Editing Saint Boniface (section)

==Early missionary work in Frisia and Germania==
[[File:Bonifatius Donareiche.jpg|thumb|Saint Boniface felling [[Donar's Oak]]]]
Boniface first left for the continent in 716. He traveled to [[Utrecht]], where [[Willibrord]], the "Apostle to the Frisians", had been working since the 690s. He spent a year with Willibrord, preaching in the countryside, but their efforts were frustrated by the war then being carried on between [[Charles Martel]] and [[Radbod, King of the Frisians]]. Willibrord fled to the abbey he had founded in [[Echternach]] (in modern-day [[Luxembourg]]) while Boniface returned to Nursling.

Boniface returned to the continent the next year and went straight to Rome, where [[Pope Gregory II]] renamed him "Boniface", after the (legendary) fourth-century martyr [[Boniface of Tarsus]], and appointed him missionary bishop for [[Germania]]—he became a bishop without a diocese for an area that lacked any church organization. He would never return to England, though he remained in correspondence with his countrymen and kinfolk throughout his life.

According to the ''vitae'' Boniface felled the [[Donar Oak]], Latinized by Willibald as "Jupiter's oak", near the present-day town of [[Fritzlar]] in northern [[Hesse]]. According to his early biographer Willibald, Boniface started to chop the oak down, when suddenly a great wind, by miracle, blew the ancient oak over. When the gods did not strike him down, the people were amazed and converted to Christianity. He built a church from its wood at the site<ref>Levison 31–32.</ref>—the church was the beginning of the monastery in Fritzlar. This account from the ''vita'' is stylised to portray Boniface as a singular character who alone acts to root out paganism. Lutz von Padberg and others claim that what the ''vitae'' leave out is that the action was most likely well-prepared and widely publicized in advance for maximum effect, and that Boniface had little reason to fear for his personal safety since the Frankish fortified settlement of [[Büraburg]] was nearby.<ref>von Padberg 40–41.</ref> According to Willibald, Boniface later had a church with an attached monastery built in Fritzlar,<ref>Levison 35.</ref> on the site of the previously built chapel, according to tradition.<ref>Rau 494 n.10.</ref>