Some of these features appear in the work of the Saxon Willibrord among
the Frisians, but are more largely illustrated in the career of St.
Boniface-Winfried. Willibrord moved under the authority of Rome; the
varying fortunes of his labours were connected with the enterprises of
Pippin of Heristal, the father of Charles Martel. They advanced with the
power of that Frankish potentate. But after his death, during the strife
between Neustria and Austrasia, the heathen Frisian king Radbod drove back
Christianity as he enlarged his dominion at the expense of the divided
Franks. Later, Charles Martel conquered him, and the Frankish power
reached (718) to the Zuyder Zee. Under its protection Willibrord at last
founded the bishopric of Utrecht (734). He succeeded in educating a native
clergy; and his labours had lasting result among the Frisians who were
subject to the Franks, but not among the free Frisians and the Danes.
Evidently there was no sharp geographical boundary between Christianity
and heathendom. Throughout broad territories, Christian and heathen
practices mingled. This was true of the Frisian land. It was true in
greater range and complexity of the still wider fields of Boniface’s
career. This able man surrendered his high station in his native Wessex in
order to serve Christ more perfectly as a missionary monk among the
heathen. He went first to Frisia and worked with Willibrord, yet refused
to be his bishop-coadjutor and successor, because planning to carry
Christianity into Germany.
Strikingly his life exemplifies Anglo-Saxon faculties working under the
directing power of Rome among heathen and partly Christian peoples. On his
first visit to Rome he became imbued with the principles, and learned the
ritual, of the Roman Church. He returned to enter into relations with
Charles Martell, and to labour in Hesse and Thuringia, and again with
Willibrord in Frisia. Not long afterwards, at his own solicitation,
Gregory II. called him back to Rome (722), where he fed his passion for
punctilious conformity by binding himself formally to obey the Pope,
follow the practices of the Roman Church, and have no fellowship with
bishops whose ways conflicted with them. Gregory made him bishop over
Thuringia and Hesse, and sent him back there to reform Christian and
heathen communities. Thus Gregory created a bishop within the bounds of
the Frankish kingdom--an unprecedented act. Nevertheless, Charles, to whom
Boniface came with a letter from Gregory, received him favourably and
furnished him with a safe conduct, only exacting a recognition of his own
authority.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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