I WRITE this from the beautiful city of Berne, in Switzerland, where we are guests of the Chaplain of St Ursula’s. Part of the Church of England’s diocese in Europe, it caters to an English-speaking congregation made up of many races and nationalities, who nevertheless find a common bond and community here in the weekly celebration of a Common Worship eucharist.

St Ursula is an apt patron saint for several reasons. First of all, Ursula means “little bear”, and the city’s name means “bear”. A great black heraldic bear is its emblem. Indeed, one sees the bear flag flown everywhere, and the city has always had a real colony of bears almost as its totem animal, rather like the ravens in the Tower of London. They were once kept and displayed, rather cruelly to a modern sensibility, in a bear-pit by one of the central bridges.

The bear-pit still survives, but I’m happy to say that the bears are now kept in far more humane conditions. They have a large enclosure along the banks of the river, with trees for shade and climbing, and even a special side pool off the river for them to swim in, though they still amble, on occasion, into the old bear-pit and forage for the fruit that is left on little ledges for them there, to the great delight of tourists and Bernese citizens alike. Needless to say, on our first day here, we went and paid our respects to the bears: huge animals in fine fettle, who were clearly enjoying life.

But there is more than just a nod to the city’s patron animal in the choice of the church’s patron saint; for legend has it that Ursula was a Romano-British Christian princess, who made the arduous journey with her famous virgin companions from the British Isles across Europe, over the Alps, perhaps passing through Berne, and on to Rome, and then back from Rome to Cologne, where she and her companions were martyred during a siege of the city by the Huns.

I say her “companions”, but the legend, in its fullest, most embroidered elaboration, speaks of them as “eleven thousand virgins”. This number seems a little unlikely, and may have arisen from a misreading of an inscription XI. M. V. as “11,000 [in Roman numerals] virgins” rather than as “eleven martyred virgins”. But, as they say, “Print the legend,” and that is exactly what Caxton did when he printed The Golden Legend, the longest book ever published at his Westminster press, which contained Ursula’s story, along with so many others.

There are, of course, earlier versions. Indeed, Geoffrey of Monmouth mentions Ursula in his Historia, the same book as contains the legends of Merlin and King Arthur, whose name may derive from the Celtic word artos, meaning bear. So, I’m happy to be under the patronage of Ursula as I continue working on my own retelling of the Arthurian legends.

Naturally, I am not the only English writer to have fallen under the spell of the Alps, and soon I will be visiting Lauterbrunnen, the remote valley that Tolkien visited as a teenager in 1911, and which inspired his descriptions of Rivendell. He may also have passed through Berne, and perhaps that city suggested something for his character Beorn, who changes every so often into a great bear. I shall certainly be invoking Tolkien as well as Ursula to aid me in the making of my own Legendarium.