VERONICA, SAINT

flourished 1st century, , Jerusalem; feast day July 12 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. This account is not the primitive form of the legend derived from Historia ecclesiastica by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea. Eusebius tells that at Caesarea Philippi there lived the woman whom Christ healed of a hemorrhage (Matt. 9:20). The legend continued to grow. In France, Veronica was reportedly married to the convert Zaccheus (Luke 19:110). In the Bordeaux district, she supposedly brought relics of the Blessed Virgin to Soulac-sur-Mer, where she died and was buried. In the 12th century the kerchief image began to be identified with one at Rome, the image eventually even being called Veronica.