ABSTRACT
This chapter provides context for Ansgar and the historical problems associated with his mission. It begins by tracing the history of missions from Augustine of Canterbury to Boniface, with particular emphasis on the ecclesiastical status of missionaries and the institutions that they founded. It closes with a study of the career of Willehad, the missionary bishop whom Ansgar came to regard as his predecessor at Bremen. Augustine received episcopal consecration on his journey northwards and arrived in Kent a missionary bishop. By the later seventh century, Augustine of Canterbury's work in England began to bear fruit with the first English continental missions. The notorious bishop Wilfrid of York was the first Englishman to evangelize in Frisia; he stopped there briefly on his way to Rome in 678. Willibrord spent his childhood in Wilfrid's monastery at Ripon.
