2. The Veil of Veronica is a hanky with the imprint of Jesus’s face on it.
The crowds jeered at the fallen messiah. The thin, beaten, and bloodied frame of Jesus strained and fell under the weight of the great beams of wood upon his aching back, as he carried his cross to Golgotha. Only one person among the throng was brave enough to help the poor man (according to apocrypha and legend). Her name was Veronica, and she wiped Christ’s exhausted face with a cloth when he fell. His face miraculously appeared on the handkerchief, which has been a coveted and semi-legendary relic ever since. So coveted, in fact, that there are several.
Despite the lack of canonical authority for the tale, the myth of Veronica’s hanky thrived as theologians puzzled over her identity. The earliest record of a Veil is at St Peter’s in Rome, which has had one since the 8th century. It is not on display. But why is this miraculous item on this list? Well, think of the Latin name for the veil, Sudarium. The noun means simply ‘sweat-cloth’, and the relic (if it is real) is, indeed, a piece of cloth with 2, 000-year-old sweat on it. That’s gross, no matter how much it looks like Jesus.
