Barry Windeatt gave a very interesting paper at the Oxford Graduate Research Seminar on 8 December entitled ‘True Image? The Vernicle in Medieval England’.

[A vernicle is a ‘copy in miniature of the picture of Christ, which is supposed to have been miraculously imprinted upon a handkerchief preserved in the church of St. Peter at Rome’ (Skeat). Chaucer’s Pardoner ‘a vernycle hadde…sowed upon his cape’ (‘General Prologue’, Canterbury Tales, l.685). In this painting by Hans Memling, you can see St Veronica, who became associated with the miracle, holding the cloth.]