[4] He had a significant professional career, and is said to have served as a senior member of the court of the Merovingian king, Clotaire III.

[5][6] Her father, said to have been another of Clotaire's chancellors,[6] arranged for her to wed his colleague, but Angadrisma – later a patroness of nuns – prayed for release from this obligation.

[13] By "a false accusation",[5] the powerful majordomo of the Frankish court, Pepin of Heristal, arranged his dismissal, either because of some kind of political opposition[13] or because Ansbert's "zeal was not well-received" and "his austere life caused offence".

"[14] The 12th-century chronicler Ordericus Vitalis relays a tale in which it was said that Ansbert's remains were desecrated and dispersed by soldiers of Hugh the Great.

He asserts that the bones in question belonged to a different Ansbert, and that those of the saint were, at the time of his writing, still preserved safely at Fontenelle Abbey.

[15] The 18th-century author Alban Butler, however, states that the remains were at some point transferred to St. Peter's Abbey in Ghent, where they were destroyed by Calvinists in 1578.