Frontal image of the man on the Shroud Dorsal image of the man on the Shroud

All who see the Shroud agree, on the physical evidence revealed by the camera, that the Shroud has the image of a man. The different branches of science do agree that this man is about 30 to 40 years of age, his height is about 5.7 feet and he has died by a violent death. Some still argue that the man on the Shroud is the product of a clever artist who painted the image with a method unknown to us. The majority agree that, with the knowledge we have of any process of reproducing an image on cloth, the theory of it being a painting is absurd. The argument of the latter statement is that no one in the 13th century would have possessed the historical knowledge of the crucifixion, how it was performed, and much less the medical knowledge of the properties of the blood as it flows from a wound before a person dies and after one is dead. Looking at the Shroud our first impression is that we do see the form of a human body and that body shows the result of a very violent, cruel abuse. Once we have realized the properties of the picture we look at, in its positive-negative nature, blood, wounds, excoriations and contusions become very visible. We see the figure of this man on the Shroud very well, but who is he? How can we assume that he is Jesus Christ, and not... another person, as for example, one of the thieves who was crucified with Jesus. This is a most difficult question to answer in regard to the Shroud. Those who had seen the Shroud before the photography of Mr. Pia believed that the man was Christ based on some tradition, more than on what they could really see on the cloth. After the first photograph was taken, then people began to be faced with a new reality. The picture revealed such an anatomical accuracy of this man, that it left little room to the imagination, but rather a great accuracy of a man who could resemble in all particulars the man described by the Gospels as being scourged, crowned with thorns, and nailed to a tree. What do the experts of medicine think of this man? Experts in legal medicine whose profession it is to identify victims of crime from whatever evidence they can obtain have done extensive studies on the man of the Shroud. These learned men, such as Judica Cordiglia, professor of legal medicine in the University of Milan, have put together all the details of the injuries of the man of the Shroud and then they have matched against it all the details of the crucifixion of Christ, as we know from the four Gospels. In comparing the two they have found that between the man on the Shroud and the execution of Christ as revealed by the Gospels there is such HARMONY that their conclusion is that the man of the Shroud has to be Jesus Christ. That the man of the Shroud cannot be any person other than Christ can be pointed out especially by looking at the two particular details which identify Him as the only possible one. One is the crown of thorns which was used for our Lord as a mockery. There is no other historical evidence that it could have been used on any other person. Second point of identification is the importance of this man. This person must be someone very important, so important that his relatives, his friends, preserved the linen cloth used for his burial as a memento, even though on the linen one can see the evidence of his execution-crucifixion, the most painful and humiliating torture. For the apostles, Christ was not dead, He was alive. After the Resurrection the Apostles had walked together and had eaten together with Him for forty days. The first Christians were not ashamed of the crucifixion of Christ, they saw in it the sign of our Redemption. St. Paul said: "We glory in the cross of Christ." We can readily understand why the Holy Shroud was preserved and held in veneration from the very beginning of Christianity. For the Jewish people such a linen was religiously unclean because it had touched a corpse, but it was not so for the Christians, who in Christ did not see a mere "man" but the "Son of God" who had died for our sins and had risen from the dead.