Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/21

Rh U R S U R S 13 and others. Finally, Logopandecteision handles the sub ject of a universal language. These original works of Urquhart s, as far as intrinsic literary merits go, are not of much account ; but they show perhaps better than any thing else that singular mixture of patriotism, generosity, shrewdness, humour, with prejudice, almost insane family pride, crotchet, pedantry, and apparent insensibility to some kinds of the ridiculous which was the dominant characteristic of a certain part of the Scottish nation, and which has furnished Sir Walter Scott with some of his most matchless studies and touches. The Translation of Rabelais, which Urquhart produced in 1653, is a very different work from the literary point of view, entering into and reproducing the author s spirit with wonderful success, and, though by no means technically faithful, far excelling in value all merely faithful versions. Next to nothing is known of Urquhart after its date ; it is said that he sought a refuge, like other cavaliers, on the Con tinent, and died (1660) of a fit of laughing, brought on by joy at hearing of the Restoration. His original Works, with such scanty particulars of his life as are known, and with reproductions of two original and curious frontis pieces, which represent him as a handsome and dandified wearer of full cavalier costume, were published in a stately quarto volume by the Maitland Club (Edinburgh, 1834). The Rabelais has been repeatedly reprinted, and with Motteux s additions forms the sub stance of Gargantua and Pantagrucl in Bonn s Extra Series. URSINUS, ZACHARIAS (1534-1583), German theo logian, and one of the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism (see vol. v. p. 219), was a native of Breslau, and became a disciple of Melanchthon at Wittenberg. He afterwards studied divinity at Geneva under Calvin and Hebrew at Paris under Mercier. In 1561 he was appointed professor in the Collegium Sapiential at Heidelberg, where in 1563 at the instance of the elector-palatine, Frederick III., he drew up the Catechism in cooperation with Kaspar Olevian. The death of the elector in 1577 led to the removal of Ursinus, who from 1578 till his death in 1583 occupied a professorial chair at Neustadt-an-der-Haardt. His Works were published in 1587-89, and a more complete edition by his son and two of his pupils, Pareus and Reuterus, in 1612. URSULA, ST, and her companions, virgins and martyrs, are commemorated by the Roman Church on 21st October. The Breviary gives no legend ; but in current works, such as Butler s Lives of the Saints, it is to the effect that &quot; 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.&quot; 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 IMaurus (845) ; but a 9th -century life of St Cunibert (06. 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 plausibly urges, between 889 and 891, has the following entry under 21st October: &quot;xi. virg. Ursule Sencie Gregorie Pinose Marthe Saule Britule Satnine Rabacie Saturie Paladie.&quot; 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. 847) in Wandelbert s metrical martyrology (21st October) : &quot; Tune numemsa simul Rheni per littora fulgent Christi virgineis erecta tropica inaniplis Agrippinse urbi, quarura furor iinpius uliin Millia inactavit ductriribus inclyta sanctis.&quot; The full legend first makes its appearance in a festival discourse (scrmo) for 21st October, written, as internal evidence seems to show, between 731 and 839. This sermo does not mention St Ursula, but makes Pinnosa or Vinnosa the leader of these spiritual &quot;amazons,&quot; 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 con current traditions of Britain, Batavia (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 &quot; nobis omni tempore celeberrima &quot; ; 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 (nostrates). Even in his time there were sceptics who pointed dubiously to the full-grown bones of&quot; widows &quot; and of men among the so-called virgin relics. But to a priori reasoners who mocked at the notion of gather ing so large a band of virgins in one place there was a triumphant answer ready : if Christ, while yet a man on earth, could summon &quot;twelve legions of angels&quot; to his aid, surely we could allow that a meagre band of &quot;less than 12,000 virgins might follow the stain less lamb &quot; in heaven. 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 &quot; Clematius, vir consularis, ex partibus Orientis.&quot; Two or three centuries later the Passio XL 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. Ac cording to her account, the son of a powerful pagan king demands in marriage Ursula, the beautiful daughter of Deonotus, a king &quot;in partibus Britannia 1 .&quot; 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 popu lace, they are carried off by a sudden breeze in eleven triremes to Thiel in Guelderland on the Waal. 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 &quot;sicut hodie illic est cernere, &quot; in a spot where &quot;to this day&quot; no meaner sepulture is permitted. Then follows the usual allusion to Clematius ; the date is expressly fixed at 238 ; and the whole revelation is seem ingly ascribed to St Cordula, one of the eleven thousand, 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 resume 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 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 un likely that, when more careful investigation 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.&quot; 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 &quot;Jacobus,&quot; 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 Yerena, 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 (235-236), 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 eleven thousand 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 Yerena, the virgins suffered when Maximusand &quot; Africanus&quot; were 2^incipcs at Rome (? 387-388). In 1183 the mantle of St Elizabeth fell upon Hermann Joseph, a Pramonstratensian canon at Steinfeld. He had to solve a more liflicnlt problem than St Elizabeth s ; for the skeletons of little