Now, however, there has appeared such a vindication, such a wonderful re-examination of the whole history, as it is impossible to resist. It is impossible to read the account of St. Ursula given in the 9th volume for October of the Bollandists, published in 1858, without being perfectly amazed at the quantity of real knowledge that has been gained upon the subject, and still more at the powerful manner in which this knowledge has been handled;—an erudition which, merely glancing over the pages and notes, reminds us of the scholars of three hundred years ago, in whom we have often wondered at the learning which they brought to bear on any one point.
This treatise occupies from page 73 to 303, 230 pages of closely printed folio in two columns. I acknowledge that it is not quite a recreation to read it, but still it is very well worth reading. All documents are printed at full length. Now, it so happened, that just after the volume had come out, I was at Brussels, and called at the library of the Bollandists, and had a most interesting conversation with Father Victor de Buck, the author of this history. He gave me an interesting outline of what he had been enabled to do. He told me that when they came to October 21, and he had to write a life of St. Ursula and her companions, his provincial wrote to him from Cologne and said, "Take care what you say, for the people are tremendously alarmed lest you should knock down all their traditions, and I [{437}] do not know what will be the case if you do." He replied, "Don't be at all afraid; I shall confirm every point, and I am sure they will be pleased with what I have to say." He was kind enough to put down in a letter the chief points of his vindication for me; but I have lost it, and so there was nothing left but to read through the whole of this great work. But, beside, a very excellent compendium has appeared, which takes pretty nearly the same view on every point, and approves of everything the author has said; indeed some points are perhaps put more popularly in it, though the history is reduced to a much smaller compass. I have the work before me. It is entitled, "St. Ursula and her Companions: A Critical, Historical Monograph. By John Hubert Kessel. Cologne, 1863." It is a work which is not too long to be translated and made known. What I have to say, after having gone through this preliminary matter, is, that I lay claim to nothing whatever beyond having been diligent, and having endeavored to grasp all the points in question, and reduce them to a moderate compass. I have changed the order altogether, taking that which seems to me most suitable to the subject, and co-ordinating the different parts and facts so as to make it popularly intelligible. In this I have the satisfaction to find that in a chapter at the end of the book, in which the history is summed up, exactly the same order is taken which I have adopted here. It will not be necessary to give a reference for every assertion that I shall have occasion to make; but I may say that I have the page carefully noted where the subject is fully drawn out and illustrated.
Now, let me first of all give, in a brief sketch, what Father de Buck considers the real history, which has been wrapt up in such a quantity of legendary matter—that which comes out from the different documents laid before us, as the kernel or the nucleus of the history, as Kessel calls it. He supposes that this army of martyrs, as we may well call them, was composed of two different bodies: a body of virgins who happened, under circumstances which I shall describe to you, to be at Cologne, and a body of the inhabitants, citizens of Cologne, and others, very probably many English and other virgins who had there sought safety. It may be asked how came these English to be there? About the year 446 the Britons began to be immensely annoyed by the incursions of the Picts and Scots, which led to their calling in (after the manner of the old fable, about the man calling in the dogs to hunt the hare in his garden) the Anglo-Saxons, who in return took possession of the country; and the inhabitants that they did not exterminate they made serfs. At this period we know the English were put to sad straits. Having so long lain quiet and undisturbed under the Roman dominion, they had almost lost their natural valor, and were unable to defend themselves. There was, therefore, a natural tendency to emigrate and get away. They had already done this before; for as De Buck shows, with extraordinary erudition, the occupation of Brittany or Armorica was a quiet emigration from England, which sought the continent, and also established colonies in Holland and Batavia, and by that means obtained a peace which they could not have at home. We have a very interesting document upon this subject. The celebrated senator Aëtius was at that time governor of Gaul; the Britons sent to him for help, and this is one passage of a most touching letter which has been preserved by Gildas: "Repellunt nos barbari ad mare, repellit nos mare ad barbaros; oriuntur duo genera funerum; aut jugulamur aut mergimur." [Footnote 83] They were tossed backward and forward by the sea to the barbarians, and by the barbarians to the sea; when they fell upon the barbarians they were cut to pieces, and when they were driven into the [{438}] sea "mergimur"—we go to the bottom. It does not mean that they ran into the sea, but that they went to their ships, and many of them perished in the sea by shipwreck or by sinking—"aut jugulamur aut mergimur." That shows that the English were leaving England to go to the continent. I am only giving you the web of the history, without its proofs; but I quote this passage to show it is not at all unlikely that at that moment, when they were in a manner straitened between the barbarians of the north and those coming upon them in the south, a great many of them went out of the country, and that especially being Christians they would wend their way to Catholic countries. Religious and other persons of a like character, we know, in every invasion of barbarians, were the first to suffer a double martyrdom. This is a supposition, therefore, about which there is no improbability, that a certain number, I do not say how many, of Christian ladies of good family, some of them, perhaps, royal, got over to Batavia or Holland (where there have been always traditions and names of places in confirmation of this), and made their way to Cologne, which was a capital and a seat of the Roman government, a Christian city, and in every probability considered a stronghold, both on account of its immense fortifications, and on account of the river.
[Footnote 83: Gildas de Excidio Britanniae, pars i., cap. xvii. Ed. Migne: Patrologia, tom. lxix., p. 342.]
Well, then comes the history, very difficult indeed to reconcile, of a pilgrimage to Rome, which it is said they made; but let us suppose that instead of the whole of them a certain number of them might go there. It is not at all improbable that at that time, as De Buck observes, a deputation, or a certain number of citizens and others, did go to Rome to obtain assistance there, as their only hope against the invasion, which I shall describe just now. There is no great difficulty in supposing this; and assuming that some of the English virgins also went, that would be a foundation for the great legendary history, I might say the fabulous history, which has been built upon it. Now, there is a strong confirmation of such a thing being done. St. Gregory of Tours [Footnote 84] mentions that at this very time Bishop Servatius did go to Rome to pray the Apostles Sts. Peter and Paul to protect his country and city against the coming invasion, and he saw no other hope of safety. He must have passed through Cologne exactly at that time, and, therefore, there is nothing absurd or improbable in supposing that some inhabitants of Cologne went with him as a deputation to Rome, and that some of the English virgins may have accompanied them. In the year following, Attila, the scourge of God, the most cruel of all the leaders of barbaric tribes who invaded the Roman empire, was marching along the Rhine with the known view of invading Gaul, and not only invading it, but, as he said, of completely conquering and destroying it; for his maxim was, "Where Attila sets his foot no more grass shall ever grow"—nothing but destruction and devastation. I will say a little more about the Huns later. In the meantime we leave them, in 450, on their way to cross the Rhine, with the intention of invading and occupying France. Attila united great cunning with his barbarity; he pretended to the Goths that he was coming to help them against the Romans, and to the Romans that he was going to help them to expel the Goths. By that means he paralyzed both for a time, until it was too well seen that he was the enemy of all. It is most probable, knowing the character as we shall see just now of the Huns, that the inhabitants of the neighboring towns would seek refuge in the capital, and that all living in the country would get within the strong walls of cities. We have important confirmation, at this very time, in the history of St. Genevieve, [Footnote 65] who was [{439}] a virgin living out in the country, but who, upon the approach of the Huns, hastened, we are told, immediately to seek safety in Paris, and was there the means of saving the city, by exhorting the inhabitants to build up walls, to close their gates, and to fight. This they did, and so saved themselves. That is just an example. When it is known that throughout his march Attila destroyed every city, committing incredible barbarities (ruins of some of the places remaining to this day), not sparing man, woman, or child, it is more than probable that there would be a great conflux and influx to the city of Cologne, where the Roman government still kept its seat, and where, of course, there was something like order, although we have unfortunate proofs, in the works of Salvianus, [Footnote 86] that the morality of the city had become so very corrupt that it deserved great chastisement. However, so far all is coherent. In 451, after Attila had gone to France, and had been completely defeated, he made his way back, greatly exasperated, burning and destroying everything in his way, sparing no one. Then he appeared before Cologne; and this is the invasion in which it is supposed the martyrdom took place.
[Footnote 84: S. Greg. Turon., Hist. Franc., lib. ii., cap. v. Ed. Migne: Patrologia. tom. lxviii., pp. 197, 576.]
[Footnote 85: Vid. Tillemont, Hist. des Emp., vi. p. 151. Acta Sanct. Boll., Jan. tom. i. in vit. S. Genovevae.]
[Footnote 86: De Gubernatione Dei, Ed. Baluzii, Paris, 1864, pp. 140, 141. ]
Having given you what the Bollandist considers the historical thread, every part of which can be confirmed and made most probable, I will now, before going into proofs of the narrative, direct your attention for a few minutes to what we may call the legendary parts of the history. When we speak of legends we must not confound them with fables, that is, with pure inventions. We must not suppose that people sat down to write a lie under the idea that they were edifying the Church or anybody. There have been such cases, no doubt; for Tertullian mentions the delinquency of a person's writing false acts of St. Paul, and being suspended from his office of priest in consequence. Such follies have happened in all times. We have had many instances in our own day of attempts at forging documents, and committing the worst of social crimes; but old legends as we have them, and even the false acts as they were called, were no doubt written without any intention of actually deceiving, or of passing off what was spurious for genuine. The person who first suggested this was a man certainly no friend of Catholics, Le Clerc, better known by his literary name of Clericus; who observes that school exercises were sometimes drawn from martyrdoms, as in our day from a classical subject, as Juvenal says of Hannibal:
"I demens et saevas curre per Alpes
Ut pueris placeas et declamatio flas."
Not that students professed to write a real history, but they gave wonderful descriptions of deeds of valor and marvellous events which had never occurred, and were never intended to be believed. In the same way, at a time when nothing but a religious subject could create interest, that sort of composition came to be applied to acts of saints and martyrs; so that many books and narratives which we have of that description may be thus accounted for. It is much like our historical novels, or the historical plays of Shakespeare, for instance. Nobody imagines that their authors wished to pass them off for history, but they did not contradict history; they kept to history, so that you may find it in them; and you might almost write a history from some of those books which are called historical works of fiction. In early times such compositions were of a religious character. Then came times of greater ignorance, and those works came to be regarded as true historical accounts. But, are we to reject them on that ground altogether? Are we to say, any more than we should with regard to the fictitious works of which I have just spoken, that there is no truth in them? We should proceed in the same way as people do who seek for gold. A [{440}] man goes to a gold-field, and tries to obtain gold from auriferous sand. Now suppose he took a sieve full, and said at once, "It's all rubbish," and threw it away; he might go on for a long time and never get a grain of gold. But if he knows how to set to work, if he washes what he obtains, picks out grain by grain, and puts by, he gets a small hoard of real genuine gold; and nobody denies that when, many such supplies are put together they make a treasure of sterling metal. So it is with these legendary accounts. They are never altogether falsehoods—I will not say never, but rarely. Whenever they have an air of history about them, the chances are that, by examining and sifting them well, we may get out a certain amount of real and solid material for history.
The legendary works upon these virgins are numerous and begin early. The first is one which I shall call, as all our writers do, by its first words, "Regnante Domino." This is an account of traditions, evidently written between the ninth and eleventh centuries. It is impossible to determine more closely than this. But we know that it cannot have been written earlier than the ninth century, nor later than the eleventh. It contains a long history of these virgins while in England, who they were, and what they were; of a certain marriage contract that was made with the father of St. Ursula, a very powerful king; how it was arranged that she should have eleven companions, and each of these a thousand followers; how they should embark for three years and amuse themselves with nautical exercises; how the ships went to the other side of the channel. It is an absurd story and full of fable, but there are three or four most important points in it. Geoffrey of Monmouth comes next. He gives another history, totally different from that of the "Regnante Domino;" but retains two or three points of identity. His is evidently a British tradition, which, of course, it is most important to compare with the German one; and we shall find how singularly they agree. Then, after these, come a number of legends called Passiones, long accounts filled with a variety of incongruous particulars which may be safely put aside; but in the same way germs or remnants of something good, which have been thus preserved, are found in them all, and when brought together may give us some valuable results. We next meet with what is more difficult to explain—the supposed revelations of St. Elizabeth of Schönau, and of Blessed Hermann of Steinfeld. It is not for us to enter into the discussion, which is a very subtle one, of how persons who are saints really canonized and field in immense veneration—one of them, Hermann, singularly so—can be supposed to have been allowed to follow their own imaginations on some points, while at the same time there seems no doubt that they lived in an almost ecstatic state. This question is gone into fully; and the best authorities are quoted by the Bollandist. It would require a long discussion, and it would not be to our purpose, to pursue it further. These supposed revelations are rejected altogether. Now we come to positive forgeries, consisting of inscriptions, or of engraved stones with legends carved upon them. One of these mentions a pope who never existed, and also a bishop of Milan who never lived, beside a number of other imaginary people. From the texture and state of these inscriptions there can be no doubt whatever that they are absolute forgeries, and the author of them is pretty well discovered. He was a sacristan of the name of Theodorus. In order to enhance the glory of these virgins, they are represented, as you see in legendary pictures, as being in a ship accompanied by a pope, bishops, abbots, and persons of high dignity, who are supposed to have come from Rome with them. All this we discard, making out what we can from the sounder traditions.