Ansgar (Archbishop)

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Archbishop Ansgar statue by Engelbert Peiffer on the Trostbrücke in Hamburg

Ansgar from Bremen (* 801 , † February 3 865 in Bremen , also Anskar or Anschar ) was a monk of the Benedictine , was long regarded as Archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen and missionary bishop for Scandinavia . The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches venerate the “ Apostle of the North” as a saint , and the Evangelical and Anglican Churches also remember him. Much of the data about Ansgar that are known today comes from the biography Vita sancti Ansgari , written by his successor Rimbert .

Life

Ansgar's cross on Birka, summer 2008
Ansgar Monument in Copenhagen
Statue of Ansgar in front of the Ribe Cathedral .

Ansgar did not come from any of the great families of the empire, but was rather of simple origin. At the age of five, after his mother's death, his father gave him to the Corbie monastery as a Benedictine wafer. From 816 he taught at the monastery school himself. In 823 he was sent to the newly founded Corvey Monastery in Westphalia as head of the monastery school.

Ansgar is said to have been carried through his life by the memory of a vision he had in Corbie when he was about twenty years old . At that time a voice asked him: “Go there! You will return to me with the crown of martyrdom ”. In 826 he led a group of missionaries to Denmark on behalf of the Synod of Ingelheim . The Danish king Harald Klak , who was involved in a serious succession dispute with the descendants of King Gudfred , who was murdered in 810 , had recently been baptized with 400 followers in Mainz in the hope of receiving support from Emperor Ludwig the Pious for his claims in Denmark . This offered the church an opportunity to renew the Nordic mission that Ebo of Reims had begun in 823 . Ansgar accompanied Harald on the train north, but Harald failed and with him the missionary attempt. Ansgar's helper Autbert had to return to Corvey because of a serious illness; there he died in 829 at Easter time.

In 829 Ansgar was invited by the Swedish King Björn på Håga . The first church in Scandinavia was built in Birka , an important trading post of the Viking Age 27 km west of Stockholm . In 831 Ansgar was recalled by Emperor Ludwig the Pious . At a synod, which was probably held in Diedenhofen , the Archdiocese of Hamburg was founded and given the power to appoint further bishops and priests in the north. Ansgar was entrusted with the management of this archdiocese and ordained bishop by Drogo von Metz .

As a result, Ansgar received the title archbishop , the pallium from Pope Gregory IV , and is used as the papal legate for Scandinavia, Denmark and the Slavs. This confirmed the establishment of Hamburg as an archbishopric on the papal side, with the stipulation that the imperial chapel was responsible for the consecration of the successor bishops. The independence from a foreign metropolitan authority was emphasized, but the dependence on the imperial authority was introduced. In the Hammaburg returned founded Ansgar with the help of Louis the Pious a school and a monastery and built a three-nave, wooden Marienkirche. Ansgar resumed his activities in Schleswig under the protection of the Danish king Horik I , who had succeeded in uniting the country . But a few years later, with the death of his great patron Ludwig, he lost his center in Turholt . In 845 the Vikings looted Hammaburg, which had now developed into a small town, and the mission stations in Sweden were destroyed. Ansgar moved his bishopric to Bremen and was appointed Bishop of Bremen by Ludwig the German . There he set up hospitals, freed prisoners and campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade. Soon after Ansgar was ordained , Gauzbert , a relative of Reims Archbishop Ebo , was ordained missionary bishop by Ansgar, Ebo and a third bishop and sent to Sweden. From there he was expelled in 845 by a popular uprising. He became Bishop of Osnabrück without giving up his rights to Sweden. Ansgar performed his duties there on a representative basis. Gauzbert himself only exercised his rights by consecrating the priests for Sweden; he did not return to Sweden himself.

Ansgar resumed missionary work in Sweden in 851, initially by sending the priest Ardgar there. Its work was successful; The Danish King Horik II was also converted. He is said to have said of Ansgar: "In my life I have never seen such a noble man and in no mortal have found so much loyalty as in Ansgar."

From Bremen he continued to lead the missionary system of the northerners in the last years of his life, completed a stone church in Bremen and founded three monasteries. He died after a long illness.

Fonts and titles

Ansgar wrote a biography of Willehad and an account of the miraculous healings at Willehad's tomb. and a prayer collection called pigmenta . His own biography was written by Rimbert , his successor as Bishop of Bremen. He said of him: "He wanted to be the blind eye, the lame foot and the poor a true father."

Because of his services to the spread of Christianity in Sweden, Denmark and Schleswig, Ansgar is called the " Apostle of the North" or "Apostle of Scandinavia". Ansgar suffered so many setbacks in this missionary activity that his biographer interprets his entire life during this period as a martyrdom , although Ansgar did not end up violently. Because of his many travels, he is also called as the patron saint of travelers. His merits are also in his work for slaves and the poor.

Recent research

Diplomats today assume that Corbie Abbey was a veritable forgery workshop in the Middle Ages and that Ansgar played a major role in forgery. The deed of foundation of the establishment of the Bremen diocese and the writings on miraculous healings at Willehad's grave are explicitly assigned to him as forgery. The historian Eric Knibbs, who has taken on the detailed processing of historically verifiable facts and has drawn a new picture of the early days of north German church history, argues that Ansgar could not have founded an archbishopric at all, but that the idea of ​​the diocese of Hamburg-Bremen was first originated in the 10th century. As a result, Ansgar was not an archbishop, but initially a simple missionary, who gave Pope Nicholas I the pallium on the basis of forgeries that Ansgar himself had created and presented to him . Diplomats from the University of Bonn claim, based on Richard Drögereit's controversial research, that Ansgar was not an archbishop at all and that Hamburg was not a bishopric. If Hamburg had been a diocese at an early stage, it would have had the older rights to Bremen. In contrast, however, Henrik Janson, based on older research (Fritz Curschmann, Bernhard Schmeidler , Otto May, Wolfgang Seegrün, Theodor Schieffer ), largely rejects the forgery theories and dates the foundation of the Archdiocese of Hamburg to May 15, 834, at the same point in time since also, according to Janson, Emperor Ludwig the Pious appointed Ansgar Archbishop of Hamburg. The conclusions in Daniel Carlo Pangerl's study on the metropolitan constitution of the Carolingian Franconian Empire also speak against the forgery theories.

Afterlife

  • Ansgar is the patron saint of the historical dioceses of Bremen and Hamburg and of today's Archdiocese of Hamburg .
  • Ansgar's relics, which had been checked for authenticity under Bishop Heinrich Maria Janssen in 1982, were venerated in Hildesheim Cathedral until 2010 . The Hildesheim Ansgar relic has now been given to Hamburg's St. Mary's Cathedral as a permanent loan and is located there in the south aisle next to the vestry entrance. Under the main altar of the Catholic Church of St. Ansgar and St. Bernhard in Hamburg ( "Little Michel" ) there is a forearm reliquary of Ansgar in a glass shrine, in which Ansgar's Elle has been kept since 1865.
  • The St. Ansgarii Church in Bremen, dating from the 13th century, was badly damaged in the last war and demolished in the 1950s. At the same time, the new Ansgarii Church on the edge of the old town was inaugurated.
  • In 1930 Hamburg's youngest church at the time, the “mother church” of the five churches and parishes in Hamburg-Langenhorn , was consecrated, and it was named Ansgar Church .
  • In Hamburg, the Sankt Ansgar School, founded in 1946, is sponsored by the Catholic Church.
  • A young charismatic evangelical church in Germany, the Anskar Church , is named after him.
  • In Copenhagen there is a Catholic and a Protestant Ansgar church at the same time.
  • In Aalborg (Denmark) there is an Ansgar church in which many very old wooden model ships hang from the ceiling.
  • The St. Ansgar Hospital in Höxter is named after him.
  • Wilstedt , a small village near Bremen, has it in its coat of arms because it is mentioned in its writings.
  • The St. Ansgari Church in Lunestedt was named after him.
  • In Hage (East Frisia) the St. Ansgari Church was named after the apostle
  • Several VCP tribes have also named themselves after Ansgar .
  • The lunar crater Ansgarius was named after him.

presentation

Ansgar is represented with fur on the bishop's robe because he is an apostle of the north or surrounded by converted pagans, or with a model of a church in his hand.

Commemoration

Friedrich Wilhelm Graupenstein (1828–1897): "Bishop Ansgar" Lithograph after a painting from the former Hamburg Cathedral , today in St. Petri, Hamburg , approx. 1865

literature

  • Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  ANSGAR (Anskar, Anscharius). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 1, Bautz, Hamm 1975. 2nd, unchanged edition Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-013-1 , Sp. 186-187.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Thorsten Fischer :  Vita Anskarii. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 32, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, ISBN 3-11-018387-0 , pp. 451-453.
  • David Fraesdorff: Ansgar - Apostle of the North (= topos pocket books. Vol. 633). Kevelaer 2009, ISBN 978-3-8367-0633-9
  • Henrik Janson: Ansgar and the early history of the Archdiocese of Hammaburg In: Rainer-Maria Weiss, Anne Klammt (Ed.): Myth Hammaburg. Archaeological discoveries at the beginnings of Hamburg (= publications of the Helms Museum, Archaeological Museum Hamburg, Stadtmuseum Harburg. Vol. 107). Archaeological Museum, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-931429-27-0 , pp. 262-279. (on-line)
  • Henrik Janson, 'Hamburg-Bremens kyrkorättsliga ställning i Norden från grundläggningen till upprättandet av Lunds kyrkoprovins', In: Kyrklig rätt och kyrklig orätt - kyrkorättsliga perspective , Martin Berntson and Anna Minara Ciardi (Eds.) Bibliothefteca theologiaeåe: 97, Skyrkoprovins 2016 , Pp. 289-306. [1]
  • Theo Kölzer: The fake "founding document" of Emperor Ludwig the Pious for Hamburg. In: Rainer-Maria Weiss, Anne Klammt (ed.): Myth Hammaburg. Archaeological discoveries at the beginnings of Hamburg (= publications of the Helms Museum, Archaeological Museum Hamburg, Stadtmuseum Harburg. Vol. 107). Archaeological Museum, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-931429-27-0 , pp. 257-261.
  • Thomas Klapheck: The holy Ansgar and the Carolingian north mission (= publications of the historical commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. Vol. 242). Hahn, Hannover 2008, ISBN 978-3-7752-6042-8 .
  • Eric Knibbs: Ansgar, Rimbert, and the forged foundations of Hamburg-Bremen. Ashgate, Farnham 2011, ISBN 978-1-4094-2882-4
  • Karl Koppmann:  Ansgar . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, pp. 480-483.
  • Otto Heinrich May:  Ansgar. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 311 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Medieval Sourcebook: Rimbert: Life of Anskar, the Apostle of the North online
  • Daniel Carlo Pangerl: The Metropolitan Constitution of the Carolingian Franconian Empire (= writings of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Vol. 63). Hahn, Hannover 2011, ISBN 3-7752-5763-2 .
  • Gerhard Theuerkauf : Ansgar . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 1 . Christians, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1364-8 , pp. 25-27 .

Web links

Commons : Ansgar  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: St. Ansgar the first Archbishop of Bremen  - sources and full texts

Remarks

  1. ↑ The date of birth is controversial. Many scholars assume 801, Thomas Klapheck: Saint Ansgar and the Carolingian Northern Mission. Hanover 2008, p. 39 f. believes he can prove that he was born in 796 or shortly before.
  2. ↑ Thomas Klapheck: Saint Ansgar and the Carolingian Northern Mission. Hannover 2008. has recently been arguing against the existence of such an early Archdiocese of Hamburg
  3. ↑ Willehad. The life of St. Willehad, Bishop of Bremen, and the description of the miracles on his grave. Introduced, translated and revised by Andreas Röpcke. Bremen 1982
  4. ↑ Plaque on the Ansgar statue by Franz Bernhard Schiller (1854) in the Church of Sankt Ansgar ( Kleiner Michel ) in Hamburg
  5. ↑ Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für Medieval Geschichte eV - Section Hessen - Prot. 256th Meeting on June 23, 2001 in the History Seminar of the University of Frankfurt, Klaus Zechiel-Eckes (Freiburg): Forgery behind monastery walls. A look into Pseudoisidor's workshop (pdf)
  6. ↑ nordkirche.de why Hamburg has lost its archbishop Ansgar
  7. ↑ Konrad Elmshäuser: Seven miraculous healings in one day. 1150 years ago: Mute people speak at the grave of Bishop Willehad in Bremen, and cripples can walk again. In: Weser-Kurier , May 22, 2010, p. 24.
  8. ↑ Eric Knibbs: Ansgar, Rimbert, and the forged foundations of Hamburg-Bremen. Ashgate, Farnham 2011, ISBN 978-1-4094-2882-4 .
  9. ^ Bavarian Academy of Sciences
  10. ↑ Richard Dröge riding: Was Ansgar Archbishop of Hamburg or Bremen? In: Yearbook of the Society for Lower Saxony Church History. Volume 70, 1972, pp. 107-132; Richard Drögereit: Ansgar. Mission Bishop, Bishop of Bremen, Mission Archbishop for Danes and Swedes. In: Yearbook of the Society for Lower Saxony Church History. Volume 73, 1975, pp. 9-45; Richard Drögereit: Archdiocese of Hamburg, Hamburg-Bremen or Archdiocese of Bremen? Studies on early Hamburg-Bremen history. In: Archives for Diplomatics. No. 21, 1975, pp. 136-230.
  11. ^ Theo Kölzer: The forged "founding document" of Emperor Ludwig the Pious for Hamburg. In: Rainer-Maria Weiss and Anne Klammt (Hrsg.): Myth Hammaburg: Archaeological discoveries to the beginnings of Hamburg. Archaeological Museum Hamburg. Hamburg 2014, pp. 257–261.
  12. ^ Fritz Curschmann: The older papal documents of the Archdiocese of Hamburg. A diplomatic inquiry. Voss, Hamburg 1909.
  13. ↑ Bernhard Schmeidler: Hamburg-Bremen and Northeast Europe from the 9th to 11th centuries: Critical studies on the Hamburg church history of Adam of Bremen, on Hamburg documents and on Nordic and Wendish history. Leipzig 1918.
  14. ^ Otto May: Regest of the Archbishops of Bremen. Volume 1. Hanover 1937.
  15. ^ Wolfgang Seegrün: The Archdiocese of Hamburg in its older papal documents. Cologne 1976.
  16. ^ Theodor Schieffer: Adnotationes to the Germania Pontificia and to the criticism of authenticity in general. First part. In: Archiv für Diplomatik 32 (1986), pp. 503-545
  17. ↑ Henrik Janson: Ansgar and the early history of the Archdiocese of Hammaburg. In: Myth Hammaburg. Archaeological discoveries from the beginnings of Hamburg. In: Rainer-Maria Weiss and Anne Klammt (eds.): Myth Hammaburg. Archaeological discoveries from the beginnings of Hamburg. Hamburg 2014, pp. 262–279. ( academia.edu ); Henrik Janson, 'Hamburg-Bremens kyrkorättsliga ställning i Norden från grundläggningen till upprättandet av Lunds kyrkoprovins', In: Kyrklig rätt och kyrklig orätt - kyrkorättsliga perspective , Martin Berntson and Anna Minara Ciardi (Eds.) Bibliothefteca theologiaeåe: 97, Skyrkoprovins 2016 , Pp. 289-306. ( academia.edu )
  18. ^ Daniel Carlo Pangerl: The Metropolitan Constitution of the Carolingian Franconian Empire. Hanover 2011, pp. 139–149.
  19. ↑ The place Westerbeverstedt, which merged with Freschluneberg to Lunestedt in 1969, was first mentioned in 860 by Archbishop Ansgar's record of the miraculous healing at the grave of Saint Willehad. see website of the Lunestedter Chronik
  20. ↑ Link to the Ansgari parish in Hage (East Friesland)
  21. ↑ The Ansgar VCP tribe in Dauborn (Taunus) and the Ansgar VCP tribe in Kiel refer in their names to Ansgar, the archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen.
  22. ↑ Invitation to the Ansgar Vespers on February 3, 2018 ( Memento from January 30, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
predecessor Office successor
Leuderich Bishop of Bremen
845–865 		Rimbert
--- Archbishop of Hamburg
831–865 		Rimbert
personal data
SURNAME Ansgar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ansgar from Bremen; Anskar of Bremen; Ansharius; Apostles of the north
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Benedictine monk and archbishop for Scandinavia
DATE OF BIRTH 801
DATE OF DEATH February 3, 865
Place of death Bremen