04 — The Organizer of the Church
Boniface’s lasting achievement was not only conversion but organization: the turning of a missionary field into a structured church. This section covers the diocesan framework he built — the bishoprics of Würzburg, Erfurt, Eichstätt, Büraburg, and the rest — and the monastic network that anchored it, above all the great abbey of Fulda under his disciple Sturm, peopled by the Anglo-Saxon monks and nuns, Leoba and Lull among them, whom Boniface drew across the sea to help him.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Apostle of the Germans; martyr)
A missionary may convert a generation; an organizer leaves a church that outlives him. Boniface, taught by the failure of his first Frisian attempt and by the disorder he found among the existing German clergy, set out from the late 730s to give the German church a permanent, hierarchical, canonically ordered shape, in close consultation with Rome. He erected dioceses with fixed sees and consecrated bishops for them; he planted monasteries as the bases of Christian life, learning, and clergy-training; and he summoned a remarkable company of his own countrymen and countrywomen to staff them. These two files cover the diocesan structure and the monastic network, the twin pillars of the church he built.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Bishoprics and Monasteries | The structuring of the German church into dioceses with fixed sees — Würzburg, Erfurt, Eichstätt, Büraburg — under papal authorization; the consecration of bishops; the creation of a hierarchy where there had been only mission. |
| Fulda and the Monastic Network | The foundation of the great monastery of Fulda (744) under Sturm; the Benedictine pattern; the Anglo-Saxon monks and nuns — Leoba, Lull, and others — who came from England to staff the mission’s houses. |
See Also
- Hesse and Thuringia — the converted field that this structure organized
- The Frankish Councils — the parallel reform of the existing Frankish church
- Boniface and the Women of the Mission — the Anglo-Saxon nuns who staffed the network
- Monasticism — the monastic tradition Boniface transplanted to Germany
References
- Willibald. The Life of Saint Boniface. Trans. C. H. Talbot, in The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany. London: Sheed & Ward, 1954.
- Eigil. The Life of Saint Sturm. 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.