In order to understand the life and actions of St. Boniface, we first need to understand the context into which he was called to proclaim the Gospel. Boniface went on his first missionary journey to Germany in 719 at the request of Pope Gregory II. From his biography on www.americancatholic.org, we see that when St. Boniface arrived in Germany. he found that....
Paganism was a way of life. What Christianity he did find had either lapsed into paganism or was mixed with error. The clergy were mainly responsible for these latter conditions since they were in many instances uneducated, lax and questionably obedient to their bishops .... These are the conditions that Boniface was to report in 722 on his first return visit to Rome. The Holy Father instructed him to reform the German Church.So what were the paganism practices the Germanic people had lapsed into? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_paganism,
Across the Germanic world, there was some variation in the places where pagans worshipped, however, it was common for sites displaying prominent natural features to be used. Tacitus claimed that the 1st century tribes of Germany did not "confine the gods within walls... but that they worshipped outdoors in sacred woods and groves",[14] and similarly there is evidence from later continental Europe, Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia that the pagans worshipped out of doors at "trees, groves, wells, stones, fences and cairns".[15] In some later cases, temples would be built on such sites, the most notable being the Swedish Temple at Uppsala which, according to Adam of Bremen, writing in the 11th century, was built around a grove which was "so holy that each tree is itself regarded as sacred".So it is clear that pagan worship held created things, trees, nature, as sacred which is evident since the Germanic people of this region worshiped at Thor's Oak, a place of veneration of the Germanic deity Thor, (or Donar), the god of Thunder.
According to Tacitus, the Germanic tribes think of temples as unsuitable habitations for gods, and they do not represent them as idols in human shape. Instead of temples, they consecrate woods or groves to individual gods.
On his return from Rome, in 723, St. Boniface began his efforts to bring the Germanic people to Christ. To do so, he had to begin by uprooting paganism. In what might be unimaginable today:
On his return to Hesse, he decided to try to root out the pagan superstitions which seriously affected the stability of his converts. On a day publicly announced, and in the midst of an awe-struck crowd, Boniface and one or two of his followers attacked with axes Thor's sacred oak. These German tribes, along with many other primitive peoples, were tree-worshipers. Thor, god of thunder, was one of the principal Teutonic deities, and this ancient oak, which stood on the summit of Mt. Gudenberg, was sacred to him. After a few blows, the huge tree crashed to earth, splitting into four parts. The terrified tribesmen, who had expected a punishment to fall instantly on the perpetrators of such an outrage, now saw that their god was powerless to protect even his own sanctuary.St. Boniface had this sacred oak tree, the tree of pagan worship, felled not because he did not love or appreciate nature and God's Created things, but to dislodge the people from their pagan beliefs and practices so they could come to know and accept Christ. Tradition has it he used the wood from Thor's Oak to build a chapel. The felling of Thor's oak is considered the beginning of the Christianization of Germany.
The site of the original chapel built using the wood of Thor's Oak eventually became the site of the 12-14th century Gothic Cathedral of St. Peter, which stands today in Fritzlar, Germany to this today. A statue of St. Boniface holding his axe faces the CathedralSt Boniface was over 70 years old and was spending his final years doing missionary work among some of the early converts who had been drifting back into paganism. On one of these missionary trips, in 754, he was martyred along with the rest of his party by a band of armed pagans.
St. Boniface, pray for us, that we might never place the good and proper love of nature and created things, above our love of their Creator, our Heavenly Father and his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Photos: http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/boniface.htm (1), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bonifacius_by_Emil_Doepler.jpg (2), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fritzlar_dom_st_peter.jpg (3)
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