[1] When Rimbert was appointed in 865 to succeed Ansgar, the first archbishop of Hamburg, the abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Corvey gave him his brother, Adalgar, as a companion.
During the latter half of his twenty years’ rule, age and infirmity made it necessary for him also to have a coadjutor in the person of Hoger, another monk of Corvey; and later five neighboring bishops were charged to assist the archbishop in his metropolitan duties.
Although Arnulf's victory over the Normans (891) was a relief to his diocese, and although under Louis the Child (900-911) it suffered less from Hungarian onslaughts than the districts to the south and east of it, yet the general confusion restricted Adalgar's activity, and he was able to do very little in the northern kingdoms which were supposed to be part of his mission.
The course of the controversy is somewhat obscure; but it is known that Stephen cited both contestants to Rome, and when Adalgar alone appeared, Hermann being represented by delegates with unsatisfactory credentials, the pope referred the matter to Archbishop Fulk of Reims, to decide in a synod at Worms.
[3] In the meantime, Stephen died; and his successor Formosus placed the investigation in the hands of a synod which met at Frankfurt in 892 under Hatto of Mainz.