Boniface, Apostle to the Germans

Winfrid, as Willibald says he was first called, was an English monk of the monastery of Nursling, near Winchester (Willibald, Life of Boniface 2 (p. 33)) (Willibald, Life of Boniface 5–6 (pp. 47–57)). He travelled to Rome (Willibald, Life of Boniface 5–6 (pp. 47–57)), and on 15 May 719 Pope Gregory II gave him a written commission to preach to the peoples still held by paganism and to baptize by the Roman rite (Boniface, Letters Tangl 12). The letter already calls him Boniface. Willibald, who wrote his Life within a few years of his death, says that he worked first in Thuringia, then for three years under Willibrord in Frisia, then in Hesse (Willibald, Life of Boniface 5–6 (pp. 47–57)).

In 722 the pope called him back and consecrated him bishop on 30 November (Willibald, Life of Boniface 6 (pp. 60–62)). Boniface swore on the tomb of Peter to uphold the Catholic faith and its unity, to be loyal in all things to Peter, to the pope and to the good of his church, to have no communion with bishops who lived against the rules of the fathers, and to correct them or report them to the pope (Boniface, Letters Tangl 16). Gregory commended him to the Frankish ruler Charles Martel, under whose protection he returned to Hesse (Willibald, Life of Boniface 6 (pp. 60–62)).

There, Willibald says, many still sacrificed to trees and springs. At Geismar Boniface set about felling an oak of great size which the pagans called by the name of Jupiter. A crowd stood by cursing him. When he had cut only a little way, the tree crashed down as if blown from above and broke into four pieces, and those who had cursed believed. From the timber he built an oratory dedicated to Peter (Willibald, Life of Boniface 6 (pp. 63–64)). The papal chronicle of the time says in a single sentence that Gregory, through Bishop Boniface, preached the word of salvation in Germany and turned that people to Christ (Liber Pontificalis Gregory II (ed. Duchesne, vol. 1, p. 397)).

Pope Gregory III sent him the pallium of an archbishop. He divided Bavaria into four dioceses (Willibald, Life of Boniface 6–7 (pp. 67–71)), and in 742 reported to Pope Zacharias that he had founded three more sees and that the Franks had held no synod for more than eighty years (Boniface, Letters Tangl 50). Under Charles’s sons Carloman and Pepin he held synods to restore the canons, and he was given the see of Mainz (Willibald, Life of Boniface 8 (pp. 74–78)). In 751 he told the pope of a monastery he had founded in the forest by the river Fulda, under the Rule of Benedict, where he wished to be buried (Boniface, Letters Tangl 86 and 89).

In old age he appointed his disciple Lul to succeed him and went back to Frisia. On the morning he had set for confirming the newly baptized, an armed band attacked his camp by the river Bordne, the Boorne in Friesland. He forbade his companions to fight, and they were killed with him. The attackers broke open his chests looking for gold and found books (Willibald, Life of Boniface 8 (pp. 74–78)) (Willibald, Life of Boniface 8 (pp. 82–85)). His body was taken by way of Utrecht and Mainz to Fulda (Willibald, Life of Boniface 8 (pp. 88–91)).

His oath and his letters to four popes bound the churches he founded, and the Frankish church he helped to reform, to the see of Rome.