New Historical Evidence Explaining the Invisible Patch in the.pdfVIP

Preface: This paper was peer-reviewed by two scholarly history journals, Viator and the Journal of Medieval History . Neither journal suggested any major or substantive corrections. The minor amendments suggested by the peer reviewers were included in the final version of this paper. New Historical Evidence Explaining the “Invisible Patch” in the 1988 C-14 Sample Area of the Turin Shroud By M. Sue Benford and Joseph Marino ©2005 All Rights Reserved Introduction At the Sindone 2000 Worldwide Congress in Orvieto, Italy, the authors posited th that a 16 Century “invisible patch” had skewed the 1988 Carbon-14 (C-14) sample of the Turin Shroud. Many critics of this theory have scoffed at the idea of an invisible repair, as if it does not, or even could not, exist. This criticism extends even from the world-renowned textile expert, Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, who was the overseer of the 2002 restoration. In response to a communication from us, she stated that it was “technically impossible” (Flury-Lemberg, 2000). In a book about the restoration, she concluded that “reweaving in the literal sense does not exist” and confidently stated that any mend would be visible on the back side of the garment (Flury-Lemberg, 2003). She continued to pronounce publicly at the Third International Dallas Shroud Conference held 8-11 September 2005 that there is no reweave. (Her use of the term “reweave” seems to be a concession to the fact that it is a term that everyone understands and uses.) In an email to the authors dated September 22, 2005, she further explains that, Your paper is based on ‘tapestry-reweaving’ = tapestry – mending. This was of course very often done in the past, - until today. My students did it under my guidance over many years on the Burgundian Tapestries of the Historical Museum in Berne. In the case of tapestries it