One of the most famous pagan holy sites in what is now Germany during the early Medieval age was a sacred grove in the region of Hesse in which stood a very large and majestic oak tree. A contemporary account calls it ‘a certain oak of extraordinary size called in the old tongue of the pagans the Oak of Jupiter.’ And this oak was more famously known as ‘the Tree of Thor’ and was dedicated to the Germanic god by the local pagan Saxons in Hesse. But in the year 723CE, the tree and the sacred grove came to a dramatic end. That year a large group of Christians were assembled by a bishop called Boniface – later Saint Boniface – who was bent on converting the Saxons of that area and eliminating their pagan practices and customs. He led the group to the grove and cut down the large oak and completely destroyed the sacred grove. Not content with destroying the tree he added insult to injury by making a church from the huge amount of wood that had been felled from the tree and the sacred grove. This was one of the most important events in post-Roman and early medieval German religious history so let’s take a closer look into this incident and see exactly what had happened.
Pagan reluctance to convert to Christianity
An interesting story survives from the early medieval period about a pagan Saxon Chief of the 8th Century being preached to by a Christian missionary priest and being asked to convert to Christianity. The pagan listened for a while and then asked the monk who he would be living with in the Christian heaven – if he became a Christian. Would he meet his father? his grandfather? his ancestors? perhaps some great Germanic warriors of yesteryear he could embrace and share heroic stories with? Or would be only meet Christians like the monks dressed in sack cloth before him. The monk gave him a pretty straightforward answer. He said he would never meet his ancestors in heaven because they were unbelievers and therefore had already been consigned to hell. But he would off-course meet him again and plenty of other Christians like himself for only Christians could enter paradise. To which the Saxon Chief answered he would rather embrace his ancestors in hell than be locked up for eternity in heaven with Christians like this monk. It’s an interesting anecdote but perhaps more importantly it pretty much encapsulated the disinterest most pagan Germans might have had in those days on the overly simplistic meaning of life that Christianity offered.
The sacred groves
The pagan Saxons believed in the Germanic gods like Odin, Thor and Freya just like all the tribes north of the old Roman borders. These deities were well known even during Roman times. The famous Roman historian Tacitus for instance links Thor with Hercules while other Greeks and Romans connected him with Jupiter. Pagan beliefs were a lot closer and in tune with nature as opposed to the Christian habit of constructing and praying in stone churches. They venerated the gods through nature itself with the creation of sacred groves and trees dedicated to these gods where prayers ands offerings could be made. Trees were special objects of veneration. They believed in fact that an Ash tree callee Yggdrasil was the centre of the world and that the Gods held their assemblies next to this giant tree.
And surviving medieval records tell us there were a large number of very famous sacred trees and groves that had been established through Germanic lands but all of these were razed to the ground by the various Christian rulers and armies that annexed these areas. One famous one was named the ‘pillar of Irminsul’ situated in the Teutoburg Forest close to the River Lippe north of Hesse. The tree and grove was destroyed by Charlemagne and his army in the year 772CE. The grove included a temple or sanctuary and the offerings of gold and silver and other items were ransacked by the Franks. A church was built on its location by the Franks and blessed by Pope Leo the third. Another famous sacred grove we have historic accounts of was situated near Dublin and was called Caill Tomair meaning ‘Thor’s Grove’ in old Irish. The grove was destroyed by a Christian army under High King of Ireland Brian Boru early in the year 1000 AD. And of course perhaps the most famous sacred tree and Pagan temple was situated at Upsala in Sweden, the most holy place of Swedish paganism. And that was razed to the ground by the Christian King Inge the Elder c. 1080. But the Tree of Thor in Hesse was arguably the first and most famous example of a sacred grove and tree being razed to the ground and perhaps set an example of the other later acts.
The Frankish (Christian) Empire
To the west of Hesse and across the Rhine river is what is modern day France, was the empire of the Franks, another Germanic tribe. The Franks had begun moving into Roman Gaul after the the Roman Empire fell and expanded their power over almost the entire region by the 7th Century. The big difference, the salient point about the Franks and Saxons, was that the Franks were solidly Christian while the Saxons were pagan. The Franks had converted to Christianity two hundred years earlier in the late 5th Century. That was when, in 496CE, their King, Clovis, had been converted and baptised and the entire tribe had been ordered to follow suit. And so two hundred years later all traces of paganism had been pretty much extinguished and the Franks had now become almost fanatic supporters of Christianity. And the Franks and their Kings looked down upon the Saxons to the east with contempt and showed considerable zeal and intolerance in their ambition to convert the pagans across the Rhine.
Frankish military power was also gradually increasing at this time with the Franks beginning to expand further eastwards. And this expansion meant that areas like Hesse and Thuringia and Bavaria in what is now central and southern Germany were either annexed or made to pay tribute. And the northern portion of German territory – Saxony – would also come under threat very soon. And in fact the Franks were also expanding northwards as well into Frisia – essentially the Northern sections of what is the Netherlands now along with north-western stretches of Germany. This was still another solidly pagan area. What this military expansion also meant was that by the end of the 7th and early 8th century, Christian missionary efforts were increasingly turning northwards as well as towards Saxony and Hesse and Bavaria. Charles Martel who was effectively King of the Franks at this time made strong moves to convert the Saxons and to facilitate this he made the situation in his territory favourable to Christian missionaries giving full protection to these people. And in the area of Hesse the pagan Saxons by the late 7th century were now being pressed into converting to Christianity with the opening of churches and the installation of Frankish garrisons in the area.
Missionaries and the use of force
So there were two means to convert the pagan Saxons. It could be done either by persuasion or if that failed by force and coercion at the point of the sword. Regarding the use of persuasion, by the late 7th and early 8th centuries there had been some missionaries scouting or already working across the Rhine river in Hesse for example. One was a chap called Frank Kunibert of Cologne and another was an Irishman called Kilian of Wurzburg. These two bishops had been working in the area between the Rhine and Thuringia – essentially the middle portion of Germany and had been having some limited success. In fact a small church had been constructed at Buraburg close to the hilltop fortress of the town. And this was exactly opposite to Geismar where the famous sacred grove and tree of Thor was situated. This aggressive evangelisation meant some of the Hessians at least had converted to Christianity already but most it seems were resolutely pagan and not interested in changing their ways.
But if persuasion didn’t work the second method -force – could be used. And this method was used extensively as the decades passed and especially when Charlemagne became the ruler of the Franks.
…He preached with an iron tongue the sword in order to open up for us Saxons the gates of faith.
A 9th century Saxon is recorded to have said the following on Charlemagne the biggest and most aggressive sponsor of the conversion of pagans. Charlemagne would in fact become infamous for the massacre of around 4,500 Saxon warriors at Verdun in Saxony in the year 782CE when they refused to convert to Christianity.
The life of Boniface
So let’s get into it. Who was responsible for cutting down the sacred grove and tree of Thor in Hesse? Well, it happened to be a fifty year old Anglo-Saxon bishop called Boniface with a high level of religious zeal and fervour. The only major biography we have of Boniface’s life written close to this period and specifically of this particular incident is from a disciple of his called Willibald so we are pretty much reliant on a single source for the details of the story. Willibald wrote an account of what happened in his work called Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldi or ‘The Life of Saint Boniface’ six years after Boniface’s death in 760CE. But it has to be remembered this was a hagiography of Boniface and hagiographies being what they are tend to magnify the achievements of the ‘saint’ and with no doubt a healthy dose of miracles added in order to sell the product. But having said that it’s an important account having being written by a contemporary and close to that period of the time.
Boniface was born in 672CE into a fairly well off family with good land holdings in Wessex in England. England hadn’t been Christianised for that long a period at this time – less than a hundred years – if we exclude earlier Roman Christianity which had pretty much disappeared in any case. Early missionaries like St Augustine, for example, had arrived only in the year 597CE and begun pushing their beliefs on the local pagans with fairly mixed results. But by Boniface’s time all traces of pagan worship were being essentially stamped out pretty vigorously by the church.
Boniface’s original name was actually the much more Anglo-Saxon sounding Wynfrith. His father had sent him at the early age of seven to a monastery which basically set him on his career in the church. And he was ordained as a priest at the age of thirty. His missionary career began in 716 AD at the age of forty-four when he decided to go to Frisia – and that’s the area which modern Holland and northern-western Germany currently occupy.
Frisia was at the time was being targeted by Willibrord, another Anglo-Saxon missionary and his band of sidekicks. The area had been opened to Christian missionaries when Pepin (who was the the father of more famous Charles Martel) became the de facto ruler of the Franks. Pepin had put pressure on the pagan King Roadbed the ruler of Frisia to open up his territory to these people. But Pippin had died in 714 and Roadbed, a committed pagan, had destroyed the local churches that had been constructed by the missionaries and had rebuilt the pagan shrines that the missionaries had ordered to be razed to the ground. So the situation was too dangerous as far as Wynfrith was concerned – he didn’t want to be killed – and he returned to England till the situation changed.
In 718, two years later he decided to go as a missionary to Thuringia instead which was the German territory on the borders of the Frankish empire . But he soon learnt the situation in Frisia had changed – that the pagan King Roadbed had died – so he went back to his original plan and worked for three years under Willbrord trying to convert the Frisians to Christianity. A year later in 719CE he returned to Germany again. The pope at the time, Gregory the second, had given Wynfrith a new name – Boniface – and encouraged him to renew his mission to convert the pagans of Germany.
…in the name of the indivisible Trinity and by the authority of Saint Peter … we now decree that you go forth to preach the Word of God to those people who are still bound by the shackles of paganism. You are to teach them the service of the kingdom of God by persuading them to accept the truth in the name of Christ, the Lord our God. You will instill into their minds the teaching of the Old and New Testaments, doing this in a spirit of love and moderation, and with arguments suited to their understanding. – Pope Gregory II
Given this remit Boniface first went to Thuringia before returning to Frisia to continue his missionary work there. And he would stay there for around two years before travelling to Hesse in 721.
So why did he go to Hesse? Well Boniface like most Anglo-Saxons in England felt some sort of bond towards their fellow Saxons on the continent. It has to be remembered the Anglo-Saxons who had crossed into England from the continent had done so only around two hundred years earlier. and Boniface himself in one of his letters refers to this brotherhood that still existed between the two Saxon contingents divided by the Frankish Kingdom and the English Channel. Therefore it was imperative in his mind to convert them to Christianity. How could the Saxons on the continent – his own cousins – still be pagans he felt. And in one of his letters he described his motives for his mission.
We beg you to be instant in prayer that God and our Lord Jesus Christ … may convert the hearts of the pagan Saxons to the faith. … Remember them, because they themselves are accustomed to say: “we are of one blood and one bone.” – Boniface 738CE Letter to his English supporters.
So around 721CE he headed off to Hesse where he had some limited success for a year or two. He had set himself up at Amoneburg which at this time was at the very edge of Frankish controlled territory. And here he managed to convert some of the local pagan rulers, the idea being the local population would automatically follow suit once their leader had converted. And this was a popular technique with Christian missionaries – if the the tribal chief could be converted then it was a lot easier to convert the tribe itself en masse to Christianity. So the chieftain was given special attention. Later in 722 he went to Rome for the second time. At Rome he very importantly received a letter of commendation from the pope to be delivered to Charles Martel asking him…
to help Boniface in all his needs and to grant him your constant protection against any who may stand in his way.
So the Pope recognised more aggressive tactics had to be used and that people like Boniface would require the backing of the Frankish army. And this is where it really gets interesting as to how focussed the pagans were in bowing and scraping to a jewish messiah born in far away Palestine. Many of the pagans had it seems only a nominal interest and had by the time Boniface got back simply apostatised and gone back to their pagan beliefs rejecting Christianity. His biographer describes the situation…
Now many of the Hessians who at that time had acknowledged the Catholic faith were confirmed by the grace of the Holy Spirit and received the laying-on of hands. But others, not yet strong in the spirit, refused to accept the pure teachings of the church in their entirety. Moreover, some continued secretly, others openly, to offer sacrifices to trees and springs, to inspect the entrails of victims; some practiced divination, legerdemain, and incantations; some turned their attention to auguries, auspices, and other sacrificial rites; while others, of a more reasonable character, forsook all the profane practices of the Gentiles i.e., pagans and committed none of these crimes. – Willibald, Life of Boniface
So Boniface found that much of his missionary work was completely undone by his absence. And this annoyed him sufficiently to take the gloves off against the pagans. He organised a council with his remaining converts and came to the decision that he had to force the issue one way or the other and prove to the pagans that his god was more powerful than Thor and the other German deities. So he travelled to see Charles Martel in spring of 723CE and showed him the letter from the pope. Martel in turn wrote a letter promising to protect him from danger as he went about his mission and which he could show to local dignitaries and garrisons.
Be it known… that wheresoever he Boniface may choose to go, he is to be left in peace and protected as a man under our guardianship and protection.
And with this protection from the powerful Frankish King, Boniface knew he would have no difficulty in aggressive action. He would obviously have known of the most important and famous pagan centre of worship in Hesse at the time. And that was the sacred pagan grove near the village called Geismar which itself was near the town of Fritzlar – and where of course the Tree of Thor was situated. Now as mentioned the area was already under the control of the Franks and the village sat opposite the massive fortress of Buraburg which was occupied at this time by a Frankish garrison. In fact the fortress of Buraburg had been captured in 690 so have been in Frankish control for a good few years. So with the backing of Charles Martel and knowing the Frankish garrison at Buraburg would protect him, he decided to take a more violent approach and perhaps manufacture a dramatic confrontation with the local pagans – designed to show them the Christian god was stronger than Thor and the other German gods.
Destroying the tree of Thor
Unusually Boniface had declared up front to the pagans that he would destroy the large oak tree. From the account by Willbord we are told a large crowd of pagans had turned up to watch and many could seen cursing Boniface and his supporters as they approached the tree.
With the counsel and advice of the latter persons, Boniface in their presence at tempted to cut down, at a place called Gaesmere, a certain oak of extraordinary size called in the old tongue of the pagans the Oak of Jupiter. Taking his courage in his hands (for a great crowd a of pagans stood by watching and bitterly cursing in their hearts the enemy of the gods), he cut the first notch. – Willibald, Life of Boniface
And this is where you begin to get the miraculous being inserted into the narrative from Willibold, his disciple. Boniface stripped to the waist, took an axe, and chopped the tree down.
But when he had made a superficial cut, suddenly the oak’s vast bulk, shaken by a mighty blast of wind from above, crashed to the ground shivering its topmost branches into fragments in its fall. As if by the express will of God (for the brethren present had done nothing to cause it) the oak burst asunder into four parts, each part having a trunk of equal length. – Willibald, Life of Boniface
Then to make sure the importance of the grove and the remnants of the tree did not continue, presumably in case the pagans continued to worship at the site Boniface had the considerable wood from the tree cut up and used to make an Oratory dedicated to St Peter in the nearby city of Fritzlar.
Thereupon the holy bishop took counsel with the brethren, built an oratory from the timber of the oak and dedicated it to Saint Peter the Apostle. – Willibald, Life of Boniface
The pagans convert en masse
When the tree was cut down, the pagans saw the god Thor had not struck Boniface dead with a lightning bolt. In his story he tells of hundreds of watching pagans then decided to convert after seeing Thor unable to stop this priest from damaging his tree. Surely this was a sign that Christianity was the true religion.
Willibald writes that…
…at the sight of this extraordinary spectacle the heathens who had been cursing ceased to revile and began, on the contrary, to believe and bless the Lord. – Willibald, Life of Boniface
Now this was no doubt a great exaggeration as the Franks would have to work hard to convert the Germans especially during Charlemagne’s time. Simply destroying sacred groves didn’t by magic convert the people. However Willibord presumably added some artistic licence into the story. However the story quickly became a Christian legend with the mass conversion or alleged mass conversion of the pagans of that area. And Boniface was later made into a saint – and in fact became the ‘Apostle of Germany’ for beginning the conversion of the people whether by dubious and forceful means or not.
The reticence of the pagans to wage war
So the question that comes immediately to mind is why the pagan Saxons didn’t do anything to stop Boniface? Well the main reason was that Hesse was already under the control of the Franks. And the felling of the tree happened almost under the gaze of the Frankish army garrison stationed at the nearby fortress and this would explain the reticence of the pagans to show any violence and protect the shrine. To attempt to defend the sacred grove would have triggered off a strong response from the garrison and perhaps even a war with Charles Martel. So this would explain why the pagans were limited to showing defiance by muttering words of contempt and insults at the Bishop and his band. But this wasn’t always the case elsewhere. In many places in Germany the pagans put up a good fight in the face of Frankish expansion. And Charlemagne later would fight many battles against the pagans Saxons before they were subdued and converted.
The end of Boniface
Boniface didn’t have a happy ending and would meet a violent end himself although this wasn’t in Hesse. He was made Bishop of Mainz later but had decided travel back to Frisia where he was busy in his mission to convert the Frisians. On the 5th June, 754CE Boniface somewhat ironically was cut down himself just like the oak tree but this time it was by a sword. He was attacked by a pagan band angry at his actions at destroying pagan holy places and he along with fifty-two men of his band were massacred. And that was the end of the apostle of Germany.
The site now
So what is the situation at the site today? Well we don’t really know the exact location where the tree of Thor was at Geismar. And the church that Boniface had built and constructed from the oak tree is obviously long gone. But you can visit the remains of the fortress of Buraburg. There are still remnants of this structure on the opposite bank of the river to Geismar. And of course you can visit the town of Geismar as well – and I notice from Google maps that the Main Street of the town is named Bonifatiusstrabe in memory of the man. You can also visit the site of Saint Peter’s Cathedral in nearby Fritzlar, where you’ll find a modern statue showing Boniface on an oak stump summing up his action.
Summing up
So summing up, for this gross show of intolerance towards pagan worship, Boniface was elevated to sainthood – a tacit acceptance really from the church for the use of strong-arm methods and that the end justified the means. I must admit I always find it a little odd how intolerance was actually seen as a virtue in Christian saints of old in their war against the pagans. Surely that’s the opposite of saintliness and the live and let live approach to life that you would expect in a holy person. But paganism was looked down on heavily and were seen as fair game. One last point the feast of St. Boniface is held on the 5th of June so I think that’s a pretty good anniversary to remember the great Tree of Thor as well. This majestic oak and the ceremonies the locals must have held in front of it must have been quite a sight.
