The Shroud of Turin — the burial relic in which Jesus Christ is supposed to have been wrapped after his crucifixion — has long been a source of fascination and contention. The cloth, which appears to bear the imprint of Christ’s body and is duly revered, was denounced by John Calvin as superstition during the Protestant Reformation. In the Eighties, a radiocarbon dating led to the widespread consensus that the shroud was medieval forgery.
