June 5 is the feast of St. Boniface (c. 675-754), the apostle of Germany and the great reformer of the Frankish church. Born Wynfrith at Crediton, in Devon, he entered the Benedictine monastery at Exeter and Nursling, became a priest, and in 718 was sent by Pope Gregory II to preach to the Germanic peoples. He was given the name Boniface ("doer of good") by the Pope, who consecrated him bishop without a see in 722 and made him missionary to the Germanic lands.
Boniface's mission was the reorganization of the Frankish church as much as the conversion of the pagan Saxons and Frisians. He founded the monasteries of Fulda in 744 — the Monte Cassino of the German lands — and of Fritzlar, and he reformed the monasteries of St. Peter and St. Burchard at Würzburg. He crowned Pepin the Short at Soissons in 751, the act that founded the Carolingian dynasty. He was martyred at Dokkum, in Frisia, on June 5, 754, by a band of pagans who attacked him as he waited to confirm a group of converts.
The body of Boniface was taken to Fulda, where it lies under the high altar of the abbey church he founded, in a tomb that became the centre of German Christianity. From Crediton, where he was born, to Fulda, where he is buried, the June 5 feast is the feast of the apostle of Germany, the patron of the German nation and of all those who preach the Gospel to those who have not heard it.
Connected Destinations
Fulda
Germany · Europe
Burial place of St. Boniface, Apostle of the Germans, whose Baroque cathedral shelters the relics of the father of the German Church.
Crediton
England (UK) · Europe
Crediton houses the National Shrine of St Boniface, the great Anglo-Saxon missionary born here in 680 who became patron saint of Germany and Devon.