98 FOUETH PERIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
with confidence approach the altar of God, and in the next you shall partake of the everlasting bliss." l
Bonifacius combined the zeal and devotion of a missionary with worldly prudence and a rare genius for organization and administration. He was no profound scholar, but a practical statesman and a strict disciplinarian. He was not a theologian, but an ecclesiastic, and would have made a good Pope. He selected the best situations for his bishoprics and monasteries, and his far-sighted policy has been confirmed by history. He was a man of unblemished character and untiring energy. He was incessantly active, preaching, traveling, presiding over Synods, deciding perplexing questions about heathen customs and trivial ceremonies. He wrought no miracles, such as were usually expected from a missionary in those days. His disciple and biographer apologizes for this defect, and appeals as an off set to the invisible cures of souls which he performed.2
The weak spot in his character is the bigotry and intolerance which he displayed in his controversy with the independent missionaries of the French and Scotch-Irish schools who had done the pioneer work before him. He reaped the fruits of their labors, and destroyed their further usefulness, which he might have secured by a liberal Christian policy. He hated every feature of individuality and national independence in matters of the church. To him true Christianity was identical with Romanism, and he made Germany as loyal to the Pope as was his native England. He served under four Popes, Gregory II., Gregory III., Zacharias, and Stephen, and they could not have had a more devoted and faithful agent. Those who labored with out papal authority were to him dangerous hirelings, thieves and robbers who climbed up some other way. He denounced them as false prophets, seducers of the people, idolaters and adulterers
1 In Migne, 1. c., p. 870. A German translation in Cruel, Geschichte der deutschen Predigt im MittdaUer (1879), p. 14.
a Othlo, Vita Bonif., c. 26 (Migne, I. c. fol. 664).
225. BONIFACE, THE APOSTLE OF GERMANY. 99
(because they were married and defended clerical marriage).1 lie encountered from them a most determined opposition, especially in Bavaria. In connection with his servile Romanism is his pedantic legalism and ceremonialism. His epistles and sermons show a considerable knowledge of the Bible, but also a contracted legalistic spirit. He has much to say about matters of outward conformity to Roman authority and usages and about small ques tions of casuistry such as whether it was right to eat horse flesh, rabbits, storks, meat offered to idols, to marry a widow after standing god-father to her son, how often the sign of the cross should be made in preaching. In his strength and his weak ness, his loyalty to Rome, and in the importance of the work he accomplished, he resembled Augustin, the Roman apostle of his Anglo-Saxon ancestors.
Boniface succeeded by indomitable perseverance, and his work survived him. This must be his vindication. In judging of him we should remember that the controversy between him and his French and Scotch-Irish opponents was not a controversy between Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism (which was not yet born), but between organized Catholicism or Romanism and independent Catholicism. Mediaeval Christianity was very weak, and required for its seli -preservation a strong central power and legal discipline. It is doubtful whether in the barbarous condition of those times, and amid the commotions of almost constant civil wars, the independent and scattered labors of the anti-Roman missionaries could have survived as well and made as strong an impression upon the German nation as a consoli dated Christianity with a common centre of unity and authority.
1 The description he gives of their immorality must be taken with considerable deduction. In Ep. 49 to Pope Zacharias (A. D. 742) in Migne, L c., p. 745, he speaks of deacons, priests and bishops hostile to Rome, as being guilty of habitual drunkenness, concubinage, and even polygamy. I will only quote what he says of the bishops: " Et inveniuntur quid-am inter eos episcopi, qui, licet d leant se forniearios rrl adultcros non <v?.sr, sed sunt ebriosi, et injurinsi, vel vcnatores, ct qui pugnant in exercitu armati, et effundunt propria manu sanyuinem hominum, give paganorum, sive Christianorum"