Boniface

Life

Boniface was born around 675 into an Anglo-Saxon noble family at Crediton in Wessex, England. His original name was Winfrid. As a child he entered the Benedictine monastery school at Exeter, and he later studied at Nursling Abbey, where he became a monk. He was ordained a priest at about the age of thirty. He was known as a scholar who taught Latin grammar and wrote a grammar and poetry.

In 716 he undertook his first mission to Frisia (in what is now the northern Netherlands), but it failed and he returned home. In 718 he traveled to Rome, and in 719 Pope Gregory II commissioned him to evangelize the pagans east of the Rhine. At this time he also received the name Boniface. He then worked in Thuringia, Hesse, and Frisia; in Frisia he labored alongside Willibrord of Utrecht. He was consecrated a bishop on November 30, 722, and the pope gave him a letter commending him to the protection of Charles Martel, mayor of the palace of the Frankish kingdom.

Pope Gregory III later raised him to the rank of archbishop, and he became the first Archbishop of Mainz. In 754 he relinquished this office and returned to Frisia. On June 5 of that year, near Dokkum, while preparing to administer confirmation, the rite that strengthens the faith of those who have received baptism, to converts, he was attacked by pagans and killed along with several dozen of his companions. His remains were taken to Fulda.

Ministry and Achievements

• Donar's Oak: Around 723, at Geismar in Hesse, he cut down a sacred oak dedicated to Donar (Thor), the Germanic god of thunder. According to the biography written by Willibald, when no divine punishment followed, the local people received baptism, and the timber was used to build a chapel dedicated to Saint Peter.
• Church organization: He founded monasteries at Amöneburg and elsewhere and brought English monks to serve as missionaries. In 742 he established a diocese at Büraburg, regarded as the first diocese on German soil north of the old Roman frontier.
• Papal legate: He organized the church in the German lands into a structure closely tied to the Roman Church and worked to reform the clergy. He is said to have presided over the ceremony at which Pepin became king of the Franks.
• Records: A nearly contemporary biography and a large body of his correspondence survive, so his life is known in comparatively full detail.

Influence on the Korean Church

Boniface has no direct connection with the church in Korea. The Catholic Church in Korea observes his feast day on June 5. Because Protestants do not practice the veneration of saints, Korean Protestant sources treat him chiefly as a missionary of the medieval church.

Assessment

The Catholic Church venerates him as the "Apostle of the Germans" and as a patron saint of Germany, and it highly esteems his orthodoxy and fidelity to the pope. He is also commemorated in the Orthodox Church, the Anglican Communion, and the Lutheran churches. Fulda, the site of his tomb, was long one of Germany's foremost pilgrimage destinations.

At the same time, his missionary methods, which included destroying the sacred sites of other religions, as in the felling of the oak, are sometimes controversial today. It is also noted that his mission was carried out under the protection of Frankish rulers.