Ansgar, also known as Anskar, Saint Ansgar, Saint Anschar or Oscar, was Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen in the northern part of the Kingdom of the East Franks. Ansgar became known as the "Apostle of the North" because of his travels and the See of Hamburg received the missionary mandate to bring Christianity to Northern Europe.
A depiction of Saint Ansgar by Siegfried Bendixen from the Church Trinitatis, in Hamburg, Germany
Saint Ansgar statue in Hamburg
Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen
The Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen — not to be confused with the modern Archdiocese of Hamburg, founded in 1994 — was an ecclesiastical principality (787–1566/1648) of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church that after its definitive secularization in 1648 became the hereditary Duchy of Bremen. The prince-archbishopric, which was under the secular rule of the archbishop, consisted of about a third of the diocesan territory. The city of Bremen was de facto and de jure not part of the prince-archbishopric. Most of the prince-archbishopric lay rather in the area to the north of the city of Bremen, between the Weser and Elbe rivers. Even more confusingly, parts of the prince-archbishopric belonged in religious respect to the neighbouring Diocese of Verden, making up 10% of its diocesan territory.
The Bremian ecclesiastical province (dark grey) with its remaining three suffragans around 1500, thus after disentangling Bremen's Scandinavian suffragan dioceses, as well as neighbouring provinces in Central Europe.
Territory of the Prince-Archbishopric from a late 16th-century atlas
