Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Many monks from the British Isles preferred to take on a more active role, traveling to pagan Europe, where they founded monasteries and set about converting the pagan population. A contemporary of Bede's, Boniface may have been one of the Christian church's most successful missionaries. He was born in Devon, England, in about 675, and commissioned by the pope for missionary work in pagan Germany. From his base in the Low Countries, he founded bishoprics in Hesse, Thuringia, and Bavaria. He eventually became archbishop of Mainz, which gave him authority over the church throughout Germany." [DK Timelines, p. 132] Boniface returned to the continent the next year and went straight to Rome, where Pope Gregory II renamed him "Boniface", after the (legendary) fourth-century martyr Boniface of Tarsus, and appointed him missionary bishop for Germania—he became a bishop without a diocese for an area that lacked any church organization. He would never return to England, though he remained in correspondence with his countrymen and kinfolk throughout his life." [Wikipedia]