Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 70
from Constantinople and up to eight from the Mediterranean area. . Summarizing the results of the investigations begun in 1969 at the request of the Church, a communique was issued at the beginning of 1976, the text of which is as follows:. After seven years of investigations on the shroud in which his body was wrapped, various scientists have reached the conclusion that Jesus Christ was buried alive. The experts confirm that the body of a crucified man lay in the Holy. Shroud which is preserved at Turin, and that this man suffered exactly the same passion as did Christ, but that he did not die on the cross but was buried alive. The twentyeight blood stains on the shroud support this theory. It would be scientifically impossible for a dead body to bleed in the way in which the body wrapped in the shroud bled, state the investigators. In the opinion of the latter it is a clear and unmistakable scientific fact that he was buried alive, unless there was a second Jesus and this second Jesus suffered the same passion as he did. . Recalling some points in the history of the so-called Shroud of Turin, we find that it was said to have been in Jerusalem in the 9th and 11th centuries, and was in Constantinople in the 12th century. Various historians place it in France in the 14th century. . After a brief sojourn in Belgium in the second half of the 14th century, it passed into the ownership of the House of Savoy from 1474 onwards. It was slightly damaged in a fire in 1532, and three years later was transferred to Turin. From 1536 to 1578 it travelled successively from Vercelli to Milan, from there to Nice, then again to Vercelli, Chambery, to return once more to Turin in 1706. In the same year it was transferred for a brief period of time to Genoa, then returned for final safe-keeping to Turin. . Humberto II of Savoy, after a referendum held in 1946, entrusted it to the safe custody of the Archbishop of Turin, without renouncing ownership of the linen cloth. . The first photographs of the cloth were taken in 1898. But the official photographs of it were taken in 1931 by G. Enrie. . Serious studies on the cloth were begun from that year onward. . It is 1 metre 10 centimetres wide and 4 metres 36 centimetres long. According to Mr. Ricci, an expert on the objects owned by the Vatican, a detailed analysis of the imprints left by the body on the shroud indicate that Jesus measured 1. 62 metres. But the 72