St. Boniface is considered, at least since the 16th century, as "the apostle of the Germans"... even though at the time he lived (673/675 - 754/755) "German" - much less "Germany" - did not yet exist: the term used at the end of the 8th century "theodiscus", from which the Italian "tedesco" and the old Spanish "tudesco" or "teuton" are derived, referred mainly to the person who spoke a Germanic language, as opposed to Latin or the Romance languages, and by extension, to one of the Germanic peoples, mainly where Romanization and, with it, Christianity had not arrived.
It was to these pagan or only superficially Christianized Germanic tribes that the missionary work of this Anglo-Saxon monk was directed, born in the kingdom of Wessex in southwest England around 673-675, with the name of Wynfreth, from which the current German name Winfrid or Winfried is derived. He entered as a boy the Benedictine monastery of Nursling, near Southampton, where he was ordained a priest at about 30 years of age.
Their missionary activity was part of the Anglo-Saxon Christianization movement promoted by Pope St. Gregory the Great at the end of the 6th century. Once the Anglo-Saxons had become firmly established, the missionary wave began in the opposite direction: from the islands to the continent.
One of the most prominent Anglo-Saxon missionaries was Willibrord (658-739), who was sent in 690 to the Frisians. To Friesland Boniface will travel later, although his first trip to this Germanic tribe in 716 will fail because of the opposition of Duke Radbod. Before the end of the year, Boniface returned to his convent at Nursling, where a year later he was elected abbot.
Bishop Daniel of Winchester sent Wynfreth in the autumn of 718 to Rome, where Pope Gregory II appointed him apostle to the Gentiles to bring the faith to the Germanic peoples and ordained him bishop on May 15, 719, at the same time giving him the name Boniface. After passing through Bavaria and Thuringia, he met Willibrod in Friesland, from whom he learned to take into account the political situation in his planning, but also to subordinate his work to Rome.
In 722, after having separated from Willibrord and begun the mission in Hessen and Thuringia, he was summoned by the Pope: Gregory ordained him bishop of the mission and entrusted him with a task of great importance: the reorganization of the Church in Germania, which entailed especially integrating the Arian and Iro-Scottish communities into the Roman Church; Boniface will encounter resistance not only among these, but also among the bishops of the Frankish kingdom, more interested in their temporal power than in the expansion of Christianity.
At that time, in the year 723, when he returned from Rome to Hessen, one of the most famous anecdotes of the life of St. Boniface, the destruction of pagan shrines, took place. Thus, according to the priest Willibald of Mainz, in his Vita sancti BonifatiiIn Geismar (now part of the town of Fritzlar) he cut down an oak tree dedicated to the god of war Thor (or Donar).
According to the chronicler, the numerous people - among them many Frisians - were impressed to see that the god did not react in any way. In this way, Boniface showed the superiority of the God of the Christians over the pagan gods. The felling of the Geismar oak is considered a "founding myth" of the new religious order and ecclesiastical reorganization achieved by Boniface.
The reorganization of the Church in Germanic lands on the part of St. Boniface takes on a special thrust after a new trip to Rome, in 737/738, in which the new Pope Gregory III invests him with the function of Papal Legate. He begins with the reorganization of dioceses in Bavaria and Saxony (Salzburg, Passau, Regensburg and Freising); he also founds those of Würzburg, Büraburg and Erfurt; in 744, also the monastery that would be his favorite, Fulda. In 747 he was named bishop of Mainz.
The creation of women's monasteries as centers of Christianization was also one of St. Boniface's priorities; for this he had the collaboration of, among others, two Anglo-Saxon nuns, who today are considered among the main "German" saints: Walburga, daughter of one of his sisters, and Lioba, who would be named abbess of Tauberbischofsheim, from where other monasteries would be founded in Würzburg and in various places in Thuringia.
The reorganization of the Church in Germanic lands was also part of his struggle for the defense of celibacy: at the German Council of 742, he succeeded in imposing severe penalties both on priests and on monks and nuns who did not live celibacy.
At the end of his life, in 753, he wanted to make a last trip, with some companions, to return to the mission land where he had begun his work: to Friesland. That he was aware that the end was near is shown not only by the fact that he transferred the see of Mainz to his successor Lullus, but also by the fact that he carried a shroud in his luggage. When, on the feast of Pentecost in the year 754 (or 755) he was about to celebrate some baptisms in Dokkum, he was attacked by highwaymen; thus he met his death with his 51 companions. His mortal remains rest in the cathedral of Fulda.
The veneration of St. Boniface experienced a special boost towards the end of the 19th century: with the creation of the German Reich, many Catholics feared the formation of a German national church, which would want to become independent of Rome. Thus began the annual pilgrimage to the saint, the "apostle of the Germans". In addition, since 1867 the German bishops have been meeting at their autumn conference in Fulda, where at the closing Mass they are each blessed with the relics of the saint. His fidelity to Rome, in the face of the various forces that sought to form a parallel church in his time, is particularly topical today, when these tendencies are once again gaining some strength.
