URSULA, ST., and her companions, virgins and martyrs, are commemorated on Oct. 21. The Breviary gives no legend; but in current works, such as Butler's Lives of the Saints, it is to the effeci that "these holy martyrs seem . . . to have met a glorious death in defence of their virginity from the army of the Huns. . . . They came originally from Britain, and Ursula was the con ductor and encourager of the holy troop." The scene of the martyrdom is placed near the lower Rhine.
The date has been assigned by different writers to 238, c. 283 and c. 451. The story, however, is unknown both to Jerome and to Gregory of Tours—and this though the latter gives a some what detailed description of the Cologne church dedicated to that Theban legion with which the tradition of the martyred virgins was very early associated. The story of their fate is not entered under Oct. 21, in the martyrology of Bede (ob. c. 735), of Ado (c. 858), of Usuard (ante 877), Notker Balbulus (896) or Hrab anus Maurus ; but a 9th-century life of St. Cunibert (ob. 663) associates a prominent incident in the life of this saint with the basilica of the sacred virgins at Cologne (Surius vi. 275, ed. 1575). Not only does Archbishop Wichfrid attest a grant to the church of the sacred virgins outside the walls of Cologne (in 927), but he was a large donor in his own person. Still earlier a Cologne martyrology, written, as Binterim (who edited it in 1824) argues, between 889 and 891, has the following entry under October 21: "xi. virg. Ursule Sencie Gregorie Pinose Marthe Saule Britule Satnine Rabacie Saturie Paladie." Much shorter entries are found in two of the old martyrologies printed in Migne (cxxxviii. 1207, 1275). A more definite allusion to the legend may be found (c. 85o) in Wandelbert of Priim's metrical martyrology (Oct. 21) : Tunc numerosa simul Rheni per littora fulgent Christo virgines erects tropaea maniplis Agrippinae urbi, quarum furor impius ohm Millia mactavit ductricibus inclyta sanctis.
The full legend first makes its appearance in a festival dis course (sermo) for Oct. 21, written, as internal evidence seems to show, between 731 and 839. This sermo does not mention St. Ursula, but makes Pinnosa or Vinnosa the leader of these spiritual "amazons," who, to avoid Maximian's persecution, left their island home of Britain, following their bridegroom Christ towards that East whence their faith had come a hundred years before. The concurrent traditions of Britain, Batavia, i.e., the Netherlands (where many chapels still preserved their memory), and Cologne are called in evidence to prove the same origin. The legend was
already very old and the festival "nobis omni tempore cele berrima" ; but, as all written documents had disappeared since the burning of the early church erected over the sacred bones, the preacher could only appeal to the continuous and careful memory of the society to which he belonged (nostrates).
Two or three centuries later the Passio XI. MM. SS. Virginum, based apparently on the revelations made to Helentrude, a nun of Heerse near Paderborn, gives a wonderful increase of detail. The narrative in its present form may date somewhere between 90o and Imo, while Helentrude apparently flourished before io5o. According to her account, the son of a powerful pagan king de mands in marriage Ursula, the beautiful daughter of Deonotus, a king "in partibus Britanniae." Ursula is warned by a dream to demand a respite of three years, during which time her com panions are to be 1 i,000 virgins collected from both kingdoms. After vigorous exercise in all kinds of manly sports, to the ad miration of the populace, they are carried off by a sudden breeze in eleven triremes to Thiel on the Waal in Gelderland. Thence they sail up the Rhine by way of Cologne to Basel, at which place they make fast their vessels and proceed on foot to Rome. Re turning, they re-enter their ships at Basel, but are slaughtered by the Huns when they reach Cologne. Their relics are then collected and buried "sicut hodie illic est cernere," in a spot where "to this day" no meaner sepulture is permitted.
The legend of Cologne grew to further dimensions with the revelations of St. Elizabeth of SchOnau in the 12th century, motived apparently by the opening up of an old Roman burial ground in Cologne. It advanced still further with Hermann Joseph, a Praemonstratensian canon of Steinfeld in 1183, who explained the presence of the bones of little children among those of the sacred virgins.
See H. Crombach, Vita et Martyrium S. Ursulae (Cologne, 1647), and the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, 21st October, where the story fills 230 folio pages. The rationalization of the story is to be found in Oscar Schade, Die Sage von der heiligen Ursula (Hanover, 1854), of which there is a short résumé in S. Baring-Gould's Lives of the Saints. See also S. Popular Myths of the Middle Ages; A. G. Stein, Die Heilige Ursula (Cologne, 1879). The credibility of some of the details was doubted as early as the 13th century by Jacobus de Voragine in the Legenda aurea. (T. A. A. ; A. J. G.)