The woman who converted a kingdom?

Who was Queen Bertha of Kent?

Dec 30, 2023

Hello there!

Today’s post is a biography of the protagonist of ‘Bertha’s tale’, the story I’ve been building in instalments over the past few months. Have you read it yet? You can find Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3 linked here or, if you’re reading this in the future (hello!) after more posts have been written, click here to visit the ‘Bertha’s Tale’ section of Telling Their Tales.

What do we know about Bertha?

‘At that time [c. A.D. 597] Æthelberht, king of Kent, was a very powerful monarch. The lands over which he exercised his suzerainty stretched as far as the great river Humber, which divides the northern from the southern Angles … Some knowledge about the Christian religion had already reached him because he had a Christian wife of the Frankish royal family whose name was Bertha. He had received her from her parents on condition that she should be allowed to practise her faith and religion unhindered, with a bishop named Liudhard whom they had provided for her to support her faith.’

Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, I.25 (ed. McClure & Collins, p.39).

So says the Venerable Bede in his first mention of the Kentish queen. The phrase ‘he had received her’ to describe Æthelberht’s marriage to Bertha is particularly arresting, suggesting (although, due to the nature of the sources, it cannot be confirmed) that their marriage was a transaction, with Bertha being sent to Æthelberht for the benefit of someone else rather than because she had fallen in love. Marriage as political alliance had already become a feature of northern European kingship; it is likely that Æthelberht and Bertha’s marriage was contracted between their parents to secure some sort of alliance or dependent relationship between the kingdoms of Kent and Francia.

From what can be gathered, Bertha was the daughter of Charibert, king of Paris. She was likely born in the 560s, making her roughly in her 20s at the time of her marriage in the 580s. Æthelberht, her new husband, was likely not yet king at the time of their marriage, although the dating of this is much debated due to some confusion in the sources. It is probable that Bertha gave birth to at least two children whilst married to Æthelberht: Eadbald, the king’s successor, and Æthelburh, who would wed King Edwin of the Northumbrians (another alliance by marriage, with curious parallels to her mother’s). Bertha probably died before Æthelberht, as Eadbald is described as marrying his father’s wife upon the king’s death; he is unlikely to have married his mother. Bertha was laid to rest in the Church of SS Peter and Paul in Canterbury, where her husband would later also be buried.

‘King Æthelberht died on 24 February, twenty-one years after he had accepted the faith, and was buried in the chapel of St Martin, within the church of the Apostles St Peter and St Paul, where his queen, Bertha, also lies.
Bede, HE, II.5 (ed. McClure & Collins, p.78).

Alas, even in her death Bertha only became relevant to the great Anglo-Saxon historian as incidental to the great men around her: would we have known about her place of burial if her husband had not been laid to rest alongsider her?

At this time, the Frankish kingdom was divided into several parts, each with its own ruler calling himself king; at other times, a singular ruler held power over a united kingdom. Bertha’s father was excommunicated by the Pope, having displayed some rather un-Christian behaviour (polygamy, to name one of his faults). It always intrigues me that Bede chooses to mention that Bertha was to be ‘received’ on the condition that she ‘be allowed to practise her faith and religion unhindered’: some members of her family had been Christians, but it seemed hardly to have a secure hold on her father. We can be fairly certainly that Liudhard did make it to England with the young princess (as she was on her arrival): a coin pendant was discovered in Canterbury some time before 1844, bearing his name and image.

Although she was a princess, the daughter of a king, it is likely that Bertha wasn’t considered very important in the Frankish court (although it is important to note that Pope Gregory the Great considered her significant enough in his missionary efforts to write her a letter). It is tempting to see the marriage as elevating the kingdom of Kent to the European royal stage; kingship had only very recently become established in Anglo-Saxon England, within one or two generations of Æthelberht, whereas Francia had a much more secure royal infrastructure. It is much more likely, however, that the Frankish kings saw this alliance as an opportunity to spread their influence across the Channel and exert their dominance over Kent. It would be unfair to say (as some have implied) that they enjoyed rulership over Kent at this time, but something akin to informal power and growing aspirations probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

How significant was she, really?

I believe that Bertha played a hugely significant role in the Conversion of Anglo-Saxon England, a turning point in English history, simply by bringing an awareness of Christianity to the Kentish court. What once existed only around the edges of the British Isles now resided within Æthelberht’s own marriage bed. This could be seen as the wild assertion of someone who has had their head turned by a historical character; certainly it would be difficult to ‘prove’, with the inadequate sources, that she had a concrete role (but then, do we really want to ‘prove’ things as historians?).

Emphasis is often placed on the success of Augustine of Canterbury’s mission, arriving in A.D. 597, but this may simply be due to his starring role in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. There are no competing sources to interrogate Bede’s account, which was produced in some sense to emphasise the success of the papal mission. Máirín MacCarron wrote a fascinating article in 2016 about the role of women in mixed marriages in the Conversion of England, reading between the lines of Bede’s account to argue that he presents royal wives as fulfilling the role, at times, of a Biblical wife whose husband is to be won over by her good deeds. Bede was, she says, subtly, demonstrating that these women were active participants in the Conversion whilst bound by the constraints of his literary purposes.

This is something I’d have to look much more into, with respect to Bertha, if I was going to make a solid argument. I think there are enough seeds, however, in Bertha’s story to suggest that she might have made some efforts to evangelise her husband, even if the written sources lay the victory at Augustine’s feet.

Want to learn more?

Although not directly about Bertha, Shelley Puhak’s recent book The Dark Queens tells the story of the Kentish queen’s near contemporaries. Puhak illuminates the world that Bertha left behind, with all the political intrigues and intricacies one would expect in the lives of the powerful.