BONIFACE, the name of several eminent men, particularly of nine popes. To the first of these, who was chosen pope in December 418, St Augustin dedicated his four books in answer to the two epistles of the Pelagians. Boniface II. was elected pope in October 530, and succeeded Felix IV., who had been nominated by a part of the clergy, the senate, and the people assembled in the basilica of Constantine, and whose memory he caused to be condemned. His pontificate was distinguished only for its turbulence. Boniface III. prevailed upon the emperor Phocas to consent that the title of Universal Bishop should be conferred on no other but the bishop of Rome, and that the Holy See should have the supremacy over that of Constantinople. Boniface IV. obtained from the same emperor, the Pantheon, or temple of all the gods, built by Agrippa, and converted it into a church, which he consecrated to all the martyrs and the virgin, under the name of Santa Maria della Rotonda. Boniface V. was elected pope in December 617, and died in October 625. Boniface VI. was elected pope in April 696, but died of the gout fifteen days thereafter. Boniface VII., called Franconi, has the title of antipope. He was suspected of having caused Benedict VI. to be strangled in prison in 974; and after the election of Benedict VII. he removed the treasures of the church to Constantinople. But he returned on the death of Benedict, and his successor John XIV. was disposed of in the same way as Benedict VI. This intruder died in 985. Boniface VIII., elected pope in 1294, canonized St Louis in 1297, and in 1300 appointed the jubilee to be solemnized every hundred years thereafter. Boniface IX. was elected pope on the 2d November 1389, after the death of Urban VI. and during the schism of the west. He supported Ladislaus of Hungary in his pretensions to the kingdom of Hungary, against Louis of Anjou, protected by the Avignon pope, Clement VII. Some writers have praised his chastity; the greater number have accused him of simony, of cupidity in order to enrich his family, and of exactions for the support of his government. He died on the 1st October 1404.
BONIFACE is also the name of a saint, the apostle of Germany, who, before he took that name, was called Winifrid. He was born at Kirton in Devonshire. Boniface chose to go and preach the gospel among the barbarous nations of Germany; and although created archbishop of Mayence, he soon after resigned his office, in order to go and preach in East Friesland, where he was murdered by the Pagans on the 5th of June 755. With him perished Eoban a bishop, three priests, three deacons, four monks, and forty-eight laics. Boniface, at the time of his death, was considerably above seventy years of age. The Bolandists collected the Acta Bonifaciana, containing an account of the miracles of the Saint, in the form of annals; and a collection of his Letters, in number one hundred and fifty-two, was published by Serrarius in 1605, 4to. In the Specilegium of D'Achery may be found the canons which he promulgated for regulating the conduct of his clergy; and one of his sermons has been preserved in the Thesaurus Anecdotorum Novissimus, tom. iii. part 2, published by D. Bernard Pez, at Augsburg, 1729.