92 FOURTH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
hearing, and excommunicated as heretics and seducers of the people, by a provincial Synod of Soissons, A. D. 744, and again in a Synod of Rome, 745, by Pope Zacharias, who con firmed the decision of Boniface. Aldebert was at last imprisoned in the monastery of Fulda, and killed by shepherds after escaping from prison. Clemens disappeared.1
§ 25. Bonifaee, the Apostle of Germany.
I. BONIFACITJS: Epistolce et Sermones, first ed. by Serrarius, Mogunt. 1605,
then by Wiirdtwein, 1790, by Giles, 1842, and in Migne's Patrol. Tom. 89, pp. 593-801 (together with Vita, etc.). JAFFE: Monumenta Moguntina. Berol. 1866.
II. Biographies of Bonifacius. The oldest by WILLIBALD, his pupil
and companion (in Pertz, Monum. II. 33, and in Migne, I. c. p. 603) ; by OTHLO, a German Benedictine monk of the eleventh cent, (in Migne, p. 634) ; LETZNER (1602) ; LOFFLER (1812); SETTERS (1845); Cox (1853); J. P. MULLER (1870); HOPE (1872); AUG. WERNER Bonifacius und die Romanisirung von Mitteleuropa. Leipz., 1875 ; PFAHLER(Regensb. 1880); OTTO FISCHER (Leipz. 1881); EBRARD: Bonif. der Zerstorer des columbanischen Kirchenthums auf dem Festlande (Giitersloh, 1882 ; against Fischer and very unjust to B. ; see against itZOpFFEL in the" Theol. Lit. Zeitg," 1882, No. 22). Cf. the respective sections in NEANDER, GFRORER, EETTBERG (II. 307 sqq.)
On the councils of Bonif. see HEFELE: Conciliengeschichte, III. 458.
BONIFACE or WlNPBlED3 surpassed all his predecessors on the German mission-field by the extent and result of his labors, and acquired the name of the Apostle of Germany. He was born about 680 from a noble family at Kirton in Wessex, the last stronghold of paganism among the Anglo-Saxon king doms. He was brought up in the convent of Nutsal near Win chester, and ordained priest at the age of thirty. He felt it his duty to christianize those countries from which his Anglo-Saxon
1 Comp. besides the Letters of Boniface, the works of Neander, Rettberg, Ebrard, Werner and Fischer, quoted below.
2 One that wins peace. His Latin name Bonifacius, Benefactor, was probably his monastic name, or given to him by the Pope on his second visit to Borne. 723.
225. BONIFACE, THE APOSTLE OF GERMANY. 93
forefathers had emigrated. It was a formidable task, requiring a heroic courage and indomitable perseverance.
He sacrificed his splendid prospects at home, crossed the chan nel, and began his missionary career with two or three compa nions among the Friesians in the neighborhood of Utrecht in Holland (715). His first attempt was a failure. Ratbod, the king of Friesland, was at war with Charles Martel, and devas tated the churches and monasteries which had been founded by the Franks, and by Willibrord.
But far from being discouraged, he was only stimulated to greater exertion. After a brief sojourn in England, where he was offered the dignity of abbot of his convent, he left again his native land, and this time forever. He made a pilgrimage to Rome, was cordially welcomed by Pope Gregory II. and received a general commission to christianize and romanize central Europe (718). Recrossing the Alps, he visited Bavaria and Thuringia, which had been evangelized in part by the disciples of Columban, but he was coldly received because he represented their Chris tianity as insufficient, and required submission to Rome. He turned his steps again to Frieslaud where order had been restored, and assisted AVillibrord, archbishop of Utrecht, for three years. In 722 he returned to Thuringia in the wake of Charles Martel's victorious army and preached to the heathen in Hesse who lived between the Franks and the Saxons, between the middle Rhine and the Elbe. He founded a convent at Amanaburg (Ainoneburg) on the river Ohm.
In 723 he paid, on invitation, a second visit to Rome, and was consecrated by Gregory II. as a missionary bishop without a dio cese (episcopus regionaritis). He bound himself on the grave of St. Peter with the most stringent oath of fealty to the Pope similar to that which was imposed on the Italian or suburban bishops.1
1 The juramentum of Boniface, which he ever afterwards remembered and observed with painful conscientiousness, deserves to be quoted in full, as it con- . tains his whole missionary policy (see Migne, /. c., p. 803) :
"In nomine Domini Dei Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi, imperantc domino Leone