The Legacy of Wynfrid / Boniface: Shaping Christianity in Germany

Is my life counting for Jesus today?

• Am I telling others how He took my sins away and came into my heart?

• Jesus did this for Wynfrid, called him to be a missionary to the Germans, and made him a "fisher of men."

• He has called me to be a missionary blogger and teach the good news that He takes away sin.

As you read, ask, What is Jesus calling me to do for Him today? Someone needs you!

Wynfrid/Boniface,    675-754

Wynfrid felling Donar's Oak,

engraving by Bernhard Rode, 1781, Public Domain

I am writing this on June 5, the date Wynfrid was born in 675, about 80 years after the death of our last blog subject, Columba*(1521-1597). He was a contemporary of the Venerable Bede* (672-735) and Charles Martel* (686-741). These were exciting times:

• The English language was being developed

• Europe was part Christian and part heathen

• There was an ongoing military threat from the Muslims

• The bishop of Rome was being recognized as Pope.

  An asterisk* after a name means the person is in SPIRITUAL LIVES

Wynfrid was an Englishman educated in a monastery to be a teacher at the abbey school near Winchester, some 60 miles southwest of London.    There he read widely and wrote a Latin grammar and a treatise on poetry.  He loved the Bible and studied it constantly. 

When the abbot died in 716, Wynfrid refused to succeed him and went instead to be a missionary to Frisia.  The Frisians were also an Anglo-Saxon people, closely related to the Saxons of England.  They were fierce, pagan warriors who ruled an area slightly smaller than New Jersey in what are today the Netherlands and northwestern Germany.

Wynfrid went expectantly, for Willibrord (658-739) and others had been working for the Lord in Frisia for some twenty years. He preached for a year with Willibrord in the countryside, but saw little immediate result.  They were caught in the middle of a war between Charles Martel and Frisian King Radbod, and Wynfrid went back discouraged to Winchester.

The following year, he returned to the mission field, but first went to see the Bishop of Rome, Gregory II, who renamed Wynfrid “Boniface,” from the Latin bonifatius, meaning “good” and “fate.”  Wynfrid and the other missionaries had been working independently of Rome. Still, Rome made him a bishop and commissioned him to bring all the earlier churches planted by Celtic and British missionaries under Roman authority.  Boniface became an agent of Rome and never returned home to England again.

The great breakthrough in his missionary work came when he confronted the pagan Donar Oak, sacred to the thunder god Thor.  When the missionary took an axe to the tree, the superstitious people were astonished that the god did not strike him dead.  They were further astonished when a GREAT wind came and finished the work the man of God had begun. 

Boniface then built a chapel using the wood from the fallen tree.  The chapel soon sprouted a monastery, and Christian belief and culture took root.

Gregory then named Boniface the archbishop of Germany, who then baptized thousands of new converts and worked to bring all Christians into the Roman Catholic Church.  He was pretty successful in this endeavor and is widely recognized as a major figure in European history for bringing Germany into the Christian fold. 

Throughout his career, he had the support of Charles Martel and his successors, who steadfastly retained their independence from Rome.  Boniface recognized his debt to Charles and said that without him, he would not be able to keep his church functioning or prevent the people from returning to paganism.

Boniface still longed to convert the Frisians and returned there in 754, where robbers killed him.  His earliest biographer says he told his armed guard, "Cease fighting. Lay down your arms, for we are told in Scripture not to render evil for good but to overcome evil by good."  Vitae   An eyewitness reports that the saint, at the moment of death, held up a gospel as spiritual protection.

Historians have cast this GREAT man’s life in terms of his career as a churchman, which he clearly was.  More important was his love for lost souls that led him to go into danger to preach the Gospel.

Wynfrid himself knew that his life and work were all for Jesus and left us with this call:

Let us trust in Him who has placed this burden upon us. What we ourselves cannot bear let us bear with the help of Christ. For He is all-powerful, and He tells us: 'My yoke is easy, and my burden light.'  -Wynfrid/Boniface  

Far, far away, in heathen darkness dwelling,

Millions of souls forever may be lost;

Who, who will go, salvation’s story telling,

Looking to Jesus, counting not the cost?

“All pow’r is given unto me,

All pow’r is given unto me,

Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel,

And lo, I am with you alway.”

2

See o’er the world, wide open doors inviting:

Soldiers of Christ, arise and enter in!

Christians, awake! your forces all uniting,

Send forth the Gospel, break the chains of sin.

3

“Why will ye die?” the voice of God is calling,

“Why will ye die?” re-echo in His name:

Jesus hath died to save from death appalling,

Life and salvation therefore go proclaim.

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