In 738 he paid his last visit to
Rome, where he stayed nearly a year and was treated with extraordinary
respect and affection. On his return he divided Bavaria into the four
dioceses of Salzburg, Regensburg, Freising, and Passau, and later on he
founded other sees also, including Wuerzburg. It was his next aim to do
something to reform the lax morals of the Frankish Church, which had
sunk to a low ebb under the Merwings. The Austrasian Synod, which
bears in some respects a close resemblance to the almost contemporary
English Synod of Clovesho (747), of 742 dealt boldly with these
matters. Other councils followed in which Boniface took a leading
part, and which made a striking reformation. [Sidenote: His missionary
work and martyrdom.] His equally important work was to complete the
conquest of the general spirit of Western Christendom, which looked to
Rome for leadership, over the Celtic missionaries, noble missionaries
and martyrs who yet lacked the instinct of cohesion and solidarity. A
long series of letters, to the popes, to bishops, princes and persons
of importance, shows the breadth of his interests and the nature of his
activity. To "four peoples," he says, he had preached the gospel, the
Hessians, Thuringians, Franks and Bavarians, not to all for the first
time but as a reformer and one who removed heathen influences from the
Church. As Archbishop of Mainz he was untiring even in advanced age:
in politics as well as in {139} religion he was a leader of men. It
was he who anointed Pippin at Soissons in 751 and thus gave the
Church's sanction to the new Karling line. He determined to end his
days as a missionary to the heathen. In 755 he went with a band of
priests and monks once more to the wild Frisians, and at Dokkum by the
northern sea he met his death at the hands of the heathen whom he came
to win to Christ. The day, ever remembered, was June 5, 755.

Boniface was truly attached to the popes, truly respectful to the Roman
See: but he preserved his independence. His attitude towards the
secular power was precisely similar. He was a great churchman, a great
statesman, a great missionary; but his religious and political opinions
cannot be tied down to the limits of some strict theory. His was a
wide, genial nature, in things spiritual and in things temporal
genuine, sincere; a true Saint, a true Apostle. Through the lives and
sacrifices of such men it was that the Church came to exercise so
prof