Carolingian Mission and its Memory

Description

Ansgar (c. 801-865) remains a unique and problematic figure in Carolingian history. In Hamburg he was remembered as a founding figure, but some modern scholars have seen him as a forger and a distorter of the truth, and even suggested that the Archbishopric of Hamburg itself was something he conjured into existence. His Vita by his successor Rimbert is our longest and richest account of Scandinavia in the period commonly known as the Viking Age, but in Denmark and Sweden, where he preached, he was barely remembered in the medieval period, and in the modern period his legacy was, like Hamburg-Bremen itself, soured through an association (real or imagined) with 'German' influence and power. This lecture looks at the Vita as well as other texts from Hamburg-Bremen (in particular, Ansgar's own hagiographic text, the Miracula Willehadi) to explore Ansgar's career, legacy and how his memory was used in the middle ages, in Hamburg and Bremen, Scandinavia and elsewhere.