page_title: Shroud of Turin
section_title: Claims of writing on the Shroud
hierarchical_section_title: Shroud of Turin / Scientific analysis / Image and text analysis / Claims of writing on the Shroud
context_page_description: The Shroud of Turin, also called the Turin Shroud, is a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a man. Some claim the image depicts Jesus of Nazareth and the fabric is the burial shroud in which he was wrapped after crucifixion. The existence of the shroud was first securely attested in 1389 or 1390 when a local bishop wrote that an unnamed artist had confessed that it was a forgery. Radiocarbon dating of a sample of the fabric is consistent with this date of origin.
  The artifact is kept in the Cathedral of Turin, which is located next to a complex of buildings composed of the Royal Palace of Turin, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, and the Palazzo Chiablese in Turin, Piedmont, northern Italy.
  The Catholic Church has neither formally endorsed nor rejected the shroud, but in 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Pope John Paul II called the Shroud "a mirror of the Gospel". Other Christian denominations, such as Anglicans and Methodists, have also shown devotion to the Shroud of Turin.
context_section_description: In 1979 Greek and Latin letters were reported as written near the face. These were further studied by André Marion, a professor at the École supérieure d'optique and his student Anne Laure Courage, in 1997. Subsequently, after performing computerized analysis and microdensitometer studies, they reported finding additional inscriptions, among them INNECEM (a shortened form of Latin "in necem ibis"—"you will go to death"), NNAZAPE(N)NUS (Nazarene), IHSOY (Jesus) and IC (Iesus Chrestus). The uncertain letters IBE(R?) have been conjectured as "Tiberius". Linguist Mark Guscin disputed the reports of Marion and Courage. He stated that the inscriptions made little grammatical or historical sense and that they did not appear on the slides that Marion and Courage indicated.
  In 2009, Barbara Frale, a paleographer in the Vatican Secret Archives, who had published two books on the Shroud of Turin reported further analysis of the text. In her books Frale had stated that the shroud had been kept by the Templars after 1204. In 2009 Frale stated that it is possible to read on the image the burial certificate of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth, imprinted in fragments of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin writing.
  Frale stated the text on the Shroud reads: "In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year." Since Tiberius became emperor after the death of Octavian Augustus in AD 14, the 16th year of his reign would be within the span of the years AD 30 to 31. Frale's methodology has been criticized, partly based on the objection that the writings are too faint to see. Dr Antonio Lombatti, an Italian historian, rejected the idea that the authorities would have bothered to tag the body of a crucified man. He stated that "It's all the result of imagination and computer software."
  A study by Lorusso et al. subjected two photographs of the shroud to digital image processing, one of them being a reproduction of the photographic negative taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. They did not find any signs, symbols or writing on either image, and noted that these signs may be linked to protuberances in the yarn, as well possibly as to the alteration and influence of the texture of the Enrie photographic negative during its development in 1931.
caption: A late 19th-century photograph of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud
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