hand of armed pagans appeared and surrounded the camp. The younger of his followers prepared for resistance, but Boniface forbade it, exhorting them to submit to the death of martyrs, in the sure hope of salvation. The whole company, numbering fifty-two, and including bishop Eoban as well as Boniface, was massacred upon the spot. The remains of Boniface were eventually carried to the abbey of Fulda, the place where he had hoped to spend his last days.
In his twofold character of missionary and reformer Boniface’s actions were throughout made subordinate to the authority of Rome. In his view, that authority was the only means of spreading christianity and of maintaining the discipline of churches once established. ‘He went forth to his labours with the pope’s commission. On his consecration to the episcopate after his first successes he bound himself by oath to reduce all whom he might influence to the obedience of St. Peter and his representatives. The increased powers and the wider jurisdiction bestowed upon him by later popes were employed to the same end. He strove continually not only to bring heathens into the church, but to check irregular missionary operations and to subject both preachers and converts to the authority of Rome’ (Robertson, iv. 5). It is this attachment to the pope's authority which has laid him open to the attacks of writers such as Mosheim and Schröckh, who have accused him of ‘an ambitious and arrogant spirit, a crafty and insidious disposition, an immoderate eagerness to augment sacerdotal honours and prerogatives,' and of being ‘a missionary of the papacy rather than of christianity. Such charges, and a still more serious one, that he used force as an instrument of conversion, are without proof and may be passed over unnoticed. No man in a high position, such as is, can altogether avoid mistakes, and he may sometimes have failed in his judgment of men. But small blemishes cannot detract from the high character of Boniface as one who followed without deviation and with unflagging energy the path of duty in difficult times. Nor was his obedience to Rome merely a blind obedience. Where religion and morality were concerned he did not hesitate to speak freely in remonstrance against the too indulgent views of the papal court in matters which in his opinion required stricter discipline. He would resist the pope himself in what he considered an encroachment on his archi-episcopal functions. When Stephen II, during a visit to Pepin, presumed to consecrate a bishop of Metz, it was, we are told, only the intervention of the prince which prevented a rupture between the pope and Boniface.
Besides his great foundation of Fulda, Boniface also established monasteries at Fritzlar, at Utrecht, at Amauaburg, and at Ordorf or Ohrdruf. For the instruction of the brethren of these houses, he invited scholars from England. The correspondence which he kept up with princes and ecclesiastics and others of his native land is still preserved among his letters, and proves the interest which he continued to feel in the welfare of the English church: and from it may also be gathered details on the social condition of the times which are not without interest. In a letter written to Ecgberht, archbishop of York, between 735 and 755, we find the record of an exchange of books, and a request for a copy of the Commentaries of Breda; and in another addressed, between 732 and 745, to his old friend Bishop Daniel of Winchester, now blind, he too speaks of failing sight, and asks that the tine manuscript of the Prophets, so fairly and clearly written hy Winbert, abbot of Nursling, may be sent to him: no such book can be had abroad, and his impaired vision can no longer read with ease the small character of ordinary manuscripts.
Besides his epistlcs, Boniface has left a set of ecclesiastical statutes, in thirty-six articles, and a collection of fifteen sermons; and, in Latin verse, acomposition on the virtues and vices, entitled ‘Ænigmata,’ and a few other shorter ieces. A gment of a work on penance has also, but on insufficient authority, been ascribed to him. In addition to these, it appears from a reference in a letter of Pope Zacharias of the year 748 that Boniface was also the author of a work ‘De Unitate Fidei Catholicæ,' which Mabillon (Acta SS. Ord. S.B.) has thought to be nothing more than the ecclesiastical statutes already referred to, but which was, more probably, an independent treatise, written to confute the hcresies of Adalbert and others. The profession of faith which he made at Rome previous to his consecration is likewise lost. Some other works attributed to him appear to be certain of his epistles under distinct titles, Lastly, a ‘Life of St. Livinus,’ to which his name has been attached, is a work of more recent date, and a ‘Life of St. Libuinus,’ also improperly assigned to him, was written by Hucbald.
[Mabillon’s Annales Ord. S. Benedicti, 1704, tom. ii., and Acta Sanctorum Ord. S. B., 1734, sæc. iii.; Jaffé’s Monuments Moguntins (in Bibl. Rerum Germanicarum), 1866, containing the most recent and best edition of Boniface’s Epistles and the Life by Willibald, &c.; Poetæ Latini ævi Carolini, ed. Dümmler (Mon. Germaniæ
