5
June 735 A.D. Boniface Murdered—An
Elderly Bishop and Missionary
Mr. Graves tells the story.
Graves, Dan. “Pagan Attack Felled St.
Boniface.” Christianity.com. Apr 2007. http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/601-900/pagan-attack-felled-st-boniface-11629751.html. Accessed Apr 28, 2014.
An elderly man sat quietly
reading in his tent on this day June 5,
754. He was awaiting the arrival of a number of new converts whom he was to
confirm. Suddenly a band of angry pagans fell upon him. Urging his coworkers
not to fight, but to accept martyrdom for the kingdom of Christ, the old man
braved the sword blows, defending himself only by protecting his head with the
book he was reading. Fifty Christians were hacked to death. So
perished St. Boniface, one of the most influential Englishmen of all time,
along with his coworkers.
Born Wynfrith, Boniface became a
monk and served in an English monastery until he was near forty. At this mature
age, he determined to become a missionary to the German races. At first he
worked in Frisia with another famous missionary, Willibrord. Willibrord wished
for Boniface to take over his mission, but Boniface left to visit Rome before
Willibrord could compel him to take up this narrow task.
Back from Rome, Boniface won
renown among the Germanic peoples by chopping down Donar's sacred oak tree. It
split into four pieces and fell with a crash at the first blows. The pagans
expected that the gods would strike Boniface. When he emerged unscathed, they
recognized the powerlessness of their pagan gods, and acknowledged that the
Christian God was a greater than theirs. In an ironic gesture, Boniface used
the wood to build a church.
Boniface entered upon a period of
fruitful evangelism. So great was the response that he had to write home to
England for more laborers. Dozens of English monks responded willingly and
thousands of pagans were brought to Christ in the regions of Frisia, Hesse and
Thuringia. The German Saxon tongue was so close to English Saxon that the
Englishmen had little trouble being understood.
So great was the success of this
holy man in converting pagans to the living Christ, that the pope appointed him
Metropolitan of the region. As such he could create sees where needed and
appoint bishops. He also founded monasteries including the famed one at Fulda.
Next in importance to his work as
a missionary were his reform efforts in the Frankish church. It had grown
corrupt. Through a series of synods and his personal appeals, he brought moral
reform to the nation and closer ties to Rome. He had discovered that his best
chance for keeping the church alive in Northern Europe was to tie it closely to
the is last mission, back to the Frisians. They hacked him to death.
Bibliography:
1. "Boniface, St." The
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A.
Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
2. Butler, Alban. Lives of the
Saints. Various editions.
3. McBeth, Leon. Men Who Made
Missions. Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman, 1968.
4. Mershman, Francis.
"Boniface." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton,
1914.
5. Neill, Stephen. A History of
Christian Missions. The Pelican History of the Church #6. Hammondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Pelican Books, 1964.
6. Various encyclopedia articles.
Last updated April, 2007.
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