Among the anomalous phenomena occurring around us, a special place is occupied by phenomena called miraculous faces. Scientists have been puzzling over their riddles for many years - after all, the studies carried out clearly indicate that these pictures could not be created by people. The materials from which they are made have been stored for centuries without damage, and the dyes used for drawings simply do not exist in nature.
The analysis was inaccurate
The most famous of these miraculous images is the Turin Shroud. According to the biblical legend, the body of Jesus, taken from the cross, was wrapped in this piece of canvas measuring approximately 4.4x1.1 meters. A double image remains on the canvas: on one half there is an image of a man with his hands folded in front, on the other - a drawing of the same body from the back.
The details on the shroud are well distinguished: beard, hair, lips, fingers. The canvas also preserved traces of blood from wounds, their location exactly corresponds to what is described in the biblical texts, which is why the shroud is sometimes called the fifth Gospel.
The relic is currently kept in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin. It is locked in a massive chest with three locks, the keys to which are kept by different clerics, and access to the relic can only be done by their mutual consent.
At the same time, the Roman Catholic Church does not officially recognize the authenticity of the relic. Moreover, a radiocarbon analysis carried out in 1988 showed that the fabric was created around the 13th century. And the very appearance of the shroud in the cathedral is shrouded in mystery: according to one version, it was brought by a certain knight-crusader, according to the other, that it was once kept in Constantinople and got to Turin through France.
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The study of the Turin Shroud and other miraculous images is being dealt with by a separate science called syndology (from the ancient Greek "sindon" - "thin canvas"). In 2005, Discovery TV aired an interview with the American chemist Raymond Rogers, who took part in the 1988 research.
Rogers suggested that the samples for radiocarbon analysis were not taken from the main tissue, but from patches applied during one of the repairs of the shroud, and its dating may well refer to the time of the crucifixion of Christ.
One of the three
Several images miraculous at once reflect the biblical story about Veronica - a pious woman who, when Jesus was carrying the cross to Calvary, gave him a drink and wiped his face with her handkerchief, after which the image of Christ remained on the fabric.
The type of the image of Christ, representing His face on a scarf, is called the Savior Not Made by Hands.
Nowadays St. Veronica is the patroness of photographers, and there are three relics in the world, which are called "Veronica's plate" or "Veronica's veil" - and each of which, according to the churchmen, may be genuine.
One of Veronica's plates is kept in the Roman Cathedral of St. Peter. The face of Jesus is clearly visible on the thin fabric - like the image on the shroud, it was somehow applied without the help of paints. True, at the present time it is not possible for an ordinary person to consider it: back in 1628, Pope Urban VIII allowed a public display of the fee only once a year - on the fifth Sunday supper of Great Lent, when it is demonstrated from the high loggia of the Pillar of St. Veronica, and only the ministers of the cathedral are allowed to it.
Showing the board of St. Veronica in St. Peter's Cathedral
The second relic, which is more often called "Veronica's veil", is kept in the monastery of the small Italian town of Manoppello. At the beginning of the 21st century, a German priest and lecturer at the Gregorian University in Rome, Frank Heinrich Feifer published the results of his research on this veil.
It is a piece of transparent fabric about 17x24 centimeters in size, where a man's face with a beard is captured, which, depending on the angle at which the sun's rays fall, appears and disappears.
The image bears an extraordinary resemblance to the image on the Turin Shroud, while Feifer failed to find any traces of dyes.
The third relic is a rectangular piece of linen cambric linen with blood stains and the face of Jesus, it is kept in the Monastery of Saint Face of the Spanish city of Alicante.
The famous Syndologist Ian Wilson, studying these images, came to the conclusion that the original Veronica's plate is kept in Manopello, and the fabrics from Rome and Alicante are later copies of the relic, created in the 10th or 11th centuries.
Virgin Mary with a swarthy face
In Latin America, the most revered shrine is the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe.
According to legend, the Mother of God in the form of a dark-skinned woman appeared four times to the 17-year-old Mexican peasant Juan Diego Cuauchtlatoatzin in December 1531. She asked the young man to build a church on the Tepeyak hill where they met. Juan Diego conveyed these words to the local bishop Juan de Sumarraga - but he did not believe the peasant, saying that the Mother of God must confirm her words with some sign.
The young man came to the hill again and conveyed to the Virgin Mary the opinion of the bishop. The Mother of God made roses bloom on the barren rock of the hill in the middle of winter. Juan Diego wrapped the flowers in his cloak and took them to the bishop. The cloak was unfolded in the presence of a large number of people, the roses fell to the ground - and everyone saw that the image of the swarthy Mother of God was imprinted on the fabric, which they began to call the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe.
Currently, the Church of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe is visited by millions of pilgrims from all over the world - and the results of studies of the miraculous image baffle scientists.
In 1947, this image of the Mother of God was investigated by the German scientist, Nobel laureate in chemistry Richard Kuhn. He came to the conclusion that the image was not created by man: there are no traces of any pigments on the canvas, and each shade of the image is a chemical compound with the fabric.
In 1976, Mexican researchers Roberto Palacios and Ernesto Pallares determined that the cloth of the cloak was woven from the fibers of ayate cactus.
Such material is usually stored for no more than 30 years. But the cloak is already almost half a millennium old - and at the same time its fabric does not rot or deteriorate. It is free of bacteria and does not adhere to dust. How can this be explained, scientists simply do not know.
Moreover, the image of the Virgin has lively eyes! Researchers have found that the pupils of a miraculous image react to light by expanding or narrowing.
In 1929, photographer Alfonso Marche discovered the image of a bearded man in the right eye of the Virgin Mary. Modern scientists, having created a computer image of the eyes of the Virgin Mary, enlarged 2.5 thousand times, determined that in both eyes of the Virgin Mary there are images of men.
From the surviving portraits, it was established that one of them is the Indian Juan Diego Cuauhglatoatzin, and the other is Bishop Juan de Sumarraga. In this case, the deformation of the images fully corresponds to the refractions of the cornea of a living eye!
Already in our time, NASA specialists were engaged in the study of the miraculous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. They found that the cloth of the cloak has a constant temperature of a living body - 36.6 degrees Celsius. But that's not all: it turned out that the tissue pulsates! The frequency is 115 beats per minute - approximately the same pulse rate for a child in the womb.
Portrait on a tile
Images not made by hands can be not only divine.
In 1971, in the Spanish village of Belmez de la Moraleda, in the house of Maria Gomez Pereira, a man's portrait suddenly appeared on a tile.
It was not possible to wash it, and the woman asked her son to knock down the tiles and lay another. But after a while the portrait appeared again. The villagers recognized him as a man who had died long ago and was buried in the old cemetery, on the site of which houses were later built, including Mary's dwelling.
Paranormal expert Herman de Argumosa examined the portrait tiles and concluded that the substance used to make the drawings was unlike any known paint. At the request of the hostess, the floor was opened in the house - and human remains were found at a depth of several meters. After their reburial, the portraits ceased to appear.
Similar phenomena have been reported elsewhere.
In 1897, John Woghen, abbot of the local cathedral of Llanduff, died in Wales. Two weeks after his burial, the outline of the deceased's face and his initials J and V appeared on the wall of the cathedral. The image remained for several days, after which it disappeared.
In 1923, a portrait of the deceased priest Henry Liddell appeared on the wall in the Cathedral of Christ, located in Oxford, England. Later, starting in 1926, next to it one could see images of several more deceased priests, who during their lifetime conducted services in this cathedral. Mrs. Huvet McKenzie, then president of the British Society for Physical Research, examined these portraits in 1931 and concluded that they could not have been created by man.
Many researchers express the opinion that miraculous images serve as proof of the existence of another world, in which our life continues after physical death and where thoughts can find material embodiment. But is this so - the answer has not yet been found.
Victor SVETLANIN