St Boniface
Feast Day: June 5th
Patronage: Brewers; Fulda; Germany; World Youth Day
St Boniface was the first archbishop of Mainz and the “Apostle of the Germans”. He was an English Benedictine monk who gave up being elected abbot to devote his life to the conversion of the Germanic tribes.
In 719 at the request of Pope Gregory II, he set out on his first mission to convert the pagans to Christianity. In the presense of a tense crowd, he attacked with an ax Donar’s sacred oak on Mount Gudenburg. The huge tree crashed, splitting into four parts. Destroying their superstitions, the people waited for the gods to strike Boniface dead.. Then realised their gods were nonexistent. He used planks from the tree to build a chapel.
He was killed in Frisia in 754, during his final mission, along with 52 others. His remains were returned to Fulda, where they rest in a sarcophagus which became a site of pilgrimage.
Originally posted 2014-06-03 02:40:52.