Feast day: February 24
St. Ethelbert of Kent
The first Christian king of the Anglo-Saxons, who welcomed St. Augustine of Canterbury, accepted baptism, and issued the earliest written law code in the English language.
Ethelbert was king of Kent at the close of the sixth century and the most powerful ruler in southern Britain, overlord of the other Anglo-Saxon kings south of the Humber. Though raised a pagan, a worshipper of the old Germanic gods, he had married a Christian Frankish princess, Bertha, and let her practise her faith freely, giving her an ancient church at Canterbury.
In 597 the monk Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, landed in Kent with a band of companions to preach the Gospel to the English. Ethelbert received them warily — at first only in the open air, for fear of magic — but gave them leave to preach and a dwelling in Canterbury.
Won over, the king was baptized that same year, the first Christian king of the English. His example carried enormous weight: thousands of his subjects followed him to the font. Yet — notably — he compelled no one, having grasped that the service of Christ must be freely given.
Ethelbert supported the young Church generously, founding churches at Canterbury and Rochester and issuing the earliest written English laws, which gave protection to the new clergy. He died in 616 and was venerated as a saint, the royal father of English Christianity.
He gave Augustine's monks land at Canterbury and let them preach freely — the opening of England's conversion — and wrote the first English laws.
Image: Giogo (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/05553b.htm
Get a story like this every Sunday.