St. Ursula, St. Hildegard’s favorite saint.
In 1106, during St. Hildegard’s childhood, St. Ursula’s relics were discovered and they caused quite a stir. And so St. Ursula most likely became one of St. Hildegard’s favorites. Barbara Newman in Sister of Wisdom adds that, “Of all the saints in the calendar, none appealed to Hildegard more than the legendary Ursula, who supposedly led a troupe of eleven thousand virgins to martyrdom at Cologne…Ursula, too, became for her a figure of Virginitas, a type of the church longing for her bridegroom…”
South Netherlandish ca. 1500
O Ecclesia – Sequence for St. Ursula and Companions by Hildegard of Bingen
1a. O Church!
Like sapphire are your eyes,
Mt. Bethel are your ears,
your nose a mount of myrrh and frankincense,
your mouth the sound of many waters.
1b. In true faith’s vision
did Ursula with God’s Son fall in love—
a husband with the world did she abandon,
to gaze instead upon the sun
and call upon the Fairest Youth to say:
2a. “With deep desire have I desired to come to you,
to sit with you at heaven’s marriage feast—
I’m racing by a different way to you,
like a sapphire cloud that races ‘cross the clearest sky.”
3a. When Ursula had made this declaration,
report of it went out through all the people.
3b. And they declared, “The innocence of girlish ignorance
knows not of what it speaks.”
4a. And they began in concert to
make fun of her—
until the fiery weight
fell on her shoulders.
4b. For then they recognized
that such contempt for the world is as Mt. Bethel.
5. They also recognized
the sweetest secent of myrrh and frankincense,
for contempt for the world
mounts over all.
6a. But then the devil seized their limbs,
to slay the virgins’ noblest bearings with their bodies.
6b. And this with piercing cry heard all the elements
and ‘fore God’s throne declared:
7a. Ach! The scarlet blood of the innocent Lamb
to pledge his troth is shed.
7b. And all the heavens hear this
and praise the Lamb of God in symphony supreme,
for the ancient serpent’s throat
is choked upon these pearls
compiled from the Word of God.
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