About the name of St. Veronica, of whose very existence there is no absolute proof, have gathered some of the most beautiful of the many legends connected with the last days of our Lord upon earth. Briefly told, the tradition accepted by the early Church is as follows: as the fainting Savior toiled along the Via Dolorosa on His way to Calvary, a woman, touched with compassion for His sufferings, pushed her way through the Roman guards, and offered Him the white veil she was wearing on her head with which to wipe His face. The Master accepted it, and as a recompense for the kind action, which, in the state of public opinion, involved the woman in considerable danger, left the impress of His face upon the soft material, and it being folded in three, it received three distinct reproductions of the Divine features. Having thus bestowed upon His helper a reward of the greatest value, the Lord passed on His painful way. The recipient of the gift treasured it up for the rest of her life, and on her death, it was preserved by the Church as an heirloom of priceless worth and handed down from generation to generation. In course of time, it passed into the custody of the Holy See and was long kept in a beautiful arborium in a chapel dedicated to it at St. Peter’s, Rome, for which in the twelfth century Pope Celestine had the fine bronze gates cast which are still in situ. At intervals the ‘Holy Face,’ as the impression came to be called, was exhibit^ to the people, and the memory of St. Veronica is still held in the greatest veneration, not only in Rome, but throughout the Catholic world. Many other cities, including Muan and Laon, claimed to own miraculously produced replicas of the original; but the general opinion is that the one in Rome has an equal claim to authenticity. It is preserved in St. Peter’s with the spear said to be that of St. Longinus, and the great relic of the true Cross, all of which are exhibited on important occasions from the gallery under the dome.
The spot in Rome where the touching incident is said to have occurred is supposed to have been identified, and was long marked by an overturned column near the wall of the house on the site of that named after the Holy Women, and it became one of the so-called Stations of the Cross represented in every Roman Catholic Church either in painting or in bas-relief.
Who St. Veronica was, and whether the name by which she is known is really simply derived from the vera icon, or true image, on her veil, or was her own, has been the subject of endless discussions. Some say she was identical with the woman whom Christ healed of the issue of blood, and that her name was Berenice; others that she was a cousin of St. John the Baptist, her father and St. Zacharias having been the sons of brothers. She is said to have been with the Forerunner at his death, having obtained leave to visit him in prison because of her relationship, and when his head was cut off, she took away some of his blood, which is said to be still preserved in the Church of Bazas, in Southern France. Others, again, assert that she was of Phoenician origin; that she took part in the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; testified to the innocence of the accused Master before Pilate, together with others whom he had healed, including the risen Lazarus, Cedon, the man born blind, and Jairus’s daughter, who all cried aloud together, ‘This man is a holy prophet I’ When Jesus was lost as a child His mother is reported to have said, ‘He will be either worshipping in the Temple or at Veronica’s house,’ and when the Holy Family returned from their search, bringing Him back in triumph, St. Veronica, with St. Elizabeth, St. Martha, and Mary Salome, went down the road to meet them.
A little feast was made in the house of the carpenter to celebrate the home-coming, and at it all the intimate friends of St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin were present, including St. Veronica. The change in the Holy Child which was inaugurated by the Dispute in the Temple was forcibly brought out at this gathering, for, after St. Joseph had pronounced the Benediction, Jesus distributed the bread to the guests with words full of solemn meaning, St. Veronica holding the basket for Him as He went from one to the other. Later, when the young Christ left His home for three days, St. Veronica received Him in her house near the entrance to Bethlehem, supplying all His wants with reverent devotion. At the Marriage at Cana she arranged the flowers upon the table; she was mainly instrumental in persuading St. Mary Magdalene to turn to the Master for help and forgiveness; in a word, though the Gospels never mention her name, she is credited with having been one of the most zealous of the followers of Christ, and after His death to have worked without ceasing for the good of the early converts.
To the simple narrative of the incident of the veil given above many graphic touches have been added from time to time by the loving imagination of those who have accepted St. Veronica as an actual actor in the scenes of the Passion. Instead of a mere spectator suddenly inspired by a longing to do something to relieve the agony of the patient Sufferer, St. Veronica is credited with having made her preparations beforehand, and to have been waiting on the threshold of her house for the Divine Victim to pass by. A woman of majestic presence, she issued forth when the great moment arrived with a bearing so full of dignity that even the stern Roman soldiers parted to let her pass, and, falling down at the feet of Christ, she offered to Him the soft linen with words of loving sympathy. Behind her came a little maid of nine years old, bearing a goblet of spiced wine; but the guards pushed her rudely back, and she fled into the house of her mistress in terror. Soon St. Veronica joined her, laid the precious relic upon a table, and, falling down before it, worshipped the Sacred Face with words broken by sobs. There she was found by seventeen holy women, who looked in at her house on their way back from following the Master to Calvary, and, seeing the miracle, they joined the owner of the priceless relic in her devotions. Then they resolved to go to Golgotha, taking the wine with them. Arrived at the foot of Calvary, they tried to bribe the soldiers about the Cross, to which the Victim was already nailed, to let them approach, but even St. Veronica failed this time to enforce her will upon the guards. The women were therefore compelled to withdraw, and they joined the other watchers afar off to await the end.
At the Descent from the Cross, the Deposition and the Entombment, St. Veronica is said to have been present, contributing the costliest spices money could buy for the anointing of the body of the Lord. She was with the eleven disciples when the risen Lord appeared to them, she witnessed His Resurrection, shared the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and when the Apostles dispersed, she remained in Jerusalem to work for the poor and persecuted. All who came to her, no matter what their need, were relieved, and many were the miraculous cores wrought by a mere touch of the linen with the Sacred Face.
According to one version of the legend, St. Veronica remained in the Jewish capital until her death, but according to another, she was summoned to Rome by the Emperor Tiberius, when he was dangerously ill, to come and heal him. He had heard of the vera icon, and hoped that perchance, in spite of all he had done against the Christians, it might aid him in his need. To Rome then St. Veronica went, and some say she not only cured the Emperor’s body but won his soul to repentance, whilst others assert that she arrived too late, life having already departed; and although none could doubt that with the aid of the sacred image it might even then have been restored, the Saint wisely decided not to interfere.
After her visit to the palace of the Emperor, St. Veronica is said to have remained in Rome, working with St. Peter and St. Paul, and to have fallen a victim to the cruel fury of Nero. Many French writers on the Saints, however, assert that she escaped from the heathen city, made her way back to Palestine, and there shared the misfortunes of St. Mary Magdalene, St. Martha and St. Lazarus. With them she was cast adrift in a rudderless boat and landed near Marseilles, but there she parted company with them, going to Bordeaux, or rather to the Roman settlement of Burdigala, to Soulac and to Bazas. In her wanderings about Provincia, as Provence was then called, she met, fell in love with and married, a man named Amator, who is called St. Amator in the legend, probably because of the similarity of his name and that of the holy Bishop of Auxerre, for there is no record of his canonization.
Under the name of Venisse, St. Veronica became loved throughout the South of France, and when her time came to die she was buried at Soulac, a column marking the spot. After being buried for eight centuries this column was du^ up and identified as the very one set up in honor of St. Venisse, and in the subterranean church of Roc-Amadur were discovered some frescoes evidently intended to represent incidents from the life of St. Veronica, including a devotional scene in which she stands at the feet of the Virgin with the sacred image in her uplifted hands, with St. Martial and St. Amator beside her. At Bazas the phial containing the blood of St. John the Baptist, said to have been brought there by St. Veronica herself, is still shown to the faithful, and in the church of St. Severin at Bordeaux, to which her supposed relics were translated, some fine modern windows represent a series of incidents in her legendary career. She is seen meeting the child Virgin on her way to be presented in the Temple; receiving the blood of St. John the Baptist as his head falls beneath the knife of the executioner; testifying with St. Zacharias and others at the trial of Christ ; wiping the face of the Master as she kneels beside Him; assisting at the Entombment; walking with the mother of the Lord along the Via Dolorosa ^er the Crucifixion; restoring the Emperor Tiberius to heal; in a boat approaching the shore ; on her way to Bazas, carrying the sacred relic still venerated there; dying at Soulac, and being carried up to heaven by angels. The discovery of the so-called relics of St. Venisse at Soulac gave a great impulse to her cult in France. Frenchwomen still call upon her for aid in illness or other distress, and she is supposed to look specially after the interests of the needlewomen of Paris and of Lidge.
Throughout Catholic Europe the so-called Sixth ‘Station of the Cross’ represents the meeting between St. Veronica and the Savior ; m devotional pictures she is often seen in a place of honor between St. Peter and St. Paul, as in one by Ugo da Carpi in the sacristy of the Vatican; in pictures of the Procession to Calva^ she is rarely absent, and is, for instance, a prominent figure in the fresco by Sodoma now in the Villa Griccioli at Siena, and in the oil painting of the same subject by Rudolfo del Ghirlandaio in the National Gallery, London. Memlinc has given a fine interpretation of her on the outside of one of the shutters of his ‘Adoration of the Magi,’ now in the Hospital of St. John at Bruges. There is a fine painting of St. Veronica alone, by Ludovico Caracci, in the Cathedral of Mans, and in the scene in Albert Dilrer’s engravings of the Great Passion, in which Christ falls beneath the Cross, she kneels beside the Sufferer with her veil outspread.
Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints, By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901).