The real St. Ursula

The Real St Ursula
by Philip Griffin
author of Ursula's Maiden Army

The Real Story, Other Points of View, Paintings of St. Ursula

The Real Story
In Cologne, Germany, at the back of the main station, just off Ursula Strasse and tucked away in an unassuming cobbled square called Ursula Platz, is the modern-day church of St. Ursula. It is a pleasantly re-constructed Sixteenth Century church well worth a visit in its own right should you ever be in the vicinity. What should interest you more, however—and what should cause you to linger in the Platz, close your eyes, and try to imagine—is what happened there around fifteen hundred years ago—a thousand years or more before the church was built. For on that ground, beneath the anonymous cobbles—which in ancient times lay immediately outside one of the main gates to Colonia, “the jewel of Rome north of the Alps,”—something truly terrible took place.

Whatever did happen there on that fearful ground, most probably transpired sometime around the Fourth or Fifth Centuries AD. This was the time of the collapse of Rome; the time of the Germanic invasions; the time of the Chaos that led the whole of Western Europe into the Dark Ages. Many awful things were happening at that time, in many places and all at once. Only some of them were properly recorded. History’s front page was full and this story simply did not make it into the record.

Turn sharp right as you enter the modern-day church and enter the Golden Chamber. See the bones of the victims stacked high, literally from floor to ceiling. See the skulls—skulls of women brutally murdered—wrapped in Medieval packaging to be sold as relics. There were so many bodies in the mass grave that this House of God was built over, it was a veritable factory of reliquaries with more than enough raw material to sustain a thriving industry. For several hundred years, bits of Ursularine bone were what brought most visitors to Cologne. Indeed, as icons go, Ursula and her “virgins” were the Fourteenth Century equivalent of Elvis!

Back in the main chamber of the modern church, set in the wall and about the size of a large TV screen, is the enigmatic Clematius stone, it’s difficult-to-decipher, ambiguous Latin inscription*, carved soon after the appalling event, provides us with the only historical evidence for the atrocity that occurred here. Apart from giving us the sole name we have that is linked with the real-life episode—Clematius—it alludes in vague terms to the martyrdom of many virgins, and fails to enlighten us with any useful information about who they were or why they were there. But that in itself is enough! It is testament that something did happen here—something involving the death of many women.

It may not have been written down and recorded, but such a powerful story about some undoubtedly incredible women simply had to be told. And so it was! The Romanized Germans of the Rhineland made it their own. As bear-worshipping folk, they probably changed the name of the women’s leader to Ursula, “little bear.” They passed it orally down through the generations—no doubt elaborating here, embroidering there–and the truth as well as the distortions became preserved in the ageless aspic of myth and legend.

Then, several hundred years later, Latin scholars—hagiographers from the Vatican—came to the Rhineland on an important task: they sought pagan heroes they could turn into saints, thereby satisfying the Church’s ambition to expand and become truly catholic—truly all-embracing. The papal clerics made their own interpretation of the stories they heard from the Rhineland folk, and “Saint Ursula” was created—the forlorn, fateful woman who led eleven thousand “virgins” to their deaths on an unfortunate “pilgrimage.” But the German scholars who accompanied the officials noted a different story and recorded references to the women being armor-clad, weapon-bearing, horse riders, who were “well-versed in the arts of war.” And indeed, even the priests could not resist the iconized image of Ursula depicted clutching an arrow—or even a brace of them. Let there be no mistake, all agreed, Ursula and her “virgins” were no strangers to weaponry. What the Church preferred to ignore, however, was that the women were not on a “pilgrimage” of any kind. They had formed an army and were on a mission!

The truth is . . . the truth is lost. The actual story of whoever the real women were and whatever really happened to them is something we shall never know. I have, nevertheless, attempted to piece together the few fragments of the real story that have come down to us and incorporated these, plus the main elements of the Ursularine legend, into this purely fictional account. There almost certainly was a real Pinnosa, as well as a real Brittola, Martha, Saula and Cordula. These names survived in the oral tradition and were recorded by both the papal hagiographers and their accompanying German scholars. And who knows; maybe there really was amongst them a truly unique and remarkable princess from Britannia, who led an army of women on a campaign to the Continent, where they met a horrific death outside a heavily-fortified city’s gates at the merciless hands of the Huns.

* The Latin inscription on the Clematius Stone reads as follows:

DIVINIS FLAMMEIS VISIONIB. FREQVENTER
ADMONIT. ET VIRTVTIS MAGNÆ MAI
IESTATIS MARTYRII CAELESTIVM VIRGIN
IMMINENTIVM EX PARTIB. ORIENTIS
EXSIBITVS PRO VOTO CLEMATIVS V. C. DE
PROPRIO IN LOCO SVO HANC BASILICA
VOTO QVOD DEBEBAT A FVNDAMENTIS
RESTITVIT SI QVIS AVTEM SVPER TANTAM
MAIIESTATEM HVIIVS BASILICÆ VBI SANC
TAE VIRGINES PRO NOMINE. XPI. SAN
GVINEM SVVM FVDERVNT CORPVS ALICVIIVS
DEPOSVERIT EXCEPTIS VIRCINIB. SCIAT SE
SEMPITERNIS TARTARI IGNIB. PVNIENDVM

(**A certain Clematius, a man of senatorial rank, who seems to have lived in the Orient before going to Cologne, was led by frequent visions to rebuild in this city, on land belonging to him, a basilica which had fallen into ruins, in honor of virgins who had suffered martyrdom on that spot.)

** English translation courtesy of: The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XV Copyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton Company

©Philip Griffin 2005 ("Historical Note" from Ursula's Maiden Army)