In defense of Saint Ursula and other scandalous saints

When we refer to someone’s life as “scandalous,” we usually mean that the person has done something shocking, immoral, or illegal. Our daily news is filled with scandalous stories of individuals who have been caught committing disgraceful or salacious acts.

But the word “scandal” comes from the Greek word skandalon, which means a stumbling block or snare. Unfortunately, there are some saints’ lives that could be described as scandalous in that sense. The story about the life of Saint Ursula, for example, might be a stumbling block for non-Catholics who are considering the truth claims of the Catholic Church.

This situation should not be confused with saints whose lives include inexplicable conversions or miraculous events. Miracles and conversions occurred frequently to those who met Jesus Christ during his life. Catholics can unapologetically explain that our Lord miraculously healed blind men and lepers, and we can similarly describe how the Apostle Paul was converted from being a persecutor of Christians to a follower of Christ. The lives of some holy men and women throughout the history of the Church—like Saint Francis of Assisi—include both kinds of remarkable event. Catholics don’t need to apologize for the workings of God’s grace in the exterior and interior lives of our saints.

But the life of Saint Ursula, whose feast day is October 21, is a true stumbling block for any Catholic trying to demonstrate scientific and historical rigor in the stories of our holy men and women.

According to the most popular tradition,¹ Ursula was a princess from Britain (date unknown) who was arranged to marry the son of a pagan king. Since she preferred to remain a virgin for Christ, she asked for permission to delay the wedding for three years. She also asked to be attended by ten ladies-in-waiting, each of whom was attended by a thousand virgins. After being granted permission, she and her eleven thousand virgins sailed away in eleven ships. They reached the city of Cologne, traveled on a pilgrimage to Rome, and returned to Cologne before their planned return voyage to Britain. However, when they reached Cologne the second time, Attila the Hun and his army attacked the city, and all eleven thousand women died as martyrs.

In another version of the story, in addition to the above details (though minus Attila) a pagan German king fell in love with the beautiful Ursula when she returned to Cologne. When she refused to marry him, he ordered all the women, Ursula included, to be killed.

Yet another tradition states that when the virgins arrived in Rome, the pope was so won over by Ursula’s holiness that he resigned his office and left the Eternal City with them. Since the name given for the pope—Cyriacus—does not appear in any list of popes, that inconsistency is neatly resolved by the claim that, after resigning his office, the pope ordered his name to be removed from all papal records.

Of course, questions about the veracity of these stories about Saint Ursula—some of which might be fairly called legends—did not arise only in the twenty-first century.

The first official martyrology listing all the Church’s saints, the Roman Martyrology, was published in 1582, and it has been revised many times. For example, when the scholar Prospero Lambertini was elected pope and became Pope Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century, he revised the beatification and canonization processes and published a reform of the Roman Martyrology. He even tried to suppress the feast of Saint Ursula entirely, presumably because of the oddities in the story.

Of course, there are other saint stories that could be stumbling blocks to both popes and ordinary Catholics. Did Saint Margaret of Antioch really get swallowed by a dragon, as is claimed in her biography? Did Saint Giles of Nîmes really drink the milk of a wild deer? Did Saint George really fight a dragon to save a town (and a virgin)?

Those questions are more easily settled than those raised by the stories about Saint Ursula.

Arrested for her faith and awaiting execution in prison, the virgin Margaret could have fought with the devil in a dream (perhaps seen by her as a dragon) or even through a true demonic attack. Afterward, she recognized that she had been tempted to apostatize to save her own life. But she defeated that temptation by refusing to renounce her faith in Christ—attacking the dragon with a cross, according to the story—and died a martyr. That explanation of the story of Saint Margaret of Antioch shows her humanity during trial, but also the power of grace.

The hermit Giles could have had a natural gift with animals which allowed him to tame a wild deer simply through patience and kindness. Or perhaps God performed the same sort of miracle with Giles, as is described with the Old Testament Prophet Elijah. Just as Elijah was saved from starvation by birds (sent by God) who brought him food, so the starving Giles may have been saved from death by a deer (sent by God).

As for Saint George, devotion to an early Church martyr named George from Diospolis or Lydda in modern Turkey can be dated back to ancient times. Since soldiers in the Roman army were often ordered to offer sacrifices to the gods prior to battle, many early Church martyrs were soldiers who refused to apostatize. The details about George’s battle with a dragon to save a town in popular stories are most likely a pious medieval embroidery of the life of an already-beloved saint. The holy example of a soldier or knight willing to risk his life to save others and then bring them the Gospel was just the sort of story that inspired medieval Christians.

This brings us to Saint Ursula because, just like Saint George, her story has been inspirational to Catholics for many centuries.

Of course, scholars have long recognized that the statement that Ursula was accompanied by eleven thousand companions was probably the result of a misunderstanding of a Latin abbreviation. Saint Ursula and the expression “eleven virgin martyrs” in Latin could have been abbreviated as “XI M.V.” and then mistakenly translated as “eleven thousand virgins.”

The claim that she and her companions died at the hands of the pagan Attila, who ruled the Huns during the years 434-453, may simply be an attempt to tie Ursula’s story to a time period when many Christians died. Or maybe it is true. Attila killed a lot of people.

In the history of Christendom, many devout Catholic noblewomen have agreed to marry pagans and less-than-devout noblemen and have eventually led their husbands to the Catholic faith. Saint Clotilda (474-545) managed to convert her pagan husband, the king of the Franks. Marie Louise (1791-1847), Duchess of Parma, was less successful when she married Napoleon Bonaparte. Either way, it would have been a pious and noble act for a British princess to undertake a pilgrimage to Rome with her faithful attendants before entering into a marriage with an unbeliever.

Although many regions of modern Germany were still pagan until the seventh or eighth centuries, Cologne itself was evangelized centuries earlier, probably as early as the second century. Cologne may have been a safe destination for a group of Christian virgins, but the same would not be true for the surrounding areas, which were ruled by pagan tribes.

With all those details in mind, the story of Saint Ursula no longer sounds so fanciful. Perhaps she traveled with a group of eleven female companions (though, one would expect, with some soldiers in attendance) on a pilgrimage to Rome to pray for God’s blessing on herself and her marriage. And perhaps she rather humanly hoped to delay the marriage a bit so that her fiancé would lose interest. During their return journey, she and her companions died for their faith, either directly by refusing to renounce Jesus Christ or indirectly because they were Christian virgins.

Sadly, the tragedy of women being given such a terrible choice is not unthinkable even today. For example, during the year 2014, an Islamic terrorist group named Boko Haram kidnapped approximately 2,000 women and girls in Nigeria. Many of these women and girls were raped, forced into marriage, forcibly converted, and sold into sexual slavery. Some are still missing and considered dead. While some of them may be true martyrs, these women were not given a choice, unlike Saint Ursula and her companions.

The Church does not recognize Saint Ursula and her companions as virgin martyrs to prove our exceptional grasp of historical fact. Whatever legendary accretions may have been added to her story, it is not unreasonable to believe that a group of women died as martyrs for their faith in Christ near Cologne and have been honored by Catholics for their faithfulness ever since the fourth century.

Every saint also teaches us lessons about how we should live our own lives. The example of Saint Ursula reminds us that we can only conquer temptations by turning to Christ. She reminds us that miracles do happen, by God’s grace, though they may sound outrageous to unbelievers. She reminds us that even princesses and virgins can be as strong in their faith and as willing to die for their Heavenly King as any soldier dies for his country. Those lessons will always be considered unbelievable to those who are scandalized by the Cross of Christ.

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