The arrival of the Holy Face or Veil of Veronica in Jaén has been dated to the time of Bishop Nicolás de Biedma (1368-78 and 1381-83). He may have received the relic as a gift from Pope Gregory XI (1370-78).

With this action, the pontiff was fulfilling an old tradition, that of offering a palladium to protect a city on the frontier with Islam, as Jaén was in the second half of the fourteenth century. 

Moreover, Biedma was the bishop who undertook to build a new cathedral after the destruction of the original one in 1368 by the troops of Muhammad V.