A Question of Evidence
The Casebook of Great Forensic Controversies, from Napoleon to O. J.
Chapter One
The Turin Shroud (1355)
Genuine Relic or Medieval Fake?
Hard-core criminality is nothing new. Catch the evening news, with
its endless litany of drive-by shootings, armed holdups, and other
scenes of urban mayhem, and it's all too easy to run away with the
notion that we are living in the most lawless era in history. Nothing could
be farther from the truth; we're just better informed. For sheer, unadulterated
havoc and skulduggery, nothing can top the Middle Ages. Setting
aside the blood-drenched wars and the ravaging plagues, it was a time when
murder was commonplace; rape went unpunished; and incest thrived in remote
rural areas. It was an age of quite extraordinary violence to person
and property, and wholesale theft. From the highest in the land to the lowliest
peasant, nobody escaped the ravages of crime-not even the established
church.
In the Middle Ages the Roman Catholic Church was a vast, sprawling
corporation, the biggest business on earth; like most multinationals,
it was riven by internecine feuding. Not all of the disputes were theological;
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