Whose Side Does Boniface Choose after Charles Martel’s Death?

By Kim Rendfeld

We don’t know how or exactly when Boniface heard the news in the fall of 741, but it boded ill, enough for him to summon a trusted aide back to Bavaria, away from his missionary work. Charles Martel, the Frankish mayor of the palace and its true ruler, was gravely ill. A succession crisis loomed, as it had 27 years before, and it had implications beyond Francia’s frontier.

A Wessex-born archbishop (without a see) in his 60s, Boniface had not witnessed the earlier crisis caused by the 714 death Charles’s father, Pippin. But he likely had heard about it from his mentor, Willibrord, the Northumbrian-born bishop of Frisia. As Charles fought for control of Francia with a high-ranking Frank allied with the pagan ruler of Frisia and his father’s widow (not Charles’s mom), Willibrord faced a tough choice of whom to support. He made the right one with Charles.

Like Willibrord, Boniface was zealous about missionary work. And like his mentor, he sought support from powerful people, including the pope and Charles Martel, or Charles the Hammer.

Photo by Martin Bahmann,
GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0,
from Wikimedia Commons

A gifted general, Charles had been the uncontested ruler of Francia since 721, even though he never claimed the crown. When the Merovingian king died in 737, Charles continued to govern in the dead monarch’s name. He was powerful enough to call the shots but apparently didn’t want to risk it by calling himself king.

That power came with a lot of bloodshed. While Boniface tried to convert pagans in Hesse and Thuringia, Charles was defending his homeland or at war in several peoples in the frontier, including the Aquitainians, Alemans, and Bavarians. The aristocrats from those areas might have been beaten into submission, but it’s not too much of a stretch to think they resented outside rule and awaited an opportunity to break free.

When Charles’s health took a turn in 739, Boniface surely was not the only person to sense trouble. A look at Charles’s family provides clues. By his late first wife, Chrotrude, who must have come from a powerful family, he had two sons and a daughter, Karlomann, Pippin, and Chiltrude; another son, Grifo, with his influential current wife, the high-ranking Bavarian Swanahild; and three more sons with his concubine. This meant quite a few claimants to the inheritance.

Boniface was in Bavaria, appointing bishops and setting up dioceses with support from Duke Odilo, who had a complicated relationship with Charles. An Aleman from the Agiloling clan and kinsman of Swanahild, Odilo had the right bloodline to rule Bavaria, but he owed his dukedom to Charles, the very person who had deposed his family from power in Alemannia.

Photo by James Steakley, CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL,
from Wikimedia Commons

In 740, rivals drove Odilo from Bavaria, and he sought refuge in Charles’s court. When returned to power the next spring, he founded a monastery and had the law code revised. It is possible he and Boniface sent messages to each other about what was going on in the Frankish court. Boniface, in turn, would have kept the pope informed.

In October 741, Boniface recalled one of his disciples, Willibald, from Thuringia to the strategically located Eichstatt. He needed someone he could trust. He probably didn’t know it at the time, but Charles had died that month.

Did Boniface ally himself with Karlomann, Charles’s eldest son? In his early 30s, Karloman probably was the most groomed for power. He was married, probably the father of two sons, and likely had the support of his mother’s family. Or did Boniface side with the teenage Grifo, and by extension his mother, Swanahild, an Agilolfing who was so influential she had governed on her husband’s behalf?

Soon after Charles’s death, Boniface wrote to Grifo, asking for him to protect missionaries in Thuringia. It is possible he wrote similar letters to Karlomann and Pippin. However, Swanahild, and probably Charles too, had commended Grifo the Boniface’s prayers.

A few weeks later, Boniface might have learned relations between the Franks and Bavarians had gotten more complicated. Charles’s daughter, Chiltrude, had fled to Bavaria and wed Odilo without her brothers’ permission but with her stepmother’s encouragement. In an age when marriages formed or solidified alliances between families, this was a scandal. The couple’s son was born before the end of the year. Yes, Odilo and Chiltrude had been more than friends while he was in Charles’s court (and why I want to write a novel with Chiltrude as my heroine).

As news about Francia came to Boniface, he must have gotten more uneasy. Karlomann, Pippin, and Grifo disputed how Charles divided his lands. It is likely Karlomann got the eastern portion. Second son Pippin got the western and southern portion. And third son Grifo got some land in the middle. (The three sons by the concubine weren’t involved.)

A 15th century depiction of the brothers’ battle in 741
and Pippin coronation 10 years later, by Jean Fouquet,
public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Karlomann and Pippin each assumed the title of mayor of the palace for their lands, imprisoned Swanahild in the royal convent of Chelles, and fought with Grifo for control of Francia. In the meantime, Pope Gregory III died and was succeeded by Pope Zacharius.

Karlomann and Pippin battled Grifo at Laon and imprisoned him at Neufchâteau. Tensions remained in Aquitaine, Alemannia, and Bavaria. Boniface probably didn’t have firsthand knowledge of an alliance among the three, but he could infer that these noblemen were more than willing to test Charles’s sons.

Boniface faced a difficult decision: whom should he support? If he chose wrong, he could see all his work to save souls be ruined.

He decided to reconcile with Karlomann and distance himself from Odilo. Perhaps as a show of loyalty, he attended Karlomann’s first Church council in February 742. A few months later, Karlomann helped him found the monastery that became Fulda.

In 743, the mayors decided they really did need a living king in whose name to rule and brought Childeric out of a monastery to fill that role. Over the next few years, the brothers fought wars in Aquitaine, Alemannia, and Bavaria. Boniface might have brokered a peace between Karlomann and Odilo in 745. Later that year, he was appointed archbishop of Mainz. When Karlomann retired to a monastery in 747, Boniface decided to ally himself with Pippin, who would set Grifo free. This decision caused more trouble for Pippin.

After a few more wars, Pippin claimed the crown in 751 and send Childeric back to the monastery. After all, he reasoned, he was the one doing the job. Boniface was the churchman to anoint him at Soissons.

Sources
The Age of Charles Martel by Paul Fouracre
From Ducatus to Regnum: Ruling Bavaria Under the Merovingians and Early Carolingians by Carl I. Hammer
The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe, by Pierre Riché, translated by Michael Idomir Allen
"St. Boniface" by Francis Mershman The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907)

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In Kim Rendfeld's Queen of the Darkest Hour, Queen Fastrada must stop a conspiracy before it destroys everyone and everything she loves. The book is available on Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Kim has written two other books set in 8th century Francia. In The Cross and the Dragon, a Frankish noblewoman must contend with a jilted suitor and the fear of losing her husband (available on Amazon). In The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar, a Saxon peasant will fight for her children after losing everything else (available on Amazon). Kim's short story “Betrothed to the Red Dragon,” about Guinevere’s decision to marry Arthur, is set in early medieval Britain and available on Amazon.

Connect with Kim at on her website kimrendfeld.com, her blog, Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, or follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld.

A Fight over Who Gets the Martyr's Relics

By Kim Rendfeld

St. Boniface would have never wanted the dispute that followed his martyrdom in 754. Two of his disciples, Sts. Lull and Sturm, wanted his remains.

The stakes were high. Martyr’s relics were attributed with miraculous powers, and churches that housed them attracted pilgrims and their alms.

Lull, the Wessex-born archbishop of Mainz, and Sturm, the Bavarian-born founding abbot of Fulda, had been close to the martyr.

The 11th century Sacramentary of Fulda
shows Boniface baptizing
converts and being martyred.

Sturm and Boniface had met in Bavaria when Sturm was a boy. With his parents' permission, Sturm traveled with Boniface to Fritzlar, where he was left in the care of that abbot and became a priest in the 730s. At Boniface's urging, Sturm spent nine years in the wilderness, seeking the perfect site for a new monastery. Boniface then persuaded the Frankish mayor of the palace to donate the land and blessed the site for Fulda in 744.

Lull had met Boniface, also a native of Wessex, in the 730s while Lull was on a pilgrimage to Rome. Lull had been a monk at Malmesbury but was persuaded to join the monastery at Fritzlar, which Boniface had founded. Boniface must have been impressed with Lull. He consecrated him as a bishop about 753 and later chose Lull as his successor as the archbishop of Mainz. Boniface went out of his way for Lull to be accepted and even wrote to Fulrad, the influential abbot of St. Dennis, to convince Pepin to look favorably on Lull’s new position.

Boniface left the safety of Mainz for the dangerous mission to Frisia, where pagans slaughtered him and his companions. If we are to believe Eigil, Sturm's hagiographer, Boniface weighed in a couple of times on where his body should rest. As always, I leave to the reader to decide the veracity.

When Boniface and his slain followers were taken to Utrecht, the companions' bodies were buried, but the locals were unable to lift Boniface's bier. They took that as a sign to send the martyr elsewhere. Once they made that realization, the body was easily moved and loaded onto a boat that went to Mainz.

At Mainz, Lull claimed the relics for his city, but Sturm had rushed there and argued that Boniface had said during his life that he wanted to be entombed at Fulda. The two places were very different. At the time, Mainz was almost 800 years old, dating back to the Romans. Fulda was only 10 years old, founded in the middle of nowhere.

Boniface again stepped in. Appearing in a deacon's dream, he asked why his journey to Fulda was delayed. Lull refused to believe it until the deacon swore on the altar.

So Boniface was taken to Fulda, and the monastery thrived.

Lull gave up the fight on the relics, but he retaliated. Three of his supporters told Frankish King Pepin that Sturm was disloyal. The abbot of Fulda didn't defend himself, saying he would put his trust in God.

Sturm and some companions were exiled for two years to the abbey of Jumièges and treated well, but the monks at Fulda were unhappy, especially with their abbey now under Lull's jurisdiction. When they rejected the abbot he appointed, the archbishop conceded and let them choose one of their own. They did so with the sole purpose of bringing Sturm home. Soon monks, along with nuns at convents and the faithful at other churches, were praying.

Boniface’s tomb at Fulda.

The prayers worked. Pepin summoned Sturm and said he had forgotten what they were quarreling over. When Sturm affirmed his loyalty, he returned to Fulda, which was no longer under Lull’s authority, and oversaw construction and decorated Boniface's tomb.

The relics were the monastery’s greatest treasure. They were so valued that when the monks feared an attack from pagan Saxons in 778, they removed the relics and fled to the forest. After three days in tents, they got word that the locals had fended off the attack and it was safe to return.

Perhaps, Boniface would have been heartened by what Sturm said on his deathbed in 779. “Pray to God for me,” he said to his brothers, “and if I have committed any fault among you through human frailty or wronged anyone unjustly, forgive me as I also forgive all those who have offended or wronged me, including Lull, who always took sides against me.”

Public domain images via Wikimedia Commons

Sources:

Eigil’s Life of Sturm

Athelstan Museum

Francis Mershman, "St. Boniface," The Catholic Encyclopedia

Rev. Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints

Joseph Lins, "Mainz," The Catholic Encyclopedia

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Sturm makes a brief appearance in Kim Rendfeld’s latest release, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar (2014, Fireship Press), a story of a Saxon mother and the lengths she will go to protect her children.

To read the first chapters of Ashes or Kim’s debut, The Cross and the Dragon (2012, Fireship Press), or learn more about her, visit kimrendfeld.com or her blog Outtakes of a Historical Novelist at kimrendfeld.wordpress.com. You can also like her on Facebook at facebook.com/authorkimrendfeld, follow her on Twitter at @kimrendfeld, or contact her at kim [at] kimrendfeld [dot] com.

Kim's book are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.

Saint Lioba: Trusted Friend of a Martyr

by Kim Rendfeld

Before he became a martyr in Frisia in 754, Saint Boniface had put his affairs at Fulda in order. Part of that was summoning his younger kinswoman Lioba, whom he had installed as abbess at Bischofsheim. He gave Lioba his cowl and instructed the monks of Fulda that they were to treat her with reverence and, when her time came, to place her remains in the same tomb as his.

Photo by Kandschwar, statue of Lioba in Schornsheim

Neither Boniface nor Lioba were young. Boniface likely was in his 70s. Lioba might have been in her mid-40s. Her hagiography gives hints of her struggles at the time, referring to “her weakness.” Boniface also “exhorted her not to abandon the country of her adoption and not to grow weary of the life she had undertaken, but rather to extend the scope of the good work she had begun.”

Those instructions must have worked. Lioba spent the rest of her days in Francia, visiting the royal court, convents, and the monastery at Fulda, where no other woman was allowed to enter.

Given how close Lioba and Boniface were in life, it might not be a surprise that his parting words to her would have such an effect. In a letter to him, she reminds her kinsman that her father died eight years before and her mother was grievously ill. "I am the only daughter of my parents, and unworthy though I be, I wish that I might regard you as a brother; for there is no other man in my kinship in whom I have such confidence as in you."

Most of what we know about the British-born Lioba comes from her hagiography written by the monk Rudolf of Fulda almost 60 years after her death. Like other hagiographies, Lioba’s story includes dreams and miracles, with parallels to biblical characters and events, the accuracy of which I will leave to the reader to decide.

“In appearance she was angelic,” Rudolf wrote, “in word pleasant, dear in mind, great in prudence, Catholic in faith, most patient in hope, universal in her charity. … No one ever heard a bad word from her lips; the sun never went down upon her anger. … So great was her zeal for reading that she discontinued it only for prayer or for the refreshment of her body with food or sleep: the Scriptures were never out of her hands.”

Childhood in the Church

Like Boniface, Lioba (also spelled Leoba) was born in the Saxon kingdom of Wessex. Her parents, Dynne and Aebbe, had given up on having a child, but then Aebbe dreamed that she bore a church bell in her bosom, which rang out merrily when withdrawn. A nurse told Aebbe that she was going to have a daughter and she must dedicate the child to the Church the way Anna offered Samuel to the temple.

Aebbe handed her daughter over to the care of Mother Tetta, abbess of Wimbourne and future saint who believed in the power of mercy and prayer. Wimbourne was a double monastery where men and women did not mix. Women who entered stayed for life unless there was a greater cause.

Growing up, Lioba proved to be serious and pious. A dream she had of an endless purple thread from her mouth, she was told, was a sign that her wise counsel would be felt in other lands.

That dream was fulfilled when Boniface sent for Lioba, who had a reputation for being learned. Boniface was founding abbeys where the practice of Christianity had slipped, and he needed people he could trust to watch over them. Tetta was not happy to let Lioba go but felt like the need was too great for her to refuse.

Life in Francia

Lioba arrived in Bischofsheim (now called Tauberbischofsheim) around 748. She trained other nuns on the principles of monastic life and many of her disciples became abbesses themselves.

Photo by Andreas Praefcke, Lioba (right)
with Saints Walburga and Michael

But Lioba and her sisters faced their own difficulties. In a story that could have come from today’s tragic headlines, a woman discovered a murdered newborn in the river and jumped to the conclusion that one of the nuns - strangers to the area - had borne and killed the child to cover up her sin. Lioba and the nuns were horrified. After a series of prayers and processions, a vision like flames appeared around the guilty party - a crippled girl the nuns had been caring for. (Her hagiography has other miracles of her healing a very sick nun, putting out a fire, and quieting a storm.)

Lioba lived for 25 years after Boniface’s martyrdom. She was often invited to the Frankish court and well received and respected for her wisdom. She was an advisor to Pepin and his sons, Charles and Carloman (who didn‘t get along). After Carloman died, she still was in Charles’s favor and became close to Hildegard. Perhaps, she was even like a second mother to the young queen, who might have been 13 when she married in 772.

But she “detested the life at court like poison,” Rudolf wrote. And so she would return to her work, mainly mentoring nuns.

At some point, her age and failing health caught up with her. Perhaps when she was in her 60s, she must have realized she had little time left. After settling her affairs at the convents under her care, she retired to Scoranesheim. But Queen Hildegard made one final request to see her.

For the sake of her friendship with the queen, Lioba visited her but soon left. Her farewell is an intimate gesture. She kissed Hildegard on the mouth, forehead, and eyes, and called her “most precious half of my soul.”

Lioba died a few days after returning home. The monks remembered Boniface’s request but they were reluctant to break into his tomb. So she was buried nearby and moved to a different location in the church several years later. (After her hagiography was written, she was moved a few more times after that, finally resting in Petersburg Abbey in Fulda.)

Miracles continued to be attributed to Lioba after her death. One involved a man cured of his twitching. When asked what happened, he said he had a vision of an old man in a bishop’s stole accompanied by a young woman in a nun’s habit who took him by the hand, lifted him up, and presented him to the bishop to be blessed.

Sources

The Letters of Saint Boniface, p. 37-38

Medieval Sourcebook: Rudolph of Fulda: Life of Leoba

"Saint Lioba of Bischofsheim" Saints.SQPN.com. 2 April 2013. Web. 8 June 2013.

All images from Wikimedia Commons, permission granted under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.

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Kim Rendfeld is the author of two books set in Carolingian Francia: The Cross and the Dragon, published by Fireship Press, and the yet-to-be published The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar. For more about Kim and her fiction, visit kimrendfeld.com or her blog, Outtakes. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.