Which 7th-century Anglo-Saxon missionary is known as the “Apostle of the Frisians” and founded the diocese of Utrecht? Willibrord.
Willibrord was born in Northumbria around 658 and trained in the Anglo-Saxon church before travelling to Ireland. In 690, he went to the Frankish-controlled mainland with eleven companions to evangelize the pagan Frisians, a people living in parts of the modern Netherlands and northern Germany.
Pope Sergius I consecrated Willibrord as bishop of the Frisians in Rome in 695. With the support of the Frankish ruler Pippin of Herstal, he established his base at Utrecht, where a church and missionary center developed into the later Diocese of Utrecht.
Willibrord’s mission faced interruptions from Frisian rulers and political upheaval, and the region was not converted all at once. Augustine of Canterbury belonged to an earlier mission in England, while Boniface later worked extensively in Germany and continued aspects of Willibrord’s Frisian mission. Ansgar, by contrast, was a 9th-century missionary associated especially with Scandinavia.