CENTURY VIII.


Winfred, better known as Boniface, "the Apostle of Germany," is,
perhaps, the chief ecclesiastical figure of this century. He taught
Christianity right through Germany; was consecrated bishop in A.D. 723,
created archbishop in A.D. 738, and Primate of Germany and Belgium in
A.D. 746; in A.D. 755 he was murdered in Friesland, with fifty other
ecclesiastics. Much stress is laid upon his martyrdom by Christian
writers, but Boniface, after all, only received from the Frieslanders
the measure he had meted out to their brethren, and there seems no good
reason why Christian missionaries should claim a monopoly of the right
to kill. Mosheim allows that he "often employed violence and terror, and
sometimes artifice and fraud" (p. 169) in order to gain converts, and he
was supported by Charles Martel, the enemy of Friesland, and appeared
among the Germans as the friend and agent of their foes. A few years
later, Charlemagne spread Christianity among the Saxons with great
vigour. For "a war broke out, at this time, between Charlemagne and the
Saxons, which contributed much to the propagation of Christianity,
though not by the force of a rational persuasion. The Saxons were, at
this time, a numerous and formidable people, who inhabited a
considerable part of Germany, and were engaged in perpetual quarrels
with the Franks concerning their boundaries, and other matters of
complaint. Hence Charlemagne turned his armies against this powerful
nation, A.D. 772, with a design not only to subdue that spirit of revolt
with which they had so often troubled the empire, but also to abolish
their idolatrous worship, and engage them to embrace the Christian
religion. He hoped, by their conversion, to vanquish their obstinacy,
imagining that the divine precepts of the Gospel would assuage their