Geismar
Place in Hesse where, according to Willibald, Boniface felled the sacred oak of Jupiter and built a chapel of St Peter from its wood. It is usually identified with Geismar near Fritzlar.
Willibald names the place Gaesmere and sets it in the land of the Hessians. There Boniface cut down an oak which the pagans called by the name of Jupiter, and built an oratory of St Peter from the timber (Willibald, Life of Boniface 6 (pp. 63–64)). Several places in Hesse are called Geismar, and the translator’s note to this passage calls the location uncertain. The village beside Fritzlar, marked here, is the one usually chosen.
What happened here
- AD 719–754, estimated dateBoniface, Apostle to the Germans
The English monk Winfrid, renamed Boniface, is sent by Pope Gregory II to preach east of the Rhine. He fells the sacred oak at Geismar, founds bishoprics and the abbey of Fulda, reforms the Frankish church under Roman authority, and is killed in Frisia.