Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/829

Rh no meaner sepulture is permitted. Then follows the usual allusion to Clematius; the date is expressly fixed at 238, and the whole revelation is seemingly ascribed to St Cordula, one of the 11,000 who, after escaping death on the first day by hiding in one of the vessels, on the morrow gave herself up to death of her own accord. Towards the beginning of the 12th century Sigebert of Gembloux (ob. 1112) gives a brief résumé of-the same story. He is the first to introduce the name of Attila, and dates the occurrence 453.

Passing over the visions and exhumations of the first half of the 12th century, we come to the singular revelations of St Elizabeth of Schonau. These revelations, delivered in Latin, German or a mixed jargon of both languages, were turned into simple Latin by Elizabeth's brother Egbert, from whose words it would seem that in 1156 an old Roman burial ground had lately been laid open near Cologne. The cemetery was naturally associated with the legend of St Ursula; and, this identification once accepted, it is not unlikely that when more careful investigations revealed male skeletons and tombstones bearing the names of men, other and more definite epitaphs were invented to reconcile the old traditions with the facts of such a damaging discovery. Hence perhaps the barefaced imposture: “ Cyriacus, papa Romanus, qui cum gaudio suscepit sanctas virgines et cum eis Coloniam reversus martyrium suscepit.” One or two circumstantial forgeries of this kind would form the basis of a scheme for explaining not a few other problems of the case, such as the plain inscription “ Jacobus, ” whom St Elizabeth promptly transformed into a supposititious British archbishop of Antioch, brother to the equally imaginary British Pope Cyriacus. For these epitaphs, with others of a humbler kind, were brought before St Elizabeth to be identified in her ecstatic converse with St Verena, her cousin St Ursula, and others. Elizabeth herself at times distrusted her own revelations: there was no Cyriac in the list of the popes; Antherus, who was said to be his successor (235-36), died more than two centuries before Attila, to whom common report assigned the massacre; and it was hardly credible that James of Antioch could cut 11,000 epitaphs in less than three days. Every doubt, however, was met by the invention of a new and still more improbable detail. According to St Verena, the virgins suffered when Maximus and “ Africanus ” were prirtcipes at Rome (P 387-88).

In 1183 the mantle of St Elizabeth fell upon Hermann Joseph, a Praemonstratensian canon at Steinfeld. He had to solve a more difficult problem than St Elizabeth's; for the skeletons of little children, ranging in age from two months to seven years, had now been found buried with the sacred virgins. But even such a difficulty Hermann explains away: the little children were brothers, sisters or more distant relatives of the II, OOO. Hermann's revelations are mainly taken up with an attempt to show the mutual relationship of nearly all the characters he introduces. The names are a most extraordinary mixture. Among British bishops we have Michael, William, James and Columbanus. Sovereign princes—an Oliver, a Clovis and a Pepin-start out in every page, till the writer finds it necessary to apologize for the number of his kings and his own blunders. But, for all this, Hermann exposes his own doubts when he tells that often, as he was preparing to write, he heard a voice bidding him lay down the pen, “ for whatever you write will be an unmixed lie.” Hermann makes St Ursula a native of Brittany, and so approximates to the version of the story given by Geoffrey of Monmouth (Historia Britouurn), according to whom Maximian, after fleeing from Rome and acquiring Britain by marriage, proceeds to conquer Brittany and settle it with men from the island opposite. For these settlers he has to find British wives, and to this end collects 11,000 noble and 60,000 plebeian virgins, who are wrecked on their passage across. Certain of the vessels being driven upon “ barbarous islands, ” their passengers are slain by Guanius and Melga, “ kings of the Huns and Picts, ” whom Gratian had called in to his aid against Maximian. In this version St Ursula is a daughter of Dionotus, king of Cornwall. Hermann alludes more than once to the Historia Britouum, and even to King Arthur.

The legend of St Ursula is perhaps the most curious instance of the development of an ecclesiastical myth. Even in the earliest form known to us this legend is probably the complex growth of centuries, and any claim to the discovery of the first germ can hardly approve itself to the historic sense. These remarks apply especially to that venerable rationalization which evolves the whole legend from a misreading of Uudecimilla, the name of Ursula's companion, into uudecim millia, i.e. II, OOO. A more modern theory makes St Ursula the Christianized representative of the old Teutonic goddess Freya, who, in Thuringia, under the name of Horsel or Ursel, and in Sweden Old Urschel, welcomed the souls of dead maidens. Not a few singular coincidences seem to point in the same direction, especially the two virgins, “ Martha and Saula, ” whom Usuard states to have suffered “cum aliis pluribus ” on the 20th of October, whence they were probably transferred to the 21st. It is curious to note that Jerome and many of the earliest martyrologies extant have on the 21st of October the entry, “Dasius Zoticus, Gaius cum duodecirrt militibus.” Even in copies of Terome this is transformed into rnillibus; and it is perhaps not impossible that to this misreading we may indirectly owe the “ thousands ” in the Ursula legend. The two entries seem to be mutually exclusive in all the early martyrologies mentioned in this article, and in those printed in Migne, cxxxvii. The earlier “ Dasius ” entry seems to disappear steadily, though slowly, as the Ursula legend works its way into current martyrologies.

See H. Crombach, Vita et Martyrium S. Ursulae (Cologne, 1647), and the Bollandist Acta Sartctorurn, 21st October, where the story fills 230 folio pages. The rationalization of the story is to be found in Oscar Schade, Die Sage oort der heiligert Ursula (Hanover, 185), of which there is a short résumé in S. 'Baring-Gould's Lives of the Saints. See also S. Baring-Gould, Popular Myths of the Middle Ages; A. G. Stein, Die Heilige Ursula (Cologne, 1879). The credibility of some of the details was doubted as early as the 13th century by jacobus de Voragine in the Legertda aurea. For further works, especially medieval, see A. Potthast, ''Bibliotheca hist. med. aevi'' (Berlin, 1896), p. 1616. (T. A. A.; A. J. G.)

URSULINES, a religious order founded at Brescia by Angela Merici (1470-1540) in November 1535, primarily for the education of girls and the care of the sick and needy. It was approved in 1544 by Paul III., and in 1572 Gregory XIII., at the instance of Charles Borromeo, declared it a religious order under the rule of St Augustine. In the following century it was powerfully encouraged and supported by St Francis of Sales. In most cases, especially in France, the sisters adopted enclosure and took solemn vows; they were called the “religious ” Ursulines as distinct from the “ congregated ” Ursulines, who preferred to follow the original plan. There were Ursulines in Canada in 163Q, who taught the catechism to Indian children, and subsequently helped to preserve a religious spirit among the French population and to humanize the Indians and half-breeds. Towards the beginning of the 18th century, the period of its greatest prosperity, the order embraced some 20 congregations, with 350 convents and from 15,000 to 20,000 nuns. The members wear a black dress bound by a leathern girdle, a black sleeveless cloak, and a close-fitting head-dress with a white veil and a longer black veil. Their patron is the St Ursula mentioned above. The founder was beatified by Clement VIII. in 1768 and canonized as St Agnes of Brescia by Pius VII. in 1807. The Irish Ursulines were established at Cork in 1771 by Miss Nano Nagle. The Ursulines do not increase now as rapidly as they did, congregations taking simple vows like the Sisters of Mercy being apparently more adapted to modern needs.

URSWICK, CHRISTOPHER (1448-1522), English diplomatist, was born at Furness in Lancashire and was probably educated at Cambridge. He became chaplain to Margaret, countess of Richmond and Derby, and was employed by her to forward the schemes for securing the English throne for her son, Henry of Richmond, afterwards Henry VII. He crossed from Harfleui to Wales with Henry in August 1485, and was present at the