HE was a monk, first of Old Corbie in France, afterwards of Little
Corbie in Saxony. Harold, or Heriold, prince of Denmark, having been
baptized in the court of the emperor Louis Debonnaire, Anscarius
preached the faith with great success, first to the Danes, afterwards to
the Swedes, and lastly in the north of Germany. In 832, he was made
archbishop of Hamburg, and legate of the holy see, by pope Gregory IV.
That city was burnt by an army of Normans, in 845. The saint continued
to support his desolate churches, till, in 849, the see of Bremen
becoming vacant, pope Nicholas united it to that of Hamburg, and
appointed him bishop of both. Denmark and Sweden had relapsed into
idolatry, notwithstanding the labors of many apostolical missionaries
from New Corbie, left there by our saint. His presence soon made the
faith flourish again in Denmark, under the protection of king Horick.
But in Sweden the superstitious king Olas cast lots whether he should be
admitted or no. The saint, grieved to see the cause of God and religion
committed to the cast of a die, recommended the issue to the care of
heaven. The lot proved favorable, and the bishop converted many of the
lower rank, and established many churches there, which he left under
zealous pastors at his return to Bremen. He wore a rough hair shirt,
and, while his health permitted him, contented himself with a small
quantity of bread and water. He never undertook any thing without
recommending it first to God by earnest prayer, and had an extraordinary
talent for preaching. His charity to the poor had no bounds; he washed
their feet, and waited on them at table. He ascribed it to his sins,
that he never met with the glory of martyrdom in all that he had
suffered for the faith. To excite himself to compunction and to the
divine praise, he made a collection of pathetic sentences, some of which
he placed at the end of each psalm; several of which are found in
certain manuscript psalters, as Fleury takes notice. The learned
Fabricius, in his Latin Library of the middle ages, calls them an
illustrious monument of the piety of this holy prelate. St. Anscharius
died at Bremen in the year 865, the sixty-seventh of his age, and
thirty-fourth of his episcopal dignity; and was honored with miracles.
His name occurs in the Martyrologies soon after his death. In the German
language he is called St. Scharies, and his collegiate church of Bremen
Sant-Scharies. That at Hamburg, which bore his name, has been converted
by the Lutherans into an hospital for orphans. His name was rather
Ansgar, as it {345} is written in his own letter, and in a charter of
Louis Debonnaire. In this letter[1] he attributes all the fruits and
glory of the conversion of the Northern nations, to which he preached,
to the zeal of that emperor and of Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, without
taking the least notice of himself or his own labors. The life of St.
Willehad, first bishop of Bremen, who died in 789 or 791, compiled by
St. Anscharius, is a judicious and elegant work, and the preface a
masterpiece for that age. It is abridged and altered by Surius, but
published entire at Cologne, in 1642; and more correctly by Mabillon;
and again by Fabricius, among the historians of Hamburg, t. 2.
Footnotes:
1. Ap. Bolland. et. Mabill.