Arcadia Discussion Zone

The first person to actually publish the Chinon Parchment was "Etienne Baluz" in the 16th century. Baluz, had been involved in other hoaxs involving documents. Barbara Frale, of the Vatican Secret Archives, the recent discoverer of the parchment (in the secret Archives), has also reported that she had found Jesus' death cirtificate on the shroud of turin and that the date agreed with scripture.

17th century, actually, and M. Baluze was duped by documents someone else fabricated concerning another topic entirely, he did not fabricate them.



"Death certificate" is referred to subjectively here. Frale did not discover, but rather deciphered a reverse inscription found on the shroud itself back in 1978 (when she was a child of eight).

So if you're asserting that either Baluze or Frale are guilty of fabrications, you're going to have to do a lot better than that.

TCP

Not asserting, "questioning".

she had found Jesus' death cirtificate on the shroud of turin and that the date agreed with scripture.

Shes a 'believer', and so is biased!

Hence, read what she writes, bearing that in mind i guess.

And for the sake of Our Lord, they do business in his name

There is no writing on the Shroud, as an academic said recently 'its just not there' .....

Well, you have your answer then. Baluze was taken in by a deception on another matter entirely, and Frale deciphered an inscription first noted on the Shroud more than thirty years ago. Thus, no perfidy on their part.

TCP

And yet somebody in 1978 said it was there, and Frale says she can make out what it says. So it's OK to discount her because she's Catholic? Are we automatically tagging believers as "biased" while everyone else is neutral, rational, and accurate? Is the point of division on accuracy that which we want to believe is true and that which we don't? If so, aren't the non-believers just as subjective as the believers?

TCP

Edited to add: Frale maintains that the "certificate" was, by practice, affixed to the burial shrouds of people executed by the Romans so that the bodies could be claimed by relatives after one year. That, in and of itself, flies in the face of the Gospel narratives, and I think a "believer" whose "bias" was coloring their findings would have covered a detail like that up.

Hi,

Tim wrote:



Yes...and the Templars are a perfect example...

Regards,

Spartacus

Are we automatically tagging believers as "biased" while everyone else is neutral, rational, and accurate? Is the point of division on accuracy that which we want to believe is true and that which we don't? If so, aren't the non-believers just as subjective as the believers?

Pretty much as i say about someone like Frale, who has a bias because i think she is a believer, which is ok, i have no problem with that. But whether subconsciously or not, a person like that will be biased in their views .... the same as i am biased in the opposite direction because i dont believe. It affects people and the research that they do

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=3661&start=50
Posted: 20 Jun 2011 2:12 am

Well, if you can explain why a biased believer, highlighting a detail that flies in the face of her core beliefs, is still allowing her bias to dictate her findings, I'd love to hear your explanation.

TCP

for me the timing is interesting
The Church wanted to show that the Templars were innocent....and they had no part in their deaths
it was all the Capetians doing

it reminds me of Joan of Arc's case

She eventually became a Saint

I would think the Order of De Molay would like to see their hero cleared of Heresy charges

International Order of De Molay over 18,000 members in US and Canada

A little more information on the first person to publish the "Chinon Parchment"

Etienne Baluze, also known as Stephanus Baluzius, was early on secretary to the Archbishop of Toulouse. Appointed "Professor of Canon Law" at the "Collage of France" he was alledgedly duped by forged documents intended to benefit his employer, Cardinal de Bouillon. Called as an expert when these documents were contested, he testified that they were authentic. After the conspiraters were found guilty, Baluze, still supported by the Cardinal, continued to maintain their authenticity. He later published two works containing all of the questioned documents. He was engulfed in disgrace and exiled from Paris.

The point is that Etiennes (publisher of the chinon parchment), claim to fame, is for being involved in forged documents. I am thinking this needs a bit more research.
And would Frale be biased? She certainly had full access to the Vatican secret archives. What kind of security clearance would that involve?

Don't ya love it Bill
Historians want Documents Documentation

but documents can be forged or just the writer totally biased
or they just disappear
Yes the original fello has a dubious reputation

What is interesting for me ...is why did the Church want to bring this issue up?
The Freemasons are entrenched in the government systems all over the world
In these days of prosecution for pedophilia in the church and prosecution by world governments
Is the Church in a precarious position willing to negotiate for more lenient punishment and mercy

I can see a Freemason saying where was the Church's mercy for De Molay and the church pulling the document out saying
it wasn't our fault but the monarchy

Did you notice Bill the De Molay Orders heraldry and the Cathar Cross intermingled with it


Another bad judgement by the Church

She alledgedly deciphered the inscription in 2009 at the age of 39 (not important but fyi).

Well, if you can explain why a biased believer, highlighting a detail that flies in the face of her core beliefs, is still allowing her bias to dictate her findings, I'd love to hear your explanation.

Im not sure Tim, that i quite understand what you're trying to say here?
Could you explain before i respond?

Also, regarding the 'death certificates' allegedly used by Romans, i have never heard of this before, so wonder if you have further information or archaeology to support this?

I read a paper that completely refutes the 'words' on the Shroud, debunked by academics who said that it is easy to see things on the Shroud, when the areas are photographed, enlarged and looked at digitally. They argue that what Frale and others see, is just not there.

the "certificate" was, by practice, affixed to the burial shrouds of people executed by the Romans so that the bodies could be claimed by relatives after one year. That, in and of itself, flies in the face of the Gospel narratives, and I think a "believer" whose "bias" was coloring their findings would have covered a detail like that up.

Why would that make a difference?
Even if it is true - and there is evidence of this practice of attaching death certificates (what to every one they executed or just Jewish ones? Because only the Jews went back a year later for the bones?) being widespread - the Romans would have just attached a certificate as usual - because they wouldnt have known this criminal they just executed was going to be taken to a tomb and 3 days later miraculoulsy resurrected from the dead. And that the body would be missing.

It seems to me an irrelevancy about a 'death certificate'.

Im not quite sure why you say it 'flies in the face of Gospel narratives'. Why? Because they didnt mention it?
Im sure im misunderstanding, so please clarify if you wouldnt mind.

And the Gospel narratives anyway, are not reliable historical documents.

The very fact that Frale uses these 'writings' on the Shroud, and interprets them almost certainly as the Bible claims - its a little too neat, and in my view she is interpreting them to back up her prior beliefs. Also, if you read her books, it is VERY obvious she is a 'believer'.

As i said, there is nothing wrong with that, but she is definitly biased.

It should, because Joan of Arc's execution was the Plantagenet's doing.

TCP

What you don't seem to get, Bill - or perhaps you simply don't want to acknowledge - is that Baluze's disgrace was a result of him being tricked, not of him fabricating a hoax; and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the Chinon Parchment. If you'd like to call the entire corpus of this man's work into question over the fact that he fell for someone else's hoax, good luck with that. I guess in your millieu that works.

TCP

Yes. She did not "discover" this inscription, it was "discovered" 33 years ago.

TCP

What you don't seem to get, Bill - or perhaps you simply don't want to acknowledge - is that Baluze's disgrace was a result of him being tricked, not of him fabricating a hoax; and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the Chinon Parchment. If you'd like to call the entire corpus of this man's work into question over the fact that he fell for someone else's hoax, good luck with that. I guess in your millieu that works.

TCP[/quote]


No, I do get it, if indeed he was tricked, but the fact remains he was involved in forged documents on some level. And to answer your other question, no again. I don't like questioning a man's life work for any mistake he may have made. But in this case the idea of the Chinon Parchment surfacing when it did just seems to be very convenient, which is why I think it may be correct to look into the authenticity of the document. On another matter, Frale believes the shroud is authentic and she claims the alledged date on the shroud is correct, also very convenient.

wayward, have you read any of Frailes work?

this is how she came to re discover the Chinon Chart....

In October 1995, I was in my second year at the Vatican School for Palaeography., Like others students, I was required, as an exercise, to make a transcription from a medieval papal register in the Vatican Archive. I became especially interested in the big paper registers written when the papal court was located in Avignon (1309–1378). They are in a terrible state of conservation. During the return journey of the papal archive to Rome, after Bonaparte’s removal to Paris, the registers suffered much damage and even fell into water,, so their consultation was suspended to preserve them from wear and tear. The Avignonese registers are protected in an artificial atmosphere, but scholars can see the documents they contain thanks to CDR. Students of the Vatican School for Palaeography, on the contrary, need the originals because they have to identify philigranes, and have to learn to make out the entangled writing and how to decode the cipher formulae of the papal Chancery: thus, they are often the ones who enjoy the privilege of dipping into these registers. As a consequence, even today, the Avignonese registers are almost virgin territory, which will surely present us with many discoveries in the future: in other words, we can say they are another entrance into the endless labyrinth of the Vatican Archive.,

I realised that in Avignonese 48, belonging to Benedict XII (Jacques Fournier, 1334–1342),, had been bound some paper fascicles dating back to the reign of a former pope, Clement V (Bertrand de Got, 1305–1314)., They contain a piece on the trial of the Templars, namely the only enquiry which had been held by the pontiff himself, at Poitiers, in the summer of 1308. It was one of the most famous trials in the history of the Middle Ages, which involved a religious order as a whole and ended with the burning of the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, on 18 March 1314, on the orders of the French king.,

The proceedings at the papal court survive in two different kinds of documents: on the one hand, the mundum (that is to say, an original and solemn form of act made to be sent or produced), a group of big parchments formerly sealed up with cardinals’ seals,, and on the other hand, the Rubrice (a summary with the most important notices), a document written cheaply on paper and made to be retained in the papal Chancery. The paper fascicles were conserved in the Rubrice of register Avignonese 48 (ff. 437r–451v).

Most striking was the abundance of marginal notes scattered throughout the pages in the fascicles. These short and simple annotations are often marked out in writing so careless as to be scarcely legible. In 1884, Konrad Schottmüller edited the parchments, and about 20 years later, in 1906, Heinrich Finke made a partial edition of nine Templars’ confessions, that survive only in the Rubrice, but no critical attention was paid to the strange notes, probably because of their shabby appearance. Too concise to be glosses, too plentiful and recurring to be simply cross-reference marks, they worked on me to such an extent that I resolved to show them to my teachers at the Vatican School, Father Sergio Pagano and Professor Alessandro Pratesi: they told me that the document was authentic and was so unique as to deserve further investigation. A preliminary study of the trial context showed that the Rubrice was a historical treasure far more precious than the refined and expensive parchments; the research, carried out over four years at Venice University ‘Ca’ Foscari’, brought to light some events in the trial that had been undervalued and some others that are quite unknown., Copyright © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Thanks for that Tingra

You should show me where I made that statement Roger and I will correct it. I quess I stepped out of line by questioning something that you consider beyond reproach. Please, inform me of what I can and cannot question on this forum, as when I read the forum rules they didn't cover this subject very well. Thank you

Sure. You maintain that Frale, being a Catholic and working for the Vatican Archives, has a bias - which I'm assuming you mean is pro-Catholic, dogmatically and in terms of historical perspective. In other words, the Church maintains that everything in the Gospel narratives is true, accurate, and historical; that Frale believes this, and renders her findings accordingly.

Now, according to Frale, she's deciphered some sort of barely legible inscription on the Shroud itself that identifies the body once contained in it as that of "Jesus the Nazarean" or "Jesus the Nazorite". According to her (and no, I don't know this to be accurate because I've never heard it before either) the practice of labeling shrouded corpses in this manner by the Romans was so that the corpses could be claimed by relatives of the deceased after one year. Now, in the absence of anything I'm aware of to substantiate this, for the sake of argument let's say that there is substantiation for this (unnecessarily cruel) practice from independent research. Frale says it's there, just as somebody else thirty-three years ago said it's there (and granted, others say it's not, but I don't know why she'd risk her professional reputation on a lark, she's got too much to lose).

The Gospel narratives maintain that Jesus' body was taken down from the cross and immediately surrendered to the custody of Joseph of Arimathea, whereupon he and Nicodemas carted it to his private tomb and put it to rest there. This is what the Catholic Church maintains is true, dogmatically and historically; this is the Catholic "bias".

However, Frale is pointing to a detail that would be contradictory to that Catholic bias - a mortuary label which, according to her, would have been placed on the body by the Roman authorities, and which would facilitate the reclaiming of the corpse by relatives only after a year had passed, not immediately. Ergo, if what she's saying is true, then that calls the accuracy of the Gospel narratives - and the Catholic bias - into serious question. Why label a corpse for a year's retention and future pick-up when the corpse is being surrendered immediately to the relatives or claimants at the execution site? The presence of such a label hints a very different story than that related in the Gospels, and probably not one that the Church would want to advertise.

So my question, again, is why would Frale advertise this detail if she's letting her pro-Catholic, pro-Gospel bias color her conclusions?



Nope, I've never heard of it either.



I can't imagine why she'd say it was there when it wasn't. Surely she'd have to show her work? One wonders what the agendas are. If she's right then that casts doubt on the orthodox position; if she's wrong, then orthodoxy is "safe". Interesting juxtaposition with the Vatican archivist casting doubts on the official byline though.



I can only venture a guess here, but perhaps this policy of keeping the remains of those executed for crimes against the Roman state out of the ground for a year served as a warning to others, i.e. not only will we put you to death, but we'll screw with your afterlife as well if you try anything so foolish. An example to others who might have similar ideas, basically.

But getting down to the specifics of this particular episode, why would the Romans have "tagged" a body they were going to hand off to relatives that day for immediate burial? It might make sense if the Gospel stories said they'd stolen the body or something along those lines, but they don't. The Gospel stories, as written, show a certain degree of sensitivity to Jewish burial customs in allowing the body to be taken down before sundown so that the family could get it into the tomb by dark. At that point the Romans are surrendering custody, no need to mark it because no one is coming back for it in a year.



I agree, but we're talking about Frale's perceived bias here. The Catholic Church has maintained for nearly two millenia that those accounts are true and accurate, historically and dogmatically. If she's tailoring her findings to comply with those conclusions, she's not doing the best job of it. Now, we can say that the Gospels aren't reliable historical documents, but we're not in the employ of the Vatican Archives. It's something else entirely for Frale to identify a detail that blows holes in Church orthodoxy. One wouldn't expect a Vatican employee to deviate from the script.



But IS she interpreting things the way the Bible claims? She says the dates line up, she says it identifies the body once held in the Shroud as the man commonly known as Jesus the Nazarene (or Nazorite), but the consistency ends there. This detail hints at the possibility of a different ending to the story than most are familiar with.

TCP

Yes, on the same level that you might be involved in counterfeiting if you got a fake $20 bill in change at Wal-Mart. Baluze was made a fool of for failing to catch a thief, not because he was a thief.



You appear to be ignorant of the fact that the document didn't go missing until after Napoleon seized the Vatican Library and had its contents transported to Paris in 1809 - more than a century after Baluze published it.



She also cites a previously unknown detail on the Shroud that potentially throws a curveball at orthodoxy, is that "very convenient" as well?

This coming from a man who believes Templars transported the Holy Grail to Nova Scotia on the strength of no evidence whatsoever. At least Frale has something to work from, which is more than can be said for you.

TCP

TCP


By George I think he's got it
Something is amiss

Is Frale playing damage control for the Vatican?

I think if she had any intention of doing so, she'd have kept her trap shut about the writing on the shroud.

TCP