Women of the Bible No 14 Veronica

There is no evidence whatsoever that Veronica existed, but her story is one of the most beautiful of all stories about saints, also one of the strangest.

The story goes that as Jesus made his agonizing way up the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha for his crucifixion, a group of women from Jerusalem met him, and as he stumbled, one of them, Veronica, came forward to wipe the sweat and blood from his brow with her napkin. When she returned home and unfolded the napkin, there was imprinted on it an image of the face of Christ.

But this story appears nowhere in any of the crucifixion accounts in the bible.

The legend may have been composed to give a background to the existence of the supposed relic, "The Veil of Veronica," which has been in Rome since the eighth century, and has a shrine on one of the main pillars in St Peter's Basilica.