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The saints

St. Ansgar

The Apostle of the North, who watched most of his life’s work burn down, and kept going.

Feast: 3 February · 801 to 865 · The Middle Ages · Hamburg, Denmark and Sweden

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Stone statue of St. Ansgar as a bishop with a miter and crosier, against a brick building.

Oursana, 2019. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Home / The saints / St. Ansgar

Hamburg, 845

Ansgar was a monk in France when a Danish king became a Christian and asked for missionaries.1

Ansgar went, and later to Sweden, getting robbed by pirates on the way.1

He became bishop of Hamburg, and then invaders burned it to the ground.

Patron of Denmark1

01St. Ansgar

Nothing to show

Denmark and Sweden slipped back into paganism, and much of his work seemed undone.1

He started again, traveled north again, and helped bring another king to the faith.1

Live it this week

Start over without bitterness

Ansgar watched years of work burn and started again. Think of one project that failed you this year. Take one first step to start it again, and pray for the people who ruined it.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Ansgar”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.