Saint Rembert of Bremen

The holy archbishop soon associated him with his apostolic labors, and when he died, he replied to those who consulted him on the choice of his successor: "Rembert is more worthy to be archbishop than I am to be a deacon." He was indeed merely a deacon, but he was elected on the very day of Ansgar's burial to govern the united dioceses of Bremen and Hamburg. After h is conse cration, he remembered a vow he had made to become a religious if he survived his beloved master Ansgar. To fulfill it, he went to take the habit at New Corvey, where he solemnl y promised to k eep the rule of Saint Benedict as much as his new office would allow.

During his episcopate, the Normans made numerous incursions into Frisia: through his prayers, he delivered one of the cities of that land that was on the point of being taken. Like his predecessor, he had general oversight of the churches north of the Elbe: Germany, Sweden, Denmark, etc.; he put the finishing touches on the work so happily begun by Saint Ansgar. His charity for the unfortunate was great: he did not hesitate one day to sell the vessels of his church to ransom the slaves whom the Normans had come to capture within the borders of his diocese. He died in 888, at a very advanced age, after having been bishop for twenty-three years and five months. He w as bu ried in Bremen, and according to the wish of his humility, outside the w alls of the ch urch, next to Saint Willehad, the first bishop of that city.

He is represented 1° standing holding a double-barred cross; 2° distributing to the poor the fragments of the sacred vessels he had broken to help his people during a famine; 3° praying in the vicinity of a great battle which, thanks to his prayers, the faithful of his diocese won against the pagans.

We have from Saint Rembert: 1° the life of Saint Ansgar, written with great fidelity and taste; 2° a letter to Walbu rga, fir st abbess of Nienheersa. It is a very pathetic exhortation to humility and virginity.