Foxe: Voices of the MartyrsMinta

Boniface (ca. 680 – 755) 

He never lost his passion for missionary service. The archbishop of Germany, Boniface, could have enjoyed the honor of his office at an age when most men dream of a settled life. But the mission field held more purpose and challenge than presiding over monasteries or maintaining cathedrals. Boniface was seventy-five years old when he left Germany to preach the Gospel once again. 

Boniface is probably the most widely known name, apart from popes and kings, of the eighth century. He was born “Winfrid” in England around 680. Early in life, to his father’s dismay, he chose a vocation in the church, taking training in Benedictine monasteries and writing the first Latin grammar in England. He was ordained a priest when he was thirty years old, but he wanted the frontier. 

In 716, Winfrid set out on a missionary expedition to Friesland, or Frisia. His own Anglo-Saxon language was similar to the spoken language of the Frisians. The mission was frustrated, however, by a war raging between Charles Martel (who later stopped the “Mohammedans” from entering Europe in the battle of Potiers, 732) and the Frisian king. 

In 719, during a visit to Rome, Winfrid was given the name Boniface by Pope Gregory II, who commissioned him to evangelize Germany. For five years, Boniface preached and baptized in Hesse and Thuringia. In 722, he was named bishop of the Germanic territories. 

A year later, Boniface performed one of those simple acts of defiance that gives birth to legends. He felled a large oak tree near the town of Fritzlar in northern Hesse, a tree known to locals as Thor’s Oak. Indeed, many locals were present as Boniface worked at the oak’s tough base. These onlookers grew steadily more curious and angry with this foreigner who was infuriating their gods with each stroke of the axe. Indeed, they expected Thor or one of his agents to fell the bishop with a thunderclap. When the oak hit the ground, it split into four parts, so the story goes, and the people instantly knew that a superior divine power was at work. Most converted as Boniface had the wood sawn to make a chapel—today the site of Fritzler Cathedral. 

In 755, Boniface was restless again about the heathen in Frisia. He organized a large group of priests and lay helpers, and he preached there with extraordinary success. On Whitsun Eve (the eve of Pentecost) in 755, he called all new converts to a great meeting near Dokkum. Instead of converts, however, he was ambushed by a gang of local vigilantes, who mercilessly killed fifty-two Christians, including Boniface. 

The powers in Rome would have made his old age comfortable. Instead, Boniface chose missions, and in Frisia he died a martyr.