So at length was the great change accomplished towards which Frankish history had been tending for more than a century. What happened was undoubtedly a revolution, though of a peaceful kind. The papal sanction, the archiepiscopal unction might impress the minds of the multitude; this new Christian consecration might partly compensate for the missing glamour of a descent from gods and heroes which had surrounded the dynasty of the Merovings; but in strict right, of course, the Bishop of Rome had no title to command the change, no power to absolve the Salian and Ripuarian Franks from their plighted faith to the descendants of Clovis. It was well thought of to put the scene of the consecration of the new dynasty at Soissons, that place so memorable in the history of the older race. It was also important, if the pope himself could not be induced to cross the Alps to perform the ceremony of anointing, to have it performed by Boniface the Apostle of the Germans, and the most conspicuous ecclesiastical figure in Europe. We may pause for a moment to notice the remarkable share taken by this man and others of our fellow countrymen in bringing about the conversion of large portions of the German nation to Christianity, and indirectly in founding the Teutonic “Holy Roman Empire” of the Middle Ages. Scarcely had the Anglo-Saxon peoples been won over to the Christian Church, when they began with missionary zeal to preach the faith among their still heathen kinsmen on the Continent. The mission of St. Augustine[23] to Britain took place in the year 596. In 634 was born the Northumbrian Wilfrid, and in 658 his countryman Willibrord, both of whom labored with zeal and success for the conversion of the heathens of Friesland. A generation later the young Devonian Winifried, born at Crediton, appeared on the banks of the Lower Rhine, to profit by the experience of the aged Willibrord and to catch his falling mantle. Three times he visited Rome to confer with those great popes, the second and the third Gregory, and to receive their orders for the conversion of fresh tribes in Germany, or for the consolidation of spiritual conquests already achieved. On one of these visits, probably, he received that name of Boniface by which he is best known in history, together with a sort of roving commission as archbishop, and authority to act as legate in the churches of Germany. Armed with this power he set up bishoprics in Bavaria, revived the dying Christianity of Thuringia, and chastised heretics in Gaul. Wherever the armies of Charles Martel marched, in Friesland, in Saxony, in Hesse, Archbishop Boniface followed, smashing idols, felling sacred oaks, and baptizing half-unwilling converts. Towards the end of his life his roving commission was changed into the more stationary office of Archbishop of Mainz, and he sometimes retired for repose to the great monastery of Fulda, which he had founded in the Hessian land near the source of the Weser.