Boniface in Frisia

Abstract

Let us start at the end. The medieval history of the northern Netherlands is punctuated by a murder. The Anglo-Saxon papal legate Wynfrith, better known as Boniface, almost eighty years old at the time, had been in Frisia for several months to preach the Word of God to the pagans. In 753 he had left his monastic retreat in Fulda, where he had retired after a long career in Germany, and arrived in the northern Netherlands accompanied by no fewer than fifty-two followers. He had passed the winter in the Utrecht mission post, which his compatriot Willibrord had founded a generation earlier in an old Roman fortress on the Rhine. Boniface had been there before: after a very short visit in 716 he had returned in 719 to learn from Willibrord in the following two years. Willibrord, who had been appointed archbishop of the Frisians, had mainly worked in the coastal area of the later county of Holland; Boniface had worked further north, on the island of Wieringen and in Westergo, in what is now Friesland. In the spring of 754, when the weather permitted travelling once more, he travelled north again. Christianity had not taken root there despite the efforts of the missionaries. Together with a number of his followers Boniface was killed by pagan Frisians on 5 June 754. It was the end of a long life, and the beginning of a legend that until today has its fixed place in Dutch historical conscience.1 This chapter deals with the activities of Boniface in early medieval Frisia, particularly with his first two visits, in 716 and in 719–721, and with the aftermath of his fateful third visit, in 753–754. To understand Boniface’s involvements with the Frisians, it will be necessary to devote some attention to the Frisians and the area they inhabited. What did the pagan Frisians believe? What kind of society had they managed to form? And what were the chances that the mission and, later, the development of ecclesiastical structures, would be successful?