At the height of Rome's imperial glory, she attempted for centuries to subdue the peoples beyond the Rhine.

Rome had destroyed the powerful empire of Carthage. She had subdued all of Gaul.

She had taken Greece and nearly all the lands of Alexander's domain.

But she could not subdue Germania.

Rome had made many incursions across the Rhine where German chieftains had been

made vassals, their sons, given to be hostages, and Romanized. One such was named Arminius,

who led a revolt against Rome about the same year the boy Jesus was teaching in the temple in Luke

2. Arminius educated in all the ways of Rome, particularly her military tactics, led three Roman legions into a trap in the Teotaburg forest.

Of the 20,000 Roman troops, not a single one escaped with his life.

Germania had ended Roman imperial expansion and centuries later, the Goths, would snuff out Roman imperial glory for good.

It was to these unconquerable people, an ambitious Saxon monk from the Order of St. Benedict,

Winfred, was called to preach the victory of Jesus Christ in 716.

After a pilgrimage to Rome in 718, Winfred was renamed Boniface by Pope Gregory II.

Despite the expansion of the Frankish Kingdom's domain across the Rhine, Germania remained thoroughly pagan.

If there was any acceptance of Christ, he was merely added to the pantheon of Norse gods rather than replacing them.

In short, Germania was still ruled by demons. Into this world,

Step Boniface. After preaching the gospel and slowly gaining converts among the Dramatics,

Boniface traveled to the great pagan shrine in Gaismar in Hays. There, at Donner's Oak,

the pagan priests offered sacrifices to their demon god Donner, better known to us as Thor.

It was believed that if anyone profane Thor's Oak by touching it, the demon would strike that

man down with a bolt of lightning from his hammer. Boniface reared back with his axe and took one

single swing when a powerful wind came out of the heavens and blew the tree over.

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