Paper Chase: A Revolution Indeed (with revised PDF file)

This is a fascinating exercise and I thoroughly congratulate OK on his work, although I have to say I think his explanation for the ‘wrong’ positioning of the side-wound (or bloodied foot) is weak. If the image on the shroud was thought of as a painting, then the side wound is on the left and the footprint is a left foot, so the right foot is on top. If the shroud is thought of as a mirror-transfer, then it is the other way round. Post 13th century crucifixes almost invariably (according to OK’s research) have a right side spear-wound and a right foot atop. Contrary to what OK suggests, I think the position of the side-wound should be considered prime, in that it could not have changed between crucifixion and enshroudment. The feet, of course, could have been placed differently after Christ was taken down from the cross. I don’t agree that a miraculous image taken directly from the saviour was considered less truthful than a vague metaphorical Old Testament reference. Not unless the artists knew that the shroud was not a miraculous image but a human painting.

However, the uncertainty leads to an interesting dichotomy. If artists followed the 1st century shroud, then they almost uniformly got some major aspects of it wrong (foot and palm nails, for example) – but if the 13th shroud followed earlier artists, then its author worked in distinct opposition to what was to become the norm. As usual, I guess, we’ll all have to keep our own counsel.

As I work in a Catholic school, we have a number of crucifixes around the house. Although they all have the wound in the right side, about 25% have left feet atop. I would like to suppose that although earlier crucifixes were not derived from the shroud at all, as most people considered it unlikely to be genuine, the publicity given it since the turn of the 20th century means that increasingly, modern crucifixes have been based on it. I predict that by 2100 all crucifixes will be left-atop!