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tetradiplon

There is significant evidence that, in Edessa and also in Constantinople, the cloth was kept folded in such a way that only the face was visible. By folding the cloth, doubled in fours (tetradiplon) that is exactly what results – a centered face of Jesus on a horizontal folded cloth – as seen in a 10th century painting of Abgar V holding a picture that is odd for its horizontal shape as a portrait.

In Constantinople, the cloth was sometimes ceremoniously unfurled, raised up like a vertical banner, in a way that showed a full frontal picture of Jesus as though rising from a grave. In 1201, Nicholas Mesarites, the sacristan of the Pharos Chapel where the Image of Edessa was kept, wrote: “Here He rises again and the sindon [=Shroud] … is the clear proof … still smelling fragrant of perfumes, defying corruption because they wrapped the mysterious naked dead body from head to feet.”

John Jackson, who was one of several physicists who physically examined the Shroud in 1978, used special raking light photography to reveal ancient fold marks on the Shroud. He found persistent creases exactly where expected and in the correct folding direction for just such a tetradiplon folding.

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© 2005 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York