Having 11,000 friends is just about de rigueur on Facebook these days. But back in 300AD that was pretty impressive. Legend has it that, accompanied by 11,000 virgins, the princess Ursula embarked on an arduous expedition from Bretagne to Rome to entreat the Pope to bless her chastity. Ursula, later patron saint of the city of Cologne, was determined to remain pure. The Pope himself, however, feels himself succumbing to all-too-human urges when presented with so much feminine charm. He resigns as pope and joins the train for the journey home, which will take Ursula and her entourage along the Rhine, past the city of Colonia. But as chance would have it, the city is being laid siege to by the dreaded Huns, who have their own special way of behaving towards women…
According to legend, the virgins were all martyred at the gates of Cologne. Parts of their skeletons were a popular relic in the Middle Ages. But then suspicions cropped up about the lucrative trade in their remains. Were these really ‘relics’ at all? Or were they perhaps just the remains of some old Romans unconnected with Ursula? Was the whole story a fabrication?
Ralf König’s comic has added yet another legend to the many that already shroud the figure of Ursula of Cologne, here spiced up with masochistic monks, socially maladjusted heathens and well-endowed barbarians.
