Ursulines

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

members of one of those religious orders which resulted from the rise of the Roman Church of the evangelical zeal which was so remarkable a reflex effect of the Reformation. Angela or Angelica Merici (1470-1540), a poor maiden of Desenzano, was their founder. She began in that town, and continued afterward in Brescia, the education of poor children. At the grave of Varallo at Milan, a favorite resort of pilgrims, she was inspired with the determination to found a new religious order, and at the celebration of the mass in St. Afra Church at Brescia, on Nov. 25, 1535, the order, as a free union without binding vows, was solemnly inaugurated, and named in honor of St. Ursula. Its object was the performance of certain church and household devotions, the instruction of young females, and the bodily and spiritual care of the poor and sick. The order was to be immediately under the supervision of a priest and matron, and Angelica was herself chosen as first matron on March 18, 1537, by the 76 members of the society, and as such she watched over the affairs of the order till her death, three years later, when she was succeeded by the Countess Lucrezia of Ladrone. On June 9, 1544, the order received papal sanction from Paul III., and in 1584 it had increased to 600 nuns in 18 establishments. It quickly spread itself from Italy into other lands, and at the beginning of the 18th century had 20 congregations, 350 convents, and from 15,000 to 20,000 nuns. It was not quite the same in all countries, and was never bound together so strictly as other religious orders were. No general assembly or provincial chapters were held, so that each settlement of the Ursulines stood under the power of the bishop of the diocese. One of its latest developments was the congregation of Chavagnes, in La Vendée, founded by Demoiselle Bréchard in 1805, and containing, in 1862, 300 to 400 sisters in about 30 houses. URTICACEÆ, in botany, nettleworts; an order of declinous exogens, typical of the alliance Urticales. Tree, shrubs, or herbs, never milky. Leaves alternate, usually covered with asperities or stinging hairs; stipules membranous, often deciduous; flowers small, green, unisexual, scattered, clustered, in catkins or in close heads; calyx membranous, persistent in the males it is four or fiveparted, with four or five stamens inserted into its base opposite to its lobes; females with a tubular, four to five-cleft calyx, three to five staminodes, the style simple or wanting, the stigma simple, fringed, the ovary superior, sessile, onecelled, with a single erect ovule; the fruit a simple inhediscent nut surounded by the calyx.