Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/828

Rh interests in the palace, and to manage the Spanish nobles, many of whom were of the Austrian party, and who were generally opposed to foreign ways, or to interferences with the absurdly elaborate etiquette of the Spanish court. Madame des Ursins was resolved not to be a mere agent of Versailles. During the first period of her tenure of office she was in frequent conflict with the French ambassadors, who claimed the right of sitting in the council and of directing the government. Madame des Ursins wisely held that the young king should rely as much as possible on his Spanish subjects. In 1704 her enemies at the French court secured her recall. But she still had the support of Madame de Maintenon, and her own tact enabled her to placate Louis XIV. In 1705 she returned to Spain, with a free hand, and with what was practically the power to name her own ministry. During the worst times of the war of the Spanish Succession she was the real head of the Bourbon party, and was well aided by the spirited young queen of Philip V. She did not hesitate to quarrel even with such powerful personages as the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, Portocarrero, when they proved hostile, but she was so far from offending the pride of the nation, that when in 1709 Louis the XIV., severely pressed by the allies, threatened, or pretended, to desert the cause of his grandson, she dismissed all Frenchmen from the court and threw the king on the support of the Castilians. Her influence on the sovereigns was so strong that it would probably have lasted all through her life, but for the death of the queen. Madame des Ursins confesses in her voluminous correspondence that she made herself a burden to the king in her anxiety to exclude him from all other influence. She certainly rendered him ridiculous by watching him as if he were a child. Philip was too weak to break the yoke himself, and could only insist that he should be supplied with a wife. Madame des Ursins was persuaded by Alberoni to arrange a marriage with Eliza- beth Farnese of Parma, hoping to govern the new queen as she had done the old. Elizabeth had, however, stipulated that she should be allowed to dismiss the Camarera Mayor. Madame des Ursins, who had gone to meet the new queen at Quadraque near the frontier, was driven from her presence with insult, and sent out of Spain without being allowed to change her court dress, in such bitter weather that the coachman lost his hand by frostbite. After a short stay in France, she went to Italy, and finally established herself in Rome, where she had the satis- faction of meeting Alberoni after his fall, and where she died on the 5th of December 1722. Madame des Ursins has the credit of having begun to check the overgrown power of the church and the Inquisition in Spain, and of having attempted to bring the finances to order.

URSINUS, ZACHARIAS (1534-1583), German theologian, and one of the authors of the (q.v.), was born at Breslau on the 18th of July 1534, and became a disciple of Melanchthon at Wittenberg. He afterwards studied divinity at Geneva under Calvin, and Hebrew at Paris under Jean Mercier. In 1561 he was appointed professor in the Collegium Sapientiae at Heidelberg, where in 1563 at the instance of the elector-palatine, Frederick III., he drew up the Catechism in co-operation with Kaspar Olevian. The death of the elector in 1576 led to the removal of Ursinus, who from 1578 till his death in 1583 occupied a professorial chair at Neustadt-ar- der-Haardt.

URSULA, ST, and her companions, virgins and martyrs, are commemorated by the Roman Catholic church on the 21st of October. The Breviary gives no legend; but in current works, such as Butler's Lives of the Saints, it is to the effect that “these holy martyrs seem. . . to have met a glorious death in defence of their virginity from the army of the Huns .... They came originally from Britain, and Ursula was the conductor and encourager of the holy troop. ” The scene of the martyrdom is placed near the lower Rhine.

The date has been assigned by different writers to 238, c. 283 and c. 451. The story, however, is unknown both to Jerome and to Gregory of Tours-and this though the latter gives a somewhat detailed description of the Cologne church dedicated to that Theban legion with which the tradition of the-martyred virgins was very early associated. The story of their fate is not entered under 21st October in the martyrology of Bede (ob. c. 735), of Ado (c. 858), of Usuard (ante 877), Notker Balbulus (896) or Hrabanus Maurus (845); but a 9th-century life of St Cunibert (ob. 663) associates a prominent incident in the life of this saint with the basilica of the sacred virgins at Cologne (Surius vi. 275, ed. 1575). Not only does Archbishop Wichfrid attest a grant to the church of the sacred virgins outside the walls of Cologne (in 927), but he was a large donor in his own person. Still earlier a Cologne martyrology, written, as Binterim (who edited it in 1824) argues, between 889 and 891, has the following entry under 21st October: “ xi. virg. Ursule Sencie Gregorie Pinose Marthe Saule Britule Satnine Rabacie Saturie Paladie.” Much shorter entries are found in two of the old martyrologies printed in Migne (cxxxviii. 1207, 1275). A more definite allusion to the legend may be found (c. 850) in Wandelbert of Priin1's metrical martyrology (21st October):

The full legend first makes its appearance in a festival discourse (sermo) for the 21st of October, written, as internal evidence seems to show, between 731 and 839. This serma does not mention St Ursula, but makes Pinnosa or Vinnosa the leader of these spiritual “amazons,” who, to avoid Maximian's persecution, left their island home of Britain, following their bridegroom Christ towards that East whence their faith had come a hundred years before. The concurrent traditions of Britain, Batavia, i.e. the Netherlands (where many chapels still preserved their memory), and Cologne are called in evidence to prove the same origin. The legend was already very old and the festival “nobis omni tempore celeberrima”; but, as all written documents had disappeared since the burning of the early church erected over the sacred bones, the preacher could only appeal to the continuous and careful memory of the society to which he belonged (rwstrates). Even in his time there were sceptics who pointed dubiously to the full-grown bones of “ widows ” and of men among the so-called virgin relics. The author of the sermo pointedly rejects the two theories that connected the holy virgins with the Theban band and brought them as pilgrims from the East to the West; but he adds that even in his days there still existed an inscription in the church, showing how it had been restored from its foundations by a certain “Clematius, wir consular is, ex partibus Orientis.”

Two or three centuries.later the ''Passio XI. MM. SS. Virginum,'' based apparently on the revelations made to Helentrude, a nun of Heerse near Paderborn, gives a wonderful increase of detail. The narrative in its present form may date somewhere between 900 and 1100, while Helentrude apparently flourished before 1050. According to her account, the son of a powerful pagan king demands in marriage Ursula, the beautiful daughter of Deonotus, a king “ in partibus Britanniae." Ursula is warned by a dream to demand a respite of three years, during which time her companions are to be 11,000 virgins collected from both kingdoms. After vigorous exercise in all kinds of manly sports, to the admiration of the populace, they are carried off by a sudden, breeze in eleven triremes to Thiel on the Waal in Gelderland. Thence they sail up the Rhine by way of Cologne to Basel, at which place they make fast their vessels and proceed on foot to Rome. Returning, they re-enter their ships at Basel, but are slaughtered by the Huns when they reach Cologne. Their relics are then collected and buried “sicut hodie illic est cernere," in a spot where “to this day”