Las Once Mil Virgenes

The rigid poses and identical dress of these carved figures evoke a choir. According to legend, St. Ursula was the daughter of a British Christian king. Betrothed against her will to a pagan prince, she made a pilgrimage to Rome to delay the wedding. For three years she sailed on a ship with a thousand virgins; ten noble virgins, each of whom traveled in her own ship with a thousand companion virgins, accompanied them. On their journey home to Britain, they were martyred in Cologne by the Huns after Ursula refused to marry their chief. A church was later built there to honor the maidens. Depictions of Las Once Mil Vírgenes are prevalent in Puerto Rican imagery. (Yvonne Lange, “Santos: The Household Wooden Saints of Puerto Rico,” PhD diss., 1975)