The name Veronica has been the subject of a good deal of speculation. It has been suggested and widely received that among several alleged authentic likenesses of our Lord (generally "not-made-with-hands") the one on the handkerchief of the kind woman was distinguished as vera icon, the "true image"; this became veronica and was transferred to the woman as a personal name. Certainly such images were and are called holy-veronica, corrupted in Middle English to "vernicle". But it is significant that in the East the haemorrhiossa was called by the name Berenike (victory-bringer) before ever there was any indication of an association with a miraculous image. Origen, in the first quarter of the third century, in his polemic Contra Celsum, speaks of the Valentinians regarding the haemorrhoissa as a type of Wisdom under the name of Prounike, whom Celsus had confounded into a Christian virgin.