desired to preach beyond the Rhine, with a letter of protection," which proved to be very valuable.a

In Hessia and Thuringia, the countries to which he now repaired, Christianity had already been long preached, but by isolated teachers, and without any regular system. The belief and the practice of the converts were still largely mixed with paganism; Boniface even speaks of presbyters who offered sacrifices to the heathen gods. The preachers had for the most part proceeded from the Irish Church, in which diocesan episcopacy was as yet unknown, and the jurisdiction was separate from the order of a bishop; they had brought with them its peculiar ideas as to the limitation of the episcopal rights; they were unrestrained by any discipline or by any regard for unity; they owned no subjection to Rome, and were under no episcopal authority. Boniface often complains of these preachers as "fornicators and adulterers" words which may in some cases imply a charge of real immorality, but which in general clearly mean nothing more than that the Irish missionaries held the doctrine of their native church as to the lawfulness of marriage for the clergy. He speaks, too, of some who imposed on the people by pretensions to extraordinary asceticism-feeding on milk and honey only, and rejecting even bread. With these rival teachers he was involved in serious and lasting contentions.

Among the collection of Boniface's correspondence is a letter from his old patron, Daniel of Winchester,' containing advice for

2 Ep. 11.

Ep. 12, c. 702; Rettb. i. 343.

b Willib. 8; Rettb. i. 346-7; ii. 310. His report of this is known from a letter of Pope Zacharias to him. Zach. Ep. 11 (Patrol, lxxxix. c. 44). Rettberg thinks that these were not Christians who had fallen into idolatry, but heathens who, without renouncing their own religion, had taken up some Christian forms. (ii. 579.) See Schmidt, i. 408.

d See p. 66.

e Willib. 8; Rettb. i. 317. E. g. Epp. 12, 27, 49; Ep. Zach. 11. col. 944.

Schröckh, xix. 185; Theiner, i. 409, 414; Rettb. i. 320-3.

Ep. 12. col. 701; Rettb. i. 313. In the letter by which Gregory II. recommended Boniface to the people and clergy of Germany (Greg. II. Ep. 4), it is said that he is not to acknowledge Africans pretending to holy orders, be

cause some of them have often been
proved to be Manichæans, and others to
be rebaptised (i. e. Donatists). Neander
(v. 62), Rettberg (i. 312), and others,
suppose this to have been carelessly
copied by a scribe from a form of older
date, since it occurs almost in the same
words in an epistle of Gregory the
Great (ii. 37), and in a form ascribed to
Gelasius I. (Patrol. lix. 137; Lib. Diurn.
iii. 9, ib. ev.) Ozanam, however, thinks
that the prohibition was applicable to
the circumstances of Germany in the
time of Boniface, and that the ascetic
pretenders of whom Boniface complains
were Manichæans. (Civil. Chrét. 192.)
But he does not explain how the African
church of the eighth century could have
sent forth such persons, how it is that
Donatists are also mentioned in that
age, or how it is that the same words
are found in Gregory the Great and in
the older Roman formularies.
1 Ep. 14.

men.

the conduct of his missionary work. The bishop tells him that, in discussions with the heathen, he ought not to question the genealogies of their gods, but to argue from them that beings propagated after the fashion of mankind must be not gods but The argument is to be urged by tracing back the genealogies to the beginning; by asking such questions as-"When was the first god generated? To which sex did this god belong? Has the generation of gods come to an end? If it has ceased, why? Is the world older than the gods? If so, who governed it before they existed?" The missionary must argue mildly, and must avoid all appearance of insult or offence. He must contrast the truth of Christianity with the absurdities of the pagan mythology. He must ask how it is that the gods allow Christians to possess the fairest places of the earth, while their own votaries are confined to cold and barren tracts; he is to dwell on the growth of the Christian church from nothing to the predominance which it has already attained.

It would seem, however, that Boniface rarely had occasion to enter into arguments of this sort, but was obliged to rely on others of a more palpable kind. He found that an oak near Geismar, sacred to the thunder-god Donar,m was held in great reverence by the Hessians, and that the impression which his words made on the people was checked by their attachment to this object of ancestral veneration. He therefore, at the suggestion of some converts, resolved to cut down the tree. A multitude of pagans assembled and stood around, uttering fierce curses, and expecting the vengeance of the gods to show itself on the missionary and his companions. But when Boniface had hardly begun his operations, a violent gust of wind shook the branches, and the oak fell to the ground, broken into four equal pieces. The pagans at once renounced their gods, and with the wood of the tree Boniface built a chapel in honour of St. Peter."

After this triumph his preaching made rapid progress. He founded churches and monasteries, and was reinforced by many monks and nuns from his native church, who assisted him in the labours of conversion and Christian education. Gregory III., soon after being raised to the popedom, in 732, conferred on him the pall of an archbishop; and when in 738 Boniface paid a third

A.D. 739.

visit to Rome, he was received with the honour due to a missionary who had by that time baptised a hundred thousand converts. On his return northwards, he was induced by Odilo, duke of Bavaria, to remain for a time in that country, where he had already laboured about three years before.' He found there a general profession of Christianity; but there was only one bishop, Vivilus by name; there was no system of ecclesiastical government; and, as in other parts of Germany, he had to contend with the rivalry of the irregular missionaries from Ireland. He divided the country into four dioceses-Salzburg, Passau (which was assigned to Vivilus), Ratisbon, and Freisingen; and, having thus organised the Bavarian church, he returned to the more especial scene of his labours.

A.D. 732.

The name of Charles Martel is memorable in the history of the Church and of the world for having turned back the course of Mahometan conquest. The Saracens of Spain had overrun the south of France, had made their way as far as the Loire, and were marching against Tours, with the intention of plundering the treasures which the devotion of centuries had accumulated around the shrine of St. Martin, when they were met by Charles, at the head of an army collected from many races-Franks, Germans, Gauls, men of the north, and others. His victory near Poitiers (although the slaughter has been vastly exaggerated by legendary writers) put a stop for ever to the progress of their arms towards the north; and while they were further weakened by internal dissensions, Charles, following up his advantage, succeeded in driving them back beyond the Pyrenees:" But the vast benefit which he thus conferred on Christendom was purchased at a cost which for the time pressed heavily on the Church of France. In order to meet the exigencies of the war, he seized the treasures of churches, and rewarded the chiefs who followed him with the temporalities of bishopricks and abbeys; so that, notwithstanding his great services to the Christian cause, his memory is branded by the French ecclesiastical writers as that of a profane and sacrilegious prince, and a synod held at

a Greg. III. Ep. 7, col. 584; Willib. 9. Willib. 9; Pagi, xii. 428; Rettb. i. 346.

Willib. 9; Greg. III. Ep. 4, 7; Rettb. 349-350.

It is said that the Infidels lost 375,000 men, and the Christians only 1500. Paul. Warnef. De Gestis Langob. vi. 46; see Sismondi, ii. 132; Mar

tin, ii. 202-6; Hallam, Supplem. Notes, 24; Luden, iv. 105-6. The Arabian accounts ascribe the defeat to the Divine vengeance for the cruelties of which the invaders had been guilty. Conde, 'Dominacion de los Arabes en España,' 44, ed. Paris, 1840.

u

Gibbon, v. 186-9.

Quiercy in the year 858, assured one of his descendants that for this sin Eucherius, bishop of Orleans, had seen him tormented "in the lower hell." x

Boniface, although he found the name of the Frankish mayor a powerful assistance in his labours beyond the Rhine," was thwarted at the Frankish court by the nobles who had got possession of ecclesiastical revenues, and by the rude, secular, fighting and hunting bishops, who were most congenial to the character of Charles. In a letter to Daniel of Winchester, he complains of being obliged to have intercourse with such persons. The bishop in reply wisely advises him, on scriptural authority, to keep himself pure, and to bear with such faults in others as it may not be in his power to amend."

ጌ

d

Both Gregory III. and Charles Martel died in 741. The new pope, Zacharias, extended Boniface's power by authorising him to reform the whole Frankish church. The sons of Charles were glad to avail themselves of the assistance of Rome in a work of which they felt the necessity; and from Carloman, who had succeeded to the mayoralty of Austrasia, while Pipin held that of Neustria, Boniface received an amount of support which he had hitherto in vain endeavoured to obtain. He now erected four bishopricks for Hesse and Thuringia; and in 742, at the request of Carloman (as he says), was held a council for the reformation of the church-the first Austrasian council which had met for eighty years. This council was for some years followed by others, collected from one or from both divisions of the Frankish territory. They were not, however, composed of ecclesiastics only, but were mixed assemblies of the national estates; and, while Boniface was acknowledged in his high office as the pope's commissioner, the decrees were set forth by the Frankish princes in their own name," and appointments which had been already made by the papal authority were again made, afresh and independently, by the secular power. Even the jurisdiction of Boniface over other bishops was thus granted anew to him.' Their canons

were directed towards the establishment of order in the church by providing for annual synods, by forbidding ecclesiastics to hunt, to hawk, to serve in war; by the enforcement of celibacy on the clergy; by subjecting the clergy to the bishops, and discountenancing such as were under no regular discipline.

An attempt was made to recover to their proper uses the ecclesiastical revenues which had been alienated by Charles Martel. The first council ordered their restoration,m but this was not to be so easily

A.D. 743.

effected. The council of the following year was reduced to attempt a compromise, by allowing that, in consideration of the wars and of other circumstances, the property should for a time be retained by the lay holders, but that for each casata a solidus should be paid to the ecclesiastical owners." But in the later councils the subject does not appear, and it would seem that the attempt was given up as hopeless. The councils also made enactments for the suppression of heathen practices, such as divination, the use of amulets, needfire (i. e. the production of fire by the friction of wood and tow)," and the offering of sacrifices, whether to the old pagan deities, or to the saints who, with some converts, had taken their place-practices of which some, with a remarkable tenacity, have kept their hold on the northern nations even to our own day.'

reason by some Romanists, on account of the position assigned in them to the secular power. (See Schröckh, xix. 204.) Their chronology is elaborately discussed by Hefele, iii. 467, sqq.

E. g. Conc. Germ. cc. 1, 3, 4; Hard. iii. 1920.

m Can. 1.

Conc. Liptinense, c. 2. By some this council is placed at Lestines, near Cambray, by others at Ettines, near Binch, in Hainault (Perry, 300). The casata, like the English hide of land, was a quantity sufficient for the maintenance of one family (Ducange, s. v. Casata). The solidus is reckoned in the Ripuarian laws as the equivalent of two oxen (Ozanam, 138); but its value varied much. See Ducange, s. v.; Hefele, iii.

Grimm, 'Deutsche Mythologie,' 570, where a great mass of learning on the subject is collected. In the 17th century it was used in Aberdeenshire, where it was stigmatised as "a highland practice." (Presbytery Book of Strathbogie, pub. by the Spalding Club, 1843, p. 117.) Grimm (567) quotes Logan's 'Scottish Gael' for evidence that it is still used in Caithness. Hefele seems to be wrong (iii. 466) in identifying the needfire with a Greek superstition condemned by the Trullan council, i. 65.

See Grimm, passim; Rettb. i. 370; W. Müller, Altdeutsche Religion,' Götting. 1844, pp. 114, seqq. Quarterly Rev. cx. 169-171. The curious Indiculus paganiarum vel superstitionum,'annexed to the Conc. Liptinense (Hard. iii. 1923 ; Pertz, Leges, i. 19), was probably contemporary, although not the work of that council. See notes on it in Hefele, iii. 471-7. The like is to be said of the vernacular form of baptismal professions and renunciations - - Forsachistu Diabolæ, &c."-where after the devil are mentioned the old pagan gods. (ibid.) Rettb. i. 328, 360. Hefele says that this form shows traces of Boniface's AngloSaxon dialect, iii. 470, 478.