Introduction

The region we now know as Germany was a battleground between the Anglo-Saxon Christian Church and Germanic pagans living in the Frankish Empire. A Benedictine monk named Boniface, along with a cohort of his Christian brothers, boldly defied the pagan gods. To show the supremacy of the Christian god over the pagan idols, Boniface determined to walk after the prophet Elijah on 1 Kings 18. Sometime around the year 723 in the town of Geismar, BonifACE strode up to a great oak tree, a tree known to the locals as Thor's Oak, dedicated to the worship of the Norse god of thunder. He declared his intentions to chop down the