ST. EGNIFACE
AND THE BIRTH 03? A NEW ORDER IN EURQPE:
713-754

Thai: for the Dogma of M. A.
MlCHiGAN STATE UNIVERSE"
David Harry Miner
196-5

IHIINHIIJHIIHIINUHINIUUIIINIHIIUHHIIIIHUIHI ~

923 01686 5036

LIBRA R Y
Michigan State

University

——.‘

 

ABSTRACT

SAINT BONIFACE
AND THE CREATION OF A NEW ORDER
IN EUROPE: 718-754

by David Harry Miller

One of the basic problems confronting those con-
cerned with the history of the early Middle Ages is the
process of the develOpment of European society from
ancient to medieval. As the Roman papacy was one of the
most fundamental and characteristic institutions of the
Middle Ages, the history of its development is of crucial
importance to the creation of Medieval EurOpe. While the
deve10pment of an institution such as the papacy is a pro-
cess Spanning the entire medieval period, there are
periods in its history which stand out as more critical
than others. Such a period is the eighth century, during
the course of which the papacy was transformed from an
imperial rump-patriarchate to one of the basic institutions
of Medieval EurOpe. There are many factors which might be
cited in explanation of this process, but one of the most

important of them is the effect of the Anglo-Saxon

missionary movement and its greatest protagonist, Saint

Boniface.

The object of this thesis is to attempt to outline
the role played by Saint Boniface in the development of the
Medieval papacy through an examination of the basic source
materials and some of the more important secondary works
covering the period. Among the source materials which the
author of this thesis has investigated are the correSpond-
ence of Saint Boniface, his biography by the monk Willibald,
the decrees of the reforming synods inSpired by Saint
Boniface in France, and pertinent Frankish records of
other sorts.

The conclusions of this study indicate that Saint
Boniface, by enlarging the Sphere of papal influence by
conversion, and by his reforming activities making peoples
north of the Alps conscious of papal authority, was
instrumental in aiding the deve10pment of the papacy into
that institution we know as typical of the Middle Ages.

In addition this author has concluded that the figure of
Saint Boniface looms large in relation to the alliance
affected between the papacy and King Pippin the Short which
ultimately led to the destruction of the Lombard Kingdom
and the enfranchisement of the papacy as the leading power

in Italy.

ST. BONIFACE
AND THE BIRTH OF A NEW ORDER IN EUROPE:
718-754
by
David Harry Miller

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of History

1965

PREFACE

There was a time when all scholars characterized
the period of the early Middle Ages as a dark age, and there
are still those who think in these terms. But lately these
quaint opinions are being revised and persons concerned with
the study of the early Middle Ages have discovered, and are
still discovering, that the so—called 'dark ages' were a
period of great importance during which the basic nature of
Christian EurOpean civilization was being determined. New
institutions, ideas, and basic attitudes were created in
this period which were the elements of a new civilization.
This new civilization was not a subculture of the old
Mediterranean world nor an inferior parasitic thing breeding
on the decayed carcass of the old culture. It was a vibrant,
creative and uniquely EurOpean civilization. The problems
which confronted it were many, but they were safely sur-
mounted because this culture was able to build institutions
strong enough to enable society to survive. It was because
these institutions were created and the difficulties facing
early medieval society were surmounted that a real 'dark
age' did not descend upon Europe.

The eighth century was one of the most crucial

centuries in the development of this new Europe. Many great

11

events took place in the course of the eighth century
which shaped the nature of things to comeythe rise of the
Arnulfing dynasty in Gaul, the Christianization of Germany
and the final dissolution of the bonds binding the papacy
to the East are three of the most important of these
events, which, along with the Arab invasions and the
beginning of the Nordic VBlkerwanderungen, helped to
determine the structure of the changes which occurred in
the following centuries. These changes were brought
about by many causes, but deeply involved in the changes
of the eighth century, and perhaps necessary to their
accomplishment, was St. Boniface the Apostle of Germany.
It is the thesis of this essay that St. Boniface was one
of the primary figures of this age without whom, in the
final analysis, these three epoch-making events I have
listed could not have taken place.

I wish to express my thanks and indebtedness to
Professor Richard E. Sullivan who read this thesis and
made many valuable and constructive suggestions. I also
wish to acknowledge the encouragement and patience of my

wife, Agnes.

D.H.M.

111

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
PREFACE OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. 11

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................ v
CHAPTER ONE .......................................... 1
CHAPTER TWO .......................................... 27
CHAPTER THREE ........................................ 37
CHAPTER FOUR ......................................... 58
CONCLUSION ........................................... 72
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY ................................ 80
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................87

iv

Abreviations Used

a. Anno. (referring to entries
of annals and chronicles)

A.S.C. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This
edition used includes readings
from all the variant MSS.

Ep. Epistle (Letter).

C.H. Church History, a Journal

H.Z. Historische Zeitsdhrift

Med. St. Medieval Studies, published by

the Pontifical Institute of
Medieval Studies in the
University of Toronto

M.G.H. Monumenta Germaniae Historica
SS. Scriptorum of M.G.H.
LL. Legum of M.G.H.:

SectiO' II: Capitularia
Sectio III: Concilia

CHAPTER ONE

At the time when the Anglo-Saxon Hynfrith made his
appearance on the Continent the Western world was in the
throes of a great change. Unknown to men of that age,
Europe was emerging as a distinct entity from the old
Mediterranean world order - the ancient was becoming the
medieval. When.the Pg; Romana was destroyed in the West,
its idea was nursed along and men found themselves looking
eastward, where on the shores of the Bosphorus, a trace of
the Imperium Romanum remained, truncated, but with an aura
of legitimacy. Thus men of the West tried to attach them-
selves to this last vestige of the empire, barbarians and
Romans alike. First and foremost among those to avow
their allegiance to the far-off caesars had been the Patriarchs
of the West - the Roman pontiffs. But in a process begins
ning in the sixth century the papacy began to be separated
from the empire, both physically and politically and in the
middle of the eighth century, the popes of Rome threw off
their allegiance to the eastern emperors and attached
their fortunes to the chariot of the embryonic Carolingian
state in the north, eventually exalting the masters of this
state with the imperial title.

2

During the later phases of this papal about-face
Hynfrith, his name changed to Boniface, was busily bring-
ing Christianity and some civilization to the Teutonic
heathen of north-central Europe. It is this aspect of
the changeover to a new epoch, the heroic labors of the
saintly Boniface, around which events seem to have turned;
for he prepared the ground upon which rested the thrones
of Gregory VII and Innocent III.1 Before any attempt may
be made to understand this man and his achievements we
must appreciate the nature of the world in which he lived
and worked and the conditions which faced him.

We know that by 75h the turning away of the Roman
Church from Byzantium was accomplished in fact and that by
800 it was acknowledged in deed. But why did the pOpes
seek to break their four-centuries—old union with the
empire and resurrect the imperial idea anew in the West,
conferring the Augustan title on a dynasty of mere
barbarians?

The reasons lie first in the inability of the
emperors to control and protect Italy, second in the in-
creasing divergences between the East and the West, and third
in the gradual development of the Roman bishopric into the

papacy o

l
Johannes Heller, Des Pa sttum Idee und Hirklichkeit,
5 Bde., verbesserte und erggnzte Ausgabe (Basel, 1951}, I,

391.

 

3
Before the reign of the Emperor Justinian I

Italy lay, in effect, outside the real sphere of imperial
rule, though theoretically a province of the empire.
Through Justinian's reconquest, Italy was returned to the
imperial sphere. But the chief significance of Justinian's
reconquest, for Italy, lay in the fact that through it the
Byzantine treasury was vastly depleted, necessitating
military cut-backs, thus leaving the West endangered.2

The effect of this was compounded by the fact that at the
same time the 23; Gothica had also been destroyed, leaving
Italy totally undefended.3 Thus when in 568, the Lombard
tribes invaded the peninsula there was no one capable of
offering resistance.

By 57% the initial drive of the Lombard invasion
had died out and the victorious tribesmen broke up into
small groups, each to pursue its own ends. Even then the
empire could not summon up enough strength to counterattack.
Toward the end of the sixth century the Emperors Tiberias
II and Maurice tried, in the usual Byzantine diplomatic
solution to a problem, to persuade Childebert II, King of
the Austrasian Franks, to attack the Lombards. But this

 

2A. A. vasiliev, Histo of the B zantine Em ire,
second English edition, 2 vols. (Madison, 19515, I, 151-142.
3

Ferdinand Lot, The End of_the Ancient World and

the Beginnigg of the M1dd1e_§ges, TT.byP. and M. Leon
New York, 19 l , p. 2 .

it
time it did not work to the advantage of the empire.
Childebert sold his support to both sides at various times,
and in 591 he made peace with the Lombards. Finally, in
the reign of Maurice, the empire tried again to solve the
problem by the creation of the Exarchate at Bavenna. The
exarch was to have both civil and military control over all
Italy and rule in the emperor's name. But as the exarch
could not command the loyalty of Italy, the arrangement
proved ineffective.

The effect of these events on the papacy was to
stimulate the assumption of civil and military responsibility
begun years before when.imperial abdication of responsibility
pulled the papacy into the vacuum thus created. Though
the defense of Italy was the duty of the exarch at
Ravenna, it was in fact the pope's responsibility by the
end of the sixth century.‘L The papacy continued to profess
loyalty to the empire, but the obvious inability of the
caesars to protect their Italian subjects placed that loyalty
under considerable strain.

Though their disunity mitigated the effects of their
depredations, the Lombards continued to prove a problem,

endangering the security of both pOpe and exarch. The

 

hL. Duchesne, The Beginning of the Temporal
Soverei nt of the Popes, Tr. By A. H. Matthew (London,
19035, p. 2.

5
Emperor Constans II made the last active Byzantine attempt
to stem the Lombard tide. In 663 he personally went to
Italy to fight the Lombards, but after a dalliance of
twelve days in Rome he retired to Sicily, leaving Italy to
its fate. It began to be apparent to the Italians, with
this last fiasco, that no real support was likely to come
from the East. More and more the papacy appeared to the
Italians to be the only 'island of liberty' in a sea of
5

chaos. Accordingly, toward the end of the seventh century,
a change took place in the thinking of most Italians; they
were no longer passive. A new aristocracy, which was in
control of the militia, had arisen, and as men began to
realize that Italians alone would defend Italy they began to
disregard the orders coming from the exarch, the impotent
representative of an impotent empire.6

The theoretical position of the pOpes as supreme
pontiffs of the church had been worked out by POpe Gregory
I. But St. Gregory counted himself as a Roman and a subject
of the Roman Empire, not forseeing, perhaps, that papal
supremacy was a doctrine inconsistent with the pOpe's

position as the subject of a temporal ruler. And the in,

stitution to which the papacy was thus held to be subordinated,

 

5Henri Daniel-Hops, The Church in the Dark Ages,
Tr. by A. Butler, 2 vols. (Garden City, 1962), I, 287.

6Let, p. 302.

6
the Roman emperorship, was by nature predisposed toward
caesaropapism, the control of theological affairs by the
emperor, who was actually counted as more than a mere

7

secular potentate. In fact, the caesars of the new Home
were in the habit of styling themselves as the “Thirteenth
Apostle“. Thus, at the same time as the political
relations between Roma and Constantinople were deteriorat-
ing, religious quarrels arose which caused the situation
to worsen.

Before the seventh century was fairly under way
the first of these quarrels erupted in the form of a
Christological decree of the Emperor Heraclius. The
emperor was faced with Persian conquest of the rich and
important provinces of the East; most of the people in
these provinces were monophysitic and thus not particularly
rabid in their attachment to the orthodox empire. In
order to placate the religious feelings of his subjects in
these provinces and to induce them to greater zeal in the
imperial cause, Heraclius introduced the doctrine of
monothelitism to try to smooth over theological differences.8
But the eastern provinces to which Heraclius had made this

religious concession were soon lost. No sooner had the

Persians been subdued - and Byzantium worn out in the

 

7Gustav Schnflrer, Church and Cultgge in the Middle
figes, Tr. by G. J. Undreiner (Paterson, N.J., 1956), I,
22.

8
vasiliev, I, 222.

7

process - than had hordes of Arabs emerged from their
desert homes in a flood that brought the empire more woe
as the freshly re-conquered provinces were lost forever.
Even though the necessity of the monothelite dogma had now
been destroyed Heraclius's successor, Constans II, retained
it. Constans made some attempt to reconcile the papacy to
the doctrine by changing some aspects of it, but Pope
Martin, soon to be a hero of the faith, condemned Constans’s
‘2122g along with Heraclius's Ecthesis at the Lateran Synod
of 6H8. In retaliation Constans had Martin arrested and
deported to the Crimea, where he at length died from the
brutal treatment accorded him at the hands of the 'Thirteenth
Apostle'.

Thus the monothelite heresy continued to divide
East and West. In 680 the Emperor Constantine IV tried to
reconcile the differences by a council at Constantinople,
the Sixth Ecumenical, which condemned monothelitism.
A tenuous peace with Home was established and the pOpe
was recognized as supreme. Constantine's peace with Home
was a short one; in 691 Justinian II called a council, the
Concilio in Trullo (Quinsexto, by which a series of anti-
Roman.measures were passed. Pope Sergius I refused to
recognize the validity of such a council and Justinian II
tried to arrest him; presumably he was to share the fate of
Martin. But the Italian militia prevented it. The
Concilio in Trullo was to be a landmark of ill-will;

8

Michael Cerularius later looked back upon it as the real
beginning of the great schism now called after him.9
Papal-imperial relations continued to worsen and then
improve and then worsen again until this series of petty
emperors of the period 6&1-717, and their vacillating
religious policy was rudely interrupted. In 717 a new
adventurer seized the throne of the Basiloi and inaugurated
a new and vigorous dynasty called the Isaurian; he was
Leo III, the first of a long series of military adventurers
from the Armenian frontier. Leo was fated to loose a
cataclysmic quarrel which was to shake both the state and
the church as no other before it had - a quarrel which was
even to effect the masses of imperial subjects.lo

Leo began alienating Italy by promulgating a series
of tax decrees which were oppressive to the peOple and
which were Opposed by Pope Gregory II, who endorsed, as it
were, the feelings of most Italians.11 Then in 726 the
aggressive emperor promulgated the iconoclastic decrees,
destined to plunge the Christian world into great controversy.

Leo knew for how much the voice of the pOpe counted in

 

9Christopher Dawson, The Making of Eurgpe (Cleveland,
1956), p. 162.

1°He11er, I, 352.
11

Walter Ullman, The Growth of Pa al Government in
the Middle A es, 2nd edition (London, 1922), p. 55.

9
theological affairs and was determined to get his support.12
He offered to forget Gregory's resistance to the taxes in
return for papal approval of iconoclasm. Gregory refused,
but made no overt move to revolt from the empire. The
papacy needed protection from the Lombards, and while no
other saviour appeared to be at hand the possibility of
the empire could not be abandoned.13

.During this theological and political crisis the
Lombards were under the command of Liutprand, their first
really great king since Alboin, and he saw a chance to
profit from the problems of the empire.14 Liutprand thus
set out to unite Italy under his rule and end Byzantine
occupation of Italy. The Lombards had been catholicized
after their arrival in Italy and there is no doubt that
Liutprand meant to rule Italy in union with the church,
recognizing the pope as its head.15 But such a solution
would only aggravate the problem. For a Lombard power in
Italy would no more tolerate a pOpe who was not subordinate
to it than wouli a Greek; the pOpe would become Lombard

l6

patriarch - no more.

 

12Heller, I, 352.

13George Ostrogorsky, The Histo of the B zantine
State, Tr. by Joan Hussey (Oxford, 1956;, p. 153.
l“Heller, I, 353.

 

15Ib1d., I, 35a.

16Daniel-Hops, I, 287.

10
Gregory II, then, had to walk a thin line between
treason and disaster. But Leo seemed determined not to
allow him to walk it in peace. Unable to get back at Home
by any direct means, he deprived the Roman see of those
ecclesiastical provinces in the Balkans and south Italy
which were still under his control and assigned them to the

patriarchate of Constantinople.17

This was the beginning

of the severance of political ties, for when Leo did this

he put the papacy wholly outside the empire, and the lands
of the patriarchate of ConstantinOple came to coincide with“
the real limeg of the empire.18 The empire was at last a
fully Byzantine state.

At the first part of the eighth century the face of
the papacy was still turned eastward.19 By the middle of
the eighth century it had become obvious that it was neces-
sary to create a new political system in the West and that

it was up to the papacy to do so.20

Italy was not part of
Byzantium, nor could it be. Nor could the papacy exist in
a caesarOpapistic state and remain the type of institution

envisaged by St. Gregory the Great.21 Besides, the empire

 

17ITaller, I, 3570

18
Ostrogorsky, Byzantine State, p. 1&6.
19Theodor Schieffer, Winfrid-Bonifatius and die
christliche Grundlegung Europas (Freiburg, 1959?: p. 38.

20
21

Daniel-Hops, II, 87-89.
Schnfirer, I, 441.

11

had ceased to be Roman; from the time of Heraclius's reign
it had become apparent that the empire was something new22-
not a Roman state but a Hellenized oriental state.
Historical develOpments had forced the emperors to confine
their main attention to the East.23 Asia Minor and the
Asian hinterland had become the most important sector of
interest, and from Asia Minor came the real strength of
medieval Byzantium.2u Indeed, even in the sixth century
the divergencies between East and West were so great that
the idea of unity was an anachronism; in fact, Justinian
I's failure to understand the importance of the East for
Constantinople instead of trooping off to Italy was nearly
fatal.25 Justinian's successors could not afford to forget
his mistake, and by the seventh century imperial policy was
being formed in.Asia, for Asian problems; the West had to
become subordinate to greater designs.

Constitutionally, resistance to the emperor was high
treason, (and irreconcilable with the idea of the Imperium
Romanum to which the papacy clung in spite of itself);

 

22Dawson, p. 153.

23George Ostrogorsky, ”The Byzantine Empire in the
World of the Seventh Century", Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No.
13. (1959). 10.

2“Ibid” p. 3.

25
vasiliev, I, 192.

12

legally the church could do nothing to resist Byzantine
caesarOpapism and yet remain a part of the empire.26
Moreover, the great events taking place north of the Alps,
of which we shall speak, were bringing new peOples into the
Christian fold and creating a new area of interest for the
papacy. The pape was patriarch of the West, but if he
nbmained tied to Byzantium he ran the risk of being degraded
to the rank of rump-patriarch - patriarch without a
province.27 On the other hand, if the Lombards prevailed,
the pOpe would be a mere Lombard bishop. A solution had to
be found. This solution was the alliance with the Franks,
a transalpine power. The Franks were near and powerful
enough to protect Rome from the Lombards, yet far enough
away not to be able to control Home.

How was this new papal power in the West achieved?
How were the Franks brought into the papal sphere? It is
by answering these questions that we shall arrive at an
assessment of the importance of the role of St. Boniface to
the establishment of the medieval papacy.

The Frankish kingdom, soon to figure so prominently
in papal policy, could not be immediately enlisted in the

service of the pOpes, but had to be prepared for its role.

 

26
Ullman, pp. ALL-J45.

27
Schieffer, p. 38.

13

The Merovingian kings had not been particularly close or
obedient to the papacy, and at the opening of the eighth
century, the Arnulfings seemed equally remote. Nor was
the moral quality of the church in Gaul a matter for pride.
Thus no small part of the papal reorientation was to be
based on the reform of the church in Gaul and its closer
alignment with Rome. It is, of course, the role of St.
Boniface in these affairs that interests us, but it would
be impossible to understand St. Boniface's problems and the
nature of his achievement without at least a cursory
survey of the Gallican church in its degradation.

The Frankish conversion to orthodox Catholicism
was less of a theological than a political decision.
Though Clovis was doubtless sincere in his profession of
faith, there was an element of political shrewdness
involved; for by choosing Catholicism rather than Arianism
Clovis was able to become the protector, and eventually the
master, of the powerful Catholic clergy rather than their

28 The

enemy as were all the other Germanic leaders.
wisdom of his decision, from the royal point of view is
demonstrated by the fact that the Merovingians were not slow
in establishing their control over the church. The

episcOpacy offered an admirable organization and

 

28He1nr1eh Fichtenau The Carolingian Empire, Tr.
by Peter Munz (New York, 1965), p. 2.

lu
administrative system which the kings would be loath to
see uncontrolled by themselves. Only a short time after
Clovis's conversion bishops were being called upon to per-
form political services, while the entire clergy passed
under civil, rather than ecclesiastical, law.29 The
Merovingians tended to have an ambiguous view of the church.
On the one hand it was the holy mother church, though this
view lost potency as time progressed, and on the other it
was part and parcel of the kingdom, part of the royal
patrimony, as it were. Thus they were naturally prone to
insist on a voice in clerical job—filling. Even so holy a
man as St. Remigius was ready to obey the royal will, even
when it demanded an uncanonical election; most bishops
followed his example.30 This attitude even extended to
episcopal elections and, thus, by the time of the first
generation after Clovis the kings began to nominate and
elect bishOps, the practice being soon established as a

31

general rule. At times when more than one man were
candidates the king had to exercise a final choice, while

at others the king merely confirmed the choice of the last

 

29Albert Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands;
5 Ede. (Berlin, 195“), I, 137-138.

3°Ib1d., I, 139.
31Gregory, Bp. of Tours, The History of the Franks,

fig. ggl, Ch. 2, Tr. by O. M. Dalton, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1927),
9 o

15

incumbent.32 Or, should the peOple be united or nearly so
in a choice, the king would again act as a rubber stamp.33
In general during the early Merovingian period, (500-550),
the royal power over the church was unabused, and the kings,
either under church influence or in the general interest,
endeavoured to put the best men in eplSOOpal positions, so
that the moral authority of the episc0pacy was still rather
high in spite of royal election. But of course such a
system was open to abuse, as the future would demonstrate.

The Frankish political system, with its division
and redivision of the realm among the sons of the kings,
was bound to provide a fertile field of conflict between
rival branches of the royal family. By the third generation
after Clovis chronic civil wars plagued the Frankish state.
In the course of these wars the church naturally suffered,
its lands and property constantly being plundered. By 567
the problem was grave enough to be taken up by the Council
of Tours, which threatened depredations against the church's

property with anethema.3“ And by about the last quarter of

 

321bid., Bk. IV, Ch. 9 (15), 24 (35-36), II, 12?-

33Ibid.

3I+Sir Samuel Dill, Roman Sociepy in Gaul in the
Merovipgian.ége (London, 1926), p. #42.

16

the sixth century the destruction of church pr0perty was so
widespread that Gregory, Bishop of Tours, was prompted to
lament over it in his History of the Franks:

The fathers venerated with their whole hearts the

bishops of the lord and hearkened to their words;

the sons not only refuse to hear, but even perse-

cute them. The fathers enriched the monasteries

and churches; the sons demolish and destroy them.35
Even.more tragic was the fact that the adversity of these
times effected the church not only physically, but morally
as well. Unworthy bishops began to hold and degrade church
offices, which became prizes highly coveted, and kings soon
began appointing laymen to bishoprics, causing Gregory to
lament that the crime of Simon Magus had degraded the
Gallican church.36 Thus, by the end of the sixth century
the church in Gaul was in a poor state. It was to sink
even lower in the seventh.

In the seventh century the power of the aristocracy
began to grow at the expense of the royal power, and in the

midst of these troubled times the church continued to

suffer.37 By the time of Charles Martel the prOperty of the

 

35
157-158.

36l§l§., Bk. VI, Ch. 8 (14), 25 (38), II, 2U9, 270.,
BK. VIII, Ch. 22, 31, 39, II, 3u6-7’ 360-1, 353-6.

37Fredegarius, Chronicorum Liber Quartus* cum
Continuationibus, Tr. by J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (London, 1960),
Liber Suartus, Chs. 2h, 32, 36, 60, pp. 15-16, 21, 23-29, 50.
. M. allace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West,.A. D. “00-1000
(New York, 1962), p. 84.

Gregory, Bp. of Tours, Bk. IV, Ch. 33 (#8), II,

 

17

church was being snapped up by lay magnates without so much
as a by-your-leave, and the authority of the bishops was
being destroyed through the appointment of royal henchmen
to the most important sees.38

During all this time Gallic relations with the
Roman see, a possible source of reform and discipline, were
nearly non-existent. Though recent researches indicate that
the Merovingians did not completely loose touch with Home
or cease to regard the papacy with some respect,39 this
respect was not significant. For the Frankish church was
not part of an universal church, but a Landeskirche for
which the kings were more potent than the popes.“o During
this period papal authority in Gaul steadily declined until
the papal vicar, the ArchbishOp of Arles, ceased to have any
importance in church affairs.“1 Indeed, though the epi-
sc0pacy remained intact, the office and authority of
metr0politan disappeared.h2 This situation might have

been otherwise had the pOpes been free enough to develop

and execute a real policy in regard to Gallican affairs,

 

38Fichtenau, pp. 13-14.

39H.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kingg
(London, 1962), p. 243.

”OHeuok, I, 391.

41
Schnfirer, I, 244.

42Dill, p. 482.

18

but, as has been noted, repeated troubles in Italy absorbed
most of the papal energies. Thus the process of dissolution
and corruption of the Gallican church went unhindered and 1
the Franks' Landeskirche reached the lowest ebb of
corruption when uncouth Frankish nobles began to take up
ecclesiastical positions once the exclusive preserve of the
better educated classes of Gallo-Romans.“3 From 639-741,
while the state was undergoing feudalization, the church
became more and more secularized.uu

The best one can say about the Merovingians is that
they did not come into cpen conflict with the church on
matters religious, and except for Chilperic, who considered
himself a theologian of sorts, did not try to practice
caesaropapism.u5 But they did, as has been observed, force
their men on the church and kept the church from calling
synods without their permission, and since freeman could
not be ordained without royal permission (freemen being
obliged to render military service) the lower orders of the
clergy came to acquire a servile character which did much

to further the corruption of the church.“6

 

“33. J. Crawford, A lo-Saxon Influenceg on Western
Christendom, 600-800 (Oxford, 1933), p. 6.

qubid., p. 7.
45
Dill, p. 480.

46
Ibid.

19

Thus, as can be readily seen, the church in Gaul
was, as a church, in sorry condition. When St. Boniface
was faced with the reforming of it he was understandably
dismayed; there had been no synods for eighty years, the
authority of the metrOpolitan was not observed and the
episc0pacy was in the hands of laymen and unfit priests.47
Yet reformed it must be; for this realm of sinners was to
become the tool and the material with which the Roman
church was to build a new culture and a new society in the
West.

The chief source of the most effective of the
seventh and eighth century missionary activity was the
recently)+8 established church among the Anglo-Saxons, a
unique church of which St. Boniface was a son. The
development of that church was one of the grandest
successes of this formative period of Europe's youth, and
one of the greatest sobriquets assignable to POpe Gregory I

is 'Apostle of England', even though he never visited there.

 

l”Saint Boniface, Letters of_§t. Boniface, Ep. XL
(50 in Tangl's ed.), Tr. by Ephraim Emerton, Records of
Civilization Sources and Studies XXXI (New York, 1940),
pp. 78:83. Note that the estimate of an 80 year lapse be-
tween the last council and the time that St. Boniface wrote
is an exaggeration. St. Boniface relied on the authority
of the elders of the Franks for his informauon.

48

Though the first mission arrived ca. 597, it was

only since the synod at Whitby that the church in England

was really well established. Wilfrid, the first missionary,
arrived in Frisia in 678, barely 15 years after the synod.

20
For though the mission sent by St. Gregory did not by any

means convert all of the English or even the major part of
them, it initiated the conversion of the English and later
provided the organization and leadership for the newly
created church.

By the end of the sixth century the Anglo-Saxons
had settled down into their conquered land and had begun to
develop some of the rudimentary arts of civilization. Dur-
ing the course of the invasions and subsequent wars through
which these Teutonic heathens had won their new conquest
they had acquired a reputation for extreme ferocity and
cruelty. Whether the tales of St. Gregory's interview
with the English slave-boys is apocryphal or not is
really immaterial, for in any event the field was ripe for
Roman activity. The ecclesiastics of Gaul, even though a
Gallican bishop resided at Canterbury with the King of Kent,
whose wife was a Frank, seemed unable to undertake a
mission to their neighbors}+9

The Roman mission under Augustine was sent in 596
and established itself in Kent with ease, and though there
was a short relapse to paganism among the Kentishmen when

King Ethelbert died in 616,50 Kent proved to be a permanent

 

49John Godfrey, The Church in Anglo-Saxon England
(Cambridge, 1962), p. 74.

Socf. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS. E, a. 616,
Tr. by Dorothy Whitelock, David C. Douglas and Susie I.
Tucker (New Brunswick, N.J., 1961), p. 16.

21

addition to the Christian fold. However, Kent was the only
real success of the mission sent directly from Rome. The
Welsh of western Britain, remnants of a Romano-British
population, were Christians, but Augustine was utterly un-
able to persuade them to join him in preaching to the
English, their hated enemies. Other attempts of Augustine's
group to expand their foundation outside Kent were dis-
couraging for the most part; in Northumbria the fledgling
church was almost completely ruined by the defeat of King
Edwin by his Mercian and Welsh enemies in 632, and missions
from Kent to other neighboring states were generally un-
successful. Thus by 650 Canterbury had lost the lead in
missionary enterprises.51

A good deal of the difficulty lay in the nature of
the English political division. For if one of the heptarchy
was converted, its rivals might be likely to cling all the
more strongly to their paganism.52 But eventually the
English were all to be converted. Though some ground was
gained by Roman missionaries independent of the base in

53

Kent, the next great surge came in the form of an Irish

 

l
5 Sir Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd

edition (Oxford, 1947), p. 113.
52

53of. A.S.C., ms. E., a. 634, p. 18.

Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English
Nation Tr. by J. Stevens and revised by L. Jane
(London, 1910 , pp. 113, 131, 137.

Schnflrer, I, 354.

22
mission gaining its foothold in Northumbria.

Christianity did not die out in Northumbria with
Edwin's defeat in 632. In 633 Oswald, Edwin‘s successor,
was able to defeat the Welsh at Heavenfield and put the
kingdom back on a solid footing. Oswald was a Christian,
but he had been converted at Iona to the Celtic liturgy,
and in 635 he sent to Iona for a mission to strengthen
the faith among his peOple. St. Aidan arrived to take the
matter in hand. Thus began a period of remarkable fruit-
fulness for the church as Aidan and Oswald were able to
work together in complete harmony to spread the faith and
secure Northumbria to Christianity.5u

It was through Northumbria, then, that Celtic
influences entered into the English church. And these
were powerful influences which dominated much of the fruit-
ful activity of the conversion of the rest of England.
Oswald was in his turn defeated in 641, but the church in
his dominions was strong enough to stand without him.55
Strong enough, in fact, to begin sending out monks to
other areas to spread the word. By 660, then, the majority
of the English peoples had been converted to Christianity
from three basic sources: the Kentish.mission originally

sent by St. Gregory, independent Roman missionaries, and the

 

54

SSIbid., PP. 106-107.

Godfrey, p. 105.

23

Irish monastics based in Northumbria. Thus England was
divided between two liturgies and two different sets of
ecclesiastical custom and organization. The Irish were
calculating Easter by an archaic system and were organized
into a monastic system in which episcopal authority was in
some ways subordinate to an abbot's. The Romans were cal-
culating Easter by a revised method and were organized
according to the more orthodox episc0pa1-rule system. The
two churches were bound to come into conflict over their
differences and the conflict began in Northumbria, where
the king was a follower of Celtic usages and the queen a
follower of Roman usages. The result was the now famous
Synod of Whitby in 663 A.D., at which the Irish could not
avoid admitting that St. Peter was first among the apostles
and gate-keeper of heaven.56

However, the effect of Whitby was not an immediate
uniting of the English under Rome, it only provided the
possibility for such a union.57 In the period immediately
following Whitby the church was undergoing a period of dis-
ruption. Contributing thereto was the absence of a primate
at Canterbury. The period of unification did not really

begin until the papacy acted to fill the overlong vacancy at

 

56Ibid., p. 23.

57Stenton, p. 124.

24

Canterbury by sending Theodore of Tarsus to England.

Theodore was a Greek of long ecclesiastical experi-
ence and fitted to the task of organizing the church in
England.58 On his way north into England Theodore visited
in Paris with Bishop Agilbert who had once been a bishop in
Wessex and from him learned much concerning English
affairs.59 Immediately upon his arrival Theodore made a
visitation of his province and then got down to the business
of putting it in order. In 672 he held a synod of the
church at Hertford which established England's first really
organized episcopal system. In general, Theodore's
archepisc0pacy seems to have been successful in creating
one church among the English, and that church Roman-oriented.
However, the unity thus achieved was not Theodore's work
alone. St. Cuthbert, a Romanized Celt, was instrumental
in bringing Celt and Roman into one body because he saw
that demands of unity overrode particularistic considera-

60

tions.

 

58Since Theodore was a Greek and thus liable to be
tainted with some Eastern heresy, Bede says that the pope
sent Hadrian along with him to be sure that he did not
intrgduce any irregularities into England. Cf. Bede,
p. 1 3.

59Stenton, p. 132.

6oStenton, p. 126.

25

Thus the English church was made, and at its height
was the most vibrant and productive church in Europe. The
two forces influencing its creation mingled deeply, Roman
missions and ideas giving it that strong pro-Roman orienta-
tion which was to be preserved through most of the middle
ages, and Celtic influences giving it a scholarly tone and
a zeal for spreading the gospel. The moderation of the
Benedictine monks softened the rigorous csceticism of the
stern Celts.61 But there is small profit in trying to dis—
cuss the relative importance of Irish or Roman influences
or contributions - they mingle at all points and in each
period.62

The pro-Roman orientation of the English church is
our chief interest. It was strengthened by moderation on
the part of the men Rome chose to represent her, which
moderation led the English to view Christianity as a freely
chosen religion.63 The Roman clergy did not push the idea
of Imperium Romanum - they entered into no attempt to

control national development, pushing it into romanized

lines, but were content to let a Germanic culture develop

 

61Richard E. Sullivan, ”The Papacy and Missionary

Activity in the Early Middle Ages," Medaeval Studies, XVII,
(1965), 52. In fact, of Gregory's contributions to the
mission field, none were so pregnant for the future as the
inducement of the Benedictine order to participate.

2
Stenton, pp. 124-125.

63Schnflrer, I, 352.

26

freely - yet the episc0pacy gave a special oneness to the
land, making cultural unity possible and paving the way

for political unity.64

The English church, with these
above mentioned advantages, plus good communications with
Home and the political divisibleness of the English, was
thus able to prevent the development of a Landeskirche.
Thus Anglo-Saxon Christianity was created of
diverse strands and its diversity gave strength to its
fabric. Out of it were to come missionaries to the conti-
nent, bringing with them Irish enthusiasm and learning and

Roman order and canon. And the greatest of these was St.

Boniface.

 

6“Ibic1., I. 379.

CHAPTER TWO

The advent of Anglo-Saxon missions to the conti-
nental Teutonic tribes was not the first endeavour to
convert the heathen of central Europe, but it was the first
effective one. Christianity had previously been carried
into Roman Germany during the period when the empire
still controlled the West; for we know that representatives
from Cologne and Treves were present at the Council of
Aries, in 314. But the Church in Germany had apparently
languished with the removal of imperial protection and
authority. Later years saw a somewhat sporadic stream of
wandering preachers in Germany. In the fifth century an
Italian monk named Severinus went north to preach and he
was followed in the sixth and seventh centuries by the
lauded Irish peregrini?

St. Columbanus arrived in Francia in the decade of
the 580's and worked earnestly for reform, eventually be-
ing banished for his pains. However, he had sent his
followers, Gallus, Fridolin, Thudbert, and Killian off to
work among the pagan Germans in Switzerland, Bavaria and
Franconia where they enjoyed some measure of success. But

these Irish missionaries were preachers only; they suffered

 

28

from a lack of organizational skills. In fact, they could
develop no real organization and recognized no central
authority to whom they were all obedient, and so could
not really build a church that would last among the
ferocious pagans of central Europe. Thus the achievements
of these Irishman were generally shortlived; each one had
a commanding personality and could readily influence men,
but when he was no longer present what he had built up
tended to crumble.2

During the period prior to the arrivakof the Anglo-
Saxons missionary work was generally independent of papal
control or encouragement; the Vicars of St. Peter were
engaged in coping with extremely urgent problems of their
own in Italy which absorbed nearly all of the papal energy;
moreover, Home at that time lacked a pOpe of as outstanding
competence as Gregory the Great.3

The first sign, that a change was about to take
place came with the appearance of Bishop Wilfrid of York
in Frisia in 678. Wilfrid had been on his way to Rome and
had gone by way of Frisia to avoid his enemies. King
Aldgisi of Frisia received him honorably and gave him leave

to preach, which Wilfrid did during the winter he stayed in

 

2Sullivan, Med. St., p. 66.

3Ibid., pp. 58-59.

29

Frisia. The success of this preaching seemed great and
Wilfrid's biographer, Eddius Stephanus, attributed this to
various and miraculous signs of God's favor which impressed
and influenced the people.“ But the efficacy of Wilfrid's
preaching was fleeting and did not long outlast his stay in
Frisia, but whether or not Wilfrid made a real break into
paganism in Frisia is incidental to the real significance
of his connection with the missions to Germany. Most
importantly, Wilfrid set his countrymen the example of
proselytising among the continental heathen and thus stands
as the inaugurator of the momentous invasion of EurOpe by
Anglo-Saxonmonks.5 The spirit of these venerable men was
a manifestation of the diverse strands in the evolution of
their church. The English had inherited two things of vast
importance; from the Irish the urge to travel and the zeal
to convert the heathen, and from their forebears the
adventurous spirit and energy of a newly Civilized peOples.
The Irishman.had taught their pupils well, and the

Anglo-Saxon missions to the continent, unlike the missions

 

4Eddius Stephanus, The Life of Bishqp Wilfrid, Tr.
by B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927), pp. 9-15.

5Peter Hunter Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-
Saxon England (Cambridge, 1960), p. 163.

6Haller, I, 390.

30

of their continental predecessors, were more effective be-
cause the monks did not merely baptize thousands in whole-
sale lots, but preached to and instructed their converts.7
And on the other hand, the ability of these monks to
organize and their loyalty to an organized church made
their efforts more effective than those of their Irish
predecessors. This is, perhaps, why one authority is led to
remark that Frisia, particularly under SS. Willibrord and
Boniface, was a testing ground of the theories developed
by Gregory the Great.8

Wilfrid of York, as noted above, did not stay long
in Frisia, being a missionary only by force of circumstance.
But the light had been kindled among the English and the
task was next taken up by Egbert, an English monk residing
in an Irish monastery who, though he never went to Frisia,
took in hand the organization of workers to go there. The
first man sent by Egbert was Wigbert, who went in 686 to
work in Frisia for two years, but who accomplished nothing.

Radbod, at that time King of the Frisians, was no Aldgisl,

 

Richard E. Sullivan, "Carolingian Missionary
Theories“, The Catholic Historical Review, XLII, (1956),
279.

8
John Seville Higgins, ”The Ultramonatism of Saint
Boniface,“ Church History, II, (1933), 202.

31

no patron of missionaries - his overriding concern was

the independence of his land from Frankish incursion, of
which he regarded thendssionaries as the vanguard.9 This
was one of the primary difficulties encountered by the
missions in Germany - Christianity was the religion of

the Franks and came to be identified with Frankish over-
1ordship. Thus in discouragement Wigbert returned home,
and when he left Frisia, what was left of the church there
fell into ruin.

But Egbert was made of sterner stuff and fortified
by greater hope. In 690 he sent another group, led this
time by a protegé of Wilfrid, Willibrord, who had spent
twelve years studying in a monastery in Ireland. With
eleven companions Willibrord arrived in Frisia and finding
that only in that section of Frisia south of the Rhine,
which was in Frankish hands, could any success be expected,

10

he determined to get Frankish support. Pippin of

Heristal, Major Domo of Austrasia and actual master of all
Gaul, gave him leave to preach and extended him protection

11

in Frankish Frisia. Pippin had by 691 consolidated his

control of the Franks and was at that time ready to turn to

 

9Hauck, I, 404.

1°Ib1d., I, 406.

11Bede, pp. 237-238.

32

the problem of gaining control of the barbaric peoples to
the east of Gaul which control was necessary to the security of
Gaul.12 Thus the understanding between Pippin and Willibrord,
which inaugurated the alliance between the Arnulfing house
and the German church of the Anglo-Saxon monks, was to
both their advantages.13

A strong Frisian church would strengthen and pro-
tect Frankish interests in Frisia while the church would
receive the protection it needed from the secular arm.14
But, for the church, at least, this blessing, like most
others was a mixed one; for the fate of the church thus
established would rise or fall with the vicissitudes of
the Arnulfing house in Frisia.15 And, the alliance was
only effective in mission areas; the Anglo-Saxons had no
contact with the Frankish church.

Once assured of Pippin's support Willibrord
insisted that papal approval of the mission and its arrange-

1$.16

ments must be sough Once this approval was procured

Willibrord set dilligently upon his task and succeeded so

 

12Annalee Mettenses, a. 691. MGR, SS; Tomus I,
edidit G.H. Pertz (Hannover, 1826), p. 320.

13

1L'LI-lauck, I, 406.

1SI-I'aller, I, 390.

Crawford, p. 43.

16Crawford, p. 43.

33
well that within the space of a few years a Frisian church
seemed to be fairly well established. As a result Pippin
desired to see Willibrord consecrated archbishop of the Fr181an
church - presumably to integrate Frisia into his Frankish

state the more readily.17

That papal permission was sought
may have been due to several factors. First, by having
Willibrord consecrated in Rome the connection of the church
with Frankish overlordship, so hated by the Frisians, would
be de—emphasized.18 Secondly, the use of the pallium as a
symbol of metropolitan authority, developed for England and
transferred now to the continent for the first time,
demanded papal approval.19 Thirdly, Willibrord was not
likely to accede to such a plan without papal approval and
Pippin could hardly refuse to go along since he needed the
Frisian church.

However, in giving the pallium in this case the
papacy wascwer-optimistic (as were Pippin and Willibrord in
asking it); Frisia was not yet stable enough to be a full-

fledged province of the church.20 For when Pippin died,

 

l7Bede, pp. 239-240. Alcuin, The Life of St.
Willibrord, in Agglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, Tr. and
edited by C. H. Talbot (New York, 1954), pp. 7-8. Both
Bede and Alcuin agree that Pippin was the motivator here.

18Sullivan, Med. St., p. 70.

l
9Wilhelm Levison, England and the Continent in the
Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), p. 52.

20Godfrey, p. 226.

34

Radbod was able to ally with Neustrian dissidents and
retrieve Frisia south of the Rhine, forcing Willibrord
out.21 The church lay in ruin and the flock quietly
merged with the wolves. Consequently, when Wynfrith
arrived on the continent for the first time conditions were
so bad that he was forced to leave. These conditions
persisted for several years until Charles Martel, Pippin's
heir, was able to gain effective control over Frisia.22
Aldgild, Radhod's successor, was peaceably inclined any
way and this plus Charles Martel's protection enabled
Willibrord to try his hand in free Frisia.23

It was in these difficult days when Gaul was in
such a chaotic state of civil war following Pippin's death
that the monk Wynfrith retraced his steps to the continent
going directly to Rome to cpen a new and, with due defer-
ence to Willibrord's dedicated labor, much more brilliant

chapter of Anglo-Saxon missionary history.2n Willibrord's

 

21Annales Mettenses, a. 714, p. 322-3.

ZZChronicon Moissiacense, MGR; SS, Tomus I, edidit
G.H. Pertz (Hanover, 18267, p. 291. Though Charles Martel
seems to have acquired a major victory over Radbod in 716,
it was not till Radbod died in 719 that Frisia was quiet.

23

24
Annales Mettenses, a. 718, pp. 324-325. This

entry describing the struggles of Charles Martel with his
enemies notes the trip of Boniface to Rome and describes his
later accomplishments: ”His temporibus Winfridus, qui et
postea, cum episcopus ordinaretur, Bonefacii nomen accepit,
doctor catholicus, natione Anglus, prinum Romam, deinde cum
auctorTUfla Gregorii papae in Franciam ad praedicandum

HBUCk, I 9 “'13 o

35
work had broken some ground, but more importantly it had

provided some lessons which Wynfrith and others would have
to learn to be successful; thus from the moment in 690
that Willibrord sought out Pippin's support the Anglo-
Saxon.missions were to be bound up unmistakably and
intimately with the politics and successes of the Arnulfing
dynasty for 150 years.25 In addition a first bond had been
created between a segment of the Frankish church and Rome,
and the pOpe had begun acquiring a power, certainly without
his contemporaries realizing it, over Christianity in the
north.27

But these were as yet only beginnings; slender and
delicate threads. It would take labor and devotion to bring
them to fruition. The missionary zeal of the Anglo-Saxons
and the expansion of the Arnulfings set into motion a

great push into the Teutonic wilderness, and to this push

 

verbum Dei venit. Idemque Bonefacius a praesule sedis
apostolicae Gregorio, Magontiae civitati, metropoli
Germaniae, archiepiscopus ordinatur, et legatus Germanicus
Romanae ecclesiae in Franciam mittitur. Qui praedicatione
sue multos populos, Thuringorum videlicet, Hessionem et
Austrasiorum, ad fidem rectam a qua diu aberraverant
convertit, monasteria quoque monachorum et virginum primus
in partibus Germaniae instituit".

25
Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the
Expansion of Chpistianity, 7 vols. (New York, 1938), II,
81.
26Heller, I, 390.

27
Hauck, I, 407.

36
the papacy was a contributing party and from it reaped
considerable gain as pope and Arnulfing were brought into
each other's orbit.28 Wynfrith-Boniface was the chief

point around which pope and Arnulfing played.

 

8
Sullivan, Med. St., pp. 68-69.

CHAPTER THREE

In Rome in 718 menis minds were solemnly occupied
with the growing political and theological troubles which
the popes were having with the emperor in the East, but
during a calm preceeding the great theological storm pre-
cipitated by Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, a footsore
Anglo-Saxon monk named Wynfrith arrived in the city.1

He had a restless, unsteady, complex nature,

dangerously wrecked by the black humours of

despair, .... The superior interests of the
church alone guided him, but when they were

in play this timid man 'was carried away "b his 2
enthusiasm and his boldness knew no boun 3....
He was full of zeal for missionary work among the heathen
of Germany, and he had come to Rome expressly to lay his
plans in this regard before the pope, Gregory II, and
secure the papal approval for his projected undertaking.3
There have been many reasons suggested which would
seem to explain Wynfrith's resolution to go to Rome: to

preclude interference by others, the example of St.

Willibrord or the advice of his diocesan, BishOp Daniel of

 

l
Schieffer, p. 37.
2
Ibnlel-ROPS, I, 3090

3
Willibald, The Life of St. Boniface, in Agglo—
Saxon Missionaries in Germany, p. 38.

38

Winchester. We feel however, that all these merely cone
firmed Wynfrith's resolve rather than created it; his basic
motivation was his zeal for orthodoxy and his respect for
and allegiance to the papal throne.

Wynfrith carried with him a letter of introduction
from his diocesan bishop to present to Pope Gregory in
718.“ In Willibald's Life of St. Boniface there is a
charming description of Wynfrith's first meeting with the
pope, who gazed intently at this traveler from afar as
though taking his measure and asked if he had a letter from
his bishop, i.e., permission to come to Rome.5 Sending
Wynfrith away the pope read the letters in private and
later spent many hours in conversation with Wynfrith after
which, apparently satisfied with him, the pOpe sent him to
make an inspection tour of the German heathen.6 The pope's
object was to give Wynfrith a trial under field conditions
before commuting himself to this unknown monk and at the
same time make a test probe into the wilderness for soft
spots in the pagan armor.

Thus in the spring of 719, Wynfrith, renamed
Boniface by the pope, left Rome with a letter from the pope

instructing him that he was to be missionary priest at

 

“St. Boniface, Ep. III a. 718 (11 in Tangl's

edition), p. 32.

5Willibald, p. 39.

6Ibid., p. 39.

39
large in Germany and that he was to insist on Roman usages
wherever he went.7 After a short sojourn with Liutprand,
King of the Lombards, Boniface crossed over the Alps
into Germany. He traveled through Bavaria, an already
Christian land, and on into Thfiringia, where he decided to
try to expand the already partly established church. But
the church of Thfiringia was poorly organized and disciplined
and the dissolute and half-heathen churchmen whom Boniface
contacted in his attempts to work there were of no credit
to their cloth, and from Thflringia Boniface went on to work
in Frisia.8 Most probably, Boniface left Thfiringia not be-
cause of a faint heart, but because the dissolute and poor-
ly instructed clergy there refused to respect either himself
or his papal commission and hindered his work at every turn.
Unable to accomplish anything since the authority of the
pope was not respected, Boniface felt impelled to leave al-

most as soon as he had arrived.9 Apparently he had meant

 

7St. Boniface, Ep. IV, a. 719 (12 in Tangl's
edition), p. 33.

8

Willibald, p. 39.

9Schieffer, pp. 114-115. The Church here was shot
through with heresy, immorality, and ignorance of canon law,
but the men who Opposed Boniface cannot be, according to
Dr. Schieffer, the monastics of the old Irish foundations.
The names Torchtwine, Berehthere, Eanbercht and Hunraed come
down to us as the names of Boniface's Thfiringian adversaries
and they are Anglo-Saxon names. In Dr. Schieffer's opinion
they were not monks but Weltpriester who had become accli-
mated to Frankish conditions and it does not matter if they
are Franks or not; historically the confrontation still stands
for the confrontation of a degenerate Frankish church with
the vignr“ of Anglo-Saxon Christianity.

40

to go to Charles Martel with a request for assistance to
support the papal authority in Thfiringia, but had heard of
Radhod's death and went on to Frisia to assist Willibrord
instead.lo

During Radhod's reign the church in Frisia had
nearly disappeared, but now better days began to dawn
for the church in that area. With Frankish protection of
the Frisian area re—established, Willibrord was able to
regain much of what had been lost and more besides.
Boniface offered to stay three years with Willibrord in the
service of the Frisian.mission.and set himself to work.11
The young man moved into the field to preach and succeeded
in converting many Frisians while at the same time learning
much about the pagan mentality and the practical techniques
of preaching to the pagan - knowledge which he soon began
to apply with great energy and ability to bring many more
men to Christ. To appreciate the extent of Boniface's
achievement in later days one must review some of the diffi-
culties which stood in his way. There was no ready made

organization to do the job; the missionary had to organize

things for himself.12 Boniface had to spend a good deal of

 

10Ibid., p. 116.

11Willibald, pp. 40-41.

12 ;
Richard E. Sullivan, "Early Medieval Missionary
Activity: A Comparative Study of Eastern and Western
Methods," Church Histor , XXIII, (1954), 21-22.

41
his time recruiting personnel and soliciting aid, rather
thanpreaching.13 On the other hand, pagans had to be
impressed;only if they thought Christianity a benefit
would they accept it. The attraction of Christianity had
to be high; the missionary had to demonstrate the super-
iority of his culture through his labors; he built, he

1” The religious

cleared land, he cultivated, he taught.
appeal had to be convincing too; instruction in dogma
would not being men to accept the new faith - that would
come later - one had first to demonstrate Christ's superior
power, to show pagan gods vulnerable and impotent.15 In
short " . . . Christianity as presented by the missionaries
must have seemed much more a new mode of living and worship-
ping that a theology and a system of doctrine."16
The success of the mission was great and consequent-
ly the responsibility of running the mission proved taxing
to the strength of the already aging Willibrord. The
number of converts was so large that one man could not

both manage what had been won and direct the effort to win

more. Consequently Willibrord asked Boniface to stay on

 

13Ibid.
h
1 Ibid., p. 24.

151bid., pp. 28-29.

16
Ibid., p. 30.

42
with him and be his assistant bishop or Chorepiscopus to
direct the missions and to be his successor as holder of

17

the see when he died. Boniface excused himself because

he did not then, so Williblifi asserts, wish the epiSCOpal
dignity for himself.18 Willibrord protested but finally
Boniface was able to convince the man by pleading his
prior committment to PCpe Gregory's service.l9 Boniface
may also have feared that acceptance of the offer would
involve him in a violation of canon law; Willibrord was
already consecrated head of the Frisian see and it was OOH!
trary to canonical usage for his office to be shared with
another.20

Having turned down Willibrord's offer because of
the pope's superior claim on his time and probably also
because Frisia seemed secure, Boniface decided in 721 to
turn south into Hesse where the Franks were also in direct
control, having conquered there in 718-20 under Charles
Martel. "'Nourished in the word of faith and good
doctrine . . . '" Boniface reached Amanaburch or Amaneburg,

a Frankish fortress in Hesse, where he made his first

 

17Willibald, p. 41.
18Ibid.
19Ibid.

20Levison, pp. 65-66.

43
missionary establishment.21 Christianity had reached the
area in some form earlier and Boniface's first experience
there were typical of what he found in Hesse generally; at
AmBneburg he encountered two brothers, Dettic and Devrulf,
native rulers who were Christians in name and pagans in
practice.22 They had to be corrected in the practice of
the faith - in fact they had almost to be reconverted.
Then having converted and corrected many 'thousands' of
their Hessian followers Boniface sent, in the same year,
a messenger named Bynnan to Rome to report on how matters
stood and to ask advice.23 Thus far, Boniface had been
phenomenally successful and the pope, no doubt impressed
at his work, summoned him to Rome. The time had come to
take serious consideration of this man and his achievements;
he had proven himself an able and a loyal servant of God
and if he were intellectually of the stature required and
well versed in theology, then he was possibly the man who
could be entrusted with creating in Germany an apostolic
church province of Rome. Pope Gregory interrogated Boniface
concerning his knowledge of the articles of faith and

Boniface asked to be allowed to write them out rather than

 

21
Willibald, p. 42.

22
Ibid., p. 42.
2
3Ibid., pp. 42—43.

44
expound them verbally.2u Upon receiving Boniface's
statement of his views, and after conversing with him about
the mission, confirming his hopes, the pope raised Boniface
to the episcopate.25 Boniface's succeSses in central
Germany had made that place an important center for the
church, and, as he was unmistakably orthodox and well in-
formed, he was the man to exercise supervision there, as
his elevation testifies.

The elevation of Boniface by the pope was an un-
usual occurrence; normally elevation of missionaries to the
episc0pate was carried out by anyone at the scene who was
qualified.26 That Pope Gregory elevated Boniface himself
demonstrates his interest in the project and his will to
extend the sphere of papal control to areas outside Italy.27
The oath taken by Boniface as bishop on November 30, 722,
was also unusual:

"I, Boniface, by the grace of God bishop, promise to
you, c blessed Peter, chief of the Apostles, and to
your vicar, the blessed pope Gregory and to his
successors, in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, the indivisible Trinity, and

of this, thy most sacred body, that I will show
entire faith and sincerity toward the holy catholic

 

zulbid o , pp 0 ’43-’44 o
25lbid., p. 44.
26
Sullivan, Med. St., p. 75.
27Ibid.
28

St. Boniface, Ep. VIII, a. 722, (16 in Tangl's
edition), p. 41.

45

doctrine and will persist in the unity of the same,

so god help me - that faith in which, beyond a doubt,
the whole salvation of Christians consists. I will

in no wise agree to anything which is Opposed to the
unity of the Church Universal, no matter who shall try
to persuade me; but I will, as I have said, show in
all things a perfect loyalty to you and to the welfare
of your Church, to which the power to bind and loose
in given by God, and to your vicar and his successors.

But, if I shall discover any bishOps who are
Opponents of the ancient institutions of the holy
Fathers, I will have no part nor lot with them, but so
far as I can will restrain them or, if that is impos-
sible, will make a true report to my apostolic master.
But if (which God forbid) I shall be tempted into any
action contrary to this my promise in any way or by
any device or pretext whatsoever, may I be found
guilty at the last judgment and suffer the punishment
of Ananias and Sapphire, who dared defraud you by
making a false declaration of their property.

This text of my oath, I, Boniface, a humble bishop,
have written with my own hand and laid above they
most sacred body. I have taken this oath, as is pre-
scribed, in the presence of God, my witness and my
judge, and I pledge myself to observe it."

The form of the oath was the same used in the oaths of the
bishops of Italy, immediately subject to the pOpe as their
metrOpOlitan;29 Boniface placed himself and his see under
papal control and in addition he omitted the usual oath Of
allegiance to the emperor.30 The first step had thus been
taken to assert the primacy of Peter and make the pOpe the
Patriarch of the West in fact as will as in theory.

The pOpe knew that Boniface's activities would lead

him into conflict with the corrupted ecclesiastics of

 

29Higgins, p. 203.

30Ibid.

46

Thflringia - very well, let that happen.31 Boniface was
going north as the champion of Rome and orthodoxy32 and a
champion cannot be victorious without battles. The object
of Boniface's work would be to preach and expand the faith,
but he would soon have to face the task of reform because
his missionary work would eventually necessitate it.33
Thus Boniface began a new career; ". . . no longer as a
mere missionary pioneer, but rather as a missionary states-
man in the service of Rome."3fl

Gregory's plans were well laid. Previously he had
planned, in concert with Duke Theodo of Bavaria, to re-
organize Bavaria and pull it into Rome's orbit, but the
plan had fallen through due to the duke's death and the
struggle for power which usually accompanied a change of
rulers in Germanic kingdoms.35 The plan for Bavaria was
not now feasible, but Thfiringia offered itself and Boniface
was now to try in Thfiringia what had been intended for
Bavaria.36 Moreover, Thflringia, situated between Frisia

and Bavaria, both in one stage or another of Christianity,

 

31Hauck, I, 433.
32Ibid.
33Ibid., I, 433-434.

3L‘J. P. Whitney, "Conversion of the Teutons,"
The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. II, Ch. XVI (b). 537.
‘TCambridge,‘I9l3).

35H8.ller, I, 392.

36
Ibid., 1’ 393.

47

would connect them and give Rome a strategic position in
Germany.37 Accordingly the pOpe began, in December of 722,
to write letters. To the Thfiringians he wrote that Boniface
was now their bishop.38 And to Charles Martel he wrote
asking him to extend his protection to Boniface.39

Boniface was well received by Martel, whom he
acknowledged as his lord and patron, and who gave him the

40

letter requested by the pope. The letter of protection

given by Martel to Boniface was addressed to all Frankish

officers, but made no mention of the pOpe, or of Boniface's

41

being sent by the pope. The pope had gambled and time

 

37
Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen
Literatur des Mittelalters (Handbugh der Altertums
Wissenschaft, 9te Abteilung, 2ter Tell, hrsg. von Walter
Otto, 2 BdeQ) (Mfinchen, 1959), I, 43.

388t. Boniface, Ep . X, a. 722, (18 in Tangl's
edition), pp. 43-44.

39Ibid., Ep. XII, a. 722, (20 in Tangl's edition),
p. 45. We have seen how Willibrord failed when he lacked
protection by a secular power and also how Boniface's first
experience in Thfiringia, a nominally Christian land, was
marred by a lack of secular protection.

uoWillibald, p. 45.

ulSt. Boniface, Ep. XIV, a. 723, (22 in Tangl's
edition), p. 47. "To the holy and apostolic bishOps, our
fathers in Christ, and to the dukes, counts, vicars, palace
officials, all our lower agents, our circuit judges (missi)
and all who are our friends, the noble Charles, mayor of
the palace, your well-wisher, sends greeting.

Be it known to you how that the apostolic man in Christ,
Father Boniface, aman of apostolic character and a bishop,
came to us with the request that we should take him under
our guardianship and protection. Know that we have

48
would show that he had gambled wisely; Martel would need
Boniface anyway and so would in all probability protect
him. Martel would not act out of pious resolve but because
a strong Thfiringian church such as even he must know
Boniface capable of creating, would be a good protection

for the Frankish flank in the eastern frontier.u2

If Martel
consciously de—emphasized the papal role because he wanted
to retain maximum control of this eastern area one need not
be overly concerned.“3 A strong Thfiringian church created

by Boniface would be a Roman church - Martel could not
change that - and such a church would not long exist even
on the periphery of the corrupt Frankish ecclesiastical
world before it would have its effect even in Gaul itself.
Let Martel have his way - for awhile - for the future lay
with Boniface and the Roman church which would soon ensnare

the Frankish warlords and command their strong right arms

in Rome's service.

 

acquiesced with pleasure and, hence, have granted his
petition before witnesses and commanded that this written
order signed by our own hand be given him, that wheresoever
he may choose to go, he is to be left in peace and protected
as a man under our guardianship and protection to the end
that he may render and receive justice. If he shall be in
any need or distress which cannot be remedied according to
law, let him and those dependent upon him come in peace and
safety before our presence, so that no person may hinder or
do him injury, but that he may rest at all times in peace
and safety under our guardianship and protection.

And that this may the more surely be given credit, I
have signed it with my own hand and sealed it with our ring."

42
Heller, I, 398.

43
Manitius, I, 144.

49

Thus the pOpe solved the two basic problems
Boniface had had in Thfiringia in his first sojourn there
by protecting him through Martel and providing him with
authority to act.

Thflringia was in a state of chaos when Boniface
arrived there; the Saxons were wreaking havoc in the land,
and the church had lost much of its following.uu
Struggling through much difficulty Boniface began to
achieve great successes; for many peOple were readily con-
verted and Boniface's challenges to the pagan gods, of
which his destruction of the tree shrine at Geismar in
Hesse is typical, convinced those who doubted by demonstrat-
ing the impotence of pagan deities to defend their shrines
or punish those who offended against them.)+5

Boniface's renown spread as he achieved success in
Germany and his growing fame brought many helpers, chiefly
from England.“6 Working in small groups under the guidance
and control of Boniface these men converted thousands of

47

Germans in Hesse and Thfiringia. Boniface remained in
constant contact with POpe Gregory and repeatedly asked his

advice and direction on various matters, such as, a

 

nuWillibald, p. 46.

45

Ibid., pp. 45-46.
46__-_

Ibid., p. 47.
47

Ibid.

50
jurisdictional diSpute with BishOp Gerald of Mainz,
dogmatic questions and points of canon law, marriage,

48

clerical crimes, the order of the mass, and other sacra-
ment.49 The pOpe's advice and instruction came north in
a steady flow and doubtless did much to fortify Boniface
in his labors. Thus the Church began to grow and grow
until all of Thfiringia and Reese were Christian lands.
From 722 until 731 when POpe Gregory II died the
work continued to go forward with a high level Of success.
Even the death of Pope Gregory II did not interrupt it.
POpe Gregory III, his successor, continued the policy of
his predecessor and Boniface made haste to assure him of
his loyalty: when word came of the accession of the new
pontiff Boniface sent messengers to re-affirm his loyalty
to Rome and to make sure that the previous arrangements

would continue.50

The work had progressed so far and so
prosPerously by 732 that Pope Gregory sent the pallium to
Boniface.51 In a letter to Boniface he noted that the
pallium had been sent and told him that as archbishOp he was

to consecrate new bishops to administer more efficiently

 

4BSt. Boniface, Ep. XVI, a. 724, (24 in Tangl's
edition). pp. 50-51.

49
pp. 53-56.

Ibid., Ep. XVIII, a. 726, (26 in Tangl's edition),

50Willibald, pp. 47—48.

51mm, p. 48.

51

the large area he had conquered for the church.52 Thus
the sending of the pallium was no mere reward for Boniface,
but a part of papal strategy; the mission had prospered
so far that a new phase must be begun. The organization
of Germany as a Roman ecclesiastical province must now be
attained.53 The intended organization was to be left in
Boniface's hands so that he could direct missionary activi-
ty in the ever-expanding area.5u

But it did not turn out as planned. The creation
of new dioceses was long delayed and, for a time at least,
Boniface continued as he had been before - he seemed to be
an archbishop in name only.55 Why was this so? Professor
Levison suggests that the opposition of either the Franco-
Rhenish bishops or of Charles Martel may be the answer.56
In all probability it was the Opposition of both. The
Franco-Rhenish bishops had had free rein in the area before
Boniface arrived, but he threatened to end their corrupt
control of the lucrative area. He brought in discipline
and set up establishments which they could not control or

mulct. Moreover, the advent of papal control and discipline

 

523s. Boniface, Ep. xx, a. 732, (28 in Tangl's
edition). pp. 57-59.

53

4
5 Richard E. Sullivan. "The Carolingian Missionary

and the Pagan", S eculum, XXVIII, (1953), 710.

Sullivan, Med. St.,p. 77.

55Hauok, I, 452.

56Levison, p. 73.

52
would mean the end Of a convenient arrangement by which the
church was controlled by the lay aristocracy, of which
these men were a part, to its own benefit. Charles
Martel, on the other hand, probably felt that things had
gone far enough in Thfiringia. The Church there was strong
enough for his purposes; papal organization of it would mean
his loss of real control over what went on there and he
probably felt that control slipping anyway when the real-
ization came that Boniface was not his man but the pope's.
The pope was theoretical overlord of the church in the
West and Martel would doubtless feel compelled to recognize
this. As long as the pope was confined to Italy he could
do no damage, but if he started putting the Frankish church
in his pocket the world would crumble for Martel. Martel
needed to control the church and he did so, but if his
Church ever seriously acknowledged Rome's right to intervene,
the state would be seriously weakened. The Franks were
surrounded by hostile peoples and had constantly to be on
guard against them: Frisians, Saxons, Bavarians, Alamannians,

57

Aquitanians and,of course, Arabs. The church was rich
and provided a source of revenue necessary to finance

Frankish armies as well as funds to buy off ambitious nobles,

 

57Enhardi Fuldensis Annales, MGH, SS, Tomus I,

Edidit G. H. Pertz, (Hannover, 1826), pp. 344-345. Annales
Mettenses, Ibid., pp. 325-326.

53

and a strongly controlled church in the eastern areas would
also make easier the Frankish control of the eastern
marches so necessary to Gaul's security. Should Boniface,
who was necessary to Martel as well as to the pOpe, be

able to organize a strong papal province in the east Martel
wnuld not be able to control it and it might prove an
influence on the church in Gaul which would mean a loss of
both revenue and control of powerful church positions.

Thus there was, in all probability, great pressure imposed
on Boniface to prevent his further organizing the church
and it is also probable that due to lapses into paganism
and other problems among his flock he was unable to
accomplish anything. It is not possible to know whether
Boniface tried and failed or was prevented from trying.

At any rate, the pOpe's request had to wait.

In 738 Boniface made his third journey to Rome to
confer with POpe Gregory III. Boniface was well received
by the Romans, his fame having preceeded him.59 Boniface
spent nearly a year conversing with the pOpe and came away
from Rome with orders to organize the church in the Bavarian
area and with powers as legate to act as the highest

6
ecclesiastical authority in Germany. 0 In a letter to

 

58Hauck, I, 452.
59

Willibald, p. 49.
60

Hans von Schubert, Geschichte der christlichen
Kirche im Frflhmittelalter (Tfibingen, 1921), p. 304.

54
England of about this time he called himself: " . . .
German legate of the Church Universal, servant of the
Apostolic See. . . ."61 The pOpe was not displeased with
his servant. The length of their conversation suggests
strongly that the problems being faced were serious indeed
and the pope must have known by this time that no man knewmore
about what went on in Germany than this man Boniface. That
Boniface was named German legate reveals the pOpels confi-
dence in this knowledge and his implicit trust in the
loyalty of Boniface.

If central Germany could not yet be organized then
south Germany could be worked on. Accordingly, Boniface
went into Bavaria to the bishops of which the pOpe wrote
informing them that Boniface was their superior.62 In the
early fall of 739 Boniface was able to report to the pOpe
that he had ordained three new bishops there. The pope
ordered to continue to improve discipline and to hold a
synod at which he should preside in the pope's stead, as
his powers of legate gave him the right.63 We do not know

whether the synod called for by the pOpe took place or not,

 

61St. Boniface, Ep. XXXVI, a. 738, (46 in Tangl's
edition), pp. 74-75.

6%IQ;Q., Ep. XXXIV, a. 738, (44 in Tangl's edition),
PP- 71-72-

6322;9-9 EP- XXV, a. 739. (45 in Tangl's edition),
Pp. 72‘7uo

55

but reform and organization in Bavaria was carried to a
satisfactory conclusion for the moment and a Bavarian
synod was held before much time elapsed.6u

In 741 both Charles Martel and Pope Gregory III
died. The accession of new rulers in both Rome and
Francia would lead to a new phase in the life of Boniface.
What had thus far been accomplished? Much, very much.
As the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries Boniface
had in effect created the grounds of a lasting rapport
with the Frankish state. Frankish pressures on the peoples
east of the Rhine had meant that only those missions run
by men unrelated to the Franks could succeed, and yet such
men would need to have Frankish good will - these men were

Boniface and his Anglo-Saxon monks.65

Though Martel seemed
hostile to these men at times because they were the pOpe's
men, yet he needed them as much as they did him. Though he
may have balked in the organization of Thfiringia, he had
on the whole supported Boniface.

The confidence which had been placed in Boniface by
the papacy had been richly rewarded. Haller says that it

was Boniface that was entirely responsible for papal interest

 

6“Hauck, I, 472, cf. Concilium 72.5EE: LL:-Sectio
III, Tomus II, Pars I, edidit Albert Werminghoff (Hannover,
1896), pp. 51-53. The Concilium Baiuwaricum was held in the
period 740-750,possibly in the reign of Duke Odilo, who
died in 748.

65Daniel-Rope, I, 307-308.

56
in missions, that he had to lead the papacy to take cone
trOl.66 But in fact, Boniface came to the pOpes when they
were beginning to look west and north for a solution of
their problems, as Gregory II's attempts to organize Bavaria
illustrate. The papacy had the desire to try to establish
a base of power in the north, but they had no means to do
so. Without a friendly state to the north nothing could
be accomplished. The importance of Boniface was that he
appeared at the right time, with his prejudices pro-papal
and his great ability to lure Germans to the baptismal font
at a time when the coming break in the east necessitated a
source Of papal strength in the north. Boniface provided
both means and ability. As a result of his work the pOpes
were no longer mere Patriarchs of Italy within a fading
empire. He made the pOpe head of a large and thriving
church in the north that stood wholly outside the imperial
umbra. With this new, noneimperial interest, the pOpe him-
self began to stand outside the imperial sphere and could
not return without abandoning the north. But the pOpe lacked
a secular ally to protect him from the Lombards and support
his official move away from Byzantium. The acquisition of
that also fell on Boniface. It is a measure of the wisdom

of both Gregory II and Gregory III that they recognized the

value and ability of Boniface and could use him, yet allow

 

66Haller, I, 397-398, 469-470.

5?
him discretion and freedom of performance. For without
Boniface the creation of the pOpes as the ecclesiastical
leaders of the West would have been long delayed, if ever

achieved.

CHAPTER FOUR

After leaving Bavaria, about 740, Boniface returned
to Thflringia where he was able to carry into effect POpe
Gregory's earlier plan to organize this province. He
consecrated three new bishOps: for Buraburg in Hesse and
for Erfurt and Wfirzburg in Thflrginia.1 With the establish-
ment of these sees the ecclesiastical organization of
Hesse and Thflrginia was fairly complete and central and
south Germany were both ready to take their places as Roman
church provinces. Such a new and vital growth to the east
would naturally raise some questions among both the lay and
ecclesiastical aristocracies of Gaul who looked upon it as
a Fremdkdpper and, consequently, as dangerous to themselves.
The question of the future was how they would take it.2
Thus Boniface could no longer continue wholly in the course
he had followed for the past decade. His works had
expanded as far as possible; missionary work had led
necessarily to organizational work, and this must in turn

lead to reformational work.3 The corrupt Frankish church

 

1St. Boniface, Ep. XL, a. 742, (50 in Tangl's
edition), p. 79.

2
Schubert, pp. 305-306.

3Schieffer, pp. 156-157.

59
would exercise a detrimental effect on Boniface‘s flock
if left alone to do so and it was apparent that to ensure
the safety and integrity Of the work already accomplished,
the Frankish church would have to be reformed.“

But reform of the Frankish church would not be so
simply accomplished. Both the secular aristocracy and
the aristocratic epiSCOpate of Gaul would Oppose any move
toward reformation and their power would have to be
neutralized before anything could be accomplished.5
But Charles Martel had always been an enemy of reform. He
had encouraged the missions for political reasons but had
always maintained autocratic control Of the church in Gaul
and would never admit that Boniface's legatine authority

6

extended to Gaul. However, by the time Charles Martel

died, the success of the mission had piqued the strong

religious interests of his son Karlomann.7
When Charles Martel died he divided the reahnof the

Franks as though he were king. Karlomann the elder son

received Austrasia, Alamannia and Thfiringia as his portion

 

“Heller, I, 399.

5Schieffer, p. 144. Alfons Dopsch, The Economic
and Social Foundations of Eurppean Civilization, Tr. by
M. G. Beard and N. MarshallITLondon, 1937), pp. 256-257.

6Stenton, p. 169.
7
Erich Caspar, Geschichte des Papsttums von den

Anfa en bis zur Hdheggep_flel§her;§ghafip, 3 Bde. (THbingen,
1933). II, 709. ,

60
while Pippin, the younger son, received Neustria, Burgundy
and Provence.8 Karlomann was of a pious turn of mind and
interested in ecclesiastical affairs.9 Consequently his
accession meant an improvement of Boniface's relationship
to the state. Karlomann realized that the best interests
of the Frankish ruling house required sponsorship of reform
and its extension throughout the realm - providing there
were no loss of power in the bargain. The Anglo-Saxon
view of the theocratic nature of monarchy would be a handy
tool for the Arnufling house.10 But it was also a snare

which would bring Karlomann and Pippin into St. Peter's service.

 

8Annales Mettenses, a. 741, p. 327.

9Ibid., a. 746-747, p. 329. In fact, Karlomann
later renounced his power to enter a monastery for life.

10Schubert, p. 306. This implies not that a theory
concerning the royal right to rule the church existed, but
that the influence of the church upon the monarchies of
England and the resulting interest of kings in affairs
religious had become a distinctive feature of Anglo-Saxon
life. The Roman missionary efforts in England were directed
at the kings throughout the period of conversion, and all
missionary progress in England depended upon close contact
with and COOperation of the royal households, (Blair, p.211).
The influence of the church on these kings was a primary
factor determining the development of court life and this
influence was so great that some kings, among whom Ceolwulf
and Eadberht of Northumbria are most notable, took up a
monastic vow, (Ibid). In the religious life of England the
kings were important figures; they took an interest in
synods, the selection of ecclesiastics for high office, and
patronized the church (IBid., p. 218, and Stenton, pp. 130,
142). The kings were the protectors Of the church and
often were consulted concerning ecclesiastical measures
(Stenton, pp. 138, 171). This sort of control exercised
by these kings is akin to that exercised by the Frankish
rulers over their church, except that it is not as extensive.
It would seem that it would be abused and in some cases it

61

Thus Karlomann determined to reform the church in
his provinces. Whether Boniface suggested it or he arrived
at the idea himself is not known. Having acquainted the
pope with the poor state of the Frankish church and receiv-
ing permission to proceed, Boniface entered upon the task
as requested by Karlomann in 742.11

The first synod in Austrasia in 742 was called by

12 He was careful

Karlomann as "Dux et princeps Francorum”.
to note that his authority prevailed and not the pOpe's -
Boniface was in attendance as Frankish archbishOp, not papal
legate. The synod was called to advise Karlomann as to how
the church might be reformed and the good of the peOple's
souls obtained.13 Though Boniface was acknowledged as

missus of St. Peter, he was, as Frankish archbishop,

subordinate to Karlomann who called his churchmen together

 

undoubtedly was, but for the most part the exceptionally
high quality of English religious life was reflected in the
royal households and with a few exceptions the kings were
pious men and careful guardians of the church. Some few of
them even resigned their thrones to pray in Rome and many
others at least made pilgrimages there.

11St. Boniface, Ep. XLI, a. 743, (51 in Tangl's
edition), p. 87.

12Capitulare 1Q; MGH, LL: Sectio II, Tomus I, edidit
Alfred Boretius (Hannover, 1888), p. 24.

13Ibid., pp. 24—25. ". . . ut mihi consilium
dedissent, quomodo lex Dei et aecclesiastica relegio
recuperetur, quae in diebus praeteritorum principum
dissipate corruit, et qualiter pOpulus christianus ad
salutem enimee pervenire possit. . . ." The synod appointed
new bishops over whom Boniface was MetrOpolitan, ordered

yearly synods and corrected erring clerics.

62
to discuss gig church.But though Rome had no role, it had
a voice in Boniface and through this synod and others
which followed the reformed Frankish clergy began to real-
ize that the pOpe was actually the only power which could
protect them from aristocratic aggression and safeguard
their reforms.lu Thus the idea of the primacy of Peter
would begin to capture the Frankish church as well in spite
of the efforts of its rulers to retain control.

The synod for 742 was not the last; another was
called, in accord with the decision of the first, a year
later at Leptines. At this synod the decisions of the
first were re-affIrmed and it was added ". . . because of
immanent war andrersecutions by the rest of the peoples
which are about us. . . ." a portion of church lands
should continue to be used to support the army, as in
Charles Martel's arrangement, and that annual payment
should be made to the church in exchange.15 Karlomann was
a faithful son of the church, but he was at this time also
a practical secular ruler who needed funds. The church

would be glad to give them for he was not a Martel and was

 

lb’Stenton, p. 170.

15Capitulere 11, ed. Boretius, pp. 28. “. . . propter
inminentia belle et persecutiones ceterarum gentium quae in
circuitu nostro sunt. . . ." of. F. L. Ganshof, "Benefice
and Vassalage in the Age of Charlemagne", Cambridge
figstorical Journal, VI, (1939), No.2, p. 157. Charlemagne
later reduced the payment due the church to a mere token
indicating ownership.

63
concerned with church welfare, and without his army no
protection could be accorded the church when it needed it.
The hostile peoples mentioned in the edict promulgating
the acts of the synod were the same in some cases that
threatened the security of missions in the lands east of
the Rhine.

Not to be outdone by his brother, Pippin called a
Neustrian synod at Soissons in 744. At that council it
was decided that the faith was to be practiced in Pippin's
realm as it had been constituted by the Nicene council.l6
Adlabertus, who was a notorious heretic and general
nuisance, was condemned and new archbishops were selected
for Neustria.l7 Boniface, though apparently not present
at Soissons, was in touch with matters there and requested,
at Pippin's instance, pallia for the three new archbishops
of Rouen, Rheims, and Sens, which the pOpe granted, giving

18 However, the plans

detailed instructions for their use.
were apparently changed and it was decided that there should
be only one archbishOp in Neustria and the pallium was

requested for Grimo of Rouen alone.

 

16Capitulare 12, ed. Boretius, p. 29.
17

Ibid 0 , pp 0 29-30 0

18St.Boniface, Ep. XLV, a. 744 (57 in Tangl's
edition) , pp. 94‘95 O

1
9Ibid., Ep. XLVI, a. 744, (58 in Tangl's edition),
p. 97. Why the change was made and the pallium requested
for Grimo of Rouen alone is not clear. In his letter to
the pope dated 751, (Ep. LXX (86 in Tangl's edition), p.158).

64

The synod at Soissons was followed by another for
Francia in general in 745, of which we know neither the
location nor much of what went on. Presumably it was pre-
sided over by Boniface. Previous decisions were probably
confirmed and the two heretics, the above mentioned
Adlabertus and another equally notorious, were discussed

20

and condemned. The council also decreed that Cologne

should be the archepisc0pal seat of Boniface, a decision

 

Boniface remarks that one pallium was requested because the
Frankish princes had not fulfilled their promises and were
delaying so that Boniface did not know what they were going
to do. The pOpe replied (EP. LXXI (87 in Tangl's edition),
p. 160), that he did not hold Boniface responsible and that
it was, in effect, up to the Franks to do whatever they
desired. What these promises were we cannot know but there
is no mistaking the fact that the issue was bound up in
Frankish politics. Emerton suggests that the charges of
simony against the pOpe are also involved and that Grimo

of Rouen may be the only one of the three proposed arch-
bishops not involved in a simoniacal affair of some sort
(P. 97, n.). It is interesting to note that Grimo of Rouen
is not mentioned in the edict of Pippin promulgated after
the Synod but that the other two, Abel and Ardobertum are.
(Cepitulare 12, ed., Boretius, p. 29. cf. Concilium 4, ed.,
Werminghoff, p. 34). One might suspect in this regard that
Pippin was concerned with preserving his control over the
church in Neustria and felt that he could control one man
better than three. One might also suspect that the presence
of the names of Abel and Ardobertum in the edict means they
bought their offices and thatsubsequently Boniface balked,
finally being able to force the choice to what he considered
a clean man. However, since there seems to be a lackcf
evidence the issue must remain obscure.

20Concilium 5, ed., Werminghoff, pp. 36-44. St.
Boniface, Ep. LXI, e. 747, (77 in Tangl's edition), p. 135.
They were referred by Boniface to a Roman synod held later
in the same year at the Lateran Palace where they were again
condemned after Deneherd presented Boniface's case against
them. But the two men escaped and shortly thereafter Pope
Zecharius notified Boniface that they were to be sent to
Rome if they continued in their evil ways.

65

which the pOpe approved.21

The last council in Francia in the era of Boniface
was a general synod in 747 of which we again have little
information. But from a letter of Boniface to Cuthbert,
ArchbishOp of Canterbury, we know that an oath of allegiance
and Obedience to St. Peter and the pope was taken by the
clergy of Francia.22

The object of Boniface's work in the synods,
independent of the objects of Karlomann and Pippin in call-
ing them, was to make the pope the head of the Frankish
church through means of archbishops holding the pallium,
and thus their offices, from Rome. The reforms were more
in the nature of a concentration of power in the pope's
hands than a general reformation.23 As such, the synods
were successful only in effecting loyalty to Rome, for
abuses continued - particularly the idea that a Christian
priest could also be a Teutonic warrior.2u The problem
was complicated by the attitudes of the princes towards

reform. Though both Karlomann, and to a lesser extent

 

21St. Boniface, EP. XLVIII, a. 745, (60 in Tangl's
edition), p. 108. He was later and for an unknown reason
shifted to Meinz without papal consultation,cf. Ep. LXXII,
a. 751, (88 in Tangl's edition), p. 165, a spurious letter
added to the collection and probably a reworking of a bull
confirming the appointment of Boniface to Cologne in 745.

22
Concilium 6, ed., Werminghoff, pp. 45-50. The
only information on this synod is the letter to Cuthbert
and a letter to Pope Zachary from the Frankish bishOps.

23

Higgins, p. 207.
24

Heller, I,401.

66
Pippin, were genuinely pious men, they preferred to hold
control of the church in their realms. They both desired
the reform of abuses in the church and both were genuinely
loyal to Rome in matters theological. But they were
practical men and rulers, and they wanted control of
lucrative church incomes and important church posts and
felt a need to make the church serve important secular
policies. However, if such control was exercised with
moderation and the abuses of previous days did not creep
into the church, political control would be no tragedy and
the popes do not seem to have objected since they needed
the Frankish rulers.

In 747 Prince Karlomann, in a mood of piety, be-
came a monk and devoted his soul entirely to the spiritual
world, shortly afterward abdicating his position.25 As a
result Pippin became effective ruler in both Neustria
and Austrasia. It may have been no accident that from this
point on Boniface lost his power and slipped into the back-
ground in a scene reminding one of the 'dropping of the
pilot'.

One might say that this may have been no accident
because it was probably desired by both POpe Zecharius and
Prince Pippin.

 

25Annales Mettenses, a. 747, pp. 329-330.

67

During the period in 741-743 when Karlomann and
Pippin were engaged in taking control of their inheritance,
some of the conquered provinces - Bavaria, Swabie, and
Aquitane - chose to revolt and try to establish unfettered
native rule once more.26 Odilo, Duke of Bavaria, had been
especially desirous of securing his independence and had
been waiting for an opportunity for some time. In fact,
his desire to reform the church in his dukedom and organize
it along Roman lines had been prompted in part at least by
his desire to become independent of Frankish control.
Odilo was successful in getting POpe Zecharius, who hoped
for aid against the Lombards, on his side and persuaded him
to send a special legate to Bavaria in 742 - without con-
sultation of Boniface and after Boniface had already com-
pleted the reorganization of Bavaria.27 Odilo's rebellion
was a miserable failure and the legate was captured in 743
by the Franks. The fact of papal complicity in an act of
rebellion was almost enough to wreck the structure which

had been erected by Boniface in central Germany.28

 

26Ibid., a. 743, p. 328.

27
Hauck, I, 495-496.
28
Caspar, II, 711. There is an interesting account
of the confrontation between Pippin and Sergius, the legate.
Sergius, in league, apparently, with Bishop Gauzebald Of
Ratisbon, had attempted to stop the war between the Franks
and Bavarians in the popeis name. Such a move was detri-
mental to the Franks since it would prevent them bringing
Bavaria back under their dominion. When caught Sergius
claimed that he acted without papal approval which Pippin

68
First it would appear to any observer that Boniface no
longer enjoyed the confidence of the pOpe and that the
pOpe was anti-Frankish. Thus Boniface's authority would
be undermined and the Frankish princes would take the
strongest steps to destroy any vestige of ultramonatism in
their realm. Also the Franks would lose respect for Rome
when they realized that the pope was capable of acting

out of purely worldly interests.29

However, Boniface was
able to maintain a position above these wrenglings, and
was apparently able to save his own position and retrieve
the pOpe's prestige. It would seem that though the Franks
knew of the pOpe's complicity they chose to treat Sergius
as a traitor to Rome.30 Apparently Frankish policy

demanded avoidance of a breach also.

 

accepted, though one suspects that Pippin was not fooled.
Pippin noted, one may imagine, sarcastically, that there
was already a papal legate in Germany. "Cui Pippinus
princeps sedato pectore dixit: '0 domine Sergi, modo
cognovimus, quia non proberis esse sanctus Petrus
apostolus, nec legationem illius ex veritate geris.
Dixisti enim nobis hesterna die, quod domnus apostolicus
ex auctorita‘te sancti Petri et sue nostram iustitiam de
Baioariis contradixisset. Et nos diximus tibi, quod nec
sanctus Petrus nec domnus apostolicus te istam legationem
dicere. Idcirco autem scias, quia si sanctus Petrus
cognovisset, quod nostra iustitia non fuisset, hodie in
isto bello nobis adiutorium non praestitisset. Nunc vero
certus esto, per intercessionem beati Petri apostolorum
principis et per iudicium Dei, quod subire non distulimus,
Baioariam Baioariosque ad Frencorum imperium pertinere.'"
(Annales Mettenses, a. 743, p. 328).

29Hauck, I, 496.

3OIbid.

69

Zecharius had, in his haste to act, nearly destroyed
the church north of the Alps. Zecharius was, apparently,
unable to sit back and allow events north of the Alps to
be influenced by Boniface alone. He seems to have had a
flair for politics and wanted to take matters in hand for
himself. But he was clearly not a statesman of the calibre
of either of his two predecessors who had realized that
Boniface knew more about affairs in the north than they
and who respected both his knowledge and his ability.

Boniface was, of course, more than slightly per-
turbed by the pope's actions and he let that be known to
the pope. Since Zecharius had learned the hard way that he
needed this old and respected hand in the north, at least
temporarily, he bowed to the force of circumstances and
Boniface was able to come away from the affair with wider

31

powers as papal legate. This was, however, only the more
obvious reason for ill-feeling between the two men, but it
was compounded by other incidents. When Zecharius ascended
the papal throne Boniface, in his first letter to him, com-
plained that rumors had reached his flock that certain
practices, pagan in nature and forbidden to Christians,
were in common practice at Rome, even at the papal court

2
itself.3 The unsophisticated minds of the newly converted

 

31
Haller, I, 3990
32
St. Boniface, Ep. XL, a. 742, (50 in Tangl's
edition), pp. 81-82.

70
would not appreciate the subtle distinctions of theology
implied but would want to know why they could not do what
the pope did. In the same letter Boniface suggested that
certain dispensations had been given by the pOpe contrary
to canon law.33 Again on the matter of the pallia for the
new Neustrian archbishOps, Boniface had suggested that the
pOpe was guilty of simony.3u On another occasion the pOpe
had questioned Boniface's judgment in the matter of select-
35

ing new bishOprics in Germany. Thus there was a certain
lack of confidence and a bitter feeling between the two
men.

Pippin, on the other hand, did not want any man as
his master, including Boniface, and wished, no doubt, to

deal with Home directly.36

Therefore one can be too for-
ward in speaking of Boniface's influence over Pippin.
Boniface himself knew only too well that Pippin had means
of communication with Rome that short-circuited his own.37
Thus we say that it was no accident that when

Karlomann abdicated Boniface slipped out Of prominence in

 

33Ibid.

Belth-g Ep. XLVI, a. 744 (58 in Tangl's edition),
pp. 97-980

35Ibid., Ep. XLI, a. 743, (51 in Tangl's edition),

p. 83.
6
Caspar, II, 722.
37wallace-Hadrill, The Long Haired Kipgs, p. 243.

71
Francia; both Pippin and Zecharius would profit from such
a development.

Boniface returned, no doubt relieved, to his
missionary activities. Operating as archbishop of Mainz
he carried on in central Germany until, in the last years
of his life, he conceived a desire to work in Frisia once
more. There in 754 he met his end as he had desired - as

a martyr for Christ at the hands of Frisian barbarians.38

 

38Annales Mettenses, a. 754, p. 332.

CONCLUSION

"Nur mit Ehrfurcht kann man den Namen des 'Apostles
der Deutschen nennen. . . ."

The Roman bishopric had always been marked by a
special quality. It was the see of St. Peter and one of
several apostolic churches in major cities of the Old
empire. But the old empire had passed away in the West
and was undergoing a remarkable transformation in the East.
Ironically enough, it was in the West, where the Peg
Romana had given way to the rule of unwashed barbarians,
that the spirit of Romanitas was preserved - not in its
purest form, but preserved nonetheless. In the East
Romanitas died a slow death and was replaced by a hybrid
Greco-Oriental state and culture. The difference was
theological as well as cultural and slowly the East and
West were alienated, the one from the other. The papacy
was the Patriarchate of the West but it failed to respond
to the changing conditions despite the influence of Gregory
the Great. Even after the Arab invasions the Roman church's

consciousness of itself as an imperial state church

 

1
Alexander Cartellieri, Weltgeschichte els

Machtgeschichte: 382-211, Die Zeit der Reichsgpfindungen
Berlin, 1927 , p. l .

72

 

73

remained unshaken - the face of the papacy remained turned
eastward.2 But the light in the east began to grow dim
and the power of the East over Italy's destiny began to
wane, and as it did the papacy began to run the risk of be-
coming an isolated imperial relic, standing outside of the
new Germanic state system of the north, yet not sharing in
the real life of the empire.3 The menaces against the
church grew: a heretic emperor ruling in the East and the
expanding state of the Lombards in Italy threatening to
engulf even the Roman pontiffs. In the early part of the
eighth century two popes held office, Gregory II and
Gregory III, who appreciated the danger and who realized
they had a potential source of papal strength to the north,
and who also realized that they must cease to exist on the
peripheries of both worlds and become the center of the
new. But there was no means of accomplishing such an end
at hand and not enough knowledge of the new and barbaric
world which had to be conquered. The means came to them
fortuitously - not from heaven, but from a newly civilized
land far to the foggy north - England gave its first great

contribution to EurOpean civilization - wynfrith-Bcniface.

 

2Schieffer, pp. 38-46.
3Ibid., p. 47.

74

He it was who provided the means of connecting the old and
the new.4 His gaze was turned toward the north - towards
Gaul.5 With one foot in Rome and the other in the Teutonic
forests, he made it his life's work to convert the heathen
and purify a heathenish version of Christianity, thus taking
the first step toward a Western renewal of the church.

He did more than any other man to carry Christianity and
civilization to the Germans and lead them to kneel before
the throne of St. Peter. To make all this possible he had
also to bring the Franks into the fold of redeemed sheep
through the reformation of their church; the Franks had to
become a pe0ple whose rulers would be fit to be the caesars
of the West. Through Boniface the reverence for Rome and
the cognizance that order and discipline were a necessary
part of ecclesiastical life took root in the Frankish and

7

German churches. Though real reform took a long time,
longer than one man's life, it did come, and the period of
the reforming synods of Boniface, from 742-747, was the

most important period of Frankish church history from the

 

“Ibid.

51b1d., p. 144.
6Ibid., p. 141.

7Godfrey, p. 250.

75

conversion of Clovis to the Cluniac reforms.

In 749 Burchard, Bishop of Wfirzburg, and Fulrad,
Abbot of St. Denis and Pippin's Chaplain, were sent to ask
of the pOpe the now famous question as to who should hold
power in Francia and got the answer they were sent to get.
Many have tried to see in this exchange, which resulted
in the deposition of Childerich III, the last Merovingian
king, and the elevation of Pippin as sole king in 750,9
the guiding hand of Boniface. But though it is useless to
maintain his direct intervention, one must be convinced
that it was a logical result of the work carried out by
him in a constant attitude of ultramonatism.lo This was
capped in 752 when Boniface, in his role as papal legate,
annointed Pippin as King, marking the assumption of church
control over the elevation of kings in Gaul.ll

Meanwhile events proceeded apace which were to give
greater significance to Pippin's hallowing and the more
than thirty years of Boniface's work that preceeded it.

The Lombards and the Byzantines were dragging the pOpe along

 

8Einhardi Annales, a. 749, MGR, SS, Tomus I,

edidit G. H. Pertz (Hannover, 1826), p. 137.

9
Ibid., a. 750, p. 139.

10
Higgins, p. 209.

l¥lp;g., Cf. Enhardi Fuldensis Annales, a. 752,

p. 346.

76
a path which could only lead to an alliance between pOpe

and Frankish king.12

Liutprand had died in 744 and five
years later Aistulf succeeded Ratchis as King of the
Lombards and soon seized Ravenna. By July 751 he had dis-
placed the Exarchate entirely and ruled in its stead,
controlling north Italy. Pope Stephen, who had recently
succeeded Zecharius, was able to make peace with him before
he attacked Rome, but the peace was shortly violated by
Aistulf. Aistulf seemed, like Liutprand before him, to
wish to hold a Lombard protectorate over Rome. By this
time Stephen had gotten to the point of writing the
Exarchate Off his slate if only Home could remain independent,
by whatever arrangement.13 In 754 though, for the sake of
form, Stephen sent one last request for aid to the East,
while at the same time asking the aid of the Franks.

Pippin came. In all he had to come to Italy
several times and Charlemagne had to destroy the Lombard
Kingdom before the papacy was safe - but eventually the
papacy was freed of both the imperial and Lombardic yokes
and the Lombards were forced to disgorge lands purportedly

l4
belonging to the papacy.

 

12Schieffer, p. 120.

1
3Heller, I, 414.

1“Annales Mettenses, a. 751-756, pp. 331-333.

Enhardi Fuldensis Annales, a. 773-776, 781, pp. 348-349-

77

Johannes Heller says that Pippin came out of purely
religious motives: "St. Peter and always again St. Peter.
. . . Only at St. Peter's will had Pippin taken up the
sword.“15 The King was ". . . advised and influenced by
the greatest spirits of the new reform. . . .“16 It was
purely due to Boniface's influence that Pippin went south.
Boniface's lifetime of work in the forests of Germany, and,
even more significantly, in the court of the Franks, was,
according to Heller, the ultimate factor determining

Pippin's policy in Italy.17

Though perhaps Heller'sthesis
expresses the idea of Pippin's piety in somewhat too

strong terms, it should not be discounted entirely.
Religious motives played a part, undoubtedly. Gratitude may
also have played a part, and ambition another part. The
role of Boniface then? He did not promote it, but he made
it possible. In the first place, he gave the papacy the

needed incentive to cut loose from the East and look north -

the pOpe's giving of the title Patricius Romanorum to

 

15Johannes Heller, "Die Karolinger und das Papsttum",
Historische Zeitschrift, CVIII, (1912), 57.

16Ibid., p. 62.

7of. Martin Lintzel, "Der Codex Carolinus und die
Motive von Pippin's Italienpolitik", Historische Zeitschrift,
CLXI, (1940), 33-41. Lintzel maintains that Heller's thesis
is not justifiable since no information on Pippin's
character is available and there were other motives. But
Lintzel must not be taken too seriously - he writes under
the Nazi regime and is anxious to develOp the concept of the
stern Teutonic warrior-hero in regard to Pippin.

78
Pippin18 indicated papal renunciation of the empire.

Under this title one had been accustomed to refer to the
imperial Exarch at Ravenna, but from 754 on in his place
stood the Frankish king - the Pax Ggrmanica settled over
Italy.19 In the second place, Boniface, by his labor,
made a place for the pOpe in Frankish thought and politics
and prepared the basis of papal primacy in the north.
Boniface came at the right time, when the popes

were ready to use him; but he also brought his own unique
attributes to the job; namely, his ultramonatism, his
monastic view and his spiritual and bodily strength. The
popes were ready, but a lesser man would not have succeeded
as did Boniface. "Boniface, the clearer of forests, the
builder, the chider of kings and popes, the reformer, the
ecclesiastical politician, the martyr is the symbol of the

'20 Boniface the monk was the

youthful, struggling West.‘
image of a new church: "Just as from the Apostolic Church
emerged the Roman Church with its pronounced differences,

so from the Roman Church evolved the Teutonic-Roman Church,

 

18Annales Mettenses, a. 754, p. 332.
19

Heller, I, 425. Idem., H.Z., pp. 46-7.
20
Sullivan, G.H., p. 31.

79

which in its turn was strikingly unlike its prototype.
21
Cl

Thus he was one of the chief creators of a new
EurOpe. He brought the pontificial Roman Church to the
north and provided the basis Of Christian medieval Europe,
carrying the ideas of Gregory the Great to fulfillment
and bringing into existence what even Gregory did not
dream of. Without him neither the empire of Charlemagne

nor the papacy of Hildebrand would have been possible.

 

21Alexander Clarence Flick, The Rise of the Medi-
evil Church and its Influepce on the Civilizatiog;gf
Western Europe from the First to the Thirteenth Century
(New York, 1909), p. 233.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

The single most valuable source to the life and
work of Saint Boniface is the collected corre8pondence of
the saint himself. The letters are available in many
editions. Of those most commonly available in Latin,
Ernst Dummler and Michael Tangl's, both in the Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, are the best. Tangl's edition is the
most recent of these two and is usually considered to be
'standard'. The edition in English used in this thesis is
that of Ephraim Emerton published in the Columbia University
Records of Civilization Spprces and Studies Series (New
York: 1940), and is a reasonably good edition and the only
complete edition in English available to this writer.
Professor Emerton has rearranged the sequence Of the
letters in order to give a more accurate sequence Chrono-
logically, and has, therefore, abandoned the order Of the
editions of both demler and Tangl.

Along with the corrOSpondence of Saint Boniface
one must see The Life Of Saint Bonifapg by the monk
Willibald published by C. H. Talbot in a volume entitled

The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (New York: 1954),
being a collection of the lives of SS. Willibrord-Clemens,

80

81

Wynfrith-Boniface, Stenn, Leoba, and Lebuin, together with
the Hodoepgricon of Saint Willibrord. This life of Boniface
is the standard one written soon after his death under
the auSpices of men who were well acquainted with him
and is free of many of the common failings ascribed to
medieval hagiography in general.

The AnnalesMettensesI edited by G. H. Pertz in the

Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum, I, (Hanover:

1826), was the most important of the sources used by this
writer in relation to the general history of the Frankish

Kingdom Of this period, as well as for some Specific
information bearing on Saint Boniface. The Annales

Enhardi Fuldensig, the Annales Eiphardi and the Chronicon
Moissiacenses were also useful sources as supplements to
the Appgges Mettenseg. These materials are available in
the same volume edited by Pertz of the M_._§_._H_. It is ad-
visable to be cautious in the use of all of this annalistic
material, however, since they are, for the most part,
compilations of a later date.

In addition to this annalistic material directly
dealing with Carolingian affairs, The History of tpepFrggkg
by Gregory, BiShOp of Tours, and the Fourth Book
'Fredegarius' chronicle and its continuation proved useful
in dealing with the.Merovingian antecedents of the

Carolingians. Gregory is available in a two volume translation

by O. M. Dalton (Oxford: 1927) and Fredegarius can be used

82
in a new translation by J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (London:
1960).

While dealing with the subject of Anglo-Saxon
England and the English church this writer found himself
having recourse to the usual sources available, namely the
Apglo-Saxon Chroniglg and the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiaspical
Histogy of the English Natigg (London: 1910). The Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle is available in an excellent translation
by Dorothy Whitelock, David Douglass and Susie Tucker
(New Brunswick, N.J.: 1961). One of the Special features
Of this edition is that it carries the varient readings of
the different MSS. side by side, which facilitates compari-
son by the reader.

The extant records of the Frankish synods are
available in two good editions. The Capitularia Regum
Francorum, edited by Alfred Boretius in Sectio II of the
Leggp of the Monuments Germaniae Histogigg (Hannover:

1888) in which the royal decrees concerning the acts of

the synods are set forth together with the Qgpgili§_§eyi
Karolini, edited by Albert Werminghoff in Sectio III of

the peggp of M,§,§, (Hannover: 1896), comprise the total
known records of these synods. The materials in Werminghoff
are a duplication of those in Boretius but contain, in
addition, materials relating to councils not held in France

but relevant to the subject.

83

There is a large amount of secondary material avail-
able dealing with Saint Boniface, either Specifically Or as
a part of a larger story. The task Of the researcher is to
separate the chaff from the good. There is a necessity for
a new and scholarly English treatment of the life and work
of Saint Boniface, however, until the need is filled one
will have to rely heavily on the magnificent Winfrid-
Bonifatius und d;e_¢hrist1icpe Gundleggng Eurppas Of Theodor
Schieffer (Freiburg: 1954), which is a scholarly and well
researched work. Most of the material one finds dealing
with the Saint is of either a superficial nature or written
from too restricted a viewpoint. There it, for example, a
lot of work devoted to pointing out that Boniface was a
Benedictine monk and most of which is insufficient for
scholarly needs, and one is also confronted by the problem
that even scholarly writers (including Schieffer) have a
tendency to view the saint from a particularly nationalistic
point of view (either as Apostle of Germany or as English
monk).

The problem of finding good secondary materials in
English is also Obvious in relation to general treatments
of the ecclesiastical events of the period. The three most
important English sources used in this thesis were K. S.
Latourette's A History of the Expansion of Christiapipy (New
York: 1938), S. J. Crawford's Aggie-Sagon Inflgggce,pp

Western Christendom, 600-800 (Oxford: 1933), and England

84
and the Continent in the Eighth Centugy (Oxford: 1946), the
product of a German historian in flight from National
Socialism, Wilhelm Levison. There are also available
translations of two important works: Henri Daniel-ROpS'
The Church in the Dark Ages (Garden City, N.J.: 1962) and
Gustav Schndrer's Church and Cuipure in the MidgiepAges
(Paterson, N.J.: 1956). All of the books mentioned above
are sOholarly works and necessary to the research of this
thesis, particularly Professor Levison's work. But still
one must look to the following German works as indiSpensable
to the task. Of the first rank are Johannes Haller's
EggpPapsttum,_Idee ppd Wirklichkeit in a reedition (Basel:

1951) and Albert Hauck's Kirchengeschighte DeutschlandsI

also in a re-edition (Berlin: 1954). Professor'Haller's

work is most important to this thesis as it is most sympathetic
with the conclusions of the present writer. Both works are
well-researched, scholarly efforts which stand, in this
writer's view, at the head of the field. Hans von Schubert's
Geschichte der Christlichen Kirche im Frfihmittelalter
(Tubingen: 1921) and EriCh Casper's Geschichte das Papsttums
ypp_den Aanngen bis zur Hdhe der We;therrsdhaft (Tfibingen:
1933) complete this list of general works found by this writer
to be useful in giving a fuller picture of the events at

issue here.

85

Turning now to works of a more Specialized nature,
this writer recommends the following books for treatments
of the Frankish world. The problems of the Merovingian Age
are well treated by Sir Samuel Dill in Roman Society in
Gaul in the Merovingian Age (London: 1926), which, along with
The Long-Haired.KingS (London: 1962) of J. M. Wallace-
Hadrill, gives a reasonably satisfactory view of pre-
Carolingian Gaul while the introductory section of Heinrich
Fichtenau's The Carolingian Empire (N.Y.: 1964 and Oxford;
1957) contains a brief treatment of the early Arnulfings.
The affairs of England and the Anglo-Saxon church are ably
dealt with in John Godfreye The Church in Anglo-Saxon
Eggland (Cambridge: 1962), Sir Frank M. Stenton's Anglo-
Saxon England (Oxford: 1947) and P. H. Blair's An Introduc-
tion to Anglo-Sggon England (Cambridge: 1960), while A. A.
Vasiliev's Histogy of the gyzantgge Empire (Madison: 1961)
and George Ostrogorsky's Hggto£y_of the Bygggtine State
(Oxford: 1956) are the best treatments available in any
language of the history of Byzantium. For a history of
medieval latinity and Saint Boniface's place in the tradi-
tionof medieval Latin writings, see Max Manitius,
Geschichte der lateipyschen Literature des Mittelgigggg
(Mfinchen: 1954).

While all Of the relevant monographic material was
by no means available to this writer, much of the most

important of it was. Here again one is faced with the

86
necessity of discarding much of the material written on
Saint Boniface which is, for one reason or another, super-
ficial. Volume XVII Of the Medieval Studies (1955),
published by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies
in the University of Toronto, contains an article by
Professor Richard E. Sullivan entitled “The Papacy and
Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages" to which this
writer is heavily indebted. Also relevant are John Seville
Higgins' “The Ultramonatism of Saint Boniface,“ Church
Histogy, II (1938) and Professor Sullivan's “Early Medieval
Missionary Activity: A Comparative Study of Eastern and
Western Methods,“ Church Histogy XXIII, (1954), “The
Caroligian Missionary and the Pagan,“ Speculum,XXVIII
(1953), and “Carolingian Missionary Theories,“ The Catholic

Historical Review, XLII (1956).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Primary Sources:

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicig, Tr. by Dorothy Whitelock,
David C. Douglas and Susie I. Tucker. New Brunswick, N.J.:
1961.

The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Gerpapy, Tr. and
edited by C. H. Talbot, New York: 1954. Being a collection
of the lives of SS. Willibrord, Boniface, Sturm, Leoba and
Lebuin with the selected correSpondence of St. Boniface and
the Hodoepgricon of St. Willibald.

Annales Einhardi, ed. by G. H. Pertz, Mgnumenta
Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum, Tomus I. Hannover: 1826.

Annales Einhardi Fuldensis, ed. by G. H. Pertz,
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptorum, Tomus I.
Hannover: 1826.

Annales Mettenses, ed. by G. H. Pertz, Monumenta
ggrmaniae HistoricaI Scriptorum, Tomus I. Hannover: I826.

Bede. The Ecclesiastical Histogy Of the English
Nation, Tr. by J. Stevens, revised by L. C. Jane. {London:

1910.

 

Capitularia Regum Frencorum, ed. by Alfredus
Boretius, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Legum: Sectio II,
Tomus I. Hannover: 1888.

Chronicon Moissiacenses, ed. by G. H. Pertz,
Monumenta Germaniae ngtogica, Scriptorum, Tomus I.
Hannover: 1826.

Concilia Aevi Karolini, ed. by Albertus Werminghoff,
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Legum: Sectio III, Tomas II,
Pens I. Hannover: 1896.

Eddius Stephanus. The Life of BishOp Wilfrid, Tr.
by B. Colgrave. Cambridge, 1927.

Fredegarius. Chornicorum Liper Quartus_gmm
Continuationibus, Tr. and edited by J. M. Wallace Hadrill.

London: 1960.
87

88

Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks, Tr.
by 0. M. Dalton, 2 vols. Oxford: 1927.

II. Secondary Works:

Blair, Peter Hunter. An Introduction to Ang_g-
Saxon Epglan , Cambridge: 1960.

Cartellieri, Alexander. Weltgeschichte als
Machtgeschichte: 382_911, Die Zeit der heiohsgrfindung_n.
Berlin: 1927.

Casper, Erich. Geschichte des Papsttums vonden
Anffingen bis zur Hdhe her Weltherrschaft, TfiBingen, 1933.

Crawford, 8. J. Apglo-Saxon Influences on Western
Christendon 600-800. Oxford, 1933.

Daniel-Hops, Henri. The Church in the Dark A es,
Tr. by A. Butler, 2 vols. Garden City, N.J.: 1962.

Dawson, Christopher. The Making of EurOpe.
C1eveland: 1956.

 

Dill, Sir Samuel. Roman Society in Gaul in the
Merovingian Age. London: 1926.

Dopsch, Alfons. The Economic and Social Foundations
of Eurppean Civilization, Tr. by M. G. Beard, and N.
Marshall, London: 1937.

Duchesne, L. The Beginnings of the Tempprel
Sovereignty of the Popes, Tr. by A. H. Matthew, London:
1908.

Fichtenau, Heinrich. The Carolingian Empire,
Tr. by P. Munz. New York: 1964.

Flick, Alexander Clarence. The Rise of the Medieval
Church and its Influence on the Civilization of Western
Europe from the first to the thirteenth Century. New York:
1909.

Godfrey, John. The Church in Anglo-Saxon England.
Cambridge: 1962.

Heller, Johannes. Des Papsttum, Idee und Wirklichkeit,
5 Bde., verbesserte und erggnzte Ausgabe. Basel: 1951.

89

Hauck, Albert. Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands,
5 Bde. Berlin: 1954.

Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of the
Expansion of Christianity, 7 vols. New York: 1938.

Levison, Wilhélm. England and the Continent in the
Eighth Centugy. Oxford: l9h6.

Lot, Ferdinand. The End of the Ancient World and
the Beginning of the Middle Ages, Tr. by P. & M. Leon.
New York: 1961.

Manitius, Max. Geschichte der lateinischen
Literatur des Mittelalters, Zte Bde. (Handbuch der
Altertums Wissenschaft, 9te Abteilung, 2ter Teil, hsgbn.
von waiter Otto). Mfifichen: 1959.

 

Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine
State, Translated by Joan Hussey. Oxford: 1956.

Schieffer, Theodor. Winfrid-Bonifatius und die
christliche Grundlegung_Eur0pas. Frieburg: 1954.

Schnfirer, Gustav. Church and Culture in the
Middle Ages, 2 vols., Tr. by G. J. Undreiner. Paterson,
N. J.: 1956.

 

Schubert, Hans von. Geschichte der christlichen
Kirche im Erflhmittelalter. Tfibingen: 1921.

Stenton, Sir Frank. Anglo-Saxon England. 2nd
edition. Oxford: l9h7.

 

Ullman, Walter. The Growth of Papal Government in
the Middle Ages, 2nd edition. London: 1962.

Vasiliev, A. A. History of the Byzantine Empire,
2nd English edition. Madison: 1961.

Wallace Hadrill, J. M. The Barbarian West, #00-
1000. New York: 1962.

. The Long-Haired Kings. London: 1962.

III. Articles:

Ganshof, F. L. ”Benefice and vassalage in the Age
of Charlemagne“, Cambridge Historical Journal, VI, (1929),
No.2, 147-176.

9O

Haller, Johannes. "Die Karolinger und das Papsttum",
Historische Zeitschrift, CVIII, (1912), 38-76.

Higgins, John Seville. "The Ultramonatism of Saint
Boniface“, Church History, II (1933), 197-210.

Lintzel, Martin. ”Der Codex Carolinus und die
Motive von Pippins Italienpolitik",'Historische
.zeitschrift, CLXI, (1940), 33—hl.

 

Ostrogorsky, George. “The Byzantine Empire in the
World of the Seventh Century“,.§pmbarton Oaks Papers, No. 13,
(1959). 1-21.

Sullivan, Richard E. "Carolingian Missionary
Theories", The Catholic Historical Review, XLII, (1956),
273-295.

. “Early Medieval Missionary Activity: A
Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Methods“, Church

. "The Carolingian Missionary and the
Pagan", Speculum, XXVIII, (1953), 705-740.

. “The Papacy and Missionary Activity in
$23 Ezrly Middle Ages", Medieval Studies, XVII, (1955),
10 .

Whitney, J. P. “Conversion of the Teutons”,
MW. Vol. II. Ch. XVI (b). 515-542.
Cambridge: 1913.

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