Saint Boniface

English missionary and archbishop (732-754)

• Born: c. 675
• Birthplace: Crediton, Devonshire, England
• Died: June 5, 0754
• Place of death: Dokkum, Frisia (now in the Netherlands)

Boniface left England to assist in the conversion of pagan Germany. He brought Christianity to many areas and, in others, set the Church on a new and sounder basis, earning the title Apostle of Germany.

Early Life

As a young child, Boniface (BAHN-uh-fas) was sent to the monastery at Exeter to be reared as a monk. In later years, he would claim to be of humble birth, but it seems likely that this claim was only a conventional profession of humility. Several of his relatives appear to have had noble rank. There is a tradition that he was born at Crediton, and though it cannot be traced further back than the fourteenth century, Crediton is near enough to Exeter for the story to be plausible.

Exeter does not seem to have satisfied Wynfrith (his given name), and perhaps in the 690's he transferred to the monastery at Nursling, near Southampton, also a Benedictine house and also in the kingdom of Wessex, but possibly with better scholarly endowments. Wynfrith gained a reputation for his learning and piety (though in the unchristianized England of that time there may have been few competitors). He compiled England's first Latin grammar; it is interesting to note, though, that according to Vita sancti Bonifati (The Life of Saint Boniface, 1916), written by the priest Willibald, when Wynfrith was first introduced to Pope Gregory II in 719, he begged to make his profession of faith in writing, as his spoken Latin did not meet Vatican standards.

Wynfrith's English colleagues thought well of him. In 712, a synod of Wessex priests and bishops chose him as their emissary to the archbishop of Canterbury. After he had made a first, brief visit to the Christian mission in Frisia (now in the Netherlands) in 716, the monastery of Nursling tried to hold this valuable man by making him abbot. They were, however, too late. Wynfrith had decided to leave England and work with the already established Christian missions in Germany. In 718, he left England, never to return.

Life's Work

The problems facing Wynfrith were complex. From the time of their own conversion, the Anglo-Saxons had felt a strong urge, even a responsibility, to spread the Gospel to their Germanic cousins who had remained on the Continent. The kinship, it seems, was recognized on both sides. Later, in a letter of 738 asking for the prayers of the English, Boniface says that even the pagans declare, “We are of one and the same blood and bone.” Yet, however welcome a friendly mission from the Anglo-Saxons might be, the next neighbor of many of the Germanic tribes, especially of the Saxons and the Frisians, was the aggressive Christian kingdom later empire of the Franks. The pagans, as a result, were very likely to see behind the missionary the Frankish imperialist and to react in very hostile fashion. In addition, relations between the English missionaries and the Frankish church were rarely good. The English thought the Franks corrupt, immoral, and self-interested; the Franks thought the English were moving in on their territory.

Wynfrith, accordingly, did not plunge straight into missionary work but went to Rome. In 719, he introduced himself to Pope Gregory II, and on May 15, he received a mandate from him, letters of support and introduction, and, in recognition of his new status, the new name of Bonifatius, or Boniface. Boniface in this way received protection from Frankish interference. Gregory and his successors, in turn, would have new provinces added to the Church, whose example in the end affected even the disorganized and unreliable Franks.

Boniface returned to the mission in Frisia established by his famous countryman Saint Willibrord (658-739) and worked there for three years. Like the monks of Nursling, Willibrord tried to retain him by offering him a bishopric, but Boniface refused. It was not that there was no work to do, for the Frisians (though situated handily close to England on the North Sea coast running up from the what is now the Netherlands through Germany to Denmark) remained among the most obdurate pagans of all. Boniface may have believed that there were less stubborn souls to win elsewhere, or he may have preferred independence. In any event, he returned to Rome, was consecrated a bishop there on November 30, 722, gave a personal oath of loyalty to the pope, and returned not to Frisia but to central Germany. He took with him a letter of recommendation from the pope to Charles Martel, the powerful ruler of the Franks. Boniface's success would depend in no small part on this combination of papal support and government protection.

Boniface worked in Germany for some sixteen years, mostly in the provinces of Hesse and Thuringia. The most famous story about him comes from Willibald's account, written by an otherwise unknown English monk not long after Boniface's death, though it seems that Willibald had not known Boniface personally. He relates that Boniface had decided to challenge the pagans by felling the sacred oak at Geismar in Hesse, which was dedicated to Donar, the god of thunder (the German equivalent of the Norse god Thor). In the presence of many angry pagans, Boniface lifted his ax to it. At the first strike, the oak fell into four parts, as if blown down from Heaven. If the story has any truth, it may show that Boniface believed in a policy of confrontation which was, in the end, to cause his death.

Assisted by many Anglo-Saxon volunteers, Boniface established churches and monasteries, converting and baptizing large numbers. He was made an archbishop in 732 by Pope Gregory II but had no bishops under him for several years. Possibly as a result of this odd status, Boniface made a third trip to Rome in 738 to confer with the pope, then turned to a new phase of large-scale organization.

Moving to the relatively Christianized south of Germany, he set up a new Bavarian “province” of the Church, with four bishoprics in it. He also established bishoprics in Hesse, Thuringia, and Franconia, ending with eight bishops subordinate to him. This looks rather like an exercise in empire-building, but Boniface seems to have succeeded in it, first because the new bishops were often Boniface's Anglo-Saxon assistants, who had no doubt volunteered to join him because of his own personal prestige, and second because he was careful always to clear himself with successive popes. The exercise was in any case necessary and had many good effects. With eight bishops, and the support of Carloman and Pépin III the Short, the heirs of Charles Martel, Boniface was able to call a series of synods between 740 and 747 to reform the Frankish church. The Frankish church was shamed into reluctant imitation and cooperation. One final problem was solved when Boniface until then an archbishop without a seat was given Cologne for his base. His base was later changed to Mainz, as a result of Frankish objections.

With these successes behind him, Boniface, by this time in his late seventies, decided to return to the scene of his first mission in Frisia, in 753. There, however, resistance to the Franks and the Christians was still strong, exacerbated by decades of war. When Boniface tried to hold a mass baptism on June 5, 754, near the town of Dokkum, armed pagans attacked him. Boniface forbade resistance and was killed, by tradition holding up a Gospel book. Many of his followers were killed with him. Willibald's The Life of Saint Boniface rather gloatingly reports that the Christian Frisians, unencumbered by Boniface's scruples about nonviolence, armed themselves and successfully counterattacked the pagans. Even if this story is true, it made no difference to the overall situation in Frisia. Boniface's body was recovered and taken for burial to the abbey at Fulda in Hesse, which he had founded.

A considerable part of Saint Boniface's correspondence has survived. It makes, for the most part, rather uninspiring reading. With the exception of the general “Letter to the English” of 738, which makes a straightforward appeal to love and piety, Boniface's letters are those of a busy administrator. He worries about recurring problems, often related to being short of assistants: What is he to do about priests unworthy of their cloth? Can he still use them, or must they be discarded? Is the pope supporting him, or are people going behind his back to reverse his decisions? More technical queries include the degrees of kinship prohibiting marriage; pagan and Christian definitions of incest often differed. Can food offered to idols be used after it has been blessed in Christian fashion? What are the rules about re-baptism? It would appear to a modern reader that Boniface often fusses needlessly over details for example, ordering re-baptism in cases in which a priest, through ignorance, has made a mistake in his Latin. The deed and intent were not enough for him; the words also had to be right.

On the other side, those writing to Boniface must often (one senses) have driven him close to despair. The bishop of Winchester, who had probably never met a hostile pagan, sent Boniface advice on how to convert people. One of the several popes Boniface served so loyally asked him to be sure that bishops’ sees were established in proper cities, not mere townships. Where Boniface was to find these cities, in the forests of central Germany, the pope did not say. Meanwhile, though the king of Mercia appears not to have replied to the strong letter of reproof that Boniface sent to him in 746/747 regarding his sins, the king of Kent did write in the most cheerful fashion, in or near 750, saying how delighted he was that Boniface was praying for him. He also asked Boniface to send him a pair of good German falcons, preferably big enough to attack crows. Letters such as these both attest Boniface's international prestige and offer insight into the unexpectedly mundane problems of missionary life.

Significance

Boniface's main achievement, perhaps, was to live so long and remain so undiscouraged. Sparks of Christianity often fell on the pagan North. Usually they were snuffed out after a few years. Boniface was one of the few who survived hostility from the pagans, jealousy or indifference from the Christians, and the discouragement and death of his supporters. He built missionary fervor into a structure that, perhaps most important, would no longer need fervor to sustain it. When he died, the Church in Germany was too strongly rooted to need great individuals for survival. Boniface made scattered missions into an organized Church, and, by his example to the Franks, brought the whole of northwest Europe into a better relationship with Rome. Later kings, popes, and emperors were to build on this stable foundation.

Bibliography

Albertson, Clinton, ed. and trans. Anglo-Saxon Saints and Heroes. Bronx, N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 1967. Contains seven lives of Anglo-Saxon saints, the last being Willibald’s The Life of Saint Boniface. Provides annotations.

Duckett, Eleanor S. Anglo-Saxon Saints and Scholars. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1967. Provides a major chapter on the life of Boniface. While written in a novelistic style, it is backed by solid research. Includes often revealing anecdotes about the period.

Emerton, Ephraim, ed. and trans. The Letters of Saint Boniface. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. One of the best complete English versions of the more than one hundred letters. While the letters are sometimes frustratingly bureaucratic, they offer a picture of an eighth century personality almost unrivaled in detail.

Levison, Wilhelm. England and the Continent in the Eighth Century. Reprint. New York: Clarendon Press, 1966. The work is especially valuable in setting Boniface in the context of earlier missions and of general European politics. An appendix gives a full account of the manuscripts of the letters.

Stenton, F. M. Anglo-Saxon England. 3d ed. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Though Boniface is not treated extensively in this general history, the author’s account includes a useful map and valuable observations on the letters, on political realism, and on events after Boniface’s death.

Talbot, C. H., ed. and trans. The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954. A well-chosen selection from Boniface’s correspondence, together with a translation of Willibald’s biography and lives of four other early missionaries. Includes a short introduction and a good bibliography (largely of foreign-language material).

Whitelock, Dorothy, ed. and trans. Circa 500-1042. Vol. 1 in English Historical Documents, edited by David C. Douglas. 2d ed. New York: Routledge, 1996. In addition to fourteen letters to, from, or about Boniface and two extracts from Willibald, this volume contains large selections of similar letters and lives, as well as of chronicles and narrative sources, which help to put Boniface in the context of his times.