Mission of Boniface in Germany

Wynfreth, a monk and teacher at Nursling in Wessex, made a first missionary journey to Frisia in 716, but it failed because of the Frisian ruler Radbod, then at war with Charles Martel, and he returned to England the same year. In Rome, on 15 May 719, Pope Gregory II gave him the name Boniface and a commission to preach to the pagans of Germania. After three years in Frisia at the side of Willibrord, the “Apostle of the Frisians”, he turned to Hesse and Thuringia; the pope consecrated him a bishop, and from 723 he travelled under a letter of protection from Charles Martel. Around 723–724 — the date is not recorded — he felled the oak of Donar at Geismar near Fritzlar. According to his biographer Willibald, a sudden gust of wind brought the tree down, the onlookers were converted, and a chapel of St Peter was built from its timber; Lutz von Padberg and other historians think the act was carefully prepared, with the Frankish fort of Büraburg close at hand.

Gregory III made Boniface an archbishop in 732, and in 737–738 he became papal legate for Germany. He reorganized the bishoprics of Bavaria (739), founded new sees at Würzburg, Büraburg and Erfurt (741–742) and, together with the mayor of the palace Carloman, held the first councils to reform the Frankish church, beginning with the Concilium Germanicum of 742 or 743. In the mid-740s Mainz became his see. On 12 March 744 his disciple Sturm founded, at his wish, the abbey of Fulda, which Pope Zachary placed directly under the Holy See in 751. Carolingian annals written decades later claim that Boniface anointed Pepin the Short king in 751, but most historians reject this.

In old age Boniface returned to Frisia. On 5 June 754 Frisians attacked his camp near Dokkum, where he was waiting to confirm the newly baptized, and killed him with his companions — Willibald names eleven of them, a later tradition speaks of more than fifty. His body was brought to Fulda, which became the centre of his cult. The “Mainz tradition” long dated his death to 755; the year 754 was argued by the historian Michael Tangl. The Bonifatian correspondence — some 150 letters collected on the orders of his successor Lullus, not all of them written by or to Boniface — is an important source for the 8th century.