Probing the Shroud

The opening page of www.pixelworks.com.ph/shroud reads like a mystery thriller. Is this Stigmata Part 2? Or a B-side movie of The Body? A click on the enter arrow, however, reveals that this is a serious work with a serious message to impart.

The Sacred Shroud site is about the much-debated Shroud of Turin, the purported burial cloth of Christ. It recently won a Web Award in the Weird and Humor Site category. But as Keith V of Cebu City posted in the site’s guestbook, weird is not the right word to describe the site. Rather, think of it as a kind of CSI (crime scene investigation) journal that deals with an ancient murder mystery.

In 500 A.D., accounts of a cloth bearing the marks of Christ’s face and body surfaced from one place to another, including Constantinople and Jerusalem. The cloth was last seen before a fire struck the Cathedral of Saint-Etienne, where it was being venerated. Then, the shroud was rediscovered in the hands of King Philip VI, but its authenticity was questioned. Because its genuineness was in dispute, history forgot about the shroud – until it was photographed in 1898 by Secundo Pia.

Is it really the burial shroud of Christ? The site’s creators combine scientific evidence with scriptural proof to drive home their point that the shroud is, indeed, Christ’s burial cloth. The site tackles the different wounds reflected on the shroud as its main argument. It reasons, for example, that the blotches on the forehead are consistent with accounts that Christ was crowned with thorns – a punishment devised by the Romans especially for him. To further support its arguments, the site presents positive and negative images of the shroud complete with arrows that point to the wounds.