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.
Vernicle; Veronica; image; Holy Face; dark face