Reorganization of the Church under Charles Martel
and Pepin the Short. The Merovingian age had seen the
Church almost completely secularized and religious life
degraded and neglected. Too often the highest positions
in the Church were held by men who were wholly un-
suited for them--even by laymen, who were usually
chosen from the court circle and consecrated without any
religious preparation. Charles Martel may have desired to
institute reforms in his Frankish territories, but he was
so fully absorbed in his wars that he could not give any
major part of his attention to it. Indeed, he contributed in
some measure to the further decline of the Frankish
Church when he sequestrated Church lands, thus depriv-
ing it of much needed revenues, bestowing them on the
magnates to enable them to provide him with cavalrymen
for his wars. Charles, however, did give some support to
missionary enterprise among the pagans, especially to the
work of St. Boniface.

This remarkable man, an English priest born in Wessex
about 675 and baptized under the name of Winfred, was
both a missionary to the pagans and a great Church re-
former. He had studied under the famous scholar Aldhelm
and taught in an English monastery (Nursling, near South-
ampton) until he was forty years of age. Only then did
he move out into the world and undertake the prodigious
labors on behalf of the Church which earned him the title
of "Apostle of Germany" and the position of archbishop
and papal legate in Frankland.

The great impetus toward the reawakening of religious
life in Gaul and Germany had come from the monasteries
of Ireland with the arrival of St. Columban and his com-
panions on the continent of Europe about 585. This prom-
ising missionary work was continued by an Englishman,

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