Saint Ansgar

Saint Ansgar (born probably 801, near Corbie, Austrasia [France]—died Feb. 3, 865, Bremen, Saxony [Germany]; canonized 865; feast day February 3) was a missionary of medieval Europe, the first archbishop of Hamburg, and the patron saint of Scandinavia.

Of noble birth, Ansgar entered the Benedictine abbey of Corbie in Picardy, where he was educated. After 823 he taught in the monastic school at Corvey (“New Corbie”), Westphalia, where he also began his pastoral work. When Harald, an exiled Danish king, appealed to the Carolingian emperor Louis I the Pious for support, Louis dispatched Ansgar to accompany and assist the king in evangelizing Denmark. Ansgar in 826 began short-lived missionary work in Schleswig. Harald’s downfall in 827 and the death of his assistant, Autbert, were blows to the mission, and in 829 Ansgar returned to the Franks. With the help of Witmar, a monk from Corvey, Ansgar began his evangelization of Sweden. The first to preach the gospel in Sweden, he was cordially received by King Björn.

Louis recalled Ansgar in 831, making him abbot of Corvey and bishop of the newly established diocese of Hamburg. Consecrated in 832, he initiated a mission to all the Scandinavian peoples and went to Rome, where Pope Gregory IV made him archbishop and papal legate to the Scandinavians and Slavs, thereby earning him the title of “the Apostle of the North.” At Hamburg, Ansgar founded a monastery and a school, and in 834 Louis endowed him with Turholt Abbey, to be used as the centre of his activities.

When Denmark had become united under King Haarik (Horec) I, he allowed the revival of Ansgar’s work in Schleswig. Ansgar lost Turholt after Louis I’s death (840); and in 845 Northmen destroyed Hamburg, and the Swedish missions were extinguished by the expulsion of Bishop Gautbert. Returning to paganism, Sweden and Denmark rejected Christianity.

In 847 Louis the German, king of the East Franks, made Ansgar bishop of Bremen, from where he revived and redirected his northern evangelization. He dispatched a missionary to Sweden in 851 and converted the succeeding Danish king Haarik II. He then went to Sweden (853–854), where the king (himself destined for conversion) allowed the Christian missionaries to preach. Ansgar succeeded in thwarting a pagan rebellion before returning to Bremen. He was proclaimed a saint by his successor, Rembert, and Pope Nicholas I the Great approved the proclamation.