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Jacques deMolay polemic

In the The Second Messiah authors Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas claim that the image on the shroud is that of Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Templar. In 1307, De Molay was charged with heresy by king Philip IV of France. According to the authors, de Molay was tortured at the direction of the Chief Inquisitor of France, William Imbert. They content that his arms and legs were nailed in a manner similar to crucifixion, possibly to a large wooden door. Then de Molay was laid on a length of linen cloth on a soft bed. The cloth was then pulled over his head and body and de Molay was left to recover from his wounds. The use of a burial shroud is defended by suggesting that the Knights Templar used shrouds in ceremonies.

In 1314, de Molay was burned at the stake on March 19, 1314 together with Geoffroy de Charney, Templar preceptor of Normandy. (This is not the same Geoffroy de Charney who came into the possession of the Shroud in the mid-1350. (He may well have been the grandfather of the later Geoffroy de Charney who died at the battle of Poitiers in 1356.

Knight and Lomas base their speculation partly on the 1988 radiocarbon dating, which has since been proven invalid.

The late Dr. Alan D. Adler, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Western Connecticut University, in an article entitled, “The Nature of the Body Images on the Shroud of Turin,” comments:

In “The Second Messiah”, Knight and Lomas (52) assign the image on the Shroud to de Molay, as a way of coping with the radiocarbon dating problem. Their mechanism mixes supported contact for the dorsal image and a diffusional process for the frontal image. Neither will VP-8 correctly, nor register with contact blood images correctly. However, they do admit that they do not seem to have gotten it all just right and appeal to literature mechanisms as a fallback position. Note, they accept the validity of the reported radiocarbon date.

The reference to VP-8 refers to the ability to plot the relative lighter and darker areas seen in the images and produce a three-dimensional isometric drawing of the body. With computerized virtual reality we can view the body from different angles. We can see the slope of the nose, the recesses of the eye sockets and the shape of the torso. It seems that the image is a graphic representation of the distance between any part of the body and the cloth. This is startling. You cannot do this with a regular photograph or a painting or any known type of pictorial art. There is nothing at all like this imagery in the history of art.

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© 2005 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York