07 — Martyrdom and Sources
Boniface’s life ended where it had first faltered: in pagan Frisia. In 754, an old man who had resigned his see, he returned to the unfinished Frisian mission and was killed by a band of armed pagans at Dokkum — the martyrdom that crowned his apostolate and that Willibald narrates with the famous image of the saint raising a book over his head against the descending sword. This section treats the martyrdom and the sources for it: the death at Dokkum as Willibald reports it, and a source-critical assessment of the Vita Bonifatii and the letters that corroborate it.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Apostle of the Germans; martyr)
The martyrdom is the seal of Boniface’s life and the foundation of his cult. It is also, like the felling of the oak, a scene that comes to us chiefly through Willibald’s Vita, and it requires the same disciplined reading: the death is reported as the hagiographer narrates it, pinned to that attestation, with the famous details (the book raised against the sword) marked for what they are. These two files cover the event at Dokkum and the sources — Willibald’s near-contemporary Life, exceptionally well-corroborated for a saint’s vita by Boniface’s own surviving letters — on which all knowledge of Boniface rests.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Dokkum 754 | The return to the Frisian mission in old age; the martyrdom at Dokkum on 5 June 754; the book raised against the sword; the killing of Boniface and his companions, pinned to Willibald’s account. |
| The Life by Willibald | Willibald’s Vita Bonifatii — its author, date, and purpose; its reliability; and the unusual fact that, in Boniface’s letters, the Vita has an independent contemporary control of a kind few saints’ lives possess. |
See Also
- The First Frisian Attempt — the field where his mission began and ended
- The Felling of Donar’s Oak — the other great Willibald scene, read the same way
- Fulda and the Relics — what became of his body and the rise of his cult
- The Pre-Schism Church — the undivided Church that honored him as martyr
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.