St. Veronica
| Saint Veronica | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1st century AD Caesarea Philippi or Jerusalem, Judea |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Communion, Eastern Orthodox Church |
| Canonized | pre-Congregation |
| Feast | July 12 |
| Attributes | woman holding a cloth that bears the image of Christ's face |
| Patronage | images; laundry workers, pictures, photos, photographers,;Santa Veronica, San Pablo City |
Saint Veronica was a pious woman of Jerusalem in the first century AD, according to Catholic tradition. A celebrated saint in many pious Christian countries, the Acta Sanctorum published by the Bollandists gave her Feast (under July 12), but the Jesuit Scholar Joseph Braun cited her commemoration in Festi Marianni on 13 January.
According to Church tradition, Veronica was moved with pity when she saw Jesus carrying his cross to Golgotha and gave him her veil that he might wipe his forehead. Jesus accepted the offering, held it to his face, and then handed it back to her—the image of his face miraculously impressed upon it. This piece of cloth became known as the Veil of Veronica.
The name "Veronica" itself is a Latinisation of Berenice (Greek: Βερενίκη, Berenikē, with a secondary form Beronike), a Macedonian name, meaning "bearer of victory". The woman who offered her veil to Jesus was known by this name in the Byzantine East, but in the Latin West the name took a life of its own. As proven by a medieval text, "Veronica" was used by the 13th century as a designation for a relic venerated in Rome as the true image of Jesus. Since the Latin word for "true" or "authentic" happens to be vera, the theory emerged that the name itself is derived from the Latin phrase "true image", vera icon (one Latin word for image is icon, derived from Greek: εικόνα, eikona). In the 13th-century text and also in some later sources the term Veronica was used for the veil, not the person, but for centuries it has been better known as the name of the woman. The claim that the name Veronica is derived from vera icon proved to be very persistent and we encounter it until today. The Encyclopædia Britannica says this about the legend:
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