Ursulines.

Ursulines. A female teaching order in the Roman Catholic Church, founded by St Angela Merici of Brescia in 1537, who was born at Desenzano in 1470, died in 1540, and was formally canonised in 1807. She formed at Brescia an association of young women for the tending of the sick and poor, and the instruction of children, and papal confirmation of the order was obtained from Paul III. in 1544. In 1565 a house was opened at Cremona, and St Charles Borromeo brought the order to Milan. In France one of its most distinguished members was the celebrated Madeleine de Ste Beuve, who endowed an Ursuline house at Paris in 1610. Here they first adopted the common life instead of dispersion in various homes. They were introduced into Savoy by St Francis de Sales in 1635. They spread also over Germany, Austria, and in the fullness of time Canada and the United States. An establishment was founded at Edinburgh in 1836, being the first Catholic convent in Scotland since the Reformation. See French works on the foundress and the order by Sainte-Foi (1858), Postel (1879 et seq.), and At (1885).