Note 102 — Chapter II

Better known as Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans. He was sent by Charles to Rome to obtain the episcopal ordination, that he might be able to act with greater ecclesiastical authority in the newly converted districts; on the 30th November, 723, Pope Gregory II. (715-731) ordained him bishop, after he had given in his “profession of faith,” which was approved of by Gregory as strictly orthodox. The pope furnished him then with letters and credentials to Christian princes and ecclesiastics, and to the heathen princes and nations of Germany, and also with faithful copies of the ordinances, creed, ritual, and regulations of the Romish Church; and the Christian missionary was thus converted into the Popish legate. By his base monkish truckling to the authority of Rome this narrow-minded zealot, who sought in idle formalities and ceremonies the spirit of the word of Christ, which he was totally unable to conceive and comprehend, turned the new Christian church in Germany into a dependence of the Papal see, and thus prepared ages of bloodshed and misery for that devoted country. He carried his “submissiveness” to Rome so far that he actually asked instructions in that quarter as to whether, on which part of the body, and with which finger he might, or was to, make the sign of the cross during the delivery of his sermons. No wonder, indeed, his “mission” succeeded only when backed by the sword. He was murdered by the Frisons, in 755. Apart from his narrow-minded bigotry, he was an estimable man, full of honest and disinterested zeal.