The life of St Veronica
Scripture itself leaves her unnamed, but early Eastern tradition, reaching back at least to the historian Eusebius in the fourth century, identifies her as a woman of Caesarea Philippi and calls her Berenike, later rendered Veronica. Eusebius reports having seen at her house in that city a pair of bronze statues, one of a kneeling woman with hands outstretched and the other of a standing man in the posture of healing her, said to represent Christ himself, along with an unusual herb growing at their base that was credited with curative power. This account of Berenike, the healed woman, is the tradition kept by the Eastern Church; it is distinct from the later Western legend of a Veronica who wiped Christ's face with a cloth on the road to Golgotha, a separate figure not part of this feast. She is remembered simply as the woman whose faith reached out in a crowd and was not disappointed.
