Apostle Onesimus of the Seventy

Onesimus was the runaway slave of Philemon of Colossae whose story is told in Paul's shortest epistle. Born in Phrygia, raised in the household of Philemon, Onesimus had taken some of his master's property and fled to Rome, where in the great anonymity of the imperial capital he came under the influence of Paul during the apostle's first Roman imprisonment, was instructed, baptized, and converted into one of Paul's intimate disciples. Paul calls him "my own bowels" (Philemon 1:12) — a Greek expression of the deepest possible affection — and sends him back to Philemon with a letter asking that the runaway slave be received now "no longer as a slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved."

Philemon received him as a brother. Onesimus eventually became bishop of Ephesus, succeeding Timothy in that see at the end of the first century, and is named by Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Ephesians as "your bishop" — one of the first independent attestations of a Pauline disciple in episcopal office. He labored at Ephesus into the second century.

Tradition makes him a martyr at Rome under Trajan: he had traveled to Rome to encourage the Christian community there during one of the persecutions and was arrested, stoned, and finally beheaded around 109. His feast falls on February 15, with the Synaxis of the Seventy on January 4.