c. 565 – in or after 601 (some sources give 606)
A Frankish Christian princess who married King Ethelbert of Kent and, by her faith and the church she kept at Canterbury, prepared the way for the mission of Saint Augustine and the conversion of the English.
The Holy and Righteous Bertha, Queen of Kent
Bertha of Kent (c. 565 – in or after 601) was a Frankish Christian princess whose marriage to the pagan King Aethelberht of Kent, and whose steady practice of the faith at Canterbury, prepared the ground for the Gregorian mission of Saint Augustine and the conversion of the English.
A daughter of the Merovingian king Charibert I and descendant of Clovis I, she married Aethelberht under a contractual guarantee that she be allowed to keep her religion, and she brought her own chaplain, the Frankish bishop Liudhard, across the Channel with her.
At Canterbury she maintained a restored Roman church dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours as her private chapel; it survives as the oldest church in the English-speaking world in continuous use for Christian worship since 580. She is honoured in pre-schism Western saint lists as a righteous queen, with her feast kept on May 1.
Bertha was a daughter of the Merovingian king Charibert I and his wife Ingoberga, and through her grandfather Chlothar I she descended from Clovis I and Clotilde, the first Christian rulers of the Franks. Her father died in 567 and her mother in 589.
She was raised near Tours in Francia and received a Christian formation during the Merovingian period, which she carried with her into a still-pagan kingdom on her marriage.
Around 580 Bertha married Aethelberht, the pagan king of Kent. A crucial condition of the marriage was that she be permitted to continue practising her religion, and she brought her Frankish chaplain, Bishop Liudhard of Senlis, to England to serve her.
For her worship she maintained a restored Roman church dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours just outside Canterbury. The building incorporated Roman walling in its chancel and is recognized as the oldest church in the English-speaking world where Christian worship has taken place continuously since 580; Saint Martin's Church, Canterbury, is today a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Through his Frankish wife, Aethelberht would already have known something of the Roman church before Augustine arrived, and Bertha's presence may have influenced Pope Gregory I's decision to send a missionary from Rome.
Pope Gregory I had urged Bertha to work for her husband's conversion even before Augustine's mission was dispatched. When Augustine arrived in 597, Aethelberht granted him land at Canterbury on which he established the Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul; the sources judge that neither this royal patronage nor the welcome Augustine received would likely have come without Bertha's prior influence.
In 601 Gregory wrote to Bertha directly, complimenting her highly on her faith and her knowledge of letters. Aethelberht himself may have delayed his conversion until Augustine's arrival to avoid appearing to act under Frankish overlordship.
Liudhard, a Frankish bishop of Senlis, came to Kent as Bertha's chaplain and helped dedicate Saint Martin's Church, described as the first Christian Anglo-Saxon church in England. He died in the late 590s, shortly after Augustine's mission arrived.
First interred at Saint Martin's, his remains were later translated by Archbishop Laurence of Canterbury to the Abbey Church of Saints Peter and Paul, and he gained a local cult. The eleventh-century abbot Spearhafoc adorned his tomb with large and beautiful statues, and William of Malmesbury recorded that Liudhard was especially quick to answer appeals for rain, so that his remains were carried in procession to the fields during droughts. The Liudhard medalet, found in a nineteenth-century Canterbury grave, is regarded as the earliest Anglo-Saxon coin, though it was probably not used as ordinary currency.
No formal Eastern Orthodox glorification decree or dedicated synaxarion entry for Bertha has been identified; OrthodoxWiki has no article on her, and the OCA calendar for May 1 does not list her. She appears in pre-schism Western saint lists, venerated as a righteous queen, with her feast observed on May 1.
Modern Canterbury honours Bertha through the Bertha trail of fourteen bronze plaques, bronze statues installed in 2006 by the sculptor Stephen Melton, and a wooden statue within Saint Martin's Church.
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