ave always remained hid. But the murderers put the
heads of the martyrs into a box, which, with a great stone they had
fastened to it, they threw into a great pond. But they were afterwards
taken out, and kept richly enshrined in the church of Wexiow till their
relics were removed by the Lutherans. These three holy martyrs were
honored in Sweden. Upon the news of this massacre St. Sigefride hastened
to Wexiow to repair the ruins of his church. The king resolved to put
the murderers to death; but Sigefride, by his earnest entreaties,
prevailed on him to spare their lives. However, he condemned them to pay
a heavy fine, which he would have bestowed on the saint, but he refused
accepting a single farthing of it, notwithstanding his extreme poverty,
and the difficulties which he had to struggle with, in laying the
foundation of that new church. He had inherited the spirit of the
apostles in an heroic degree. Our saint died about the year 1002, and
was buried in his cathedral at Wexiow, where his tomb became famous for
miracles. He was canonized about the year 1158, by pope Adrian IV.,[1]
an Englishman, who had himself labored zealously, and with great
success, in the conversion of Norway, and other northern countries,
about a hundred and forty years after St. Sigefride, who was honored by
the Swedes as their apostle, till the change of religion among them.[2]

Footnotes:
1. Vastove, Vinea Aquilonis.
2. In the life of St. Sigefride, published by Benzelius, it is
mentioned, that St. Sigefride, upon his first arrival in Sweden,
preached chiefly by interpreters.

FEBRUARY XVI.

ST. ONESIMUS, DISCIPLE OF ST. PAUL.

HE was a Phrygian by birth, slave to Philemon, a person of note of the
city of Colossae, converted to the faith by St. Paul. Having robbed his
master, and being obliged to fly, he providentially met with St. Paul,
then a prisoner for the faith at Rome, who there converted and baptized
him, and sent him with his canonical letter of recommendation to
Philemon, by whom he was pardoned, set at liberty, and sent back to his
spiritual father, whom he afterwards faithfully served. That apostle
made him, with Tychicus, the bearer of his epistle to the Colossians,[1]
and afterwards, as St. Jerom[2] and other fathers witness, a preacher of
the gospel, and a bishop. The Greeks say he was crowned with martyrdom
under Domitian, in the year 95, and {419} keep his festival on the 15th.
Bede, Ado, Usuard, the Roman a