The Shroud Codex (27 page)

“That’s right,” Middagh said. “From the evidence of the Shroud, there was no footrest or seat on the cross. The man’s body was allowed to hang free, supported only by the nails in the wrists and the nail in the feet. The other variable was that the man in the Shroud shows evidence of a brutal scourging, back and front, from his shoulders to his heels. Crucifixion itself was meant to be a relatively bloodless process. The Roman executioners were expert in placing the nails so as to avoid piercing an artery. If they made a mistake and pierced an artery, the man could die in a matter of minutes. Making that mistake, a Roman centurion would have faced severe punishment for incompetence. But by scourging a man just short of the point where the scourging itself killed him, the time the man lived on the cross would have been shortened. This is what looks like was done to the man in the Shroud.”

“If all else failed,” Morelli added, “and the crucified man was living too long, the Romans typically took what amounted to a
sledgehammer and broke the man’s legs below the knees. With the legs broken, the only way the man could breathe was by raising and lowering his body by using his arms and pivoting against the nails in his wrist. As you can imagine, breathing like this would barely work at all and the pain of even trying to do so would have been unbearable. Once the legs were broken, death tended to come a few minutes later. Typically, those crucified died from a combination of pulmonary asphyxia and cardiac arrest.”

Middagh added a point of clarification. “In the case of the man in the Shroud, the legs show no sign of being broken. Instead, the right side shows evidence of having been pierced by a Roman spear. This follows the accounts of the crucifixion in the New Testament and in Christian tradition that the legs of the two criminals crucified with Christ were broken, but Christ was spared this indignity. Thinking that Christ was already dead when sundown was approaching, a Roman centurion named Longinus took his spear and pierced through Christ’s side to his heart. This would have left no doubt Christ was dead.”

So far, what Middagh was describing confirmed what Castle had observed at Beth Israel of Father Bartholomew’s wounds. The feet wounds looked like punctures from the top of the feet, as indicated by the skin forced down into the wound on top of each foot. The trauma evidence was that the left foot had been on top of the right, with a straight line evidencing the wound from the left foot through to exit Father Bartholomew’s right foot. The skin on the sole of each foot was pushed out, as Castle would have expected to see from an exit wound caused by a nail or a spike.

“The ancient Romans had crucifixion down to a cruel science,” Morelli added. “Sadists were particularly adapted to the work and Roman executioners who weren’t good at what they did usually didn’t last very long. Roman executioners were particularly good at taunting and tormenting the condemned as they were scourged,
beaten, and crucified. With Christ’s case, there was ample opportunity for humiliation, as evidenced by the crown of thorns.”

“What does the Shroud tell us about the crown of thorns?” Castle asked Middagh.

“The blood flows on the forehead of the man in the Shroud appear to be from puncture marks that would be consistent with a crown of thorns. Particularly noticeable is the long blood flow above the left eye that seems to form the number 3. The puncture wounds and bloodstreams are also visible in a circle around the head in the dorsal image. Moreover, if you look closely, you will see matting on the hair on the top of the head, both in the frontal and posterior views of the man in the Shroud. This would suggest the crown of thorns was actually a cap of thorns that was beaten or hit into the scalp to cause fairly profuse bleeding. As you know, wounds to the scalp tend to bleed heavily.”

Studying the Shroud, Castle could clearly see the same types of scalp wounds that Father Bartholomew suffered yesterday. His scalp wounds were from punctures and the punctures were on the top of his head, not just in a circle around his head at the level of his forehead.

“In the frontal view, you can clearly see the blood flows from the scalp wounds soaked down into the hair,” Middagh went on. “Again, these blood flows occurred while the man in the Shroud was living and they were transferred directly onto the Shroud as bloodstains. The blood from the crown of thorns is distinct from the image of the man and was transferred onto the Shroud before the image appeared. Again, we know this because there is no body image formed under the blood flows on the head. The blood flows from the crown of thorns are more evidence the man was placed in the Shroud directly from the cross and shortly after he died.”

“Looking at all this, one thing doesn’t fit together,” Anne said, obviously perplexed.

Castle expected that she was going to be upset at the suffering her brother was going through. Obviously, this was a concern Anne repeatedly expressed. But this morning something else was on her mind.

“If I am getting this right, first my brother experienced the stigmata on his wrists and then he suffered the scourge injuries. Is that correct?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Castle said.

“Now we see my brother experiencing the crown of thorns, then he levitates and gets the stigmata in his feet, right?”

“Yes,” Castle said once again. “That’s right. What’s your point?”

“My point is that it’s out of order,” Anne said. “The way Christ suffered his passion and death was that first he was scourged at the pillar, then the crown of thorns was placed on his head. He didn’t suffer nail wounds until later, when he was crucified. If my brother is manifesting Christ’s passion and death, the order of his injuries is all wrong.”

Castle could see that Anne had hit on an important point. “What do you think it means?” he asked her.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Anne answered. “But I think it must have something to do with what Dr. Silver told us at Princeton.”

“What do you mean?” Castle pressed again.

“I think it has to do with time,” she explained. “My brother told me he felt his mission was to decipher the message of the Shroud for the world. Maybe he’s showing us that time does not necessarily happen like we experience it. Maybe the events of Christ’s passion and death are all still happening somehow, as if those moments never ended. If that were so, my brother is able
to go back and key into this moment or that moment of Christ’s torture and death, but he doesn’t necessarily have to do so in the sequence the events were seen to have followed some two thousand years ago.”

“It’s an interesting idea,” Castle said.

“I mean, think about it,” Anne said. “In a way, Christ’s death preceded his scourging and crowning with thorns.”

Castle struggled to follow this point. “I was following you up to now, but you just lost me.”

Anne began to explain. “It’s about how the tree defines the seed. Father Middagh has just explained that the way the ancient Romans crucified people depended on how the executioners wanted the crucified man to die. We just heard that the Romans scourged Christ to within an inch of his life because the Sabbath was approaching and Christ had to die quickly on the cross, in order to comply with the rules of the Jews that Christ’s body had to be buried by sundown Friday. So, in that regard, the death of Christ was a reality that even two thousand years ago preceded his scourging at the pillar and determined exactly how he was crucified—whether or not he would have a seat to rest on and a footrest, for instance.”

“There’s another point here,” Morelli said, picking up on the theme. “In a way, the Shroud of Turin is a book. Examining the wounds of the man in the Shroud gives us clues as to exactly how he was punished and killed. We read motivations into the crown of thorns, namely that Christ was mocked as the supposed King of the Jews, a concept the Roman centurions thought laughable. Otherwise there would have been no point in the mock crown designed to torment Christ.”

“My brother continues to use the word
codex
to describe the Shroud,” Anne said. “He said the Shroud was a codex, a secret
message that he intended to decipher. My brother also said he never quit being a physicist and that this was the crowning experiment of his life. What my brother researched was time. Like Dr. Silver told us, my brother, when he was at the Institute for Advanced Study, was working out advanced particle physics equations in order to prove we live in a universe that may involve ten or more dimensions, not just the four dimensions we think we live in. The point is that time is not as we experience it every day, not a logical progression from birth to death, from infancy to old age—not a straight line at all.”

Just then, Castle’s cell phone went off, interrupting the meeting.

Castle took the call. Archbishop Duncan was on the other end of the line.

“The pope would like to talk with you,” Duncan said simply.

This did not entirely take Castle by surprise, not after the worldwide attention Fernando Ferrar’s video broadcast had received. “Okay, when?”

“At one
P.M.
today,” Duncan said. “If you are available, my office will arrange a three-way conference call with the Vatican, to include you and me with the pope.”

“That will work,” Castle said. “I want you to call me on my private landline in my office.”

“Will do,” Duncan agreed.

“Unfortunately, this meeting is over,” Castle announced to the group in the conference room. “That was Archbishop Duncan and we’ve got an important conference call with the pope at one
P.M.
today.”

“Should we wait to go to the hospital with you?” Anne asked.

“No,” Castle said. “You go ahead. The hospital emailed me,
and the report on your brother this morning is that he is out of the burn unit and resting quietly in intensive care.”

“Do you see any reason for me to go to the hospital?” Middagh asked.

“No,” Castle answered. “I think it’s better not to confront Father Bartholomew with a crowd. Your presentation today has been very helpful. Thank you, again.”

Monday afternoon

Dr. Stephen Castle’s office, New York City

1:00
P.M.
ET, 7:00
P.M.
in Italy

Day 19

The conference call came through to Dr. Castle’s office on time, as expected.

“Can Father Bartholomew travel?” the pope asked Castle immediately.

“I’m not sure,” Castle answered. “I’m going to the hospital this afternoon to check on him. If his last injuries are any indication, he should recover rapidly. I can confirm it this evening, but I expect Father Bartholomew is going to be much stronger in a day or two. What do you have in mind?”

“I want to bring Father Bartholomew to the Vatican,” the pope answered. “We need to manage this situation from Rome. Father Bartholomew’s story is drawing tens of millions of believers and skeptics around the world and it’s more than Archbishop Duncan can or should have to handle on his own.”

“Thank you, Holy Father,” Duncan said, relieved that he might
soon transfer primary responsibility for Father Bartholomew to the Vatican. “I think I need to stay here in New York, if only to deal with the press. That’s a responsibility that should fall to me.”

“Agreed,” the pope said. “You’ve got millions of people in New York and the United States who are now closely following Father Bartholomew.”

“We’re getting swamped with press requests,” Duncan noted.

“Even in Italy, Father Bartholomew has become a sensation,” the pope said. “Italians love the stigmata. When I was a boy growing up in the 1950s, Padre Pio was all the rage in Italy. He was on all the televisions. Every newspaper or magazine you picked up had a story about Padre Pio. I never was in favor of him being canonized, but then I guess a lot of Italians would say I’m prejudiced. I’m from northern Italy and Padre Pio was from southern Italy.”

Castle understood. “Are you implying you’ve concluded Father Bartholomew is a fraud?”

“I’m not implying anything,” the pope responded. “I just want Father Bartholomew in Rome where we can deal with him directly. This is the age of twenty-four-hour cable television news and the Internet. Father Bartholomew is an international celebrity. Have you seen how many people are watching the videos about Father Bartholomew on the Internet? In Italy alone the numbers are in the millions.”

“Am I off the case, then?” Castle asked.

“No,” the pope answered quickly. “If you can, I want you to clear your schedule and come to Rome with Father Bartholomew. I’m arranging for a chartered jet to arrive there tomorrow morning. The jet will have hospital facilities and I will send along a Vatican medical staff—provided you determine Father Bartholomew can leave tomorrow evening and be here in Rome on Wednesday morning.”

Castle thought quickly. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’m going to be at Beth Israel Hospital a little later today and I will begin figuring out when we can travel. How long do you think we will be in Italy?”

“I have no idea,” the pope answered. “Until this thing is over. That’s all I can say at this point.”

Castle considered carefully what that might mean in terms of his commitments to his patients. “It will be complicated,” he said quietly, “but I’ll do it.”

“One more thing,” the pope added.

“What’s that?”

“I want you to bring with you Father Morelli and Father Middagh. It’s time for Father Morelli to return to the Vatican. We are going to need Father Middagh’s expertise on the Shroud.”

“What about Anne Cassidy?” Castle asked. “She’s Father Bartholomew’s half sister. Should we bring her, too?”

“By all means,” the pope said. “She’s family. But there’s one more person I want you to bring, and this one might surprise you.”

“Who’s that?” Castle asked.

“That television reporter,” the pope said. “I want you to invite Fernando Ferrar and his mobile television crew. I’m going to send you a large airplane and you will have room.”

“But won’t that just make it a circus?” Castle wondered out loud.

“It’s going to be a circus no matter what we do,” the pope answered. “His boss will send Fernando Ferrar to Rome to report for the television network, regardless of what we do. If we try to keep him out of the tent, we’re only going to raise his suspicions. Let’s prove to him the Vatican has nothing to hide here. There’s no better way to do that than for the Vatican to extend him an invitation to come to Rome at our expense.”