Boniface's West Saxon Background

Chapter 2 Boniface’s West Saxon Background

Barbara Yorke

1 Introduction1

Boniface must have been at least forty when he left for Frisia in 716,2 an age when most people’s basic character and preconceptions have become estab- lished so that even if one considers the second phase of Boniface’s career, when he worked in mainland Europe, to have been the most significant, one still needs to study his formative years in Wessex as Wynfrith in order to appreciate the baggage that he took with him when he left his native land. Boni- face grew up in an area on the western frontiers of Wessex where Anglo-Saxons were in a minority, but were seeking to impose secular overlordship and “correct” Christian practices on a British majority. Traditions of royal service, of trust in one’s family and countrymen, and of a distrust of those who followed different practices help to explain some of the unusual features of Boniface’s Continental career, such as the promotion of kinswomen or why popes and Frankish kings were so eager to acquire his services. Although the broad outline of Boniface’s career in England can be recon- structed, there are inevitable gaps and uncertainties, and in particular one would like to know more about events leading up to his decision to leave his native land. For the basic facts of his early life we are dependent on the details provided by Willibald of Mainz in his Vita Bonifatii. Willibald composed this Vita at some point between 754 and 769, at the request of Lull, who was Boni- face’s successor as bishop of Mainz (754–785), and Megingoz, his disciple who

1 This chapter revisits and updates Barbara Yorke, “The insular background to Boniface’s Con- tinental career,” in Bonifatius: Leben und Nachwirken (754–2004), eds. Franz J. Felten et al. (Mainz: 2007), 23–38. Some of the issues raised in that paper have since been explored in greater detail by John-Henry Clay, In the Shadow of Death: Saint Boniface and the Conversion of Hessia, 721–54, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 11 (Turnhout: 2010). 2 Boniface’s birth is generally estimated to have occurred between 672 and 675, but it is a mat- ter on which no greater precision is possible. See Franz Flaskamp, “Das Geburtsjahr des Wyn- frith-Bonifatius,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 45 (1926), 339–44; Frank Barlow, “The Eng- lish Background,” in The Greatest Englishman: Essays on Boniface and the Church at Crediton, ed. Timothy Reuter (Exeter: 1980), 26–27.

28 Yorke became bishop of Wurzburg (763–769).3 It seems likely that Willibald also came from Wessex, and so would have been familiar with the general ambi- ence in which Boniface had grown up, even though he does not seem to have known him personally. However, he was in a good position, as he states, to consult others who had known Boniface well.4 One should expect, as with all hagiography, that biographical realism will have been tempered by idealism and the overall aims that lay behind the composition. For instance, Willibald’s insistence that the Benedictine Rule was followed by Boniface in Wessex seems to be mistaken, and the result of the greater significance accorded the Benedic- tine Rule at the time he wrote.5 However, other passages do seem to accurately reflect Wessex at the time of Boniface’s youth, such as the mention of itinerant priests coming to the settlement in which Boniface’s family lived, probably a reference to the provision of pastoral care from minster centres.6 Thus there seems no reason to reject the main details Willibald provides for Boniface’s early life in Wessex, but in order to appreciate their significance they ought to be viewed against a broader background of West Saxon history that can be drawn from, among other sources, the vitae of Boniface’s relatives who also worked in Germany, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, charters, and the letters to and from Boniface.7

2 Boniface’s Family Background

In order to appreciate how Boniface’s experiences in Wessex formed him, it is important to reconstruct as much as possible of his family background and relate it to events of the late 7th and early 8th centuries, when the kingdom of Wessex was taking in new lands to the south and west. Arguably Boniface’s family and the church foundations with which he was associated were actively

3 Willibald, VB, prologue; Ian Wood, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe 400–1050 (Harlow: 2001), 61–64. 4 Willibald, VB, c.1. 5 Christopher Holdsworth, “Saint Boniface the monk,” The Greatest Englishman: Essays on Boniface and the Church at Crediton, ed. Timothy Reuter (Exeter: 1980), 54–57; however, as Holdsworth discusses, a “mixed” rule that was in part influenced by the Benedictine Rule may have been followed. Willibald’s statements that Boniface entered Exeter at the expected age of oblation (7) and was ordained priest at the correct canonical age (30) may merely be his expectation of when these events should have occurred. 6 Willibald, VB, c.1, 5; John Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford: 2005), 153–65. 7 Clay, In the Shadow of Death, 10–16 for a succinct overview of sources.