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You’ve likely seen this saint’s picture if you’ve ever entered a Catholic church, even if you don’t recognize her name. Churches often include artistic depictions of the Stations of the Cross, which chart Jesus’s passion and death, and the sixth station shows Veronica wiping Jesus’s face.

The piece of cloth she used retained an image of Jesus. Veronica later went to Rome at the request of Emperor Tiberius, whom she healed using the sacred image. Some legends say Veronica stayed at Rome through the time of Paul and Peter’s mission there, bequeathing the sacred relic to Pope Clement I when she died. Others say she traveled to France, where she married and joined in apostolic preaching.

None of these traditions have documentary support. The episode in which she wipes Jesus’s face is not even in the Bible.

The figure of Veronica is probably a product of linguistic misunderstanding. In Rome soon after Jesus’s death, followers did venerate a cloth with an alleged image of Jesus. They called it vera icon (“true image”) to distinguish it from other “face of Jesus” relics. Ordinary people came to mangle the words “vera icon” into “Veronica.” In due course, “Veronica” came to refer, no longer to the cloth, but to the name of the woman who obtained it from Jesus. Popular imagination took off from there. -- http://listverse.com/

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