Willibrord struggled to establish a functional church in Frisia, even collaborating with the young St. Boniface for several years. When the pagan king Radbod seized power, however, he destroyed almost all of the churches Willibrord had built, replacing them with pagan shrines and killing any missionary he could lay hands on. Patiently, Willibrord returned and rebuilt the devastated churches once the Frankish king could guarantee his safety.
Though well trained as a scholar, the only confirmed writing we have from Willibrord is a note in the margin of a calendar, where he scribbled the date of his arrival in Frisia. Thankfully, St. Alcuin of York, Willibrord’s blood relative and the greatest scholar of his day, wrote a biography to record Willibrord’s legacy for later generations.
The Beginnings of the Dutch Mission
St. Alcuin’s biography of his relative St. Willibrord shows how the monastic schools of England could become breeding grounds for future missionaries. We also see, in these selections, how French military power served as a necessary support for European missions.
By the age of thirty-three [Willibrord’s] religious fervor had reached such a pitch of intensity that he decided it was not worthwhile to continue to increase his own holiness, unless he could also preach the Gospel to others and increase their holiness as well. He had heard that in the northern regions of the world “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (Lk 10:2). Therefore, in fulfillment of his mother’s dream, Willibrord, knowing only of his own decision, and not of God’s preordination, decided to sail for these parts, so that if God willed it he would bring the light of the Gospel message to those whose unbelief had not been stirred by its warmth.
So he departed on a ship, taking eleven others who shared his enthusiasm for the faith. Some of these companions gained a martyr’s crown through their constant preaching of the Gospel; others later became bishops and have since died in peace, after their labors in the holy work in preaching.
Thus the man of God and his brothers, as we have said, set sail, and after a successful crossing they moored their ships at the mouth of the Rhine River. Then, after resting, they set out for the castle of Utrecht, which lies on the bank of that river, and where some years later, after God had increased the faith of the people, Willibrord built his cathedral church.
But the Frisian people, and Radbod their king, still preferred their pagan practices. So Willibrord set out for France instead and met with its king, Pepin, a man of immense energy, military success and high moral character. Pepin received him respectfully, and not wanting to lose the services of so great a scholar, he invited him to preach within his own kingdom, to uproot idolatry and to teach the newly converted.
The Pope Ordains and Commissions Willibrord
The English Church, founded by the Roman missionary St. Augustine of Canterbury, possessed a strong loyalty to the papacy. It is no surprise, then, that missionaries from England often stopped by Rome for authorization and a blessing from the pope.
After a time, the man of God had carefully visited several places and carried out the task of evangelization, and the seed of life, watered by the dews of heavenly grace, had born great fruit in the hearts of many souls. Then the king of the Franks, pleased with Willibrord’s burning zeal and the extraordinary growth of the Christian faith, which he sought to expand even further, decided to send him to Rome to be ordained a bishop by Pope Sergius, one of the holiest men of that time. In this way, having the apostolic blessing and papal mandate, he would return to preach the Gospel with even greater confidence and vigor….
The pope, warned in advance by a heavenly dream, welcomed Willibrord with great joy and showed him every courtesy. For he saw in Willibrord a sincere faith, a religious devotion, and a profound wisdom. Therefore, he appointed a day for the ordination when all the people could assemble together.
He invited holy priests to take part in the ceremony, and in accordance with apostolic tradition and with great reverence, he publicly ordained him archbishop in the church of St. Peter, prince of the apostles. At the same time he renamed him “Clement” … and whatever he asked for (relics of saints, liturgical vessels, etc.) the pope gave him without hesitation, so that he was sent back to preach the Gospel loaded with gifts and strengthened with the apostolic blessing.
Willibrord Desecrates a Pagan Shrine
Like his protégé, St. Boniface, St. Willibrord had little patience for the pagan superstitions of the German natives. His dismissive treatment of pagan shrines did much, however, to impress the inhabitants, who expected their gods to punish such violators of shrines.
Now while this energetic preacher of God’s Word was continuing his journey he came to a certain island on the Frisian-Danish boundary, which the natives had named Fositeland after a god named Fosite, whom they worshiped and whose temples stood there. The pagans held that place in great awe, so that none of the natives would venture to touch the cattle that fed there, and would only draw water from the spring that bubbled up there in complete silence.
Willibrord was driven ashore on that island by a storm, and had to wait for some days until the wind died down and fair weather made it possible to set sail again. He cared nothing for the superstitious “sacredness” of that spot, or for the savage cruelty of the king, who was said to condemn to the most cruel death those who violated those sacred objects. Instead, Willibrord used the water from the sacred springs to baptize three people in the name of the Blessed Trinity and slaughtered several of the cattle as food for his companions.
When the pagans saw this they expected the strangers to become mad or be struck with sudden death. But they were astounded and terror-stricken when they saw that Willibrord and his companions suffered no harm at all.
St. Boniface (d. 754)
That St. Boniface was hacked to death by a mob of frenzied pagans while preparing for a confirmation service probably surprised no one. As a man of determination, with an iron will, tact and diplomacy had not exactly been his strong suit. Once, when pagan villagers would not stop worshiping an oak tree believed to be sacred to Thor, Boniface snatched up an axe and chopped it down. When he was not (as the villagers had expected) struck by Thor’s lightning, they agreed to convert, but such tactics were not likely to make him many friends.
Boniface, named Winfrid by his parents, was born among the Saxon tribes in England who had been so patiently won for the Church by the efforts of St. Augustine of Canterbury. Sometime after joining a Benedictine monastery over the objections of his parents, he turned down election as its abbot, departing for mainland Germany to preach the Gospel to his kinfolk there, never to return to his native land again. He worked under the tutelage of the elderly missionary St. Willibrord for some years in the forests of the German interior and took up that saint’s mantle upon the latter’s death.
Like most great missionaries, however, Winfrid knew he needed support. St. Augustine of Canterbury had impressed on the English a strong devotion to the papacy, and of his own initiative Winfrid traveled to Rome and sought the pope’s blessing and commission for his missionary endeavors. (It was the pope who, apparently impressed with this missionary’s eagerness, renamed him Boniface, from bonum facere, “to do good.”)
The pope encouraged him to secure the military protection of the French, whose armies could guarantee his safety among the savage German tribes, and it was probably Boniface’s close collaboration with both Rome and the French kings that set the stage for the later alliance which would emerge in the age of Charlemagne.
Boniface worked patiently in the German hinterlands, building church structures from the ground up, establishing monasteries, seminaries, and bishoprics while presiding over Church synods to enforce strict moral standards on local clergy. Boniface’s pattern of convincing entire tribes to convert, often through extraordinary acts like the felling of the sacred oak, and then leaving until later the work of catechesis and Christian instruction, meant that the Christian religion in mainland Europe was often only superficial, with paganism and barbarism lurking just below the surface.
Yet Boniface,