Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

St. Panteleimon Fresco

While Manuel was emperor the church in the St. Panteleimon monastery was built and a grand fresco was painted in 1164. The fresco, like many others of the era, showed Jesus after the crucifixion but before entombment. What catches our attention is the burial shroud with a crisscross pattern of diagonal lines or Xs on the burial cloth. Scavone notes:

As early as 1164 a threnos mural was painted and a liturgical epitaphios was woven in Nerezi, Serbia, both which showed the body of Jesus lying upon a symbolic burial sheet. The mural, however, is important as it shows a shroud designed with a series of Xs very much like the Xs that decorate several artists' copies of the Mandylion that begin to appear in the 10^th century . . .  It is not precisely a herring-bone weave, but does hint at it. Another interpretation of the Xs, of course, is that they represent Chi, the first Greek character in the name Xpistos. It seems that this X design was common in the Kosovo (Eastern European) region since the Edessa cloth was depicted in a mural at Studenica in 1235 with precisely the same design. (30)

Dan Scavone goes on to say:

Hans Belting is one of the few who have perceived the Shroud as at least one factor among many in the rise of the larger cloth epitaphioi and the new mural art, but sadly he did not follow it up as we might have wished. Belting noticed what he called a new empathetic realism in liturgical representation during the 11th-12th c. (30)