiful pavilion here in this square he had all the dignitaries from all around coming to this square along with Cardinals Archbishop's lots of clergy and on this platform he brought out the shroud which was held out not in the frame like they do today but by the hands of the bishops and the people once they saw it they immediately went absolutely wild they were throwing up their roses cannons were firing it was a magnificent occasion so successful in fact the Duke repeated it other times throughout his reign fascination with the shroud hasn't waned since that first public viewing in Turin over 400 years ago but since that date there have been many dozens of public expositions of the cloth including this one in 1933 at each public showing the Shroud had been exposed to sunlight and air and were still handled by hundreds of people but since being placed in its modern high-tech home its continued to deteriorate the church authorities began to worry the fibers surrounding the image were oxidizing causing the cloth to get darker the image was slowly disappearing so in 2002 under total secrecy vital restoration work was carried out mekt hilt flurry Lemberg a textile historian from Switzerland and her team were the only people entrusted to make the delicate repairs this linen normally the beginning naturally had been natural natural color and is also in the meantime oxidized that mean more yellowish and this process is going on and because we don't want the ground grow in darker and darker and growing together with the image that would mean in the future the image would no longer be visible [Music] but while she was undertaking this repair work flurry Lemberg uncovered secrets embedded in the cloth that could refute the carbon dating results push the date of the shroud back to the first century and reinstate its authenticity [Music] for centuries admirers of the Shroud had venerated a faint image of a crucified man no one had imagined that hidden in the fibers of the cloth was an even greater prize in 1898 Italian photographer secondo Pierre was commissioned to capture the first images of the Shroud on film he exposed the light-sensitive glass plate and hurried back to his darkroom to process the picture as the plate developed it revealed not the ghostly image of a man but a lifelike picture of remarkable detail that had never been seen before [Music] secondo Pia's discovery of the photographic qualities hidden within the image heralded a new age in shroud research but despite the astonishing detail of these pioneering photographs no one could be certain how the image was made and whether it was the impression of a real man in 1978 the Shroud of Turin research project called stir was given unrivaled access to the cloth [Music] one of the teams photographers was Barry Schwartz stop was a group of mainly American scientists about twenty four of us and the purpose of the group was to determine what formed the image on the shroud now of course the theory was the shroud was a painting so we took with us the tests that would normally be performed on art the x-rays for example they use x-rays to determine if there's lead in the paint's that are used we used different types of spectral imaging again the kinds of things that one uses to authenticate paintings and of course both infrared and ultraviolet photographic imaging all of which are experiments geared towards determining how the image was formed on the Shroud the team exposed the cloth to low levels of x-ray radiation if the shroud was a painting this is where it would show up but no traces of pigment were detected on the cloth the image was not the work of an artist what they did find was that the pale yellow image only appears on the very surface of the cloth fibers [Music] disturb team were convinced it was the impression of a real man even more disturbing they identified the shroud was soaked in blood the exact fate of the man on the shroud has become a lifetime obsession for forensic pathologist Fred's dagger be [Music] for 50 years he's been solving homicides on the streets of New York what he's uncovered is shocking even for a hardened professional feature that you see are the Marth injuries here for instance your swelling above the eyes we've marked swelling below the right eye on the cheek here and some swelling below the left one here you can see a separation of the bone and the cartilage from a blow to the nose on the chin area they're swelling on the chin area in this region to here is saturated with blood but the blood saturation here and neither injuries from the crown of thorns [Music] every time they hit him with the read as a file past him and hit against the head and a crown of thorns these were puncture his scalp the human scalp contains a network of highly sensitive nerves now Connor thorns would irritate the trigeminal nerve [Music] it's a Lanting type of pain across the face and it may stop suddenly a wisp of wind may bring the pain on again the pains are brutal very difficult to handle and some people have actually gone to shock and died from trigeminal neuralgia [Music] saga B's detailed work has revealed that the image on the shroud is of a real man with a gruesome past but his research doesn't tell us how the image was formed and there are some who still believe it's a clever case of deception dr. Nicholas Allen is an art historian at Port Elizabeth University in South Africa he believes the image could be of a man who died in the 14th century by the time we come to the 13th or 14th centuries the use of relics comes to an all-time high we had developed into what could be described as a multi-million pound industry he has his own theory about how the image on the shroud was made that it's the world's first photograph to do it one would have needed a body that person would more likely have been dead because of the time needed for the exposure and that person would have to kept perfectly still the person would have had to have been hung up in sunlight for at least eight hours opposite a crystal lens which had been placed in the aperture of a wall around a room which we would now call a camera obscura or a darkened chamber Allen claims that all the tools needed to produce this image would have been readily available by the late 13th century all you would have needed at that time was somebody who knew how to make a lens and they were plenty of people making lenses at that time somebody was some alchemical knowledge because all you needed some saw the sulphate and a camera obscura which is exactly what we have here today set up as they would have done it in the 1300s lenses were widely used throughout a medieval Europe the spectacles being introduced to Italy in the late 13th century this is a convict Lindh passed from aliens in the British Museum that was made around about a hundred and fifty Common Era which would have looked something like this when it was new and two of these lenses placed together make a condenser with which you can project an image Allen also believes that the lady evil alchemists had a primitive understanding of photochemistry to capture an image as you see on the screen behind me is a relatively simple thing to do but now to permanently capture that image we have to make sure that the cloth that the image has being projected onto contains light-sensitive material [Music] and what we're using here is silver sulfate which was available in the 13th century once Alan has made a silver sulfate solution he soaks his linen shroud just like a piece of photographic film the cloth is now light-sensitive he stretches it over a frame and opens up the aperture exposing the screen to his image as the silver sulfate reacts with the UV rays an image is gradually burnt into the cloth it'll take about three days to fully develop [Music] the image that you see here is in effect a chemical scourge and it only appears on the upper five walls of the linen if you turn to the back of this cloth and we're to look at the back there'd be no image here whatsoever the images only on the side of the sunlight struck the cloth and like the Shroud of Turin this image is not made from dyes pigments or powders it's just simply oxidized dillan to the naked eye the image is very subtle but just like stucando Pia's photographic plates of the shroud when this picture is reversed the ghostly face can be seen in much more detail Allen believes the silver sulfate residue left in his cloth after drying will also be found in the shroud and could be used to confirm that the cloth is many even there are microscopic amounts of atomic silver pure silver trapped in the linen we could end this discussion once and for all about how the shard was made if the authorities would allow a non-destructive test on the cloth to look for silver content remembering in 1977 stood committee only tested up to iron in their tests they didn't test the gold or cadmium tin or silver if they found parts per million of silver in the shreditor and it would prove that it had been through this particular technique if Nicholas Allen is right then the carbon dating results are correct and the Shroud really is a fake but there remains one big problem [Music] one of the experiments carried out by the sterk team was to photograph the Shroud using ultraviolet photography UV opens up a world beyond the visible spectrum of our eyes it revealed hidden evidence about the quality of the cloth in the area where the carbon dating sample was taken amazingly when we look at the UV fluorescence photography of that area the area where the samples were taken is dramatically different than the rest of the Shroud of Turin now remember that in 1978 that particular corner of the cloth was irrelevant it was 10 years before the carbon dating so we didn't focus our attention there going back and looking at those UV fluorescence images today we can see now that there is a dramatic difference in the color of the Shroud in the area where the carbon-14 samples were taken and that indicates a difference in physical makeup or content so it's quite obvious just from the UV fluorescence photography that there is something anomalous about the area where the carbon-14 samples were taken from the corner where the sample was cut appears darker than the rest of the cloth I think the carbon dating was skewed and if any any cause was was responsible that contamination I think has to rank high in terms of deciding where the sample should should come from I don't think they took into account the evidence of history that that particular corner of the shroud had been so repeatedly handled and the problems that that might cause for the reliability of any carbon dating result was there something strange happening to the fibers in this part of the cloth throughout its long life the shroud has been passed down from generation to generation every time the cloth was exhibited it was contaminated with new bacteria from people's hands the very corner from where the carbon dating sample was taken is one of the most handled parts of the cloth professor Stephen Mattingly believes that tiny bacteria microbes living on the fibers could have sway to the carbon dating result when you examine the microscopic appearance of the linen from the Turin Shroud you can see microorganisms on the inside of the fiber as well as wrapped around on the outside you can actually see cells microorganisms would really form a network within it all around and through the linen material unless it's cleaned properly the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud probably is is an error it's really more modern than it should be if the bacterial coating did skew the carbon dating could the Shroud actually be pre medieval one clue that could help turn back the clock lies with a small set of holes found towards the edge of the cloth called the poker holes their origin is not fully understood deep in Budapest National Library lies the prey manuscript the oldest surviving text of the Hungarian language within its pages is an image of Christ being prepared for burial the cloth that will wrap his body is clearly visible but it's the degree of detail that has excited historians the image shows the characteristic herringbone weave and four holes and these the polka holes found on the cloth had the artist seen that urine shroud all this seems more remarkable because the prey manuscript has been dated to eleven ninety seventy years before the earliest carbon-14 date for the shrouds creation but is there any evidence that could wind back the clock even further the answer may lie here in a Cathedral in northern Spain kept under lock and key inside is a silver arc carried here from Jerusalem in the 6th century [Music] Marc Gaskin has been researching the mystery of the Shroud of Turin for over 10 years using ancient manuscripts and documents to unravel its elusive past here in the cathedral town of Vienna in the north of Spain there is a cloth that's been kept here ever since the cathedral was built known as the sudarium domine the sudarium of the Lord it's a blood-stained cloth there has no images on it unlike the Shroud but in contrast to the Shroud it does have a very well-documented history there are documents that take this cloth all the way back to Jerusalem where it was seen in the 6th century by a group of pilgrims it left Jerusalem at the beginning of the 7th century due to the Persian invasion always fleeing it was always one step ahead of danger until it finally found a resting place in the kingdom of Asturias the first Christian kingdom in Arab Spain [Music] this large silver coated chest or Ark that we can see here actually came from Jerusalem to the original box it's incredible that it's still here there's an inscription on the top that tells us what was inside it inside it were all of these smaller boxes that we can see around here and inside the smaller boxes were all kinds of objects and relics among which was the sad area the sudarium is a piece of poor quality linen much like a handkerchief covered in stains of blood and bodily fluid Jewish belief dictates that the human soul is carried in the blood when someone suffered a violent death a sudarium was wrapped around the face to catch the blood this dirty creased cloth that has survived many centuries holds vital clues within its blood-stained patterns chemical analysis has revealed that the blood on the sudarium matches the blood on the Shroud of Turin we know the central stone was formed by a body hanging in an upright position with the arms outstretched the head was leaning to the right and also slightly forwards now the SCID area was first pinned to the back of the head there are actually pinned holes in the original that shows how it was pinned into the hair the cloth was then brought round to the front and it came across an obstacle the idea would have been to wrap the cloth entirely around the head but what happened was that the head was actually stuck to the arm due to rigor mortis setting in very quickly after a traumatic death hence the solarium was folded back on itself in the first position like this which is why we have the groups of parallel stones when this liquid seeped through the cloth this wound here the body was still alive when this blood came out of the back of the head and if we overlay this part of the sudarium on to the same area of the shroud then the actual shape of the stains fits in perfectly although we have no obvious facial image on the sudarium it does reveal some of the features of a man's face we can see the stain that corresponds to the beard area we're talking about a bearded male we can see the base stain of liquid that came out through the nose and how the other stains were formed when the first stain had dried that's where we have different edges but can make all of them out at a later time the cloth was wrapped all the way around the head and most probably tied in a knot here at the top and then when the body reached the tomb what most probably happened was this cloth sudarium could have just been very easily lifted off the head like that rolled up on itself as it says in the fourth gospel and left to one side but detailed analysis of the stains can only unravel part of the sued Aryans mystery it's the documented history which enables us to trace it back through time [Music] this book here's the book of Testaments of the Cathedral of year there and it's the most treasured manuscript that is still in the Cathedral archives and it's basically a collection of various documents of donations that have been given that were given to the cathedral over the years and the most important thing in other words what confers on the Cathedral the highest level of importance is precisely the ark and the relics that were inside it including the sudarium and even better than that is that this is not the only document that tells us this story there are various documents from various cities copied in various countries all in different places there are manuscripts in France in Belgium that tell us the story of the sudarium this is a well-established history of this cloth that came from Jerusalem to Spain and has been in Spain since these since the seventh century since the beginning of the seventh century laboratory tests carried out on both the sudarium and the Shroud in the 1980s revealed the same rare ad blood group found in less than 3% of the population if both cloths were taken from the same body then the shroud could predate the carbon-dating by at least 600 years laboratory tests have shown virtually without doubt that these cloths were used on the same body it's not really a question of doubting the carbon-dating it's just saying it doesn't fit in with what we know we don't need to doubt it it's just wrong the fact that the sudarium no more than a dirty piece of cloth has been revered for so long suggests it must have held special significance for the people who preserved it could this cloth really hold the blood of Christ everything points towards this cloth having been used on the body of Jesus of Nazareth I know that we'll never be able to prove it scientifically in historically but the same is also true the other way around nobody can prove that it wasn't both the sudarium and the Shroud point to a traumatic death whoever's images on the cloth must have suffered a horrific last few hours 2,000 years ago the Romans used crucifixion as the most humiliating form of execution first the victim was scourge then nailed alive to a wooden cross the person would be tied to some object maybe a pillar or something and the individual would be lash so many a kind the body on the shroud is covered with multiple lacerations scourging was usually done as a prelude to crucifixion generally they only scourge them a few times prior to it because they didn't want him to die before him what they would do is they would take an instrument called a flagrant which had leather thongs on it usually three but bits of metal or bone at the end the metal would penetrate the flesh ripping nerves blood vessels and so forth generally the individuals would go into absolute agony some of them actually to the point of convulsions the Shroud of Turin shows over a hundred markings from these patterned injuries but the most dramatic marks on the Shroud image revealed that the man was then crucified nailed to a cross the Shroud of Turin shows the wound in the wrist area on the back of the hand but the nail went through here at the base of the thumb region here it would emerge exactly where the Shroud of Turin shows it and would be in an extremely firm place that would hold several hundred pounds the nail would have cut through one of the most sensitive nerves in the body damage of the median nerve causing the person to have a condition called cause Alger one of the worst pains ever experienced by man it's like lightning bolts traversing the arm the pains are brutal could send a person into shock by the time the body was removed from the cross it was covered in blood and sweat [Music] microbiologist professor Stephen Mattingly decided to investigate if this bloody end could be responsible for creating the image on the shroud it really started when a physician knocked on my lab door and wanted to know if I'd be interested in working on a sample of the Turin Shroud and I said Wow as I became more interested in the trout and I looked at the image it seemed to me that we were looking at a transfer of microorganisms from the body to the linen surface Staphylococcus epidermidis is the most common bacteria found on human skin it released is a sticky polymer that can adhere to cloth leaving an imprint which could explain the ghostly image on the shroud the body becomes very very sticky because of the polymers and the material that these microorganisms produce and when they become very sticky then they will they will stick very efficiently to a linen surface so when you pull it off and you see a transfer of some of these microorganisms to the linen surface exactly where they made contact with the skin Mattingly decided to begin experimenting could he create an image of his own face on linen using just bacteria he believes the man on the shroud had skin primed for bacterial growth these bacteria grow best at body temperature and we had a man that was bleeding continuously providing the nutrients for these bacteria to grow there was also sweat because of the exertion that he was undergoing which allowed this particular Staphylococcus to become predominant and then we had the body staying alive during this whole period so he served as a perfect incubator for the growth of these bacteria to allow them to reach such high levels the image on the turnaround comes from the fact that certain molecules will pick up oxygen and when they do that they turn this yellow color we see this everywhere we see it where you see yellowing on your church white shirts this is due to bacteria that had been transferred from the skin to the linen surface and exposure to oxygen then they returned yellow [Music] Mattingly must remain perfectly still during this process if he moves the image will blur he believes it would take up to 12 out to create a full-body transfer when the linen is first removed the image is faint but develops naturally over time as it's exposed to the air [Music] I'm using a UV light to enhance the contrast between the dark areas and clearly see the eyebrow region right here the forehead nose the lips and the chin area down here it almost gives a three-dimensional effect here as you compare my lips here with the nose area and the eyebrows the eyebrows are darker because that's for more bacteria were present and where there was greater contact with with the amended surface what we see is a perfectly natural phenomenon that Bay's all the laws of science physics mathematics chemistry etc it's not anything to be concerned about in terms of a supernatural event this is a natural process apart from the image of a crucified man the Shroud is covered with numerous scars that suggest a turbulent past the most obvious are large burn holes and water stains that run the length of the linen could these mysterious marks shed light on the true age of the shroud [Music] on December the 4th 1532 an accident that nearly destroyed the shroud revealed a clue that could date it back to the 1st century the cloth was kept in a church at the alpine village at Sean Barie it was stored in a silver casket and hidden in a niche behind the otter as the fire caught hold the temperature started to rise and the caskets began to melt molten silver dripped onto the shroud and began to burn through the mayors of folded cloth the Shroud was finally rescued and the burn holes have given historians and insult into its past the very way these marks repeat actually enables you to say how the cloth was folded each time and these incidents occurred this is how a replica of the Shroud has to be folded to line up the pattern of burn holes this is the actual configuration there as Aldo has worked out and this is where the drop of molten silver or whatever would have hit in the fire of 1532 for centuries the water stains were thought to be the result of dousing the fire but they do not match the 1532 burn holes their pattern tells a different story shroud expert aldo Goreski believes that to recreate the water stains on the shroud the cloth must be folded like a concertina these turns out to be a simple effective and efficient way of folding a sheet if we place the sheet at this particular angle and put it into this replica jothika jaha support machinery you can imagine the condensation or penetration of water when at this angle could be the cause of these markings Aldo believes the shroud was kept in a clay jar similar to those found 2,000 years ago near the Dead Sea this type of container was used for storing anything valuable during the first century [Music] he conducts an experiment to replicate the water stains this is the corner of fabric that would have been immersed inside the jar [Music] when the cloth is unfolded the pattern of water stains bears a remarkable similarity to those on the shroud so what we're seeing here is a very close representation of the motor marks as they occur on the shroud as can be seen and the interesting thing is that this does seem to be in a jar that was actually used because of the way the the folding was not tight as in a box but with that rather loose way that that Aldo demonstrated and so the idea is so tall jar very like the sort of jars that were used in Qumran for keeping the Dead Sea Scrolls and so on so conceivably looking back to the first century AD but the most convincing link back to the first century came during flurry Lemberg restoration of the shroud this faint looking stitch line may offer evidence that the cloth really is 2,000 years old the same style of stitch was found on another cloth dated 70 years after the birth of Christ it was discovered in the ruins of the Middle Eastern Fortress of Masada on the coast of the Dead Sea this type of stitching has never been found in medieval Europe you see the scene which you can see up there is a very carefully soon we can find examples in Masada of this kind of seam all what we see in this aspect shows us that it was a precious piece the Masada cloth dates from the time of Christ and has the same style of stitching is this the final stamp of authenticity for the Shroud the most other closest seven after Christ where we can show this special scene but it is a system of sewing which it can show it's not to compare with this piece of course but the system of sewing was known and it was especially done you see on the surface here we have it completely um plane and on the back we have the little seam and it's so carefully done then you what they did it is not not a it is a professional work I don't believe in this carbon-14 dating especially because we have so many signs that this piece of linen is done in the first century could this really be the face of Jesus Christ the Shroud is either a two thousand year old record of a crucified man or an ingenious thang from me this image is simply a medieval piece of little that I'm looking at and isn't a very important artifact because of the technology that's been used on it and I don't think enough has been done to look at the technology that was used to make this image if it's the worth of a forger it is the most extraordinary subtle piece of forgery out and my problem is that I simply cannot see that in the 14th century that was anybody that would have had that degree of confidence based on new data that has come to light in the last particularly last three or four years I think it's imperative that new carbon-dating be done the only way we will ever be certain about the origin of the shroud is to carry out further scientific tests but whatever the truth Fred's Agha be has no doubt of the real pain suffered by the man on the shroud what would be the cause of death then so he had lost the fluid from the scourging from hemorrhaging into the lungs from the hemad hydrosis from the penetration of the nails to the hand and being up on the cross overall was up to six hours I would write my death certificate as due to shock that he would have died of hypovolemic and traumatic shock [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 197,220

Rating: 4.4885731 out of 5

Keywords: 2017 documentary, Documentary Movies - Topic, History, Secrets Of The Shroud, 2002, Full Documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, summe, Channel 4 documentary, Conspiracy Documentary, history documentary, Shroud, real, restoration, documentary history, Shroud of Turin, Documentaries, BBC documentary, stories, TV Shows - Topic, Secrets, religious relic

Id: wz6UEaBsgh0

Length: 49min 40sec (2980 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 16 2018