court of queen Mary and king Philip, tacitly granted her house a
kind of privilege, by never, allowing it to be searched on account
of religious persecution; so that sometimes sixty priests at once
lay hid in it.

ST. WULFRAN, ARCHBISHOP OF SENS.

AND APOSTOLIC MISSIONARY IN FRISELAND.

HIS father was an officer in the armies of king Dagobert, and the saint
spent some years in the court of king Clotaire III., and of his mother
St. Bathildes, but occupied his heart only on God, despising worldly
greatness as empty and dangerous, and daily advancing in virtue in a
place where virtue is often little known. His estate of Maurilly he
bestowed on the abbey of Fontenelle, or St. Vandrille, in Normandy. He
was chosen and consecrated archbishop of Sens, in 682, which diocese he
governed during two years and a half with great zeal and sanctity. A
tender compassion for the blindness of the idolaters of Friseland, and
the example of the English zealous preachers in those parts, moved him
to resign his bishopric with proper advice, and, after a retreat at
Fontenelle, to enter Friseland in quality of a poor missionary priest.
He baptized great multitudes, with a son of king Radbod, and drew the
people from the barbarous custom of sacrificing men to idols. The lot
herein decided, on great festivals, who should be the victim; and the
person was instantly hanged, or cut in pieces. The lot having fallen on
one Ovon, St. Wulfran earnestly begged his life of king Radbod: but the
people ran tumultuously to the palace, and would not suffer what they
called a sacrilege. After many words, they consented that if the God of
Wulfran should save Ovon's life, he should ever serve him, and be
Wulfran's slave. The saint betook himself to prayer, and the man, after
hanging on the gibbet two hours, being left for dead, by the cord
breaking, fell to the ground; and being found alive was given to the
saint, and became a monk and priest at Fontenelle. Wulfran also
miraculously rescued two children from being drowned in the sea, in
honor of the idols. Radbod, who had been an eye-witness to this last
miracle, promised to become a Christian, and was instructed among the
catechumens. But his criminal delays rendered him unworthy such a mercy.
As he was going to step into the baptismal font, he asked where the
great number of his ancestors and nobles were in the next world. The
saint replied, that hell is the portion of all who die guilty of
id