ABSTRACT
It is possible that it was Boniface who anointed Pippin king in 751/2. 1 Certainly he had played an increasingly important part in the Frankish Church during the 740s. As the Carolingians established their control over the kingdom, and were able to depose such ecclesiastical families as that of Savaric of Auxerre, and also to reduce their own dependence on clerics like Milo of Trier and Gewilib of Mainz, so too were they increasingly able to patronize ecclesiastical reform. In 742, the year after Charles Martel's death, Carloman supported the so-called Concilium Germanicum. 2 A year later an Austrasian synod was held at Estinnes, 3 and Pippin summoned its western counterpart to Soissons in 744. 4 The three synods dealt with clerical standards and provision, calling for annual councils; they subjected monks to the Rule of St Benedict, and they dealt with the surviving remnants of paganism. Two further councils were certainly held, in 745 and 747. 5 At the former it seems that Gewilib was deposed. As a result Boniface, who had been an archbishop without a see since 732, was given the diocese of Mainz. 6 The reform of the late Merovingian Church was well under way, and its future assured. Already, in 742, Chrodegang, who was to some extent a pupil of Boniface, had been appointed bishop of Metz. 7 In 754, the year of Boniface's martyrdom, Chrodegang was elevated to the archiepiscopate; 8 he was to be the dominant force in the continuation of ecclesiastical reform during Pippin's reign.
