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Rimbert's Vita Anskarii and Scandinavian Mission in the Ninth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2004

JAMES T. PALMER
JAMES T. PALMER
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Sheffield, 387 Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2TN; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The idea of converting Scandinavia to Christianity had been enthusiastically pursued by the Emperor Louis the Pious and Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims in the 820s. Optimism such as theirs was, however, not to last, and little progress was made between the death of Archbishop Rimbert of Hamburg-Bremen in 888 and the conversion of Harald Bluetooth a century later. This article examines how Rimbert wrote a saint's Life about Anskar, his predecessor and ‘apostle of the north’, in an attempt to arrest the waning support for the mission. It considers how this was achieved by placing the text in the context of the clashes between Ebbo and his successor, Hincmar, the predestination debate and the idea that mission was fulfilling apocalyptic prophecies.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , April 2004 , pp. 235 - 256
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

MGH Epp.=MGH Epistolae; MGH SS=MGH Scriptores; MGH SS rer. Germ.=MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum; MGH SS rer. Mer.=MGH Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum in usum scholarum
My thanks to Sarah Foot and the anonymous readers for this JOURNAL for the helpful advice and suggestions offered about this article. I would also like to thank Rosamond McKitterick for her invaluable help with the Cambridge MPhil. thesis from which this work developed.