URSULA, Sr., a celebrated saint and martyr of the Roman calendar, especially honored in Germany, and particularly at Cologne, which is the reputed place of her martyrdom. The legend substantially, in its present form, can be traced as far back as the end of the 11th or beginning of the 12th c., as it is found in the revised edition of the Chronicle of Sinebert of Gemblours (Portz, Rerum Germanicarum Scriptores, viii. 310), which was made 'between 1106 and 1111. Aecording to this writer, Ursula was the daughter of the British king Dconatus; and on account of her distinguished beauty, was sought in marriage by the son of a heathen prince who was originally named Holofernes, but afterward, when a christian. was called YEtherius. Her father was forced to yield to the demand; but Ursula made it a condition that her suitor should become a Christian, and that she should be allowed a space of three years, during which she proposed, in com pany with her maidens, to each of whom should be assigned a thousand companions, and a three-oared galley to convey them, to make a voyage of pious pilgrimage. The conditions were accepted; the maidens, to the number of 11,000, were collected from all parts of the world; and at length the expedition set sail from the British coast. Arriving at the mouth of the Rhine, they sailed up the river to Cologne, and thence upward to Basel, where, leaving their galleys, they proceeded by land to visit the tombs of the apostles at Rome. This pilgrimage accomplished, they descended the river to Cologne, which, however, had meanwhile 'fallen into the hands of an army of Hunnish invaders, under the headship of a chief, who, although not named, is plainly the Attila of his tory. Landing at Cologne in ignorant security, the pious virgins fell into the hands of these barbarous heathens, by whom they were all put to the sword with the exception of Ursula, who, for her beauty's sake, was reserved as a prize for the chief. She, too, however, as well as another maiden who had at first concealed herself in terror, demanded to join her companions in martyrdom; and thus the full number of 11,000 victims was made up. Heaven, however, interposed. A host of angel warriors smote the cruel Huns; Cologne was again set free; and in gratitude to their martyred intercessors, the citizens erected a church on the site still occupied by the church now known under the name of St. Ursula. Such is the legend as told by Sigebert, although it has undergone some modifications in later hands: The improbabilities and anachronisms of this legend were early observed; and it became the subject of an animated controversy soon after the reformation. On the one hand, the centuriators of Magdeburg exposed its weak points with unsparing severity; on the other, a Jesuit father, Crombach, devoted an entire folio volume to the vindication of the substantial truthfulness of the narrative. Many suggestions have been offered as explanations of its most startling improbability—viz., the alleged number of the martyred victims, 11,000. One of these is, that this belief arose from the name of a virgin who was really the companion of Ursula's martyrdom— Undeemilla The record of the martyrdom in the calendar thus being " Ursula et Undeemilla VV., " Ursula and Undecimilla Virgins," was easily mistaken for " Ursula et Undecim VV." and eleven thousand virgins." • Secular inquirers into the origin of the Ursula legend deny that it has the slightest foundation in any historical facts. They find the first traces of the reverencing of these
virgins in martyrologies and missals of the latter half of the 9th c., in which mention is made either of a very small number of virgins whose names are given, or a larger indefi nite number without names. In one metrical martyrology of this period, by Waidal hert, a monk of Piaim, they are already spoken of as thousands; and after the end of the lath c. the number of 11,000 is found in the calendars. The name of Ursula, however, does not occur till after the 10th c. ; and it was not till the 12th c. that the reverence fur Ursula became predominant over that of the associate virgins. With the 12t1r c. begins the discovery of the sacred bones. The alter Ursalinus was revealed by a vision in 1106; and at first, single skeletons were raised with the greatest solemnity; but beginning with 1155, the digging up of the field was carried on systematically for nine years, in the course of which thousands of skeletons were found, male as well as female, besides coffins, stone tablets with inscriptions, mid the like. What the several relics were was revealed to a nun named Elizabeth, then living in the diocese of Trier, to whom the holy martyrs appeared in visions. In this way were identified a pope of the name of Cyriacus, an archbishop, several cardinals, bishops, and priests, and also -Etberius, Ursula's bridegroom, along with whose title the cross, a crown, and other royal insignia were represented. It was also explained how all these men came to be in the company of the pious virgins. Even the children's bones found among the others were accounted for by revelations made forty years later to an abbot at Arnsberg, which confirmed and supplemented those of Elizabeth. The numerous human remains found in the Ursula!' field at the north side of the city have been accounted for by antiquaries, by making it out to have been the burying-ground of the ancient Roman Colonic Agrippina. The origin of the legend is accounted for by Schade in his work Die Saga von der Heiligen Ursula (Han. on the theory that it is a Christianized relic of old German paganism, in which Ursula has taken the place of the ancient goddess worshiped by the Scandi navians as Freyja (q. v.), and still remembered by the German people under the names of Berchta (q.v.), Hulda (q,v.), etc., and in Sweden by the very title of "Old Ursehel." But without pursuing further this curious inquiry, it will be enough to say, as con, corns the Roman Catholic view of the matter, that while the most learned of the Catho lic hagiographers, putting aside the idea of a directly and intentionally invented narra tive. have traced the origin of the legend to a real historical massacre of a very large number of Christian maidens, which took place during the invasion of Attila, and soon after the celebrated battle of Chalons in 451, all the modern writers of that church are agreed in regarding the details of the narrative, the number, the pilgrimage to Rome, the interposition of the heavenly host, etc., as legendary embellishments of the medimval chroniclers.—See, for the full exposition and vindication of the history, Crombach, Ursula Vendicala (fol. Colonim, 1617); and for it more critical exposition of the histori cal foundations on which it rests, Binterim's Culendarium Eccles. Germ. Colon. (1824); ZeitscArift fur Phil. u. Kaaol. Theologie (1850); Kellerhoven, La Legende de ,Sainte Ursula (1832).