Ursula and her Companions

Ursula and her Companions are a group of virgin martyrs of Cologne (Colonia Agrippina) in Germany, venerated from early times in the undivided Church. Little is known of them with certainty.

The earliest evidence of their veneration is an inscription of about the year 400 in the church of Saint Ursula in Cologne, which says that the senator Clematius restored the basilica on the site where the holy virgins had been killed. The name Ursula appears as the name of the group's leader only in sources of the 10th century. The familiar story, much enlarged in the Middle Ages, makes Ursula a British princess promised to a pagan governor, who won three years' delay and set out on pilgrimage to Rome with ten virgins, each followed by a thousand companions; on the return, at Cologne, besieged by the Huns, all were beheaded, and Ursula was pierced by an arrow. This legend, with its countless variants, was doubted by some writers already in the Middle Ages, and historians today do not regard it as historical. The date of the killing is uncertain; their record places it around 451.

The Ursuline sisters and the Virgin Islands are named after Saint Ursula and her companions. At Llangwyryfon in Wales there is a church dedicated to the saint.

They are commemorated on 21 October, the liturgical date in the Orthodox calendar (the same day number on the old and new calendars).