Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/292

280 280 ST. URSULA' infnriated. He drew the bow which he held in his hand, and transfixed her breast with three arrows, so that she too fell dead and her soul ascended to heaven with the souls of that vast army she had led glorionslj to death. When the barbarians had removed from Cologne, the inhabitants came oat of the city and gathered np the holy bodies and reverently buried them in the plain where they had suffered. Not long after, in the places where many bodies lay together, they built churches. The most famous is called the Church of the Holy Virgins, and it is held in such reverence that no other body is buried there. " For," says Bishop Lindan, <* the ground or earth of that church will receive no other body, no not the corps of young infants newly baptized, but as it were vomiting tbem up again in the night, they will be cast above ground and not be contained within it, as hath often been tried." A manuscript history of British affairs by Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th century), preserved in the Vatican, gives the Eng- lish version of the legend quoted by Butler, Villegas, etc. It is as follows : — In the reign of Gratian (about 382), one of his captains called Maximus, a native of Britain, and a famous soldier, rebelled against him and was proclaimed emperor. He entered France and possessed himself of Armorica (Bre- tagne), where the British soldiers put to death all the inhabitants and gave their name to the country. Maximus wished to people the place, so he sent to Britain for a great number of virgins to marry his soldiers. Conanus, his general and warden of the ports, loved Ursula, the daughter of Deonocius, king of Cornwall, and desired that she should be sent for his wife. Eleven thousand maidens were collected in Britain to accompany her to Armorica. They were carried by contrary winds to Zealand and up the Bhinc, as far as the tide ebbs and flows. Gratian meanwhile engaged the Picts and Huns to make war upon the rebel Maximus. They were pirating the seas preparatory to attacking bim, when they met the ships containing the eleven thousand virgins and put them all to { death. The martyrs were buried at Cullen (Cologne). The date of Ursula's martyrdom is variously fixed : some authorities give the middle of the third century; some suggest different periods in the fourth; but more generally it is taken as occur- ring in the middle of the fifth century, when the Huns were invading Gaul and Belgium. Ursula and her companions lay neglected, until her body and a few others buried in the same tomb were discovered at Cologne, by the reigning bishop. Some assert that the finder was St. Cunibert, bishop of Cologne in the middle of the seventh century, who had so great a devotion to St. Ursula that he has been accused of inventing the legend. For her translation, etc., see Elisabeth 9).) Many bodies preserved with veneration in different churches are said to be those of the companions of St Ursula ; some have been arbitrarily named after their arrival from Cologne ; some remain un- named ; some are called Ursula, though not claiming to be identified with tibe leader of the eleven thousand. Some of St. Ursula's companions are — her aunt St. Gerasine with her four daughters SS. Babylla, Julia (18), ViGTOKL^ and Aubea (6), SS. BBiom (1), Helen (4), Sapientl^, Cobdula, OdILIA (1), CUNEBA, CuNEOUND (l), Mechtumd,Chbi8ghona, Wibband, Aonbs (4) ; Florence (4), Vebena (2). Criticism has been busy with the legend of St. Ursula. The Bollandists, among others, have devoted two hundred and thirty foHo pages to its elucidation. The earliest document bearing on her history is a sermon for her festival which they date between the years 750 and 850. It appears that ancient calendars (those of Odo, Bede, Florus, Jerome, etc.,) copied by Usuardus, do not men- tion her unless — as the authors of the New Paris Breviary assert — she is repre- sented by the entry for Oct. 20, " The passion of the Blessed Virgins Martha and Saula and many others in the city of Cologne." The editors of the Roman Martyrology make a distinct entry of Si Ursula and her companions, Oct. 21, and they do not state the number. The first