Two mountain-top locations have been proposed as sites of worship for Stuffo: the Staufenberg near Gießen, in Hesse; and the Stuffenberg, now Hülfensberg, in the Eichsfeld district, Thuringia. At any rate, there are over half a dozen mountains of a similar name in Hesse alone (stouf meaning something like "sharp mountain peak").[2]
The source for the latter designation comes from the 1602 Historia S. Bonifacii by Johannes Letzner, who claims that after Boniface destroyed the Donar Oak near Geismar (now in Fritzlar, Hesse) he traveled to the Stuffenberg in Eichsfeld, where the god Stuffo was worshiped by the local population. Boniface fought and defeated the god, who fell into a hole, still called "Stuffo's hole,"[3] a story retold by Johann Nepomuk Seppin Die Religion der alten Deutschen (1890).[4] Afterward, Boniface turned the pagan place of worship into a church in which he placed a priest to teach Christianity to the locals.[5] Later versions expand on the account, conflating it with popular myth about Charlemagne; Erfurt bishop Nikolaus Elgard wrote in 1575 that "der heilige Bonifatius dort ein Götzenbild, durch das ein Dämon redete mit Namen Stauff, zerstört und bei dem Berge ein Heer der Ungläubigen geschlagen habe. Darum nannte er den Berg Hülfensberg (Inde salvatus salvatoris montem vocavit)" ("there, Saint Boniface destroyed an image of a god through which a demon called Stauff spoke, and at the mountain he defeated an army of unbelievers, which is why he named the mountain Hülfensberg").[6] A nineteenth-century Eichsfeld historian, Dr. Konrad Zehrt, combines the Donar Oak and the Stuffo accounts, and locates them both on the Hülfensberg.[7]