Turin Shroud How Da Vinci Fooled History

Introduction Irony and Inspiration The exquisite, perfect irony would have appealed to Leonardo da Vinci. It certainly appealed to us. When the Catholic nun Sister Mary Michael demonstrated against the filming ofThe Da Vinci Code-- based on Dan Brown's phenomenal best seller -- at Lincoln Cathedral in August 2005, declaring during her twelve-hour prayer vigil that it was "against the essence of what we [Christians] believe,"1 she was clutching a photograph of the face of the man on the Shroud of Turin. The irony is that if we are right, and of course we believe we are, then the image she held so fervently to her bosom was not that of her beloved Jesus Christ at all, but actually the image of the old troublemaker himself -- Leonardo da Vinci. Sister Mary Michael's holy talisman is -- as we hope to demonstrate in this book -- nothing less than the image of the ultimate freethinkers' hero and now the inspiration for the most read book of the early twenty-first century, the very one that Sister Mary Michael was demonstrating against. (In fact, new and exciting evidence that Leonardo is the man on the Shroud is presented for the first time in this revised and updated edition.) Even in the twenty-first century, da Vinci clearly has a lot to teach us. There is another, similar irony in the presentation of full-sized reproductions of the front and back images of the Shroud in a side chapel of the important church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, facing the Chapel of Angels with its enigmatic paintings by Eugene Delacroix (which also, it has been suggested, contain coded messages). Not only is the church a key location inThe Da Vinci Code, but of course the Shroud is, we claim, a major hoax by da Vinci, one with its very own code for courageous seekers to unlock. The controversy surrounding both Dan Brown's original book and the movie has ensured that the side of da Vinci that is conspicuous by its absence from school textbooks and worthy art history tomes is now receiving unprecedented attention. Da Vinci (or "Leonardo," as he should be known) the heretic, the game player and gleeful, irrepressible encoder, now emerges into the limelight half a millennium after his death, entrancing countless millions with what may be termed his "sleight of mind" -- just as he delighted and bewildered his peers with demonstrations of his conjuror's abilities of sleight of hand. His whole mind-set was geared to causing misdirection -- and even perhaps a form of psychological mayhem. Since the first edition ofThe Turin Shroudcame out in 1994, it is no exaggeration to say that our lives have changed immeasurably -- mostly very much for the better -- because of this book and the strangely fascinating world into which it led us. Not only did we become a proven writing team, but we traveled extensively, sometimes with film crews and sometimes with new friends. But although we have since written several other books on widely differing mysteries -- including three with our late friend Stephen Prior and Robert Brydon -- we are particularly pleased to have had the opportunity to update this, our first joint book, and to present a wealth of new material that will hopefully fill in any gaps and inspire new debate. Since 1994, our two paperback editions have given us the chance to catch up with new developments in Shroud research -- fresh claims, intriguing ideas, and, of course, all the many reactions to our hypothesis. And since the first edition, after a gap of twenty years the Shroud itself has been displayed not once but twice -- although this nearly did not happen, as a dramatic fire a few months before the first of the recent expositions, in 1998, threatened to destroy the relic completely. To many, the very presence of the sacred cloth was intensely reassuring, not only after the fire but also after the carbon-dating results of October 13, 1Picknett, Lynn is the author of 'Turin Shroud How Da Vinci Fooled History', published 2007 under ISBN 9780743292177 and ISBN 0743292170.