Saint Boniface
Apostle
to the Germans
By Michael Durnan
If you are German-speaking or descend from German emigrants and you call yourself a 'Christian,' you owe this fact to Boniface, an English monk who lived in the 8th century. The first archbishop of Mainz, Boniface is known as the “Apostle to the Germans.” He also is the patron saint of Germany, and is credited with conceiving the idea of the Christmas tree.
aint Boniface was born in the year 675 AD in the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of
Wessex, and given the baptismal name Wynfrid. Wessex occupied the far west and south of modern-day England. By the seventh century, St. Augustine of Canterbury and Lindisfarne monks St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert had converted the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Wynfrid was to be one of the beneficiaries of this flowering of early Christian culture and learning.
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