Greg Lane, on his blog, Through the Eyes of this Calvinist, has just republished a piece from a Christianity.com Church History Timeline entry for the year 1502, (the year the Sainte Chapelle was completed; go figure). It’s a stuck-in-cyberspace, seven-paragraph pick-and-choose selection of historical an scientific tidbits. It is worth reading just for an example of Golden Corral writing:
Clement VII, one of the rival popes of the fourteenth century, after first trying to hush up those who would expose the shroud of Turin, signed papers declaring it a fraud. Supposedly, the artist who painted it acknowledged it as a forgery. According to contemporary documents, certain men, for hire, had pretended the “relic” cured them, giving it a reputation, because the forgers desired to make money off it. At that time Bishop Pierre D’Arcis excommunicated those who showed it, but they were raking in so much money they found ways to get around his decision.
[ . . . ]
More than one scientific committee studied the relic. The scientific conclusion, which it must be emphasized is by no means unanimous, is that the shroud is indeed a forgery, painted in tempera. Bits of paint were found on the cloth. The blood looks red; real blood turns brown or black. The tempera technique has been reproduced by several modern artists who claim to have created shroud-like “negatives” using only the materials available to the forgers of the 14th century.
If the scientific conclusion is by no means unaminous then it is not THE scientific conclusion, but a conclusion reached by some scientists. Quite an important distinction.