. The
heathens stood around, looking fiercely at him, cursing and threatening
him, and expecting to see him and his companions struck dead by the
vengeance of their gods. But when he had only just begun to attack the
oak we are told that a great wind suddenly arose, and struck it so that
it fell to the ground in four pieces. The people, seeing this, took it
for a sign from heaven, and consented to give up their old idolatry; and
Boniface turned the wood of the huge old oak to use by building a chapel
with it.

In some places Boniface found a strange mixture of heathen superstitions
with Christianity, and he did all that he could to root them out. He had
also much trouble with missionaries from Ireland, whose notions of
Christian doctrine and practice differed in some things from his; and
perhaps he did not always treat them with so much of wisdom and
gentleness as might have been wished. But after all he was right in
thinking that the sight of more than one kind of Christian religion,
different from each other and opposed to each other, must puzzle the
heathen and hinder their conversion; so that we can understand his
jealousy of those Irish missionaries, even if we cannot wholly approve
of it.

In reward of his labours and success, Boniface was made an archbishop by
Pope Gregory III. in 732; and, although at first he was not fixed in any
one place, he soon brought the German Church into such a state of order
that it seemed to be time for choosing some city as the seat of its
chief bishop, just as the chief bishop of England was settled at
Canterbury. Boniface himself wished to fix himself at Cologne; but at
that very time the bishop of Mentz got into trouble by killing a Saxon,
who, in a former war, had killed the bishop's father. Although it had
been quite a common thing in those rough days for bishops to take a part
in fighting, Boniface and his councils had made rules forbidding such
things, as unbecoming the ministers of peace; and the case of the bishop
of Mentz, coming just after those rules had been made, could not well be
passed over. The bishop, therefore, was obliged to give up his see; and
Mentz was chosen to be the place where Boniface should be fixed as
archbishop and primate of Germany, having under him five bishops, and
all the nations which had received the Gospel through his preaching.

When Boniface had grown old, he felt himself again drawn to Frisia,
where, as we have seen,[64] he had laboured in