Mainz
Roman city on the Rhine and the see held by Boniface in his last years. His disciple Lul succeeded him there, and the first Life of Boniface was written at Lul’s request.
Willibald calls the city Magontia and says that Boniface ruled its bishopric by the consent and gift of the Frankish ruler Carloman, and that before leaving for Frisia he ordained his disciple Lul to take his place (Willibald, Life of Boniface 8 (pp. 74, 78)). Lul sent monks to bring the martyr’s body from Utrecht; it rested at Mainz on the way to Fulda (Willibald, Life of Boniface 8 (pp. 88–90)).
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.
- c. 1454–1455, estimated dateGutenberg Prints the Bible
At Mainz in the mid-1450s the Latin Bible is printed from movable metal type in an edition of well over a hundred copies, the first large book so made in Europe. A visitor who saw sheets of it in 1454 reported that every copy was sold before the work was finished.