St. Boniface

An English Benedictine sent by Pope Gregory II to evangelize the pagan tribes of Germania, Boniface famously felled the great Donar Oak sacred to Thor — and when no thunderbolt came, won mass conversions. He organized the Church in what is now Germany, founded the abbey of Fulda, and was killed at age 79 by a band of robbers while reading Scripture, awaiting candidates for confirmation.

Born Winfrid in Devon around 675, he was educated in Benedictine abbeys at Exeter and Nursling, where he became a gifted scholar and teacher. He left a secure monastic career in England to spend the rest of his life on the continent, baptizing tens of thousands, establishing dioceses at Salzburg, Regensburg, and Freising, and reforming the Frankish clergy at the behest of the Carolingian rulers.

When the bandits struck his camp near Dokkum in Frisia, Boniface told his companions not to resist. He held a copy of the Gospels over his head as a shield — the book, still preserved at Fulda, bears the slash marks of the swords that killed him. He is venerated as the Apostle of Germany and one of the great missionary saints of the Western Church.