Letters of Boniface
The collected correspondence of Boniface: letters to and from four popes, English bishops, abbesses and friends, with his oath of 722 and papal charters. They are first-hand evidence for his mission, written as it happened.
Read the text at sourcebooks.fordham.edu ↗Latin text, edited by M. Tangl (Monumenta Germaniae Historica) ↗
The collection holds letters of Boniface and of his successor Lul, letters written to them, and some others of the same time. Among them are the commission given to him by Pope Gregory II on 15 May 719 (Tangl 12), the oath he swore at his consecration as bishop (Tangl 16), his long report to Pope Zacharias on the state of the Frankish church (Tangl 50), and his account of the founding of the monastery at Fulda (Tangl 86).
Unlike the Life by Willibald, these are documents of the moment, many of them dated by the regnal years of the emperor. They show the mission from the inside: requests to England for books and prayers, questions put to Rome about marriage law and baptism, and complaints about worldly bishops.
Cited in
- AD 719–754, estimated date