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announce the good tidings of salvation to them. These took the cross and the Gospel in their hands; and although they were exposed to the greatest dangers, they preached, with no less courage and confidence in God, the doctrine of the Saviour of the world. St. Patrick was sent by Pope Celestine, in a.d. 432, to Ireland, and labored there for many years, converting the entire country to Christianity, and establishing many episcopal sees, churches, and monasteries. This is the only instance in the history of the Church of the conversion of an entire people without a single martyrdom. St. Patrick has been deservedly styled the Apostle of Ireland, and Ireland was called the Island of Saints. In the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries Germany was also converted and civilized. St. Severinus is called the Apostle of Austria, because he converted that country to the Christian faith. He died in 482. St. Columban and St. Gall, both natives of Ireland, preached near the Lake of Constance and elsewhere in Switzerland; St. Kilian, a holy Irish monk, and St. Willibald, an English West-Saxon, in Franconia; St. Rupert and St. Corbinian, both French missionaries, in Bavaria and the surrounding countries; St. Ludger, a native of Friesland, in Westphalia; St. Anscharius, a French Benedictine monk, in Scandinavia and Lower Germany (d. 865). But the most indefatigable and successful preacher of the Gospel in Germany was St. Winfrid or Boniface, who is therefore justly called the Apostle of the Germans. He was born at Crediton, in Devonshire, about the year 680, and was a Benedictine monk at Exeter. On account of his great merits he was created Archbishop of Mentz in 732, by Pope Gregory III.; and whilst he was engaged in preaching the Gospel to the infidel inhabitants of the northern parts of Friesland he was martyred, in 755. As soon as the missionaries had got a footing in a country, they made it their first business to erect one or several monasteries. These sanc-