A small piece of stained pale cloth kept in the tiny village of Manoppello has been regarded as a sacred icon with wondrous properties by Father Germano, head of its Capuchin monastery. He is right, according to Heinrich Pfeiffer, professor of Christian art history at the Vatican's Gregorian University. The fabric, says Pfeiffer, is the headcloth handed to Christ by a woman as he carried the cross to Calvary. Christ pressed it to his sweaty, bloody face, leaving an image of the son of God, and handed it back.
The veil, measuring 17cm by 24cm, is almost transparent. But reddish-brown marks on it trace the face of a bearded, long-haired man with wide-open eyes. The face becomes invisible depending on the angle of the light.
"The fact that the face appears and disappears according to where the light comes from was considered a miracle in itself in medieval times," said Pfeiffer, who is to present his findings at a conference tomorrow. "There are few such objects in history. This is not a painting. We don't know what the material is that shapes the image, but it is the colour of blood."
Enlarged digital photographs of the veil reveal that the image is identical on both sides of the cloth - a feat impossible to achieve by ancient techniques. The photographs have also been used to compare the veil with the face on the Turin Shroud, which millions of Christians believe to be Jesus's burial sheet. Striking similarities were apparent: the faces are the same shape, both have long hair and a tuft on the forehead, and the beards match.
Traces of the veil legend go back to the 4th century, but it was only in the Middle Ages that it became more strongly linked to Christ's suffering. From the 12th century to 1608, the Veronica veil was preserved in St Peter's in Rome where pilgrims worshipped it as the image of Christ.
In 1608 Pope Paul V ordered the demolition of the chapel housing the relic and the cloth was removed to the Vatican's archives which list it in a catalogue, complete with a drawing. It then vanished. The Vatican, which later passed off copies of the Veronica as the original to avoid disappointing pilgrims, never explained the disappearance.
According to the monastery's records, the wife of a soldier sold the veil to a nobleman of Manoppello in 1608 to get her husband out of jail. The nobleman later gave it to the Capuchins. In 1618 it was placed between two sheets of glass and encased in a walnut frame adorned in silver and gold. It has remained there ever since. Only after 13 years of searching through archives did Pfeiffer track it down.
The professor believes he has convincing evidence but sceptics will take much persuading. Keith Ward, regius professor of divinity at Oxford University, said: "The Gregorian University is quite respectable, but I think the claim about the veil is totally absurd. Almost everybody accepts that it is legend. I'd put it on the same level as seeing the face of Muhammad in a potato."
Critics argue that even the name Veronica betrays the fiction because it derives from the Latin and Greek words vera and ikon, meaning "true image". She has become the patron saint of photographers.
Although the story of the veil is well known - it was a moving scene in the film The Greatest Story Ever Told - it does not appear in the Bible. Most experts conclude that it was invented to explain the relic.
Dr Lionel Wickham, of the faculty of divinity at Cambridge, said: "Pfeiffer may have found an object that was venerated in the Middle Ages - I wouldn't discount that. But whether it dates back to early events is another matter."
He describes the historical accuracy of the Veronica legend as "half way between Mickey Mouse and the Three Musketeers".
Scientific tests might shed further light on the veil's origins, but they could well destroy the small and delicate cloth without necessarily solving the mystery. Furious debate still surrounds the origin of the Turin Shroud, for example, even though carbon-14 tests in 1988 dated it between 1260 and 1390.
'Face of Christ' Relic Found in Monastery
Almost four centuries after its mysterious disappearance, one of the most revered relics of Christianity has been found in a monastery hidden away in the Apennine mountains of Italy. That is the claim of a scholar who has been hunting the legendary "veil of Veronica" for more than a decade.
[Source: Sunday Times / London / By John Follain -- May 30 1999]
