6th century
A bishop known from childhood for generosity to the poor and freedom from possessiveness.
Our Father among the Saints Boniface the Merciful, Bishop of Ferentino
Boniface the Merciful was bishop of Ferentino, a town north of Rome in the region the early sources place in Tuscany, during the sixth century. He is remembered above all for a lifelong freedom from possessiveness and an open-handed charity toward the poor that the tradition traces back to his childhood. His memory is kept on December 19.
Most of what is recorded of Boniface comes from the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great, who calls him a saintly man and a true bishop in every respect and reports his deeds on the authority of the priest Gaudentius, who had been trained under Boniface and was still living when Gregory wrote. The synaxarion preserved in later Orthodox use draws on this same body of tradition, noting that his rare compassion from childhood drew rebuke from his widowed mother even as it was repaid, by tradition, a hundredfold from the Lord.
As a youth Boniface is said to have given away his own garments and a large part of his mother's grain stores to the destitute, and by tradition his prayers restored the emptied granary to fullness. The Dialogues gather several such accounts of providence answering his generosity, presenting him as a model of the merciful pastor whose trust in God outran ordinary prudence. He died peacefully in Italy in the sixth century.
In truth you were revealed to your flock as a rule of faith,
an image of humility and a teacher of abstinence;
your humility exalted you;
your poverty enriched you.
Hierarch Father Boniface,
entreat Christ our God
that our souls may be saved.
Text used with permission of the Orthodox Church in America (oca.org).
The principal source for Boniface is the first book of Gregory the Great's Dialogues, where he is treated at some length among the holy men of Italy. Gregory attributes his information to the priest Gaudentius, a disciple of Boniface who was still alive at the time of writing, which the text offers as a guarantee of the accounts. Later Orthodox synaxaria, including the entry kept on December 19, transmit the same tradition in condensed form.
Several episodes in the Dialogues illustrate Boniface's charity meeting with providential supply. When hail destroyed the only vineyard of his see, leaving very few grapes, he is said to have given thanks for the poverty, had the small harvest pressed, blessed it, and seen the wine increase until it filled all the vessels prepared for it. By tradition his prayers also restored his mother's depleted wheat after he had given much of it away.
Other accounts present him exercising authority over creatures: he is said to have adjured caterpillars infesting a garden, in the name of Jesus Christ, to depart, upon which they left; and when a fox carried off his mother's hen, his prayer is reported to have brought the fox back to return the bird before it died. The tradition presents these as signs of a life wholly given over to God's care of the poor.
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