St. Boniface
Patron of Germany, brewers, tailors, file cutters
Saint Boniface (c. 675–754), born Winfrid of Crediton in Devon, was the apostle of Germany. With the blessing of Pope Gregory II he crossed the Rhine, felled at Geismar the great oak sacred to Thor — and when no thunderbolt fell, the Saxons converted in waves. He organized the entire German Church into dioceses, founded the abbey of Fulda, anointed Pepin the Short as king of the Franks, and at almost eighty years old returned to the heathen Frisians of his youth. On Pentecost morning 754, at Dokkum, he and fifty-three companions were attacked by a raiding band; he died holding a book of the Gospels over his head, and the cut-marked codex is still preserved at Fulda.