St. Ursula (and the eleven
thousand virgins) was the daughter of a British Christian king betrothed
to a pagan prince. Wishing to preserve her virginity, she obtained a three-year
postponement, which she spent cruising on ship, according to legend: accompanied
by ten noblewomen virgin companions, each occupying a ship with a thousand
virgin handmaids. A storm blew them to the mouth of the Rhine, after what
they sailed to Cologne and set out on a pilgrimage to Rome, where they
met the Pope, Cyriacus. They sailed on to Basel and then returned to Cologne,
where they were all martyred by the Huns for their Christianity after Ursula
refused to marry their leader. The leader of the Huns allegedly shot Ursula
dead with an arrow.
Various sources claim that the actual number of virgins accompanying
St. Ursula was between three and ten. Theories of where the eleven thousand
came from include the possible misreading of the abbreviation “XI M.V.”,
supposedly standing for “eleven martyred virgins” (“undecim martyres virgines”),
as “eleven thousand virgins” (“undecim millia virgines”). Ursula’s feast
day is October 21, but is no longer listed in the universal calendar since
1969 after the Roman reform of the calendar.
