This text appeared in French in Revue Scientifique, 1902. My dear Director, When I went to see you, several months ago in your laboratory, to introduce Mr. Vignon and the curious documents of the Shroud of Turin we were studying, did you feel any passionate disputes that would arise in the press? This matter that we were discussing coldly, as we would have on any problem of physiology? No, isn't! And later, when Mr. Vignon, with the assistance of Mr. Colson, had found the scientific explanation of the formation of the image on the Shroud, do you remember the profound joy that we had finally solve the enigma? For weeks and months our minds were still obsessed with this bewildering contradiction between a material fact and the apparent inability to find a natural explanation, giving a beautiful occasion to those who accept the miracles, but my philosophical views do not want these at any price. And suddenly, here is the natural explanation that arises, luminous in its simplicity, pushing away the miracle. Naively, we thought believers, at least those whose religion was too narrow to enslave the mind, that we allegedly wanted ill will. It also was not to make us retreat. I had no merit, having no religious belief, but it was not the same for Mr. Vignon, who is a believer. And this is in honor of his character and his intelligence that he had not declined more than me and let me add that this is also to the credit of my laboratory, as men of various opinions, the most opposed, have been able to study the same topic closely related to their philosophical views the most expensive, discuss it with zeal, without the warmth of their relations has been altered for a moment; and they came to the same conclusion, they proclaimed it because they believed it the truth, without being influenced by the consequences it could have. Yes, this is a show which one has the right to be proud, especially when compared to what is presented to us by a certain press, where people who have not given twelve hours of reflection to the problem, who have little or not seen or understood the documents, who show with their objections that they have understanding nothing to most of our arguments, and launch to us insults. You think right that these insults leave me completely cold; time is too valuable for me to respond to this. But there is another category of people whose opinion I am less indifferent and who, in good faith, could believe, that we have disfigured the facts, all or part of what some newspapers reported, namely: that, unconsciously or for lack of scruples, I had betrayed science and lied to my opinions of free thinker. For them, I would like to restore the facts and I ask you the hospitality of your newspaper. I would not have to do it if the Office of the Academy had agreed to publish the explanation I gave in introducing the work of Mr. Vignon. But my Note have been rejected by the Permanent Secretary on the day of my presentation, it happens that I have spoken and participated in the debate on the Shroud, without there being nowhere a written piece that I can refer to say what I accept or deny. They have a beautiful setup in these conditions to confuse things. I want to quickly summarize what I said at the Academy and add a few remarks that would clarify my situation and my attitude in the debate, remarks that I could not do at the Academy because they would not have been at their place. I go on a short exorde to warn that the historical, artistic and archaeological facts which I had to start my presentation, for they could be misplaced inside the Academy of Sciences, were nonetheless necessary and eventually lead to scientific facts about physics, chemistry and physiology; I am not describing the Shroud as it was understood in 1898, and I continue reproducing the Note I made for the Comptes Rendus. "So far, this is only a relic who, at a scientific point of view, does not interest us. But in 1898, on the occasion of the centennial exhibition of sacred art in Turin, the Shroud was photographed with serious guarantees, and there are two curious facts that laid the scientific issue which is questioned: 1) the image of the Shroud is a negative, ie that the parties highlighted are dark and vice versa; 2) that this negative image, becoming positive in relation to the object represented, takes an unexpected sharpness and shows an anatomical perfection and aesthetic that nothing before have suspected. The body takes a real form, and the head, rather shocking on the real Shroud, became, after the reversing of shadows and lights, so admirable from an expressive point of view that, in the opinion of Authoritative painters none of the heads of Christ painted by artists of the Renaissance is superior. The representations that I put under your eyes allow you to judge it for yourself. "The question is how this image has been made. "The first idea that comes to mind is that the image of the Shroud is not, as we conceded, an imprint, which would give a rough image of the general shape, but it is a painting made for the purpose of pious fraud. But when you look carefully, we see that this hypothesis should be rejected for the following reasons. "1) The Shroud being authentic (b) since the fourteenth century, it should, if the image is a painting due to a forger, had existed at that time an artist able to work at a scope of the greatest painters of the Renaissance, and that this artist was still unknown. --continue translation here --- "It is already difficult to admit this for the positive picture. It becomes quite incredible when you think it is painted in negative, it has no aesthetic in that form, it does when the lights and shadows are interchanged, while rigorously respecting their plans and values, something almost impossible unless photography, unknown in the fourteenth-century, it would have meant that the forger, painting in negative, had managed to place clear and shadows so that after they had given overthrow figure he attributed to Christ, and that with perfect precision, because we know how little just change a beautiful header into a caricature, especially when its beauty is due to the expression. " And I add here that argument we feel the full weight if we want to bother to think: Why is this forger he was concerned to achieve a beauty that was not on his work and that we could see a reversal after which only became possible only later? He worked for his contemporaries, not the twentieth century and the Academy of Sciences. "The idea that the image could have been painted and had turned positive to negative, as it was taken for some paintings on canvas or some frescoes, is contradicted by, among others, that image is monochrome and could not, therefore, undergo two changes opposite of clear shades and shadows clear. 2 The image results from a juxtaposition of colors degraded without a line, without a treaty outline, like a photograph poorly developed, carried absolutely foreign to the artistic conceptions of the fourteenth century. "3 The image is of extreme realism, impeccable, without fail, without forgetting it does imperfectly account of tradition, not yield anything about mapping, nothing to the Convention, characters not found in any iconographic productions of the time, or to a degree as absolute, in those of any era. " I recall here to shorten without m'astreindre to reproduce exactly my notes: a) drops of blood, which are not in tears flowing immediately bataviques of injury, especially the front, a striking realism if those of the forearm, separated by an interval of the wound wrist. b) marks flogging, dumbbell, as could a thongs flagrum to small armies of heavy and hard masses of the same shape, similar to those we have in some archaeological museums. It would be curious to know if people fourteenth-century knew this flagrum structure, and if they do not know, this is further evidence. And the convergence of these marks, down on his back, cutting on the thighs, calves on ascending to a point where could be the hand of the executioner! A forger can not think of all this. There has to be convinced to examine the tables at the time, however, whose perpetrators had equal concern to represent the truth. c) buttocks, and maybe the genital area, naked, which had been considered a high impropriety. The bishop or the prior, which had commissioned the Shroud to the artist, monk or secular, had not failed to require that t the perisoma (c) around the pond, because we must place at the time which had been fraud: the Shroud to heat the zeal of the faithful should not simultaneously offend their feelings, shocked. The thing is so true that on certain copies, perisoma was added. d) in the hands breakthroughs carp and not the metacarpal bone, according to the needs anatomical and contrary to tradition. e) The wound to the left flank and right, following the reversal of the image. f) The nature of the gradient, exactly in line with what would result from the type of training that I further and very different from what an artist would have thought, and so on. etc. "From these reasons and many others, that this is not the place to detail, follows the conviction that the image of the Shroud is not a painting done by the hand of a man, but that it was obtained by a chemical phenomenon. And the scientific question that arises is: How could a corpse be given on the Shroud that covers an image of its forms with detailed facial features? "The idea of a fingerprint by unclean body contact, for example, sweat or blood, or artificial coloring of a substance must be rejected, because such a process gives only a rough image, without aesthetic value and very distorted as a result of sprawl in a plane of the fabric, which had to marry the convolutions to receive hollow empreinte parties. Here are some images obtained by Mr. Vignon through this process. It shows the effects of deformation face is extended, eyes are lowered, and so on. "A careful examination of the image of the Shroud to recognize the law of its formation. Here it is: the image is a projection roughly orthogonal, somewhat diffuse, and the intensity of the color varies at each point in the opposite direction to the distance of this point in the body corresponding intensity decreased very quickly As the distance increases and becomes zero when it reaches a few centimeters. "The problem then becomes this: What radiation or substances impressive what can come from a corpse, following the terms of this law? How the Shroud or substances which could be impregnated have been able to accept and retain printing? "Mr. Vignon was placed on the road to solving the problem through an experience of Mr. Colson and that it has submitted to it. A blade zinc cleaned, placed in the dark, facing a photographic plate, it impresses and sailing: zinc cold emits vapors that settle on the plate; under the influence of the developer, it oxidizes and is free of hydrogen that reduces the money. A blade not cleaned, striped streaks, gives the image of these streaks. Mr. Vignon further experience and found a coin sprinkled with fine chip zinc gives a negative image with the main characters of the Shroud. "But on the corpse, no zinc, and the Shroud is not a photographic plate. What, in conditions of the corpse buried, was able to replace zinc and the plate? "Comparison of physiological data, chemical and archaeological gave rise to the following hypothesis: a fabric impregnated with an emulsion of aloe in olive oil contains a thin layer of brown alo tine that under the action of vapors Alkaline and alkaline could these vapors from the fermentation carbonate ammonia and urea abundant in the feverish sweat emitted by the body during the ordeal. The assumption was immediately supported by the following experiment: we gloved hand of a statue of glove leather Sweden, soaked the glove of a weak solution of ammonium carbonate or simply urine, tense above a cloth soaked in oily emulsion of aloe, and the next day appeared on linen image of the hand with all the main characters of the Shroud. Here it is. "I consider it highly suggestive and as testimony to the scientific nature of this research, that the problem of the Shroud has led to the discovery of two new methods of training images, just one interview, the other completely unknown until here. "So the idea of Mr. Vignon, which I fully agree, is that the corpse of the torment was deposited on the Shroud, half was folded on him that this corpse was covered with a feverish sweat rich urea; that has fermented urea ammonium carbonate, which issued calm atmosphere, vapors increasingly diluted as they were farthest from the surface emissivity; that the Shroud was coated with Aloe emulsion that has browned under the influence of alkaline vapors, and given a tinge more intense than the surface was closest to him, hence the negative image, with the characters I described high. "Do I talk about identifying the person who gave his image on the Shroud? " Here, I stated that I took out quite issues that the Academy's mission of caring. I did that because of the interest it seemed to take my statement and I read the evidence in the attention she wanted to give me and I did so saying expressly that it was to complement, independent of the communication itself, how these talks, which in other societies, are at the end of the meeting, while the secretary filed the pen with which he takes notes for the record. "We have one hand the Shroud, probably soaked in aloe, which places us in the East, except, it seems, Egypt, and a crucified was scourged, pierced the right flank and crowned with thorns on the other hand, a part of history, legend and tradition, which shows Christ in Judea having undergone various treatments that we read on the body whose Shroud covers the picture. "Is it not natural to bring these two sets of parallel and relate to the same object? "Add to this that if the image was produced and has subsequently been destroyed point, it is necessary that the corpse remained in the presence of the Shroud at least twenty-four hours, time necessary for the formation of the image , And at most a few days, after which there is a decay that destroys the image and finally the Shroud. Yet that is precisely what the tradition (more or less apocryphal, I want good) says have happened for Christ, who died on Friday and disappeared on Sunday. "And if not Christ, so any criminal law. How to reconcile this with admirable expression of nobility that you read on this figure? " Let me add here that there is a five circumstances (the East fors Egypt, the wound from the right side, the crown of thorns, the duration of the burial, the character of the physiognomy), for mention only the main, which are quite exceptional. Assume that for each there is a chance cent for it has met with another character there is only one chance in L005, or ten billion, for they have encountered together. I do not do this, of course, as numbers with any claim to the accuracy, but as a figure to show the incredible support of all of these conditions with another character. In any case, those who wish attribute the Shroud to another character are in the same manner as we respect other difficulties, with the difference that their character is pure invention, having nothing to him or in history nor tradition nor the legend: their hypothesis is more free than ours since it relies on anything on the side of commemorative. I recognize that none of the arguments given, either to prove that the image is not a painting made by a forger, is to show how it could happen, mainly, to identify the character, produces the characters an irrefutable demonstration, but it must be recognized as a whole they are imposing a bundle of probabilities, some of which are close to being evidence, corroborated by a positive experiences across a critical tight; and there is no scientific shrug and say, to dispense discuss, there is just gratuitous assumptions: the assumptions are corroborated, since they could be . We gave reasons that are at least the beginnings of evidence. It is for opponents to refute. If they were not welcomed by some people as they deserved to be, it is only because we wrongly attached to this scientific question a religious issue that has warmed the minds and distorted the right reason. If, instead of Christ, he had been a Sargon, an Achilles on a Pharaoh any person had found nothing wrong. By refusing to admit my note to the records, it was forgotten that he is in this collection of things otherwise hypothetical theories (I quote) no experience does, and many others who are based on arguments otherwise fragile than we bring here. But it was not much related to religion. There is a difference. We reproach for not having seen the Shroud, but only photographs, also made in conditions which make loyalty extremely likely. But we have never hidden and we have made every effort to examine the Shroud itself. A first attempt through the Baron Manno failed. In closing my paper at the Academy, I highly stated that we had not seen the Shroud, that this was a serious shortcoming with certain reservations about the conclusions of the argument, and I asked the Academy to appoint a commission in order to obtain permission to see the Shroud and to scientific review. It is not my fault if I had refused, no, indeed, by the Academy, who has not been consulted and which perhaps would have decided otherwise. Tell you he had not taken any research from the photographs alone? How much work has been made in the reproductions of documents, and what harm is there to use these reproductions when there are good reasons to keep accurate when it could not obtain the original document and when they say honestly what has been done and what materials we worked? Had it been a single fossil, held by the Emperor of China and we have got a hard cast, nobody would have found ill describing what a palaeontologist fossile, especially if found on This molding traces of histological structure that the Chinese had been unable to produce because they have assumed the knowledge they have not. The comparison is striking with what happens to the Shroud. I did not want to be here a full discussion of the question of the Shroud. I know the objections that were raised: the admission of the forger, photography by transparency, thirty-nine Shrouds that are located throughout the world, the facsimile of the National Library, the positive giving direct negative because they are drawn in red (!), the difference of 2 centimeters between the two images and the need for a gap of one meter and so on. etc. I knew most of them before making my communication to the Academy, and I know what they are worth. Mr. Vignon is to have the right and pleasure to reverse this frail scaffolding I just wanted to establish on a piece printed and signed me what I want to be responsible for not being judged on gossip where it confuses people and things. There is nothing in this whole affair Shroud that is demonstrated in the manner of a mathematical truth or fact observation, but there is a set of considerations for and against which one has the right to balance. However, on balance, I remain convinced that the image of the Shroud is not a painting of a forger, it is not a footprint, it is natural reproduction of the corpse buried by a phenomenon similar chemical in its general appearance, if not identical in all respects to that raised by Mr. Vignon. Was there involvement of a forger, not to make the image, but perhaps edit at a time more or less recent, the Shroud or photographic materials? In my opinion, the man said no, but the scientist who must remove moral considerations, made the reservations of law and calls for consideration of the Shroud before that. As for the identification of character with Christ, I believe, on balance, there are stronger reasons to accept him for the push, and until proven otherwise, I admit founded . But I recognize that this is a matter of discretion, that the factor that gives value to the various arguments has something a little arbitrary, and that others may judge otherwise Unfortunately, I do not see this which can never resolve the issue one way or another. In any case, I suggest, in this case, having really work and scientific way ... clerical. I ask forgiveness of the word, which I can not find a synonym brief and suitable for people it could hurt the convictions that I respect, although I do not agree. I was faithful to the true scientific spirit in dealing with this issue concerned the only concern for the truth, without worrying whether it would or not cases of a particular religious party. And it is those who are influenced by this concern that has betrayed the scientific method. I have not done clerical work because anti-clericalism and have nothing to do with this case. I see Christ as a historical figure and I do not see why we are shocked that there is a material trace of its existence. As to whether it was God and son of God, it has risen on Easter Day to ascend to heaven, etc.. Etc., I do not say anything because I had nothing to say. Those who want to know what I think in this vein simply refer to my book on Heredity (p. 184 and 813). There are some very characteristic sentence in that report (d). That sentence has done enough harm to some people when I was a candidate for the Academy that I have the right to recall the days where I need to show that my views are philosophical. Yves Delage, of the Institute. Dominique Auti Notes: (a) [Charles Richet is the scientific director of the magazine. See our presentation of the protagonists.] (b) [It can be assumed that Yves Delage uses that word deliberately in its double meaning: legal primarily because the Shroud photographed in 1898 introduced a "traceability", as we say today, since entering Heritage Lirey (see No. 1 and the arguments that draws Maurice Vernes), ie that the object has not been lost sight since, as was the case previously - in If its origin dates back to an earlier era in the Middle Ages, in this sense, Yves Delage could say that the Shroud is authentic since then. But it goes without saying that this assertion is tantamount to "pique", a kind of currency of the play made by a barely contained violence including Mauritius Vernes has demonstrated against the author in his two previous interventions.] (c) [Elsewhere (more frequently) designated p rizonium: machine whose Western pictorial tradition surrounded the kidneys of Christ on the cross, raids Cross and any representation resulting from the Passion. On this machine fiction, see the text Mystique my cloths and the masterly study of Leo Steinberg, Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance art and modern refoulement, Gallimard, 1987.] (d) [Do not have the book, I did not perform library research to identify the two passages which the author refers. I, however, cited repeatedly on the Web pages devoted to the processor, the following excerpt, taken from the same book: "I am here the first person to show that I speak on my behalf and not in the Transformer , Many will be shocked by reading this statement. But I am absolutely convinced that is, or that is not transformed, not for reasons from the Natural History, but because of his philosophical views. "(Yves Delage, Heredity and major problems of general biology, 1895 - new edition, 1903, p. 204). We also read with profit on record that Remy de Gourmont fit the work of Yves Delage and options for the processor. It evokes quite significantly persistent resistance to Darwinian theory and method in which they spoke again at the beginning of the twentieth century.]