Article of the day for February 24, 2016
The Article of the day for February 24, 2016 is Æthelberht of Kent.
Æthelberht was King of Kent from about 589 until his death on 24 February 616. Bede lists him in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People as the third king to hold imperium over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and he is called a bretwalda or "Britain-ruler" in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Æthelberht's law, the earliest written code in any Germanic language, instituted a complex system of fines. Coins may have begun to circulate in Kent during his reign for the first time since the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. His marriage to Bertha, the Christian daughter of Charibert, king of the Franks, built an alliance with the most powerful Western European state. Æthelberht became the first English king to convert to Christianity, shortly after the arrival of Pope Gregory I's missionary Augustine in 597. Churches were established, and wider-scale conversion to the religion began in the kingdom. Æthelberht provided the new church with land in Canterbury, thus establishing one of the foundation stones of what ultimately became the Anglican church. He later came to be regarded as a saint; his feast day is 25 February.
Æthelberht was King of Kent from about 589 until his death on 24 February 616. Bede lists him in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People as the third king to hold imperium over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and he is called a bretwalda or "Britain-ruler" in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Æthelberht's law, the earliest written code in any Germanic language, instituted a complex system of fines. Coins may have begun to circulate in Kent during his reign for the first time since the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. His marriage to Bertha, the Christian daughter of Charibert, king of the Franks, built an alliance with the most powerful Western European state. Æthelberht became the first English king to convert to Christianity, shortly after the arrival of Pope Gregory I's missionary Augustine in 597. Churches were established, and wider-scale conversion to the religion began in the kingdom. Æthelberht provided the new church with land in Canterbury, thus establishing one of the foundation stones of what ultimately became the Anglican church. He later came to be regarded as a saint; his feast day is 25 February.
