St. Veronica

St. Veronica (flourished 1st century ce, Jerusalem; feast day July 12) was a renowned legendary woman who, moved by the sight of Christ carrying his cross to Golgotha, gave him her kerchief to wipe his brow, after which he handed it back imprinted with the image of his face. In Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and certain other Christian traditions, she is honoured at the sixth station in the meditative Stations of the Cross. Her imprinted kerchief is commonly known as the Veil of Veronica, or simply Veronica, and there are several existing images that are each purported to be the original relic or an early copy of it.

The account of St. Veronica is thought to be a legend originally derived from Historia ecclesiastica (written 312–324; Ecclesiastical History) by Eusebius of Caesarea. Eusebius tells us that at Caesarea Philippi there lived the woman whom Christ healed of a hemorrhage (Matthew 9:20). In the apocryphal Acts of Pilate (4th/5th century), this woman is identified with the name Veronica. Later tradition held that Christ gave the healed Veronica a miraculous cloth, which was allegedly used to cure the emperor Tiberius of leprosy, and the cloth was eventually understood as being the Veil of Veronica. In France, Veronica was reportedly married to the convert Zaccheus the tax collector (Luke 19:1–10). In the Bordeaux district, she supposedly brought relics of the Blessed Virgin to Soulac-sur-Mer, where she died and was buried. By some accounts, the name Veronica is itself a fanciful derivation from the words vera icon (Latin icon from Greek eikōn), meaning “true image,” and was originally used for the kerchief and later applied to the legendary woman.