ETHELBERT
(Æthelberht)
Popular Quotes
Augustine had been sent by Pope Gregory to bring Christianity to England. He began by trying to preach to King Ethelbert and his court. The king’s response was the essence of what most modern democratic societies would formulate as a policy and is given in full. It is one of the great statements of religious toleration in the history of the world.
All Quotes
Æthelberht was King of Kent from about 589 until his death. The eighth-century monk Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, lists him as the third king to hold imperium over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. In the late ninth century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he is referred to as a bretwalda, or "Britain-ruler". He was the first English king to convert to Christianity.