Boniface

Boniface, St, 'the Apostle of Germany,' whose original name was Winfried, was born at Crediton, in Devonshire, about 680. He entered a Benedictine monastery in Exeter at the age of thirteen, and afterwards removed to that of Nursling, in Hampshire, where he taught rhetoric, history, and theology, and became a priest at the age of thirty. He seems to have adopted the name Boniface when he first turned monk. A movement, proceeding from England and Ireland, was then going on for the conversion of the still heathen peoples of Europe; Gallus and Emmeran had been sent in 614 to Alemannia, Kilian (murdered 689) to Bavaria, Willibrord (died 696) to the country of the Franks, and Siegfried to Sweden. Winfried also took the resolution (716) of preaching Christianity to the Frisians, among whom it had not yet found entrance. But a war broke out between Charles Martel and the king of the Frisians, and Winfried returned from Utrecht to Nursling, of which he might have become abbot. But bent upon his design, he repaired to Rome in 718, and received the authorisation of Pope Gregory II. to preach the gospel to all the tribes of Germany. He went first to Thuringia and Bavaria, then laboured three years in Friesland, and travelled through Hesse and Saxony, everywhere baptising multitudes, and consecrating their idolatrous groves as churches. In 723 Gregory II. called him to Rome; consecrated him bishop, and furnished him with letters to Charles Martel and all princes and bishops, requesting their aid in his pious work. Returning to Hesse (724), he destroyed the objects of heathen worship (among them the great oak of Geismar, sacred to Thor, and an idol named Stuffo, on a summit of the Harz, still called Stuffenberg), founded churches and convents, and called to his aid priests, monks, and nuns from England, whom he distributed through the various countries. In recognition of his eminent services, Gregory III. sent him (732) the pallium, and named him archbishop and primate of all Germany, with power to establish bishoprics wherever he saw fit. Boniface now made a third journey to Rome (738), and was appointed papal legate for Germany. The bishoprics of Ratisbon, Erfurt, Paderborn, Würzburg, Eichstädt, and Salzburg owe their establishment to St Boniface. The famous abbey of Fulda is also one of his foundations. In 746 he was chosen Archbishop of Mainz, and in 752 he is said to have consecrated Pepin as king of the Franks at Soissons. In 754 he resigned the archbishopric, and had resumed his apostolical labours among the Frisians, when at Dokkum, 18 miles north-east of Leeuwarden, in West Friesland, he was fallen upon by a band of armed heathens, and killed, along with the congregation of converts that were with him (5th June 755). His remains were taken first to Utrecht, then to Mainz, and finally to Fulda. In the abbey there is still shown a copy of the gospels written by him, with a leaf stained with his blood. A collection of his letters, and the canons he promulgated for the discipline of the newly-established churches, have been preserved, and are instructive as to the state of Germany at the time. The best editions of his Letters (Epistolæ) are those of Giles (2 vols. Lond. 1844), and Jaffé (Berlin, 1866), to which is appended the Life of him by Willibald. In 1811 a monument was erected to St Boniface on a hill near Altenberga, in the principality of Gotha, where, according to tradition, he had founded (724) the first Christian church in North Germany. A statue by Henschel was also erected to him at Fulda in 1842. See German works on Boniface by Seiters (1845), Müller (1870), Werner (1875), Fischer (1881), and Ebrard (1882); also Merivale, Conversion of the West: the Continental Teutons (1878).