Boniface
Boniface names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Boniface bone-fass (680-755)
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
bone-fass (680-755), "the apostle of Germany." He was born in Devonshire, England, and was known at first as Winfrid. He threw himself into a movement for the conversion of the pagan Germans to Christianity. He traveled extensively, preaching, converting, and turning pagan temples into Christian chapels. He founded churches in Bavaria, Thuringia, Hesse, Saxony, and Friesland. Pope Gregory made him archbishop of all Germany. One means of holding the country for Christianity was the establishment of monasteries and convents, which he filled with monks and nuns from England and Ireland, on the same principle that Hull House has been established in Chicago. In 732 Gregory III made him archbishop of Germany. At the end, Boniface was preaching the gospel in Friesland and was set upon by a heathen mob there. He and his congregation of converts were killed. His bones were buried at the Abbey of Fulda, the most famous of his foundations, where relics of the venerable archbishop are yet to be seen. The most striking incidents in his life are connected with the destruction of an oak at Geismar sacred to Thor and an idol named Stuffo on a summit of the Harz, still called by the name. A number of popes have taken the name of Boniface. The term is akin to benefactor and means well doing.
Boniface ST., a saint of the Roman calendar
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ST., a saint of the Roman calendar, and a native of England, who was sent by Gregory II. to convert the Germans. Gregory III. made him an archbishop. Born in Devonshire in 680; slain by some peasants in Friesland, in 755. His letters were printed in 1616.
Boniface the name of a landlord in an old English play
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the name of a landlord in an old English play, whence the frequent use of boniface in the sense of an innkeeper. Boniface was in league with highwaymen. His inn was famous for good ale.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The outline Aiton's gave in 1910 still stands: Winfrid of Devon, the Geismar oak, the archbishopric under Gregory III, the murder in Frisia, the tomb at Fulda. Scholars now settle on 754 rather than the 755 both Aiton's and Collier's print, and they read his mission less as lone heroism than as a joint enterprise with the rising Frankish house of Pippin, who needed a reorganised church as much as Rome did. Fulda still displays the Ragyndrudis Codex, the book tradition says he raised against his attackers' blades, and his tomb drew large crowds at the 1,250th anniversary of his death in 2004. What has dated is the prose around the facts: Aiton's comparison of his monasteries to Chicago's Hull House, and the second entry's confident gloss of "boniface" as everyday slang for an innkeeper, a usage taken from Farquhar's stage landlord that has now almost vanished from speech.
Written for this edition, 2026.