St. Boniface is known as the Apostle of Germany and is
credited with being one of the most effective missionaries in the history of
the church. Boniface is not without his
detractors and some of his evangelistic style seems pretty insensitive by the
standards of today, but he was a man of his times with a heart for making
Christ known where he was not before and a man of boundless energy when it came
to caring for the faithful and organizing a church that would stand the test of
time in Northern Europe.
St. Boniface was born in Devonshire England in 680. Christianity was a relatively new faith in
Britain at this time having only been established in south and central England
for 90 years. Boniface’s birth name was
Wynfrith (sometimes called Winfred) and he was of a strong Saxon family. Early in life Wynfrith wanted to become a
Benedictine monk but for some time his father was opposed to this calling. Eventually his father came to support him and
Wynfrith enters the monastery in his early twenties and is ordained a priest by
age 30.
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| ruins of monastery in England |
Although Wynfrith showed great promise as a scholar, he had
a deeper calling welling up within his soul.
He felt duty-bound to return to the land of his ancestors and evangelize
them. His initial missionary trip was to
Friesland (what we would call Holland or the Netherlands today) to assist a
work among those people that had been going on for several years. The situation on the ground was quite
difficult largely because of political reasons and soon Wynfrith returned to
England. He was not discouraged in the
slightest by the lack of fruit he saw in Friesland, but rather stimulated to
even greater exertions in the future.
When he returned to England we might not have ever heard of
him again. He was offered the office of
Abbot in his monastery which was an office with dignity and privilege. Most anyone would have considered this God’s
promotion of them, but Boniface, true to his character, was restless and looked
again towards the mission field. When he
took the next step, Wynfrith would never set foot in England the remainder of
his life.
For several centuries the German peoples had been exposed to
the Gospel by Celtic and Frankish missionaries.
While they were strong in evangelistic zeal they were often weak in
organizational skill. This coupled with the societal chaos in the wake of the
tribal invasions from Central Asia pretty much left what churches existed in a
weakened and floundering state.
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| Boniface preaching to a local ruler |
In 718, Wynfrith makes his way to Rome and presents himself
to the pope for mission service. He is
given a commission from the papacy to travel beyond the Rhine river and
establish the Roman church in Germany.
With the prestige of a papal endorsement behind him, Boniface was well-received by the local
rulers and over the next few years was quite successful in his work of re-building
the existing Christian church and evangelizing the pagans.
5 years later (723) Wynfrith returned to Rome and was
ordained a bishop. This gave him the
right to oversee the new churches and ordain its ministers. It is on this occasion of ordination that
Wynfrith is given the new name Boniface.
Boniface was the name of a Roman martyr whose feast day was about to
happen. His new name would have been
Wynfrith Boniface but he so identified with his role as a bishop and shepherd
that from that day forward chose to only go by his new name.
When Boniface returns as the bishop of Germany with the
authority of the Pope and then gets a further letter of endorsement from
Frankish King Charles Martel that perhaps the most storied moment of his
ministry occurs.
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| Sacred Grove |
While he had been away from Germany, some of Boniface’s new
converts in the area of Geismar had fallen back into their old pagan ways of
magic and superstition. The particular
temptation and draw in this region was centered in the sacred oak tree of Thor
the god of thunder. Sacred trees have
long been part of animist cultures throughout the world (even the Biblical
Canaanite culture) but were especially prevalent in Northern Europe which was
so heavily forested. Sacrifices of all
kinds were offered to the trees and if a person so much as picked a piece of
bark of the tree they would pay for it with their life.
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| Boniface with cross and hatchet! |
Boniface, wanting to ‘root paganism out of the people for
good’ came to the sacred tree and to the shock and amazement of everyone took
his axe out and chopped it down. The
people expected him to drop dead for touching the sacred oak but instead when
all was said and done, he was still standing and the tree was not. This had a strong effect on the people for
they realized Boniface represented the one true God and the tree had no power. It is said that Boniface used the wood from
the sacred tree to build a small chapel dedicated to St. Peter.
Another variation on this story has Boniface not chopping
but preaching. As he preaches the Gospel
at the site of the oak, a huge gust of wind comes and blows the tree down
splitting it conveniently into four pieces.
However this happened, it is representative of many instances where
Boniface destroyed pagan temples, sacred rocks, and trees so that the people would
truly believe that there was no spiritual power in the object which in turn
paved the way for his message. It was
certainly not a culturally sensitive policy to be sure, but it was effective
and often resulted in mass conversions.
At some point Boniface abandoned this “power encounter”
approach and took a more philosophical approach with people asking questions
about their local gods and what they believed and then would teach them about
Christianity. People often saw this as a
superior message coming from a greater culture and would convert. For Boniface, if the people renounced their
pagan beliefs and confessed faith in Christ, he would prepare them for baptism.
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| Boniface baptizing new Christian |
But the great missionary evangelist has more than a good
message and a winning presentation. He
also has a plan for establishing church communities and building local leaders
so that when he leaves the work will be self-sustaining. Boniface’s plan was to establish
monasteries. It may seem odd from our modern
perspective today, but in the early Middle Ages, the monastery was the closest
thing to a university there was. The men
and women who lived there were taught to read, taught the scriptures, and
learned and developed practical and useful knowledge for the entire world. The perfect example of this is how monks
advanced agriculture through crop rotation and the development of plow
harnesses for animals. This could only
happen in a monastery at the time because its environment of security and
efficiency allowed the leisure necessary for innovation and advanced thinking.
Boniface would recruit men and women monks from England to
start monasteries in Germany and then as German people became Christians some
of their number would be invited to join the monastery, become educated, and
then would serve as leaders for the growing church in their nation. The greatest and largest monastery was at
Fulda which is said to be in Germany what the Benedictine Monastery at Monte
Cassino is to Italy.
In 747 AD, Boniface
again is recalled to Rome and is made the Archbishop and spiritual leader of
the German people by the pope. This
empowers him to organize the church into many different dioceses (church
districts) and appoint bishops to oversee them.
Boniface himself was a stickler that holding high office in the church
was not a call to privilege (as some in his day saw it), but a call to
service. He would remind those under him
that the Lord Jesus Himself washed the feet of the disciples at the Last
Supper. Whenever he received a gift from
one of his subordinate bishops, Boniface would send a gift in return and it was
always the same: a hand towel for washing feet.
At this point Boniface is poised to end his life in Germany
serving the church with distinction as archbishop. But shortly after his 70th
birthday, he resigns his high office to return to his calling as a
missionary. His choice? Boniface returns to Friesland, the place of
his first missionary effort to give it another try. In this, Boniface shows that as a Christians
you are never too old to take on another challenge or assignment from the Lord.
The second mission in Friesland proved to be a very fruitful
period for Boniface. He had a large team
of people helping him and thousands were baptized and again the church was
expanding there. Unfortunately in June
of 754 AD, while Boniface and 50 of his assistants were encamped at Dockum on
the river Borne preparing for a mass baptism, they were attacked and killed by
a gang of robbers thinking they had a large sum of money to take.
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| Martyrdom of Boniface |
Tragic as this was, the gospel had taken root and by the end
of the 8th century paganism in Friesland had almost completely been
replaced with Christianity.
To sum up, Boniface is considered one of the most powerful
influences on the future history of Western Europe. Not only were the Teutonic tribes who
occupied most of the land we know as present day Germany evangelized, but by
connecting them with the Catholic church there was a great transference of the
seed of ancient Roman culture into a world that was at one time barbaric and
superstitious. This seed when fully
germinated (or should I say “German-ated”) would later develop into an even
greater movement of Christianity centuries later with the Protestant
Reformation which would change the face of Western Civilization forever.
Sources:
“Boniface” Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and
Ecclesiastical Literature. McClintock and Strong eds. (Grand Rapids : Baker Book House, 1981)
“Boniface” Dictionary of Christian Biography Michael Walsh ed. (Collegeville : Liturgical Press, 2001)
“Boniface” Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity. Angelo Di Berardino gen. ed. (Downers
Grove : Intervarsity Press, 2014)
Cairns, Earle E. Christianity Through the Centuries : A
History of the Christian Church. (Grand
Rapids : Zondervan, 1981)
Cohn-Sherbok, Lavinia.
Who’s Who in Christianity. (London : Routledge, 1998)
Curtis, A. Kenneth,
J. Stephen Lang, and Randy Peterson.
The 100 Most Important Events in
Christian History. (Grand Rapids :
Fleming Revell Publishing, 1998)
Ferguson, Everett. Church History : From Christ to the
Pre-Reformation Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids
: Zondervan, 2013)
Frazer, James George, Sir.
The Golden Bough. New York : Macmillan, 1922; Bartleby.com,
2000. www.barltleby.com/196/. April 13,
2015.
Latourette, Kenneth Scott.
A History of Christianity Vol.
1 (New York : Harper and Row, 1975)
McManners, John. The Oxford History of Christianity. (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2002)
Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church Vol.
IV. (Grand Rapids : Eerdmans, 1910)
Tucker, Ruth A. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya : A
Biographical History of Christian Missions.
(Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 1983)
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