St Boniface, Apostle of Germany: Life, Oak and Martyrdom

St Boniface (born Winfrid, about 680, in Devon, England; martyred at Dokkum, in Friesland, on 5 June 754) is the Apostle of Germany: an English Benedictine monk sent by the Pope, who evangelized Hesse and Thuringia, felled the sacred oak of the god Donar (Thor) at Geismar, founded the abbey of Fulda, organized the Church in Germany under Rome, reformed the Church of the Franks, and died a martyr with his companions at nearly eighty years of age. His feast is kept on 5 June, a feast of the third class in the 1962 calendar. The historian Christopher Dawson judged that he "had a deeper influence on the history of Europe than any Englishman who has ever lived".

Who was St Boniface?

Winfrid, the monk of Wessex

Boniface was baptized Winfrid. He was born about 680, probably at Crediton in Devonshire. Butler relates that at the age of five, after hearing monks who visited his home, he resolved to be a monk himself; at seven he was sent to a monastery school near Exeter, and some seven years later to the abbey of Nursling, near Winchester. There he became the pupil of the learned abbot Winbert and then head of the school. He wrote the first Latin grammar known to have been compiled in England, and his lessons were copied and studied far beyond his classroom. Ordained priest at thirty, he preached from the Bible, "which was his study and delight throughout life."

Was St Boniface a Benedictine?

Yes. Exeter and Nursling were monasteries living under the Rule of St Benedict, and Boniface remained a Benedictine monk all his life. Everywhere he went he founded monasteries on the same Rule, and he meant his great foundation of Fulda, in Butler's words, to become "the German Monte Cassino". On the father of Western monks whose Rule he carried into Germany, see our page on St Benedict.

Sent by the Pope

When high office in England seemed certain for him, Winfrid felt called to the pagans of the Continent. In 716 he sailed to Friesland, where St Willibrord had long laboured, but war made the mission impossible and he returned home. Convinced that he needed a commission from the Holy See, he went to Rome in 718 and presented himself to Pope St Gregory II, who sent him to preach to the heathen of Germany and changed his name from Winfrid to Boniface, "the doer of good". He worked three years in Friesland under the aged Willibrord, refused to become his successor, and went on into Hesse.

In 722 Gregory II called him back to Rome and, on St Andrew's day, 30 November 722, consecrated him a missionary bishop with jurisdiction over all Germany, giving him a letter for the powerful Frankish ruler Charles Martel, who granted him protection.

Why did St Boniface cut down a tree? The oak of Geismar

On his return to Hesse, Boniface struck at the root of the pagan superstitions that held back the people and kept new converts wavering. At Geismar, near Fritzlar, stood a huge oak sacred to Donar, the Germanic thunder god, the Norse Thor, one of the chief objects of the people's worship. On a day announced in advance, before a crowd awaiting the god's vengeance, Boniface took an axe to the tree. Butler relates that almost as the first blows fell, the huge oak crashed down and split into four parts, and the people, seeing that their god could not protect his own sanctuary, acknowledged that their gods were powerless. According to the Life written by his disciple Willibald, Boniface built from the timber of the oak an oratory dedicated to St Peter.

This is how St Boniface converted the Hessians: not by the axe alone, but by preaching backed by an act that showed, in front of everyone, that the idols were nothing. From that day, the evangelization of Hesse advanced steadily. It is the gesture of the prophet Elias against the priests of Baal, and the fulfilment of Our Lord's command: "Going therefore, teach ye all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 28:19, Douay-Rheims).

St Boniface and the Christmas tree: a later legend

A popular story says that after felling the oak, Boniface pointed to a young fir growing among its roots and made it the sign of the Christ Child, the first Christmas tree. The story is a later legend, unknown to Willibald's Life and to the early sources, and it spread in the nineteenth century. The Christmas tree itself is a German custom of much later centuries. The legend is harmless as long as it is told as a legend; what the sources record is the oak, the oratory of St Peter, and the conversion that followed. For the season the legend is attached to, see the Christmas novena.

The missionary bishop of Germany

From Hesse Boniface passed into Thuringia, founding a monastery at Ohrdruf. Everywhere he found the people willing to listen; what he lacked was teachers. He appealed to the monasteries of England, with which he kept up a constant correspondence, and for years parties of monks and nuns crossed the sea to join him: St Lull, his successor at Mainz, St Eoban, who would share his martyrdom, St Burchard, St Wigbert, and among the women St Thecla, St Walburga and his young kinswoman St Lioba.

In 732 Pope Gregory III sent him the pallium and made him archbishop and metropolitan of Germany beyond the Rhine. On a third visit to Rome he was named legate of the Apostolic See. He organized the Church in Bavaria, founded the bishoprics of Erfurt, Buraburg, Würzburg and Eichstätt, each under one of his English disciples, and in the 740s, with his young disciple St Sturmi, founded the abbey of Fulda.

The reform of the Frankish Church

At the same time the Church of the Franks had fallen into decay: bishoprics sold or left vacant, a clergy ignorant or worse, no council held for eighty years. After the death of Charles Martel in 741, Boniface persuaded his sons Carloman and Pepin to summon a series of synods from 742 to 747, over which he presided, restoring discipline. In 747 Pope St Zachary gave him the fixed see of Mainz, as primate of Germany and legate for Germany and Gaul. Through all of it, Boniface bound the young Churches of Germany directly to the See of Peter, which is perhaps his most lasting work.

How did St Boniface die? The martyrdom at Dokkum

Old, and having handed his see to Lull, Boniface would not rest. At about seventy-three he went back to his first mission, the Frisians, who were relapsing into paganism since Willibrord's death. With Bishop Eoban and other companions he sailed down the Rhine, worked among the lapsed, then crossed into the still pagan north-east of Friesland, where many were baptized.

He had arranged to confirm the newly baptized on the plain of Dokkum, by the little river Borne. While he was reading in his tent awaiting them, on 5 June 754, a band of armed pagans fell on the camp. His attendants would have fought; Boniface forbade them, exhorting them to trust in God and to welcome death for the Faith. He was among the first to fall, and all his companions, about fifty, were killed with him. Tradition says he raised a book over his head as the swords came down; that book, dented by sword-cuts, is still kept at Fulda, where his body was finally taken and where it rests to this day.

So St Boniface was killed for the Faith, by the very people he had come to baptize, refusing to let blood be shed in his defence. "Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:10), says the Gospel of his feast.

The feast of St Boniface: 5 June

The feast of St Boniface is kept on 5 June, the day of his martyrdom. Archbishop Cuthbert of Canterbury, his contemporary, ordered it to be kept every year in England, where he was honoured as a patron with St Gregory the Great and St Augustine of Canterbury. Pope Pius IX extended his feast to the universal Church in 1874. In the 1962 Missal it is a feast of the third class; the Epistle is the praise of the great men of old, "Let us now praise men of renown, and our fathers in their generation… their name liveth unto generation and generation" (Ecclesiasticus 44:1, 14), and the Gospel is the Beatitudes.

The collect of 5 June, from the Roman Missal:

Deus, qui multitudinem populorum, beati Bonifatii Martyris tui atque Pontificis zelo, ad agnitionem tui nominis vocare dignatus es: concede propitius; ut, cuius sollemnia colimus, etiam patrocinia sentiamus. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

O God, who by the zeal of blessed Boniface, Thy Martyr and Bishop, didst vouchsafe to call a multitude of peoples to the knowledge of Thy name: mercifully grant that we who keep his feast may also feel his patronage. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

A prayer to St Boniface

The collect above is the Church's own prayer through St Boniface, and asks exactly what his life obtained: that many peoples be called to the knowledge of God. The faithful have long prayed to him for the conversion of nations that have abandoned the Faith, for missionaries, for courage against the idols of every age, and for fidelity to the Holy See. He is invoked among the martyr bishops in the Litany of the Saints, and those who wish to pray for the reconversion of lands once Christian may join his intercession to that of St Patrick, the other great apostle from the islands, and of St Andrew, on whose feast Boniface was made a bishop.

What is St Boniface the patron saint of?

St Boniface is the patron of Germany and its principal apostle, and of the dioceses and cities he founded or served, above all Fulda and Mainz; Germany's bishops have met at his tomb in Fulda since the nineteenth century. He is venerated at Dokkum in Friesland, where he died, and honoured in his native Devon and Crediton and throughout England.

He is invoked as a patron of missionaries, of Germans and those of German descent, including the many German Catholic immigrants who raised churches of St Boniface across America; the city of Saint-Boniface in Manitoba, Canada, was named after him by the missionaries of the Red River. Our guide to the Catholic saints sets St Boniface in the company of the other saints of the traditional calendar, month by month. Eight centuries after him, the Breviary called the Jesuit St Peter Canisius "the second apostle of Germany".

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was St Boniface?

An English Benedictine monk, born Winfrid about 680 in Devon, who was sent by Pope Gregory II to evangelize the Germans, became archbishop of Mainz and papal legate, founded Fulda and many bishoprics, reformed the Frankish Church, and was martyred in Friesland in 754. He is called the Apostle of Germany.

When was St Boniface born?

About the year 680, probably at Crediton in Devonshire, England. The exact year is not recorded.

How was St Boniface killed?

He was cut down by armed pagan Frisians at Dokkum, in present-day Netherlands, on 5 June 754, while waiting to confirm new converts. He forbade his companions to defend him, and about fifty of them were martyred with him.

Why did St Boniface cut down a tree?

To show the pagans of Hesse that their god was powerless. The great oak of Donar (Thor) at Geismar was one of the chief objects of their worship; when it fell under his axe and the god did nothing, the people turned to Christ, and Boniface built a chapel of St Peter from its wood.

Did St Boniface invent the Christmas tree?

No. The story of the fir tree growing from the roots of the oak is a later legend, absent from the early Life of the saint. The felling of the oak is historical; the Christmas tree is a German custom of later centuries.

How do you pronounce St Boniface?

In English, BON-i-fuss, with the stress on the first syllable. The name comes from the Latin Bonifatius, "doer of good"; in German he is Bonifatius, and his baptismal name was Winfrid (Wynfrith).

The Iter Fidei app carries the 1962 calendar of the saints with the feast of St Boniface on 5 June, the propers of the Mass, and the prayers to the saints in Latin and English. Join early access here.

Sources. Butler's Lives of the Saints, 5 June (St Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz and Martyr); St Willibald, Life of St Boniface; the letters of St Boniface; the Roman Missal of 1962, Mass and collect of 5 June; Holy Scripture, Douay-Rheims version (Ecclesiasticus 44; Matthew 5:1–12; Matthew 28:19).