The Apostle Of The Germans - The Propaganda Of Boniface In The German Area

One of the important spots in the research of the early Church history is the historical process of evangelization in Germanic region in the early medieval Europe. And in this process,the missionaries have played an irreplaceable role. This paper chooses one of the most important missionaries of the period——Boniface, which is concerning his missionary experience, in order to further deepen the understanding of the historical process. Saint Boniface(680—754.6.5), whose primitive name is Wilfred, is one of the first missionaries who came from England to Western Europe to spread Christianity. He is one of the most abundant achievements figures in the history of German missionaries, and he made a great contribution to the development of the German evangelization.Boniface spent his childhood in two British monasteries and accumulated the theological knowledge for his later missionary career. Then, he devoted his life to missionary activity in Bavaria, Thuringia and Hessen in the region of Germany. Among them, he went to Rome three times. In the support of the Pope and Frankish kings, Boniface performed the ecclesiastical organization in the German region. First of all, Boniface consecrated three new bishops with fixed sees and divided the whole country into four territorial dioceses in Bavaria. And he created three new sees in Hessen and Thuringia. He placed the churches under the control of the Holy See, which not only promoted the combination of the Frankish king and the Pope in Rome, but also improved the position of the Roman Catholic Church against the Eastern Catholic Church. Then he also established some monasteries and monastery schools as monastic and cultural center, and introduced the Rule of Benedict into Western Europe where almost lost its content again from England. Finally, he also reformed the Frank churches which mainly involved the church property, the doctrine and the rite of Roman Catholicism heresy, and the church organization and the unification of canon and so on, and restored the orders of churches to a certain degree. The later of his life in organization of Church, which not only consolidated the previous missionary, but laid the foundation of the construction of churches in German region, and generated a great influence in Western civilization and political.Through collecting the primitive source—— Boniface’s biography written by his inheritor, the systemizing of his letters —— and the research achievement of the later generations, this paper makes a further study of Boniface in his missionary activity and church organization. The main body of the paper is made of three parts. Firstly, it introduces the experience of Boniface in his early years in England by starting with his life at that time, and the preaching conditions after he went to Europe and the difficulties his met. Secondly, it describes how he solved these problems in Europe, which highlights the key points of the support by the pope and Frank governors to him during the preaching period. The article analyzes that the missionary played in the combination of ecclesiastical power and royalty. Thirdly, the paper introduces the organization of churches in German region by Boniface, and the contribution and position of Boniface in the Christianizing history of the whole Western Europe.