05 — Reform of the Frankish Church
Boniface was not only an apostle to pagans but a reformer of Christians. In the 740s, under the Carolingian mayors Carloman and Pepin, he turned to the lax and disordered Frankish church — its bishops worldly, its clergy irregular, its councils long unheld — and pressed a programme of reform, beginning with the Concilium Germanicum of 742. This section covers that reform and the larger question it opens: Boniface’s place in the deepening alliance between the see of Rome and the rising Carolingian dynasty, including the genuinely disputed matter of his role in the anointing of Pepin as king in 751.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Apostle of the Germans; martyr)
The Frankish church Boniface confronted in middle age was, by his account and others’, in serious disorder: no general council had met for decades, ecclesiastical property had been seized by lay magnates and granted to laymen, and bishops behaved as warlords. When Charles Martel died in 741 and his sons Carloman and Pepin took up the government, they enlisted Boniface — by then the most respected churchman in the realm — to help them reform it. The councils of the 740s are the result. They are also the setting for the most contested episode of his career: the part he may or may not have played in the great political transformation of 751, when the Carolingians set aside the last Merovingian king and Pepin was made king with papal blessing. This section presents the reform straightforwardly and the disputed anointing question with both scholarly positions named.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Frankish Councils | The reform of the lax Frankish church under Carloman and Pepin; the Concilium Germanicum of 742 and the councils that followed; the suppression of abuses, the regularization of the clergy, and the limits of what Boniface achieved. |
| The Papacy and the Carolingians | Boniface’s role in the Roman–Carolingian alliance; the change of dynasty in 751; the genuinely disputed question of his part in the anointing of Pepin — both scholarly positions, named and cited, without anachronism. |
See Also
- Bishoprics and Monasteries — the organizing work that paralleled the reform
- The Commission from Rome — the Roman authorization behind the reform
- The Correspondence — the letters that document the reform and its frustrations
- A Roman Loyalist and the Undivided Church — the pre-Schism reading of his Roman alignment
References
- The Letters of Saint Boniface. Trans. Ephraim Emerton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1940.
- Willibald. The Life of Saint Boniface. Trans. C. H. Talbot, in The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany. London: Sheed & Ward, 1954.
- 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.