Saint Ursula October 21

Little information exists about her and the anonymous group of holy virgins who accompanied her and, at an uncertain date, were killed with her in Cologne. They remain in the Roman Martyrology, although their commemoration does not appear in the simplified Calendarium Romanum Generale (General Roman Calendar) of the 1970 Missale Romanum.

The earliest evidence of a cult of virgin martyrs in Cologne is an inscription from c. 400 in the Church of St. Ursula, located on Ursulaplatz in Cologne, which indicates that the old basilica had been restored on the site where some of the virgin saints were killed. The earliest source for naming one of these virgins Ursula dates from the 10th century.

Her legendary status comes from a medieval story in which she was a princess who, at the behest of her father, King Dionotus of Dumnonia in southwest Britain, set sail with 11,000 virgin 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 port Gallic, Ursula said that before her wedding she would undertake a pan-European pilgrimage.

She headed for Rome with her followers and persuaded Pope Cyriacus (unknown in papal records, although from late 384 AD there was a Pope Siricius) and Sulpicius, Bishop of Ravenna, to join them. After leaving for Cologne, which was besieged by the Huns, all the virgins were beheaded in a massacre. The Hun leader killed Ursula with an arrow around 383 AD (the date varies).

A legend resembling that of Ursula appeared in the first half of the 10th century; it does not mention the name of Ursula, but rather gives the leader of the martyr group as Pinnosa or Vinnosa. The relics of Pinnosa were transferred around 947 from Cologne to Essen, and from that time on, the role of Ursula was emphasized. 

In 970, for example, the first Passio Ursulae was written, naming Ursula rather than Pinnosa as the leader of the group (although Pinnosa is mentioned as one of the group's members). This change may also be due in part to the discovery at this time of an epitaph speaking of Ursula, the "innocent virgin."

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, a 12th-century British clergyman and writer, Ursula was the daughter of Dionotus, ruler of Cornwall. However, this may have been based on his misinterpretation of the words Deo notus in the second Passio Ursulae, written around 1105. The plot may have been influenced by a story told by the 6th-century writer Procopius about a British queen sailing with 100,000 troops to the mouth of the Rhine in order to force her reluctant husband Radigis, king of the Varni, to marry her.