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Dave's Mythical Creatures and Places |
Saint Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins
Gutierrez map of 1562
According to legend, Saint Ursula and her handmaidens made a pilgrimage by sea from Britain to Rome. The voyage took three years, and they were blown off course to many strange places. Finally, they arrived at the Rhine river. When Saint Ursula refused to marry a Hun chieftain, she and her companions were martyred in Cologne around 500 A.D. As this story was retold, the number of martyred virgins grew from 11 to 11,000, perhaps in part due to a mistranslation of the story. (read more about this story.) This became a popular legend, and there were many different versions of it.
In November of 1493, on his second voyage, Columbus found a large island, surrounded by an archipelago of smaller islands. He named the largest island (as it appeared to him) Saint Ursula, and the others he called the Once Mil Vigines (the 11,000 virgins.) These islands are still known today as the Virgin Islands.
In 1520, the Portuguese explorer Jose Alvarez Faguendes named several islands off of Newfoundland "Onze mil Virgines" in honor of the legendary Saint-Ursula. (Map above)
