medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Wednesday, February 24, 2016, at 12:16 AM, I wrote:
Ethelbert as depicted (at left; at right, St. Augustine of Canterbury) at the outset of a set of twelfth-century lives of saints (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fell 2, pp. 45-50, 295-308, and 460-464, at p. 45):
http://tinyurl.com/gnrn4rt
Please read: ... at the outset of a later twelfth-century copy of some lives of saints...
--JD
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From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 12:16 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [M-R] FEAST - A Saint for the Day (Feb. 24): St. Ethelbert of Kent
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The middling amount that is known about Ethelbert of Kent (Æthelberht; d. 616) comes chiefly from St. Bede the Venerable's _Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum_, from the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, and from two mentions by St. Gregory of Tours in his _Historia Francorum_. He was king of Kent when Christian missionaries led by St. Augustine not-yet-of Canterbury arrived in 597. Married to a practicing Christian (Bertha, a daughter of the Frankish king Charibert), Ethelbert received this party graciously, gave Augustine a place to live in the decayed Roman town of Canterbury, and probably within the year was himself baptized. He provided the land at Canterbury on which the monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul (later St Augustine's Abbey) was built, intending the latter's church as his family's future burial site. Ethelbert used his influence in the kingdom of the East Saxons to provide a site for bishop St. Mellitus' church of St Paul in London and was helpful in promoting conversions there as well as in his own realm.
Ethelbert's name appears in liturgical calendars starting in the thirteenth century but usually under 25. or 26. February (in the Roman Rite 24. February was medievally -- as it still is in Germany -- the feast of St. Matthias the Apostle).
Ethelbert promulgated the first written law code in any part of what would become England. This is in Old English rather than in Latin and presumably reflects the missionaries' creation of a written form of the vernacular. It survives in a single, early twelfth-century mansucript (Strood, Medway Archive and Local Studies Centre, MS DRc/R1 (Textus Roffensis), fos. 1r-3v). A digital facsimile is here:
http://www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/laws/manuscripts/h/?tp=s
A period-pertinent image of St. Ethelbert (Æthelberht) of Kent:
Ethelbert as depicted (at left; at right, St. Augustine of Canterbury) at the outset of a set of twelfth-century lives of saints (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fell 2, pp. 45-50, 295-308, and 460-464, at p. 45):
http://tinyurl.com/gnrn4rt
Detail view:
http://tinyurl.com/z8xcl7j
Best,
John Dillon
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