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Saint
Ursula and her companions, the 11,000 virgins
October
21: Feast day of St Ursula,
and her companions, virgins (nuns) and martyrs
(Hairy
silphium, Silphium asteriscus, is plant of the day, dedicated
to Ursula.)
Much
of the little we know of the origins of the legend of St Ursula and
the 11,000 Virgins we know from Helentrude, a nun of Heerse near Paderborn
(a city in North
Rhine-Westphalia, Germany),
whose narrative may date from somewhere between 900
and 1100. In the
legend, Ursula was the beautiful daughter of a Christian British
king, Dionotus
of Cornwall, and had taken a vow of chastity, but, against
her wishes, was betrothed to a pagan prince.
Ursula
was warned by a dream to demand as a condition of marriage, his
conversion to Christianity, and a delay of three years, during which
time her companions were to be 11,000 virgins collected from her own
kingdom and that of her suitor. After vigorous exercise in all kinds
of manly sports, to the admiration of the people, they were carried
off by a sudden breeze in eleven triremes
to Tiel in Gelderland.
They arrived in Cologne,
Germany, sailing up the Rhine
to Basel,
Switzerland, where they moored their ships
and crossed the Alps in order to visit Rome (on the instructions of
an angel). On their return, Cologne was being sacked by the
Huns, who slaughtered the virgins after Ursula refused the advances
of a Hun prince. One of the 11,000, St Cordula, escaped death on the
first day by hiding, wrote down the tale for posterity, then gave
herself up to join her sisters in martyrdom.
What might
be at the root of the tale is that group of virgins were martyred at
Cologne, Germany, perhaps under Diocletian
in the 4th Century. They probably numbered 11 women, rather than
11,001, possibly an exaggeration from a misreading of a Roman text. Jeromes
writings and many of the earliest martyrologies have on October 21
the entry, Dasius Zoticus, Gaius cum duodecim militibus.
Another theory says that the number arose due to an error in the
translation of Latin shorthand. That shorthand was XI MV, and it was
translated as "eleven thousand virgins" (or undecim
millia virgines) when it should have been "eleven virgin
martyrs" (or undecim martyres virgines). Even in copies
of Jerome this is transformed into millibus; and it is
possible that this misreading gave rise to the thousands in
the Ursula legend.
Another
legend tells that Armorica
(Brittany)
was settled by British colonisers and soldiers after the conquest of
Britain and Gaul in 383 by the Roman Emperor Magnus
Clemens Maximus
(ruled 383
- 388).
The settlers king, Cynan
Meiriadog,
demanded wives for the settlers from King Dionotus (ruled from 389-402
CE in other words, too late for this tale to be plausible),
whereupon Dionotus sent his daughter Ursula, who was to marry Cynan,
with 11,000 noble maidens and 60,000 common women. Their fleet was
shipwrecked and all the women were enslaved or murdered.
So,
the legends origin is lost to time, but we do know that an
ancient stone in the wall of Saint Ursula's Church, Cologne, records
that a certain senator Clematius rebuilt a memorial church in the 4th
Century on the site of the martyrdom of a number of virgins. Nothing
more seems to have been recorded of Ursula and the Virgins for
another 400 years, when in the 9th Century the legend
commenced as we know it today.
Sabine
Baring-Gould
inCurious
Myths of the Middle Ages
(1867) suggests that St Ursula is the Christianised
representative of the old Teutonic goddess Freya
(Frigg),
who, in Thuringia, under the name of Horsel or Ursel, and in Sweden
Old Urschel, welcomed the souls of dead maidens. Saint
Ursula with her bow and arrow, her ship and virginal companions,
sails up the Rhine as Urschel, the Teutonic moon goddess, sailed
before her, with all the graceful attributes of Isis
and Diana.
She is likely to be one of the saints who has become confused with
the old gods, that is, a real martyr's story has been embellished
with that particulars of an old myth. A Slavic moon goddess
was apparently known as Orsel.
Helen
Farias, founder of The
Beltane Papers, proposes that Ursula was originally the
German bear goddess, Orsel, and conjectures that her companions are
the stars surrounding the constellation of the Bear, Ursa Major, the
great She-Bear known to us as the Plough or Dipper (Farias, Helen,
The TBP Lunar-Solar Festival Calendar, The Beltane Papers,
Issue 3, Beltane, 1993).
The
bear goddess was known to the Greeks as Artemis
(daughter
of Zeus
and
Leto
and
the twin sister of Apollo)
and in China as Matsu
Po, Queen of Heaven and the Sea.
According to one
source, one of Artemis's frequent animal incarnations was the
Great She-bear (constellation Ursa
Major), ruler of the stars and protectress of the axis
mundi, Pole of the World. The Helvetian (Swiss) tribes
around what is now Berne, worshipped her as the She-Bear, and she is
still their heraldic arms. Berne, in fact, means She-bear,
just as Urus means bear. Sometimes the Helvetians called her
Artio, shortened to Art by the Celtic tribes who married her
to the Bear-king, Arthur. As Artio's Lord of the Hunt, the medieval
god of witches came to be called, Robin son of Art. In Irish,
Art meant God, but its earlier meaning was Goddess'
more specifically the Bear-goddess.
Waverly
Fitzgerald (School
of the Seasons) writes that in Norway, on this day, no work
was to be done that involved using the wheel, such as spinning,
milling, and so on, suggesting a fascinating connection with the
goddess of Fate.
Saint
Ursula is represented in Christian art as a princess holding an
arrow, sometimes with maidens under her mantle; or an angel coming
to her as she sleeps; or taking leave of her royal parents; in a
boat surrounded by maidens and ecclesiastics, as she sails down the
Rhine; or she and her companions massacred by archers.
At
Cologne, where Ursula is venerated, she is the patroness of
unmarried women, drapers, and teachers; invoked for chastity and
holy wedlock, and against the plague.
In
November, 1493, on his second voyage, Columbus
discovered a large island surrounded by an archipelago. He
named the largest island Saint Ursula, and the others he
called the Once Mil Vigines (the 11,000 Virgins.) They
are still known today as the Virgin Islands. Appropriately
enough, Saint
Ursula's Day
is a holiday in the British
Virgin Islands.
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