Saint Boniface

Saint Boniface, originally named Winfrid (also spelled Wynfrith or Wynfryth), was an Anglo-Saxon Benedictine monk, missionary bishop, and martyr of the eighth century, later styled the Apostle of the Germans. He was born in the kingdom of Wessex in the late seventh century. Later medieval tradition identifies Crediton in Devon as his birthplace, though the earliest biography, the Vita Bonifatii written by the priest Willibald within about a decade of the saint’s death, does not name a specific town. He was educated first at the monastery of Exeter and then at Nursling (Nhutscelle) in Hampshire, entered the Benedictine life, was ordained priest, and gained a reputation as a teacher of Scripture and grammar. An early attempt to preach in Frisia around the mid-710s failed because of warfare between the Franks and the Frisian ruler Radbod. Winfrid then travelled to Rome, where Pope Gregory II gave him the name Boniface, commissioned him to evangelize the Germanic peoples east of the Rhine, and in 722 consecrated him bishop without assigning a fixed territorial see.

Under the protection of the Frankish mayors of the palace, especially Charles Martel and later Carloman and Pepin, Boniface preached and organized churches in Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria, and Frisia. Willibald recounts that at Geismar in Hesse he felled a great oak sacred to the god Donar (Thor); when no divine punishment followed, many of the local inhabitants accepted baptism. He founded and reformed monasteries, of which Fulda, established in the 740s by his disciple Sturm on land granted by Carloman, became the most important centre of his work. Pope Gregory III raised him to archiepiscopal rank and authorized him to create bishoprics in Germany. Boniface eventually occupied the see of Mainz and used a series of reforming synods to discipline the Frankish clergy, promote the Rule of Saint Benedict, suppress remaining pagan customs, and bring the churches of the Frankish realms into closer conformity with Roman practice. His surviving letters, exchanged with popes, English churchmen, and Carolingian rulers, are a principal source for the ecclesiastical history of the period.

In his final years Boniface laid aside his metropolitan duties in order to resume missionary work in Frisia, the region of his first unsuccessful journey. In 754, while preparing to confirm converts near Dokkum, he and a group of companions were attacked and killed by a band of Frisians. Near-contemporary accounts present the deaths as martyrdom. His body was taken first to Utrecht and Mainz and then, in accordance with his own wish, to Fulda, where his tomb became a major pilgrimage site. Veneration spread rapidly in the Frankish kingdoms and in his native England. His feast is kept on 5 June. He is invoked as a principal patron of Germany and of the diocese of Fulda, and also of brewers, tailors, and file-cutters. Because he died in the eighth century, long before the later medieval papal process of canonization, his recognition as a saint rests on continuous liturgical cult rather than a formal decree.