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Biography

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Anschar (also known as Ansgar, Anskar, or Ansgarius) was a Frankish Benedictine monk, missionary, and archbishop, later honored as the Apostle of the North for his pioneering work of evangelization in Denmark and Sweden. He was born in 801 to a noble family in the region of Amiens in Picardy, then part of the Carolingian Frankish empire. His mother died during his childhood. According to the Life composed soon after his death by Rimbert, his disciple and successor, the boy experienced a vision of his mother and the Virgin Mary that turned him toward a devout life. He was entrusted to the Benedictine abbey of Corbie, a leading monastic school in northern Francia, where he was educated in Scripture and the liberal arts and made his profession as a monk. At Corbie he served as a teacher and preacher and was already known for austerity and for further visions that, Rimbert relates, prepared him for missionary labor among pagan peoples of the North.

When Corbie established a daughter monastery at Corvey in Saxony in the early 820s, Anschar was sent there to teach. In 826 the Danish king Harald Klak, then in exile, was baptized at the Frankish court, with the emperor Louis the Pious standing as godfather. Anschar and a companion named Autbert were assigned to return with Harald in order to preach in Denmark. They opened a small school and made some converts, but Harald’s hold on power failed and the mission could not be sustained. In 829 Swedish envoys asked Louis for Christian teachers. The emperor sent Anschar and the monk Witmar. They reached the trading center of Birka on Lake Mälaren, where King Björn allowed them to preach. Herigar, a prefect of the king, was baptized and built a church, forming the first recorded Christian community in Sweden. After roughly two years Anschar returned south.

In 831 a diocese was created at Hamburg to support the northern missions, and Anschar was consecrated its bishop. In 832 he went to Rome. Pope Gregory IV granted him the pallium, appointed him papal legate for the Danes, Swedes, Slavs, and other northern peoples, and confirmed Hamburg as a metropolitan see. In 845 Danish Vikings sacked Hamburg, destroying the cathedral, monastery, and library; Anschar escaped with difficulty. Hamburg’s ruin led to the union of his see with Bremen, vacant at the time; from about 847 he governed the combined archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen. From that base he rebuilt ecclesiastical life, maintained a school, founded a hospital, and became known for personal charity, including the ransom of captives. He obtained from the Danish king Horik I permission to establish a church at Hedeby (Schleswig) and later, under Horik II, a church at Ribe.

Anschar undertook a second journey to Sweden around 852. The congregation at Birka had suffered in the interval, yet King Olof and the local assembly renewed permission to preach, and a priest was stationed there. Scandinavia was not converted during his lifetime; later pagan reactions and the weakness of the mission after his death delayed a lasting Christianization until subsequent centuries. He died at Bremen on 3 February 865. Rimbert’s Vita Anskarii, written shortly thereafter, describes him as humble, reluctant to publicize miracles, and disappointed that he had not died a martyr. He was venerated as a saint from the period immediately following his death, in an age before the later formal process of papal canonization. His feast day is 3 February. He is invoked as patron of Denmark, Sweden, Scandinavia, and Hamburg.

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