Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr

Wynfrith was born about 675 in Wessex, in England, and became a monk and a teacher at Nursling. In 716 he went to preach in Frisia, without success. In 719 Pope Gregory II gave him the name Boniface and sent him to the Germans. In 723, at Geismar in Hesse, he cut down a great oak sacred to the god Donar; according to his Life, when the tree did not avenge itself, many of the onlookers were baptized, and he used its wood for a chapel.

He became archbishop, organized dioceses in Bavaria, Hesse and Thuringia, founded the abbey of Fulda and reformed the Frankish Church. In old age he returned to Frisia, and on 5 June 754, near Dokkum, he and some fifty companions were killed by a band of pagans. He is called “the Apostle of Germany.”