Editing Saint Boniface (section)

==Last mission to Frisia==
[[File:Grab des Bonifatius, Krypta, Dom Fulda-6384.jpg|thumb|Saint Boniface crypt, Fulda]]
[[File:Nagelung - vergrößerter Ausschnitt.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Nailhole in the [[Ragyndrudis Codex]]]]

According to the {{lang|la|vitae}}, Boniface had never relinquished his hope of converting the [[Frisians]], and in 754 he set out with a retinue for Frisia. He baptized a great number and summoned a general meeting for confirmation at a place not far from [[Dokkum]], between [[Franeker]] and [[Groningen (city)|Groningen]]. However, instead of his converts, a group of armed robbers appeared and slew the aged archbishop. The {{lang|la|vitae}} mention that Boniface persuaded his (armed) comrades to lay down their arms: "Cease fighting. Lay down your arms, for we are told in Scripture not to render evil for evil but to overcome evil by good."<ref>Talbot 56.</ref>

Having killed Boniface and his company, the Frisian bandits ransacked their possessions but found that the company's luggage did not contain the riches they had hoped for: "they broke open the chests containing the books and found, to their dismay, that they held manuscripts instead of gold vessels, pages of sacred texts instead of silver plates."<ref>Talbot 57.</ref> They attempted to destroy these books, the earliest {{lang|la|vita}} already says, and this account underlies the status of the [[Ragyndrudis Codex]], now held as a Bonifacian relic in Fulda, and supposedly one of three books found on the field by the Christians who inspected it afterward. Of those three books, the Ragyndrudis Codex shows incisions that could have been made by sword or axe; its story appears confirmed in the Utrecht hagiography, the {{lang|la|Vita altera}}, which reports that an eye-witness saw that the saint at the moment of death held up a [[gospel]] as spiritual protection.<ref>Schieffer 272-73.</ref> The story was later repeated by Otloh's {{lang|la|vita}}; at that time, the Ragyndrudis Codex seems to have been firmly connected to the martyrdom.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

Boniface's remains were moved from the Frisian countryside to Utrecht, and then to Mainz, where sources contradict each other regarding the behavior of [[Lullus]], Boniface's successor as archbishop of Mainz. According to Willibald's {{lang|la|vita}} Lullus allowed the body to be moved to Fulda, while the (later) {{lang|la|Vita Sturmi}}, a hagiography of Sturm by [[Eigil of Fulda]], Lullus attempted to block the move and keep the body in Mainz.<ref>Palmer 158.</ref>

His remains were eventually buried in the abbey church of Fulda after resting for some time in [[Utrecht (city)|Utrecht]], and they are entombed within a shrine beneath the high altar of [[Fulda Cathedral]], previously the abbey church.
There is good reason to believe that the Gospel he held up was the {{lang|la|Codex Sangallensis}} 56, which shows damage to the upper margin, which has been cut back as a form of repair.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}