Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73). Volume I: January. The Lives of the Saints. 1866.
January 19St. Henry, Archbishop of Upsal, Martyr
| HE was an Englishman, and preached the faith in the North with his countryman, Cardinal Nicholas Breakspear, the apostle of Norway, and legate of the holy see, afterwards Pope Adrian IV. by whom he was raised to this see, in 1148. St. Eric, or Henry, (for it is the same name,) was then the holy king of Sweden. 1 Our saint, after having converted several provinces, went to preach in Finland, which that king had lately conquered. He deserved to be styled the apostle of that country, but fell a martyr in it, being stoned to death at the instigation of a barbarous murderer, whom he endeavoured to reclaim by censures, in 1151. His tomb was in great veneration at Upsal, till his ashes were scattered on the change of religion, in the sixteenth century. See John Magnus, l. 1, Vit. Pont. Upsal. Olaus Magnus, l. 4. Bollandus, and chiefly his life published by Benzelius. Monum. Suec. p. 33. | 1 |
| Note 1. Stiernman, in his discourse ‘on the State of Learning among the Ancient Swedes,’ observes, that Sweden was chiefly converted to Christianity by English Saxon missionaries. The principal among these were Ansgar; Sigfrid, Roduard, Richolf, Edward, Eskil, David, and Henric, as he gives their names. In the history of the bishops and archbishops of Upsal, published by Benzelius in his Monum. Suec. p. 37, the first whose name is recorded is Everin, whom Benzelius supposes to be the person whom St. Sigfrid consecrated to this see. He seems to have been one of his English colleagues. Stephen, the sixth bishop of Upsal, was the first archbishop. See the life of St. Sigfrid, and Benzelius’s notes on the catalogue of the bishops of Upsal, p. 186. [back] |