Saint Boniface
Bishop and Martyr
- Feast Day
- June 5
- Life
- 675–754
- Order
- Order of Saint Benedict
- Born
- Crediton, Devon, England (traditional)
Saint Boniface, born Winfrid about 675 in Wessex, England, became a Benedictine monk at Exeter and then at Nursling in Hampshire, where he was ordained priest about 715. After an unsuccessful first mission to Frisia in 716, he traveled to Rome in 718, where Pope Gregory II commissioned him to evangelize the Germanic peoples east of the Rhine and gave him the name Boniface (good-doer).
Boniface preached in Hesse, Thuringia, and Bavaria. About 723 at Geismar, Hesse, he felled the sacred Oak of Thor, an act recorded by his biographer Willibald, which decisively broke the power of pagan worship in the region. Pope Gregory II consecrated him bishop in 722 and Pope Gregory III made him archbishop with metropolitan rights over Germany in 732. He founded numerous monasteries, including Fulda (744) under his disciple Saint Sturmi; Fulda became and remains the Catholic ecclesiastical heart of Germany.
Boniface organized the German hierarchy with sees at Wurzburg, Buraburg, Erfurt, and others, and held synods that bound the Frankish-German Church to Roman discipline. About 747 he was named Archbishop of Mainz. In 754, having resigned his see to return to direct missionary work, he was conducting a confirmation in Frisia near Dokkum when he and fifty-two companions were attacked and killed by pagan Frisian raiders on June 5. His relics rest at Fulda.
Boniface is venerated as the Apostle of Germany. His Roman commission and lifelong correspondence with successive Popes, preserved in some 150 letters, are a foundational documentary witness to the eighth-century reorganization of the Western Church around the See of Peter. Pope Benedict XVI, himself a German, devoted a general audience to him on March 11, 2009.
Patronages
Germany · brewers · tailors · world youth day (Cologne 2005, retroactively)
Catholic Churches Named After Saint Boniface
20 parishes on Catholic Church Times share Saint Boniface's name. Find their Mass times, confession schedules, and adoration hours:
- St Boniface - Bentham (Parish of Our Lady and St Boniface) — Bentham, ENG
- St. Boniface — Dilke, SK
- St. Boniface — Tipton, KS
- Saint Boniface Catholic Church — Stuart, NE
- St. Boniface Catholic Church — Goodsoil, SK
- St. Boniface — Hilton Beach, ON
- St. Boniface — Stewart, MN
- St. Boniface — Saint Boniface, PA
- Saint Boniface Catholic Church — Camden, WV
- St. Boniface Catholic Church — Williamsport, PA
- Saint Boniface Catholic Church — Fort Smith, AR
- St. Boniface — Monee, IL
- St Boniface Parish — Ionia, IA
- St. Boniface Church — Bigelow, AR
- St. Boniface (Idylwilde) — Freeman, SD
- Saint Boniface Catholic Church — Vincent, KS
- Saint Boniface Church — Waukee, IA
- Saint Boniface Catholic Church — Garner, IA
- St. Boniface Catholic Church — Koeltztown, MO
- St. Boniface — Lunenburg, MA
Sources