'Vera Icon'? : the variable Veronica of medieval England

Abstract

Early reports of English responses to the Vernicle constitute some of the most significant evidence of the icon's development. British travelers to Rome in the early-thirteenth century provided valuable observations on the relic's appearance; Matthew Paris chronicled a crucial miracle affecting the Vernicle and Pope Innocent III's institution of indulgences; and thirteenth-century English manuscripts were illustrated with the earliest extant representations of the Vernicle. Yet, although the Vernicle's unique claim is to preserve the direct impress of Christ's features rather than a mere painted likeness, the Vernicle became familiar in quite diverse and even contradictory versions. After a review of how various narrative accounts develop of the Vernicle's origin, this article surveys the disparities in accounts of the Vernicle in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English texts and images. Taken together, they represent a kind of mouvance and coexistence of different understandings of the legend, the relic, and its replication.