In an old English poem on the life of Pilate, written before 1305, it appears that the Emperor of Rome learnt that a woman at Jerusalem named ‘Veronike’ possessed this handkerchief, which could heal him of his sickness. He sent for her, and
“Anon tho the ymage iseth, he was whole, anon,
He honoured wel Veronike, heo ne moste fram him gon;
The ymage he athuld that hit ne com nevereft out of Rome,
In Seint Peteres Church it is.”
Thence Veronica became a patron saint; and in the fifteenth century a real monastic Saint Veronica lived near Milan.
Véronique is rather a favourite name among French peasant women, and Vreneli in Suabia. Pott and Michaelis suggest that Veronica may be the Latin form of Berenice, or Pherenike (victory-bringer); but the history of the relic is too clear to admit of this idea. The flower, Veronica, appears to have won its name from its exquisite blue reflecting a true image of the heavens; and the Scots, who have a peculiar turn for floral names, thus seem to have obtained it.
In 1802 an inscription, with the first and last letters destroyed, was found in the catacombs standing thus, lumena pax tecum fi. A priest suggested that Fi should be put at the beginning of the sentence instead of the end, and by this remarkable trick, produced Filumena. There was a real Greek name Philomena, which had fallen into disuse, and of course was derived from Love, but to please the ears of the Italians, the barbarous Latin Filumen was invented.
Thereupon a devout artisan, a priest, and a nun, were all severally favoured by visions of a virgin martyr, who told them the story of Diocletian’s love for her, of her refusal, and subsequent martyrdom; and explained that, having once been called Lumena, she was baptized Filumena, which she explained as daughter of light! Some, human remains near the stone being dignified as relics of St. Filomena, she was presented to Mugnano; and, on the way, not only worked many miracles on her adorers, but actually repaired her own skeleton, and made her hair grow. So many wonders are said to have been worked by this phantom saint, the mere produce of a blundered inscription, that a book, printed at Paris in the year 1847, calls her “La Thaumaturge du 19me Siècle” and she is by far the most fashionable patroness in the Romish Church. Filomena abounds in Rome, encouraged by the example of a little Filomena, whose mosquito net was every night removed by the saint, who herself kept off the gnats. She is making her way in Spain; and it will not be the fault of the author of La Thaumaturge if Philomene is not common in France. The likeness to Philomela farther inspired Longfellow with the fancy of writing a poem on Florence Nightingale, as St. Philomena, whence it is possible that the antiquaries of New Zealand, in the twenty-ninth century, will imagine St. Philomena, or Philomela, to be the heroine of the Crimean war.[[89]]