2007/7/15, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net:
I kind of believe that breaking tribal taboos maybe involved in the death of many early missionaries, yet one needs evidence for this. I can hardly imagine a way to find it.
To be sure the early Christian times were close to soviet censorship regarding whatever data about any form of organized pagan resistance. AFAIK no pagan tribal documents have remained, either.
So what can he use for evidence? Because unless he really has some serious academic evidence... he is not reporting about anything apart from his own beliefs.
Well, his main argument is that the whole story of Boniface's murder is a christian apology (interestingly, on the same grounds I have argued that his story is wrong - if Boniface had been killed for the reasons he supposed, he would have been a full-fletched martyr rather than a half-baked one, and so the hagiographies would have embellished the story rather than hide it away).
His main evidence is http://www.friesgenootschap.nl/artikelen/bonifatius.htm, which as its main theme has the ineffectiveness of Boniface as a missionary in Friesland, but also says: "According to their own laws, as known from the Lex Frisionum, [the Frisians] were in their right to punish those who desecrate holy buildings by dead. Cutting down holy trees belonged to Boniface's missionary repertorium, but no messages about that have been told for Friesland. In this case only in general it is mentioned that he disturbed holy rites. Even if it was not through that, we can still imagine that Boniface's massive evangelisation campaign [...] would have provocated his opponents."