On this, The Feast of St. Boniface
Martyred for his tenacity in faith, St. Boniface entered the Kingdom of God 1,256 years ago today. For the most part, despite his immense significance to the foundations of European Christendom itself, St. Boniface has become, at best, a secondary saint, remembered only in what remains of German immigrant communities in the United States. Or, perhaps, with the pleasant and continuing growth of microbreweries and homebrewing, some still recognize him as the patron saint of brewing.
But, his deep and far-reaching influence might be beyond compare, at least, for mere mortals.
On this, the Feast of St. Boniface, we would do well to remember him, his faith, and his life.
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Despite the new insecurities caused by the heathen Scandinavians [the Vikings], the monks of Ireland and England had already secured much of the continent in favor of Christendom. Indeed, the synthesis of classical and Christian cultures in England, especially, had witnessed the rise of one of the most important figures in the history of Christendom, St. Boniface, who evangelized the pagan tribes of what is now northern Germany. Dawson believed that understanding Boniface was the key to understanding the origins of Europe. When encountering a Hessen tribe worshipping an oak tree dedicated to the Norse god Thor, St. Boniface promptly grabbed an axe and cut down the tree. According to legend, the tree exploded into four parts at the first touch of the axe’s blade. And, much to the surprise of the chagrined Hessians, Thor remained aloof and the intruder went unpunished. “But when he had made a superficial cut, suddenly the oak’s vast bulk, shaken by a mighty blast of wind from above, crashed to the ground shivering its topmost branches into fragments in its fall,” A posthumous account recorded. “As if by the express will of God (for the brethren present had done nothing to cause it) the oak burst asunder into four parts, each part having a trunk of equal length.” Awed, the Barbarians were ready to listen. Legend tells that in the spot of the felled oak, an evergreen instantly sprang forth from the ground, and Boniface’s followers placed candles on it so that Boniface could preach the Gospel late into the night, thus creating the tradition of the Christmas tree.
Closely studying the exploits of the intrepid saint, Dawson proclaimed St. Boniface “a man who had a deeper influence on the history of Europe than any Englishman who has ever lived.” In his Medieval Essays, Dawson took this even further. His many accomplishments almost gives Boniface “the right to be called the founder of medieval Christendom.” Perhaps providentially, every significant moment in Boniface’s life corresponded with a further Islamic incursion into Christian Europe. “During the generation before the birth of St. Boniface the whole of the Christian East had been conquered” and Byzantium almost fell. When a “monk at Nursling in 711-713[,] Spain was being conquered by the Saracens, and while he was beginning his mission to Germany the Saracens were beginning their invasions of France.” Boniface’s genius came from his realization that Christian Europe would need a Christianianized German people to serve as a barrier to the growing Islamic threat in the South. He also needed the protection of the powerful Martel family in the Frankish regions. Each, then, would allow the classical documents, classical tradition, and Christian scriptures to remain protected in the relative safety of the British Isles. Boniface was a diplomat as well as a spiritual figure, who attempted to infuse Christianity into barbarian culture.
The work of St. Boniface did more than any other fact to lay the foundations of medieval Christendom. His mission to Germany was not an isolated spiritual adventure like the achievements of his Celtic predecessors; it was part of a far-sighted programme of construction and reform planned with all the method and statesmanship of the Roman tradition. It involved a triple alliance between the Anglo-Saxon missionaries, the Papacy, and the family of Charles Martel, the de facto rulers of the Frankish kingdom, out of which the Carolingian Empire and the Carolingian culture ultimately emerged.
Like all good Christians, Dawson argued, Boniface surrendered his own will and became “a servant rather than a master of his age. . . accepting every charge and never attempting to impress his personality on the course of history.” Though eventually martyred for his selfless and Grace-filled efforts, St. Boniface succeeded in creating what we would now recognize as the beginnings of Europe, a synthesis of the classical, Christian, and Germanic. His contributions in the formation of Christian Europe are equaled only by St. Gregory the Great and St. Benedict. Fulda, established by Boniface, remained a center of European evangelization long after Boniface’s martyrdom. St. Boniface had also carried with him the Benedictine rule into central Europe. As the Archbishop of Canterbury eulogized in the year of Boniface’s death, 754, “We recall the wondrous—nay, the ineffable—grace of God and render thanks that the English people were found worthy, foreigners as they are, to send this gifted student of heavenly learning, this noble soldier of Christ, with many pupils well taught and trained, to far-off spiritual conflicts and for the salvation of many souls through the grace of Almighty God.”
When he discussed the contributions of the monasteries and the heroic monks, Dawson resembled, at least in tone and enthusiasm, the Archbishop of Canterbury of the eighth century. “As Christians we cherish—or ought to cherish—a genuine pietas towards the institutions and the men who laid the foundations of Christianity in the West.” Unlike the “deceived men” of the so-called eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the nineteenth-century liberalism, Dawson stated in his Harvard lectures, the twentieth-century Christian can see through haze and identify a thriving and dynamic culture, far from the darkness decried by its opponents. The early middle ages, then, “which have not unjustly been called dark, are most interesting of all, since they contain the germ of a thousand years of cultural development.” The same time period witnessed the mass conversions of Europeans—western and eastern—to the faith. Few eras could rival such missionary activity.
Could we ask for a better exemplar as we think about the trajectory of Europe--economically, culturally, demographically, and politically--or as we continue to ponder the role of science and faith in this country, the purpose of being an American or a citizen of the West? Boniface, reflecting the love of the Savior, helps point the way.
St. Boniface, pray for us.
[Some of the above, taken from Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson, pp. 162-167]
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