A Way Forward for Collaborative Research on the Shroud of Turin and the Holy Face of Manoppello

Ever since  Sr. Blandina Paschalis Schlömer began to make the first systematic comparisons of photographs of the Holy Face of Manoppello and the Shroud of Turin in her convent in Germany there has quite often been opposition and disdain on the part of scholars of the Shroud for this endeavor. Actually this is not surprising given the mind-boggling claims that the Holy Face is actually not only the Veil of Veronica but the burial face-cloth of Jesus!  How could we have missed this all these centuries?

Nevertheless following in the footsteps of Sr. Blandina there have always been more than a few Shroud scholars who have tried to see if and how these two images of Jesus might be related.

 Recently several interesting articles comparing the two images using the ImageJ computer software for image processing and analysis have appeared on one of my favorite blogs:  The Shroud of Turin blog - latest news and views on the Shroud of Turin edited by Dan Porter (with apologies to Mr. Porter for my earlier error in attributing the editorship to someone else).

 The author of the two articles is Oskar K. from Poland who presents what I think is a compelling case for the Holy Face of Manoppello to be a part of the research on the Shroud of Turin and offers ImageJ software as one of the research tools.

Along with the fascinating overlays of the two images which are presented in his papers are a number of  hard hitting comments which the blog is known for.

http://shroudstory.com/2014/06/14/imagej-used-to-compare-the-shroud-of-turin-and-the-manoppello-image/#comments

Here are several of the author's replies to comments on his article which I find important.

The purpose of my paper, was merely to show the abilities of ImageJ +some interesting features. So every ‘shroudie’ can make own, even quite really serious research.

Methinks they are also amateurs as to the image matching, and interpretations coming from it... I think the proper people for that job are not in the academic Institutes of Art History, but rather in police department.


http://shroudstory.com/2014/06/18/the-manoppello-this-little-cloth-cannot-be-further-ignored-in-shroud-research/

and another comment by the author

Anyway, I see it extremely unlikely for Manoppello to be a painting. I have a question/challenge for all sceptics...If this is indeed a painting, how has it been made?


Many thanks to the  Juliusz Maszloch of Poland who made sure I was aware of these articles.  Here is Juliusz' website on the Holy Face of Manoppello. http://www.manoppello.eu/