02 — The Call to the Mission Field
The turn from scholar to apostle, in two decisive moves: the failed first attempt on Frisia in 716, when Wynfrith crossed into a field torn by the Frisian–Frankish war and found it closed to him; and the journey to Rome in 718–719, where Pope Gregory II gave him a new name, Boniface, and an explicit commission to preach to the heathen of Germany. The second move is the one that defined his life: he made his mission, deliberately, an extension of the authority of the see of Rome.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Apostle of the Germans; martyr)
These two files cover the period in which Wynfrith of Nursling became Boniface the papal missionary. The first attempt, on Frisia in 716, failed for reasons outside his control — the field was a war-zone — and taught him that mission without a stable political and ecclesiastical authorization was futile. His response was not to find a different patron but to go to the highest authority he knew: the bishop of Rome. The commission Gregory II gave him in 719, renewed and elevated over the following decades, is the structural fact of his whole career; everything he built in Germany he built as the pope’s authorized agent.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The First Frisian Attempt | The crossing of 716 into Frisia amid the war between Charles Martel and Duke Radbod; Radbod’s pagan reaction and the collapse of the mission field; Wynfrith’s return to Wessex and the lesson he drew from failure. |
| The Commission from Rome | The journey to Pope Gregory II in 718–719; the new name “Boniface”; the papal letter of commission; the deliberate choice to ground the German mission in Roman authorization, and what that meant in the eighth-century Church. |
See Also
- Wessex and the Anglo-Saxon Church — the church and the Willibrordian precedent behind the first crossing
- Hesse and Thuringia — where the Roman commission was first put to work
- A Roman Loyalist and the Undivided Church — what Boniface’s turn to Rome did and did not mean before 1054
- The Pre-Schism Church — the undivided Church whose Roman see Boniface served
References
- Willibald. The Life of Saint Boniface. Trans. C. H. Talbot, in The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany. London: Sheed & Ward, 1954.
- The Letters of Saint Boniface. Trans. Ephraim Emerton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940.
- Wood, Ian. The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400–1050. Harlow: Longman, 2001.
- Palmer, James T. Anglo-Saxons in a Frankish World, 690–900. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009.