Gautbert

Gautbert (also rendered Gauzbert, Gauzbertus, or Gautbertus, and known in some sources by the name Simon after his episcopal consecration) was a ninth-century Frankish churchman who served as a missionary bishop among the Svear and later as bishop of Osnabrück. He was a kinsman of Ebbo (Ebo), archbishop of Reims, who had obtained from Pope Paschal I a commission for the evangelization of the Danes and other northern peoples. In the setting of the Carolingian mission to Scandinavia under Emperor Louis the Pious, and after Ansgar’s first journey to Sweden, Ebbo consecrated Gautbert as bishop for that mission in the early 830s. Gautbert then travelled to the trading settlement of Birka on Lake Mälaren.

At Birka, King Björn received the missionary party. According to Rimbert’s Vita Anskarii, the principal near-contemporary narrative, Gautbert built a church there and preached with some initial success, remaining in Sweden for a number of years. Rimbert presents this work as complementary to Ansgar’s, though the two efforts had distinct patrons (the church of Reims and the see of Hamburg). Precise dates for Gautbert’s arrival and the length of his stay are not stated in the Vita; modern historians generally place his activity in Sweden between about 832 and the mid-840s. Details of his birth, education, and early career are not preserved.

Around 845 a violent reaction against the Christians took place at Birka. Gautbert was seized and bound, his goods were plundered, and his nephew Nithard was killed. Gautbert was expelled from Sweden and did not return. The same year saw the Viking attack on Hamburg, which destroyed Ansgar’s church and library and forced a reorganization of the northern mission. After his expulsion Gautbert was given the diocese of Osnabrück in Saxony, a see organized in the wake of Charlemagne’s Saxon wars. Episcopal lists record him as bishop of Osnabrück from about 845 until his death.

Gautbert died on 11 April 860. Almost nothing is recorded of his administration of Osnabrück or of his place of burial. Later notices sometimes number him among the saints or blesseds and commemorate him on 11 April, the date given for his death, but evidence for a substantial medieval cult is limited. He is known primarily through Rimbert’s account of the Swedish mission and through the episcopal catalogues of Osnabrück.