Ursula and companions (4th century(?)), virgins and martyrs. At the basis of the cult of these martyrs, whose Legend developed incredible additions, is a Latin inscription, carved in stone c.400, in the church of St. Ursula at Cologne. This records that Clematius restored a ruined church in honour of some local virgin-martyrs. Their names, number, and date, and circumstances of death were alike unrecorded. Posterity, however, was not content with such ignorance. A 9th-century sermon admitted that no authentic written account survived, but claimed to give the local tradition that they suffered under Maximian, that they were very numerous, that they had come to Cologne in the wake of Maurice and the Theban Legion, and were probably British in origin. There is a disconcerting silence about them on the part of the martyrologies: a late 9th-century calendar gives the name of Ursula among a group of five, eight, or eleven martyrs. In the 10th century their number became fixed at 11, 000, probably through the wrong expansion of an abbreviated text which read ‘XI MV’ into ‘undecim millia virgines’ (= 11, 000 virgins) instead of ‘undecim martyres virgines’ (= eleven virgin-martyrs). However this may be, once launched, the Legend became popular and several writers invented details until it reached its final form in the Golden Legend. This may be summarized as follows. Ursula, daughter of a British Christian king, was betrothed to a pagan prince, but obtained a three-year delay because she wished to remain a virgin. She spent this time in a ship, cruising with ten noble companions, each of whom occupied a ship with an incredible thousand companions on board. Winds drove them into the mouth of the Rhine; they sailed to Cologne and Basle, went on pilgrimage to Rome and returned to Cologne. There they were martyred by the Huns for their Christianity, Ursula having refused to marry their chief. The citizens of Cologne buried them and a church was built in their honour. There are other variants of the Legend, including one which gives Ursula a Cornish origin and makes her sail to Brittany for her marriage with 11, 000 maidens and 60, 000 serving-women.
In 1155 a vast collection of bones was found at Cologne, which were unhesitatingly identified with those of Ursula and her followers and were sent out as relics to many countries. The fact that some of these were of men and children (the collection probably came from a large hitherto unknown burial-ground) only gave impetus to the further development of the Legend. At the same time a number of forged inscriptions were ‘discovered’ of imaginary people alleged to have suffered with Ursula. Meanwhile further support was given to the cult by the revelations of Elizabeth of Schönau. This visionary, it is claimed, was fed with spurious information by two abbots of Deutz. The main areas of the cult of Ursula were the Rhineland, the Low Countries, Northern France, and Venice. But her supposed British origin does not seem to have made her particularly popular in England. Only two ancient churches were dedicated to her, but her feast occurs in the Sarum and other calendars on her usual day, 21 October.
Her late medieval iconography is extremely rich: about twenty-five cycles of her Life survive, painted from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Several of these are at Cologne, but there are also notable examples by Memling at Bruges and Carpaccio at Venice. The latter decorated the School of St. Ursula and includes elements dependent on the revelations of Elizabeth of Schönau such as the meeting between Ursula and Pope Cyriacus at Rome and the inclusion of a bishop and even a cardinal among the companions of Ursula in her martyrdom. In England there is a fine stained-glass window at Holy Trinity church, York, which depicts Ursula in the usual way, with crown and sceptre, and protecting under her cloak a group of her companions. Ursula was one of the saints affected by the Roman reform of the calendar in 1969: her feast is no longer in the universal calendar, but is permitted in certain localities.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Oct. IX (1885), 73–303; ‘Historia SS. Ursulae et sociorum eius antiquior’, Anal. Boll., iii (1884), 5–20; W. Levison, Das Werden der Ursula-Legende (1928); M. Coens, ‘Les Vierges martyres de Cologne’, Anal. Boll., xlvii (1920), 89–110; M. Tout, ‘The Legend of St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins’ in Historical Essays (ed. T. F. Tout and J. Tait, 1902), pp. 17–56; J. Sozbacher and V. Hopmann, Die Legende der hl. Ursula (1964); F. Valcanover, La leggenda di S. Orsola (1963); G. de Tervarent, La Légende de S. Ursule dans la littérature et l'art du moyen âge (
2 vols. , 1931). Bibl. SS., ix. 1252–71
