medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
This is the celebration that used to be known as that of St. Ursula and her companions or as that of St. Ursula and her 11,000 companions or (earliest attestation) as that of the 11,000 Virgins. Underlying it is an inscription (_CIL_, XIII, 1313) now mounted in Köln's Basilika St. Ursula (built over the remains of a small, fourth-century church) that is variously dated either to the fourth or fifth century or to the ninth and that announces a rebuilding by a _Vir Clarissimus_ of Eastern origin named Clematius of a church dedicated to martyred virgins. Here's a view:
http://tinyurl.com/n35jsjf
The cult in question is attested from the eighth century by an Office for the 11,000 Virgins. Absent from the ninth-century historical martyrologies, these saints' suffering is given four lines by Wandelbert of Prüm in his ninth-century martyrology in verse. Also in the ninth century these virgins received a Passio (BHL 8427) in which they are led by a king's daughter of Britannia (usually taken to be Brittany) named Ursula who in order to preserve her vow of virginity flees her homeland by ship with eleven thousand fellow virgins, is forced by a storm to enter the Waal, and then travels upstream to Köln.
Still according to this Passio, Ursula, prompted by an angel, undertakes together with her virgins a pilgrimage from Köln to Rome. On their return, they find that Köln has been conquered by Huns. The latter's chieftain proposes marriage to Ursula; when she declines, she is shot to death with an arrow and all her companions are martyred. Thanks to the virgins' sacrifice, Köln is liberated from the Huns. The people of Köln recover the martyrs' bodies and a man of Eastern origin named Clematius erects a new basilica in their honor. Thus far the Passio.
Later versions add fresh details: the numbers of the companions and their social standing vary, Geoffrey of Monmouth offers a version in which they are from _his_ Britain, and the martyrs are said to return from Rome with a pope Cyriac and numerous other ecclesiastical dignitaries all of whom join the virgins in martyrdom. The names of a few companions were established early; prominent among these is St. Cordula (22. October). Other names were revealed to St. Elizabeth of Schönau. The revised Roman Martyrology of 2001 commemorates the virgins today (21. October) but does not assign them a particular number, large or small; it names Ursula as the representative figure to whom was dedicated the church in Köln erected at the site of their martyrdom.
Today's Basilika St. Ursula in Köln was known into the seventeenth century as the Church of the Holy Virgins. Erected in the early twelfth century and partly rebuilt in the late thirteenth, this chief temple of the cult in question suffered extensive damage in World War II and was restored in the early 1960s to a quasi-facsimile of its former self (e.g. the formerly vaulted ceiling of the nave was replaced with a curved span of very different appearance; the dominant interior color scheme is now the off-white and gray also seen in Köln's restored Kirche St. Andreas).
An illustrated, German-language page on this church:
http://tinyurl.com/jdbkcgw
Other exterior views of the church:
http://tinyurl.com/6rg7e7
http://tinyurl.com/5jo9mu
Views of the restored interior:
http://tinyurl.com/239wffd
http://tinyurl.com/234f3ff
http://tinyurl.com/255p9ml
http://tinyurl.com/29e7w6j
Some period-pertinent images of the Virgin Martyrs of Köln:
a) as depicted (scenes) in an incised twelfth-century copper alloy bowl of German origin in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht6/IRHT_095908-p.jpg
Detail views:
http://tinyurl.com/h44yjht
b) as depicted in an historiated initial "G" in a thirteenth-century missal from the abbey of Signy (Charleville-Mézières, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 149, fol. 136r):
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht6/IRHT_095908-p.jpg
c) as depicted in two earlier thirteenth-century glass windows (ca. 1220-1230) in the apse of the Basilika St. Kunibert in Köln:
1) St. Cordula:
http://tinyurl.com/h3maxpe
2) St. Ursula:
http://tinyurl.com/h84vpmg
d) as depicted (right-hand column; martyrdom) in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 147r):
http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/ds/huntington/images//000909A.jpg
e) as depicted (martyrdom) in the late thirteenth-century Livre d'images de Madame Marie (ca. 1285-1290; Paris, BnF, ms. Nouvelle acquisition française 16251, fol. 101v):
http://tinyurl.com/yhc4e26
f) as depicted (martyrdom) in an historiated initial "O" in a fourteenth-century copy, from the diocese of Girona, of a Catalan-language version of the _Legenda aurea_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Espagnol 44, fol. 227r [continue clicking on the image for increasingly higher resolution]):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52506309k/f459.item.zoom
g) as depicted (Ursula, at left; at right, St. Lawrence of Rome) by Simone Martini in a predella panel of his early fourteenth-century St. Catherine polyptych (1319) in Pisa's Museo nazionale di San Matteo:
http://tinyurl.com/nmgw6we
h) as depicted (martyrdom) in an historiated initial "C" in an earlier fourteenth-century collection of saint's lives in their French-language translation by Wauchier de Denain (ca. 1320; Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, Comites Latentes 102, fol. 304v):
http://www.e-codices.ch/en/bge/cl0102/340v
i) as depicted (martyrdom) in an earlier fourteenth-century French-language legendary of Parisian origin with illuminations attributed to the Fauvel Master (ca. 1327; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183, fol. 89v):
http://tinyurl.com/gpqtv8k
j) as depicted (storm-tossed) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy of the _Roman de Brut_ (ca. 1326-1350; London, BL, Egerton MS 3028, fol. 10r):
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=egerton_ms_3028_f010r
k) as portrayed (Ursula alone) in a restored earlier fourteenth-century reliquary bust (ca. 1330-1350) in the Pinacoteca di Castiglion Fiorentino in Castiglion Fiorentino (AR) in Tuscany:
http://tinyurl.com/jclp2zq
l) as depicted (Ursula, at right; at left, St. Oswald) in an earlier fourteenth-century glass window (ca. 1340) in the entrance hall -- an enclosed porch -- of the Basilika Mariä Himmelfahrt in Gurk (Kärnten):
http://www.burgenseite.com/glas/gurk_glas_2.jpg
m) as depicted (martyrdom; Ursula at center) in the mid- to later fourteenth-century Breviary of Charles V (betw. 1347 and 1380; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 1052, fol. 540r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84525491/f1089.image.zoom
n) as depicted (Ursula at center; sailing down the Rhine with the pope and a cardinal) by Allegretto Nuzi (attrib.) in a later fourteenth-century fresco (1365?) in the basilica cattedrale di San Venanzio in Fabriano:
http://tinyurl.com/j55hfka
o) as depicted (Ursula at far right) by Giovanni di Benedetto and workshop in a late fourteenth-century Franciscan missal of Milanese origin (ca. 1385-1390; Paris, BnF, ms. Latin 757, fol. 380r):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8470209d/f763.item.r=.zoom
p) as depicted (martyrdom) in a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Rennes, Bibliothèque de Rennes Métropole, ms. 266, fol. 296r):
http://tinyurl.com/zyqhb2g
q) as depicted (full-length-portrait, Ursula at center) by Niccolò di Pietro in an early fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1410) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437222
http://tinyurl.com/h5vqme8
r) as depicted in semi-grisaille (full-length portrait, Ursula at center) by the Masters of the Delft Grisailles in a mid-fifteenth-century book of hours for the Use of Utrecht (ca. 1440-1460; Den Haag, KB, ms. 74 G 35, fol. 102r):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_74g35%3A102r_min
s) as depicted in grisaille (martyrdom) by Jean le Tavernier in the Suffrages of the mid-fifteenth-century Hours of Philip of Burgundy (ca. 1451-1460; Den Haag, KB, ms. 76 F 2, fol. 279v):
http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_76f2%3A279v_min
t) as depicted (Ursula with two angels and a donor) by Benozzo Gozzoli in a mid-fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1455-1460) in the National Gallery of Art in Washington:
http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.408.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maulleigh/4183070194/#/
u) as depicted (the martyrdom of Ursula, her fellow virgins, the pope, and various bishops) in a later fifteenth-century copy of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1463; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 51, fol. 389r):
http://tinyurl.com/yl4f4wb
v) as depicted (scenes) on the inside of the two wings of a late fifteenth-century altarpiece (1480s) in the Groeningemuseum in Bruges:
1) left wing:
http://tinyurl.com/zxvzf8y
2) right wing:
http://tinyurl.com/h3zx7pl
w) as depicted (full-length portrait, Ursula at center; scenes) by Hans Memling in Ursula's late fifteenth-century shrine (1489) in the Memlingmuseum in the Sint-Janshospitaal in Bruges:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/m/memling/4ursula/index.html
x) as depicted (martyrdom) in a late fifteenth-century fresco (ca. 1490) in Ytterlännäs gamla kyrka in Kramfors kommun (Västernorrland län):
http://tinyurl.com/zeh3kdu
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/jmjfj4p
y) as portrayed (full-length, Ursula at center) in a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century polychromed oak statue of southern Netherlandish origin (ca. 1500) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/467722
z) as portrayed in relief (Ursula and her fellow martyrs) by the Master of the Pursed Lips in an early sixteenth-century polychromed limewood sculpture (ca. 1510) in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg:
http://objektkatalog.gnm.de/objekt/Pl.O.3289
http://tinyurl.com/jf6o3yn
Best,
John Dillon
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