# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 03 16_S116
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

116

Pipin, on the other hand, recognized the worth of all the endeavors of Boniface completely and rendered him assistance in every way. With their help he brought the founding of the necessary bishoprics fully to completion and put into effect yet another important institution: namely, that in every episcopal diocese from time to time special councils, and for all Germany general councils, should be held, in order to deliberate on the abolition of abuses and the introduction of good ordinances, and to lay upon everyone his duty the more to heart. In the year 742 Boniface himself held a general German council, and in 743 another in Flanders, at all of which clergymen were forbidden, on pain of deposition, to take part in hunting and war, while a serious, orderly walk of life and faithful fulfillment of their official duties were enjoined by many kinds of laws and resolutions.*) Great pains were taken with the extirpation of heathen superstition and the establishment of institutions for the training of clergymen. At the same time, to be sure, the subordination of the German Church to the Pope was also made ever firmer, without anyone, however, having so much as thought of thereby infringing in the least upon the sovereignty of the territorial prince. Church and civil power remained for a long time in the friendliest understanding; the resolutions and councils were made known by Duke Karlmann as Major domus. With the help of the young dukes and the councils it now succeeded also for Boniface, as regards the adversaries who here and there still would not submit to his ordinances, partly to reduce them to silence, partly to remove them from their offices and render them harmless. These were partly coarse and dissolute clergymen, who strengthened the people in their superstition so that they themselves might live the more licentiously; partly they were enthusiasts, who by a holy life and all sorts of peculiar opinions had made a following among the people; partly freer-thinking men, who may well have had some purer evangelical insight, but also had an aversion to submitting to a stricter ecclesiastical order. That Boniface proceeded against these people with earnestness and severity, and even had some of the most obstinate imprisoned, men have wished to charge against him, and have called him a gloomy, domineering monk. But what a heavy sacrifice he brought, with such strict procedure, to his sworn official duty and the welfare of the Church, one sees from a letter to his friend, Bishop Daniel in England. To him he laments with great anguish of heart that he does not know how he is to conduct himself toward certain clergymen who by false doctrine and offensive life were extremely harmful to the progress of the work of God. He would gladly retain brotherly fellowship with them, if only it were not against conscience *).

The topmost stone upon the outward structure of the German Church was laid in the year 745, when the bishopric of Mainz was raised to an archbishopric and given to Boniface†). For ten years thereafter he supervised from there the Church in the Frankish realm, and in this time anointed Duke Pipin as king. His chief care he devoted to the monastery of Fulda, which for a long time became for all Germany a principal seat of learning and Christian culture, and gave to the Church a long line of distinguished servants. One of his most capable disciples and helpers, Sturmi, had founded it in 744. After the toilsome wandering about, an irresistible longing seized him to withdraw into deep solitude and to serve his God in stillness. Boniface approved his resolve, gave him two more companions, and directed him to seek a suitable place for a settlement in the immense beech forest which at that time covered a large part of Hesse. For three days they rode on asses into the wild forest, until they came to a place where now the city of Hersfeld stands. Here they built themselves huts of tree bark, in which they spent a long time in prayer and and fasting. But to Boniface this place seemed too dangerous because of the nearness of the wild Saxons. Upon his counsel Sturmi therefore went still deeper into the pathless forest, and indeed quite alone on his ass, defying wild beasts and scattered wild hordes with prayer and song, until at last he came into a region of lofty beauty on the Fulda. This seemed to him suitable for his purpose, and glad he returned to his master. The latter now hastened himself with a band of helpers. First they called upon the Lord together for His blessing on their work, then the trees fell crashing under their axe-strokes, and soon the first beginnings of the monastery of Fulda arose, and green grainfields cleared the old forest. Sturmi had to visit the most renowned monasteries, in order to learn their arrangements and to use the best of them for the new foundation. It became, to Winfrid's joy, soon the most renowned in all Germany and the principal seat of the sciences. In a short time the number of monks rose to 400; who divided their time between prayer, study, and manual labor. Through the founding of this monastery alone Boniface has earned for himself immortal merits for the cultivation of the land, for the fostering of the sciences, and for the welfare of the German Church.

The more, however, his work was everywhere strengthened and prospered, the more vehement became in this restless spirit the desire to create new things, although he was now already of advanced age. Where he had begun, there he wished also to end, — among the Frisians; for that the conversion of this vigorous and capable tribe should remain unfinished gave him no rest. But his first care was to leave his episcopal office to a capable successor, who would keep the Christian Church in Germany in good momentum. Such a one he found in his friend and countryman Lullus, and now he left nothing untried to obtain the archbishopric of Mainz for him. His hearty solicitude for those under him expresses itself touchingly when he writes in this matter to the confessor of King Pipin: Almost all my disciples are strangers; some are priests, appointed to the service of the Church and of the peoples; others monks, who are distributed in the monasteries to teach the children to read, and many are already aged men, who have supported me a long time and have labored with me. For all these I am anxious lest after my death they be scattered, like sheep without shepherds, and lest the peoples on the borders lose the law of Christ! Therefore I beseech you earnestly in the name of God that you cause my son and co-laborer Lullus to be appointed to this service of the peoples and of the churches as preacher and teacher of the priests. And I hope that in him, God willing, the priests will receive a leader, the monks a teacher in their rule, and the Christian peoples a faithful preacher and shepherd. I ask this especially for the reason that my priests on the border of the heathen lead a wretched life. Bread to eat they can earn for themselves, but clothes not; they must moreover be supported, as I have hitherto supported them, if they are to persevere in those places in the service of the peoples. Pipin gladly confirmed the man thus recommended to him as Boniface's successor, and so the latter handed over his office to the faithful friend, praised God for such a proof of His grace, and strengthened himself by a short rest for his new mission.

In the same year he went down the Rhine with a small retinue of clergymen and monks and some servants. In vain his friends sought to hold him back with tears and adjured him at last to spare himself. He followed the call of his

*) They were to see to it that all their confessional children learned by heart the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, in order that they might be saved through faith and prayer; whoever had not attained to this should not be permitted to be a baptismal sponsor. At baptisms the priests were to ask the renunciations and confessions plainly in the language of the country, so that they might know whom they were renouncing and what they were confessing.

*) One of these men had himself usurped the priesthood, had erected crosses and little chapels in the fields, had gathered the people there and drawn them away from the churches, had let himself be called holy, claimed to know the names of the angels, and had gained a great following among the ignorant people. Another, Clement, had a concubine and had begotten two sons with her, and defended this with the Old Testament, that the surviving brother should marry the wife of the deceased.

†) In a battle against the heathen Saxons, namely, Bishop Gerold had been mortally wounded, and to comfort him, his son Gewilieb, before his death, had been promoted to priest by Duke Karlmann and appointed his successor. But when the latter, in the year following, stabbed with his own hand, treacherously, the man who had killed his father, and yet continued in his office, without anyone taking offense at it; Boniface summoned him in 745 before his sixth synod in Franconia, at which eight bishops, all native Englishmen, appeared. Gewilieb was deposed from his bishopric, and Boniface was installed by Karlmann and Pipin as Archbishop of Mainz and recognized as head of the whole German Church.