We have all heard of the Grotto of Milk at Bethlehem, with its rock of offence to so many scoffing tourists. It is only those who have a profound faith in the Incarnation that venerate everything associated with the divine Infancy. St. Louis of France built the beautiful Chapelle du Saint Lait in the Cathedral of Rheims to receive the relic that gave it its name. A like relic was venerated in the church of Mans in the time of Clovis. And a vial was borne before the army at the battle of Askalon, in 1224, which reminds one of Rubens’s painting at Brussels in which the Madonna bares her breast before the awful Judge, as if he could refuse nothing at the sight of the bosom on which he had so often been pillowed, and where he had been nourished. There is an old legend of a similar vial of this sacred laict being brought from the Holy Land by a pilgrim, who, weary, stopped one day to repose by a fountain near Evron, and hung the reliquary on the hawthorn bush that overshadowed him, and went to sleep. When he awoke, the bush had grown into a tree and the relic was far beyond his reach. He tried to cut the tree down with a hatchet, but could make no impression on the wood. Feeling an inward assurance this was the spot where Providence wished the relic to be honored, he gave it to the bishop, who built thereon a church, which became known as Notre Dame de l’Epine Sainte. The high altar enclosed the hawthorn tree. François de Châteaubriand, abbot of Evron in the sixteenth century, gave this church a beautiful reliquary of silver gilt, in the form of a church, beneath the dome of which was a tube for the relic. Devotion to this relic still exists at Evron.
But to return to Soulac. It is not surprising the Syro-Phœnician woman should come to this distant shore. We know by Strabo that the ancient Phœnicians and Carthaginians came to traffic on this coast, and even went to Great Britain. Soulac was probably the ancient Noviomagos spoken of by Ptolemy. The old legend of Cénebrun speaks of Veronica as la Dame Marie la Phénicienne, who came from the East under marvellous circumstances, learned the language of Médoc, and built a church beside which God caused a fountain of fresh, soft water to spring up out of the salt shore for the cure of tertian fevers so common in this region. Moreover, it appears she was in such constant relations with the governor of Bordeaux, appointed by Vespasian, that, to facilitate the intercourse between Soulac and the capital, a Roman road was constructed, “very level and as straight as a line—rectissimum sicut corda.” If Vespasian had anything to do with it, we may be sure it was straight; for we know how, to rectify a bend in the Flaminian Way, he bored a tunnel through a rock a thousand feet long.
It was at Bordeaux that Veronica converted Benedicta, a woman of distinguished birth, and the wife of Sigebert, a priest of the false gods, who, attacked by a cruel malady, and hearing of the marvels wrought by St. Martial, said to Benedicta: “Go and bring the man of God; perhaps he will take pity on me.” St. Martial gave her the miraculous staff of St. Peter, at the touch of which Sigebert recovered the use of his limbs. He at once proceeded to Mortagne, accompanied by a great number of soldiers and other followers, all of whom were baptized by St. Martial. At his return to Bordeaux he overthrew all the pagan altars, with the exception of one, which St. Martial purified as a memorial of the triumph of the true faith. The inscription graven thereon is still to be seen in the museum at Bordeaux: Jovi Augusto Arula donavit. SS. Martialis cum templo et ostio sacravit—Arula gave this altar to Jupiter Augustus. Martial consecrated it with the temple and vestibule.
Benedicta continued to work miracles with St. Peter’s staff, and greatly contributed to the propagation of the faith in the province. She died in the odor of sanctity, and was buried in the oratory of St. Seurin at Bordeaux, where her remains are still honored on the 8th of June.
Sigebert, whose name signifies the powerful or courageous, became the first bishop of Bordeaux, where he is honored as a martyr under the name of St. Fort. To his sanctum feretrum at St. Seurin’s people formerly went to take solemn oaths.
The foregoing reference of the old chronicler to Vespasian reminds us of the part Veronica is said to have had in the destruction of Jerusalem. A curious old play of the middle ages tells us Vespasian was afflicted with the extraordinary inconvenience of a wasp’s nest in his nose, and, after trying every known means of dislodging it, sent for the great Physician of the Jews. Finding he had been put to death by his own nation, he demanded some of his followers, whereupon Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Veronica are said to have gone to Rome. The emperor expressing a desire to see a portrait of Christ, Veronica held up the Volto Santo before him, at the sight of which he was instantaneously healed. In his gratitude he vowed to take vengeance on the murderers of Jesus, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem. The connection between this legend and the traditional respect in which Veronica was held by Vespasian’s representative at Bordeaux is curious.
Some say it was Tiberius who was cured of the leprosy by the holy veil, which accounts for his leniency to the Christians and his placing a statue of Christ among the gods. These legends, confused by time, may be regarded as traces left by Veronica at Rome, where a constant tradition asserts she herself brought the Volto Santo.
This precious relic must have been in great repute to have been placed at St. Peter’s in 707 by Pope John VII. When removed to the Santo Spirito, it was confided to six Roman noblemen, each of whom had one of the keys that gave access to it. For this service they annually received two cows at Whitsuntide, which were eaten with great festivities. In 1440 it was restored to St. Peter’s, where it is preserved in a chamber within one of the immense piers that sustain the wondrous dome. None but a canon of the church can enter this chamber, but the Vera Iconica is annually exposed from the balcony. It seems to have all the solemn gravity traditional in the Greek representations of our Saviour. Petrarch respectfully speaks of it as the verendam populis Salvatoris Imaginem.
Veronica’s statue is beneath—one of the guardians that stand around the tomb of the apostles. Perhaps she came to Rome with St. Martial; for there are traces of her wherever he announced the Gospel. Else remembers their visit, and says, when they left its walls, they directed their course towards Gaul. Mende and Cahors carefully treasure the shoes of the Virgin she brought, and Puy has some of her hair. St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, says that, according to the ancient traditions of the churches of Italy and France, Amadour and his wife Veronica accompanied St. Martial to Gaul. And St. Bonaventure, the great Franciscan, in the thirteenth century, in one of his homilies, represents St. Veronica in a humble cabin at Pas-de-Grave visited by St. Martial.
St. Amadour embraced the solitary life, and is believed to have been the first hermit of Aquitaine. His whole life is painted on the walls of the subterranean chapel at Roc Amadour, where he died. The inscriptions attached to these frescoes thus sum up the legend respecting him: