URSULA AND THE ELEVEN THOUSAND VIRGINS: The center of a noteworthy medieval cycle

of legend in the Roman Catholic Church. In the developed form of the legend St. Ursula was the daughter of Deonotus or Diognetus, a Christian king in Britain, and received her name as the antagonist of the bear, i.e., the devil (cf. I Sam. xvii. 34). Wooed by a heathen prince, she consented to marriage on condition that he become a Christian, and that he allow her three years for pilgrimage with her ten maidens. In eleven triremes, each with a thousand virgins, she went to the harbor of Tila on the coast of Gaul, then up the Rhine to Basel, where she left the fleet and completed the pilgrimage to Rome by land. Returning by the same route, Ursula and her virgins reached Cologne, where they were all massacred by Huns under their King Ezzel. Ursula refused to become the wife of Ezzel, and was killed with an arrow which became her constant attribute in Christian art. Immediately after the massacre, the Huns were routed by a celestial host of 11,000, and then the citizens of Cologne buried the slain virgins on the bank of the Rhine.

The earliest mention of the legend of Ursula and the 11,000 virgins is contained in the martyrology of Wandalbert of Priim, written at Cologne about 848 (ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH, Poet. Lat. tevi Car., ii. (1884), 569 sqq. The legend is, therefore, not older than the ninth century. The tradition takes its rise from the late fourth- or early fifth-century inscription of Clematius (ed. F. X. Kraus, Die christlichen Inschriften der Rheinlande, No. 294, 2 vols., Freiburg, 1890-94). According to this, Clematius, a man of senatorial rank, received a series of visions in which heavenly virgins admonished him in regard to their martyrdom, of which he had been ignorant. Clematius then restored the ruined basilica on his estates that commemorated these martyred virgins, warning the citizens of Cologne that no bodies except those of the virgins who there had suffered martyrdom were to be buried in the basilica. This belief in the martyrdom of an indefinite number of unnamed maiden martyrs, who had suffered at an unknown time and in unknown fashion, forms the kernel of the legend of St. Ursula. Thus, as in the additions to the martyrologies of Bede (ASB, Mar., ii. 25) and Ado (MPL, cxxiii. 431), arose the number of 11,000, probably from a combination of the "thousands" with the eleven names. [Ursula et XI M (" Ursula and eleven M[artyrs] ") was read "Ursula and eleven thousand (M being mistaken for millia, thousands").] The account of the virgin martyrs of Cologne was blended in the tenth century with the Gyrmo-Breton legend of the migration of women from Britain to Armorica during the reign of the Emperor Maximus, as narrated by Geoffrey of Monmouth (Historic regum Britannice, v. 15-16), thus giving the voyage of the virgins and their massacre. In the twelfth century the legend became history, being found in a number of chronicles. The two completely developed recensions of the legend are the Historic sanctce Ursuh et soeiarum ejus (Anadecta Bollandiana, iii. 7 sqq.) and the Passio sanctte Ursulce et sanetarum undecim millium virginum (ASB, Oct., ix. 157 sqq.). The day of St. Ursula

and her virgins is Oct. 21. (A. Heucg.)

113

Bibliography: The Paasio and various other early forms of the legends, with commentary, ed. V. de Buck, are in ASB, Oct., ix. 75-246, and this material was issued sep atate).y as De S. Ursula et undecim millibus sociarum, Brus sels, 1858 (replies to Schade, below); other materials were ed. by J. Klinkenberg, in Jahrbücher des Vereins von Alter tumsJreuiden in Rheinlande, lxxxviii. 79-95, Ltxxix. 105 134, xciii. 130-179, Bonn, 1890-92. Consult further: L. Reisehert, Lebenageschichte and Martyrertod der heiligen Ur sula, Cologne, 1837; O. Schade, Die Sage von der heiligen Ursula, Hanover, 1854 (began the modern critical inves tigation of the legend); P. Heber, Die vorkarolingischen christlichen Glaubenaboten am Rhein, Frankfort, 1858; E. M. J. Heinen, Leben, Fahrt, and Marlyrlod der heiligen Ursula, Cologne, 1858; J. H. Kessel, St. Ursula and Are Gesellscha jt, ib. 1863 (also replies to Schade); J. B. Dutron, Le L_gende de S. Ursula, Paris, 1868; Legend of St. Ursula and her Companions, London, 1869; G. Beetem6, S. Ursula et sea onze mille vierpea, Brussels, 1870; G. Floss, Annalen des historischen Vereins für den Niedenhein, xavi. 177 196, Cologne, 1874; Rettberg, KD, i. ll1-123; Friedrich, KD, i. 141-166; DNB, ME. 53-55.