According to legend, the Mandylion was an image of Christ’s face imprinted on a towel, kept in Edessa. This acheiopoieton image (“not made by human hands”) disappeared in the eighteenth century. The first records of another acheiropoieton relic appeared in mid-fourteenth century France: a long linen bearing the image of Jesus’ corpse, known nowadays as the Holy Shroud of Turin. Some believe the Mandylion and the Shroud to be the same object, first kept in Edessa, later translated to Constantinople, France and Italy. Andrea Nicolotti traces back the legend of the Edessean image in history and art, focusing especially on elements that could prove its identity with the Shroud, concluding that the Mandylion and the Shroud are two distinct objects.

The Image of Edessa, also later known as the Mandylion, was a relic of Christ, a cloth imprinted with his features which he had used to wipe his face, and subsequently used to cure King Agbar of Edessa, the first Christian ruler. This book collects and provides parallel translations of all the available written evidence for the image, along with detailed analysis of the history of the image. Guscin deftly seperates fact from legend, for while the story of King Agbar is certainly mythical, an image of some sort did definitely exist by the mid tenth century when it was translated to Constantinople.

This book scientifically challenges earlier radiocarbon testing and presents new evidence in determining the Shroud of Turin's true age.

This essay divulges what the research has established about the famous Shroud of Turin, and it is not intended to persuade to believe that the Cloth of Turin really wrapped the body of Christ a couple of thousands year ago.The author returns several times to certain subjects, according to different perspectives: the reader does not consider such reiterations as not necessary and involuntary: the work includes a general introductory part – at some point, considering it useful, already with in-depth studies, as for the medical conclusions of the anatomopathologist Pierluigi Baima Bollone – and a section, divided into chapters, specifically dealing with particular topics already covered in the first part, for example the photographs of the Shroud, and a chronology.This essay has been updated several times by the author.The essay is not intended to persuade to believe that the Sheet of Turin has really wrapped the body of Christ a couple of thousand years ago or, as commonly said, that it is authentic- On the other hand, authenticity can also mean something else, you can say the Shroud preserved in Turin is the Cloth that wrapped body of Christ, but it could be different than simply assume that an item is two thousand years old; and if I do not take a position on the fact that this famous Sheet wrapped Jesus, I suppose that the reasons for thinking that the Shroud is very ancient are prevailing, as there are currently lots of evidence to support it and only two against, of which only one seems objectively to be considered: the radiodating tests on Shroud samples which determined the age of the Sheet at lower medieval period; but they are increasingly disputed by Christian experts, scientifically and not only. The other reason against the Shroud is a prejudice, that comes both from anticlerical laityand from the majority of the Christians Reformed, preclusion that leads the first to ignore the theme, and sometime to mock it; and leads the Protestant believers to condemn the veneration of the Shroud, which they consider to be a mere ”symbol” created by human hands: they follow the Old Testament condemnation of ”make for yourself images”, historically born for anti-idolatrous reasons, although Catholics argue that the prohibition existed only before God was incarnated in Jesus, showing himself to the world as ”image”, that is as carnal human figure, without any possibility to be confused with graven images; there are, moreover, Catholics who deny authenticity, in the sense that the Shroud isn't precisely the one that wrapped Jesus , and you can find Protestants which assume it is authentic, at least in the second sense of the term or even in the first. In any case, it should be stressed that the Christian faith is not based on the Shroud of Turin but, historically, on the oral witness of the Apostles on Christ’s resurrection, gathered within the first century in the books of the New Testament and come down to us because it was preserved by the Church over the centuries, with systematic control of matching between the new copies and the previous ones, starting with the oldest.With this spirit comes the second edition of the essay of Guido Pagliarino on the Shroud, , carried out considering new data and correcting a couple of inaccuracies in the book released years agoThe author returns several times to certain subjects, according to different perspectives: the reader does not consider such reiterations as not necessary and involuntary: the work includes a general introductory part – at some point, considering it useful, already with in-depth studies, as for the medical conclusions of the anatomopathologist Pierluigi Baima Bollone – and a section, divided into chapters, specifically dealing with particular topics already covered in the first part, for example the photographs of the Shroud, and a chronology.

Christianity was born nearly two thousand years ago in ancient Palestine. It has shaped the course of human history. Yet historians still cannot say how it really began. How did a first-century Jew called Jesus manage to spark a new religion? It is one of the biggest and most profound of all historical mysteries. This extraordinary book finally provides a convincing answer. Traditionally, the birth of Christianity has been explained via the miracle of the Resurrection. After Jesus died he was raised from the dead by God and appeared to his disciples, telling them to spread the gospel. Once they saw the Risen Jesus, nothing could shake their belief. Within a few generations Christianity had spread throughout the Middle East and Europe; within a few centuries it had taken over much of the world. But historians have been unable to account for Christianity’s remarkable success without the Resurrection to spark it. If no one really saw the Risen Jesus, how were his followers convinced that he was their immortal Messiah? Art historian Thomas de Wesselow has spent the last seven years deducing the answer to this puzzle, and in doing so he has pieced together an entirely new picture of the birth of Christianity. Reassessing a familiar but misunderstood historical source and reinterpreting many biblical passages, de Wesselow shows that the solution has been staring us in the face for more than a century. The Shroud of Turin, widely thought to be a fake, is in fact authentic. And it holds the key to the greatest mystery in human history.

Sacred relic or medieval hoax? Relic? Icon? Hoax? This authoritative book about the Shroud of Turin applies the methods of science and scholarship to the cloth many believe wrapped Jesus' body in the tomb. Sorting through the controversies surrounding the shroud, Dr. Nickell traces the historical, iconographic, forensic, physical, and chemical evidence, examining the latest radiocarbon dating tests as well as reports of DNA traces in the alleged bloodstains. Inquest on the Shroud of Turin is a must read for anyone interested in the facts pertaining to this mysterious cloth. - Back cover.