09 — Veneration and Legacy
Boniface’s body was carried to Fulda, the monastery he loved, and there became the heart of one of the great cults of the medieval West; the bloodstained book of his martyrdom was preserved and venerated, and “the Apostle of the Germans” became a national patron. This concluding section traces the relics and the cult at Fulda, and offers a sober assessment of his legacy — the shaping of German and Frankish Christianity, the Carolingian church, and, through them, the Europe that followed.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Apostle of the Germans; martyr)
A saint’s afterlife has two parts: the cult that venerates him and the historical consequences of his work. For Boniface both are large. Fulda, his burial place, became one of the foremost monasteries of Christendom and the guardian of his relics and his memory; his cult spread through Germany and beyond, and he became a patron of the German lands. And his historical legacy is among the most consequential of any missionary: he did much to make the German church, to reform the Frankish, to knit both to Rome, and so to lay foundations on which Carolingian and ultimately European Christendom would rise. These two files treat the cult and the assessment, the latter weighed soberly, neither inflating nor diminishing what he did.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Fulda and the Relics | The translation of the body to Fulda; the bloodstained book and the other relics; the rise of the cult and the great monastery as its center; Boniface as patron and “Apostle of the Germans.” |
| Legacy and Assessment | A sober assessment of his historical significance — the making of the German church, the reform of the Frankish, the binding of both to Rome, and his contribution to the Carolingian and European order; what he did and what he did not do. |
See Also
- Dokkum 754 — the martyrdom from which the cult flows
- Fulda and the Monastic Network — Fulda as Boniface founded it
- The Orthodox Reception — his veneration in the Orthodox tradition
- The Pre-Schism Church — the undivided Church that honors him
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.
- 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.