Saint Ursula is a legendary Romano-British Christian saint. Her feast day in the pre-1970 General Roman Calendar is 21 October. The Huns’ leader fatally shot Ursula with an arrow in about 383 AD. There is only one church dedicated to her in the United Kingdom.
About Saint Ursula in brief
Saint Ursula is a legendary Romano-British Christian saint, died on 21 October 383. Her feast day in the pre-1970 General Roman Calendar is 21 October. There is little definite information about her and the anonymous group of holy virgins who accompanied her and on some uncertain date were killed at Cologne. The Huns’ leader fatally shot Ursula with an arrow in about 383 AD. There is only one church dedicated to Saint Ursula in the United Kingdom. It is located in Wales at Llangwyryfon, Ceredigion. Her legendary status comes from a medieval story that she was a princess who, at the request of her father King Dionotus of Dumnonia in south-west Britain, set sail along with 11,000 virginal handmaidens to join her future husband, the pagan governor Conan Meriadoc of Armorica. After a miraculous storm brought them over the sea in a single day to a Gaulish port, Ursula declared that before her marriage she would undertake a pan-European pilgrimage.
She headed for Rome with her followers and persuaded the Pope, Cyriacus, and Sulpicius, bishop of Ravenna, to join them. After setting out for Cologne, which was being besieged by Huns, all the virgins were beheaded in a massacre. A legend resembling Ursula’s appeared in the first half of the tenth century; it does not mention the name Ursula, but rather gives the leader of the martyred group as Pinnosa or Vinnosa. Gregory of Tours mentions the legend of the Theban Legion, to whom a church that once stood in Cologne was dedicated. The most important hagiographers of the early Middle Ages also do not enter Ursula under 21 October, her feast day. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that the legend, with its countless variants and increasingly fabulous developments, would fill more than a hundred pages.
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This page is based on the article Saint Ursula published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
