ETHELBERT
553
ETHELBERT
represented as standing with one foot on sea and one
on land, and swearing by Him that liveth forever that
time shall be no more. Whatever the meaning of the
oath may be, it has found an echo in our religious ter-
minologj-, and we are wont to think and say that with
death, and especially with the Last Judgment, time
shall cease. The meaning is not that there will be no
more succession of any kind; but that there will be no
substantial change or corruption in what survives
death, the soul ; or in the body that shall have been
raised from the dead ; or in the heavens and earth as
they shall be renewed after Christ's second coming.
There Ls. moreover, an implication or connotation of
the doctrine that in the future life of souls, whether in
heaven or in hell, succession will be accidental, the act
in which their essential happiness or misery will con-
sist being continuous and unbroken vision and love,
or blinded wrong vision and hatred, of God. This
kind of duration is in our ordinary language spoken of
as life or death eternal, by a kind of participation, in a
wide or improper sense, in the character of the Divine
eternity (Billot, op. cit., 119). Questions of the great-
est importance have been raised as to the possibility of
an eternal world, in the sense of a world of matter,
such as we know, having never had a beginning and
therefore not needing a first cause; also as to the pos-
sibility of eternal creation, in the sense of a being,
with or without succession, having had no beginning
of existence and yet having been created by God (see
Cre.\tion"). For other questions as to eternity see
He.we.v, Hell. "'Eternal life" is a term some-
times applied to the state and life of grace, even before
death; this being the initial stage or seed, as it were,
of the never-ending life of bliss in heaven, which, by a
species of metonymy, is regarded as being present in
its first stage, that of grace. This, if we are true to
ourselves and to Ciod, is sure to pass into the second
stage, the life eternal.
The basis of all later treatment of the question of eternity is that of St. Thomas, I, Q. -N. For a fuller e.xposition see Su.\REZ, De Deo, I. iv; Idem, Melaphysica, disp. I, s,«. 4 sq.; Lessius, De perfectionibus divinvi, IV. For the teaching of early non-Christian philosophers (Plato, .\r:stotle. and the .veo-Platonists). as also of the Fathers, see Petavic s. De Deo, III. iii, iv. In the same chapters he discusses the meaning of the term (Evum. For the testimony of the Fathers as to the
gassibility of creation from eternity, see Petavius, op. cit., vi. riefer expositions may be found in the ordinary handbooks of philosophy, on ontology and natural theology; also in the various treatises De Deo Uno.
Walter McDgn.vld.
Ethelbert, S.\ixt, date of birth unknown; d. "04; King of tlie East Angles, was, according to the "Speculum Historiale" of Richard of Cirencester (d. about 1401), the sou of King Ethelred and Leo- frana, a lady of Mercia. Brought up in piety, he wa.s elected king on Ethelred's death, ruled wisely, and was a man of singular humility. Urged to marry, he de- clared his preference for a life of celibacy, but at length consented to woo .\ltrida (.\lfrida), daughter of Offa, King of the Mercians. Leofrana foreboded evil and tried to dissuade Ethelbert; but in spite of an earth- quake, an eclipse of the sun, and a warning vision, he proceeded from Bury St. Edmunds to \\\\a. .\ustralis, where Offa resided. On his arrival .\ltrida expres.sed her admiration for Ethelbert, declaring that Offa ought to accept him as suzerain. Cynethryth, the queen-mother, urged by hatred of Ethelbert, so pois- oned Offa's mind against him, that he accepted the offer of a certain Cirimbert to murtlcr their guest. Ethelbert, having come for an interview with Offa, was bound and beheaded by Grimbert. The liody was buried ignoininiously, but, revealing itself by a heavenly light, was translated to the cathedral at Hereford, where many miracles attested Ethelbert's sanctity. The head was enshrined at Westminst(!r Abbey.
The "Chronicon" of John Brorapton (fl. 1437) adds a few particulars: the body with the head was first
buried on the banks of the Lugg. On the third night
the saint commanded one Britlifrid, a nobleman, to
convey his relics to Stratus-way. During the journey
the head fell out of the cart and healed a man who had
been blind for eleven years. Finally the body was
entombed at Fernley, the present Hereford. Accord-
ing to Brompton, .\ltrida became a recluse at Croy-
land. Offa repented of his sin (Matthew of Paris
represents Offa as ignorant of the plot till after Ethel-
bert's murder), gave much land to the martjT,
" which the church of Hereford holds to the present
day ", founded St. Albans and other monasteries, and
made his historic pilgrimage to Rome.
St. Ethelbert figures largely in the Missal, Breviary, and Hymnal of the Use of Hereford. His feast is on 20 May. Thirteen English churches, besides Here- ford cathedral, are dedicated in honour of Ethelbert; and one of the gateways of Norwich cathedral bears his name.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, sub anno 792; Richard op Ciren'- CESTER, Speculum Historiale, in R. S., I, 262 sqq.; Chronicle of Brompton, in Twtsden, 748 sqq.; Acta SS., May, V, 271; Bibl. Hag. Lot., 394; Brewer, Opera Girald. Cambren., Ill, 407, V. pp. xlv and 407; Wharton". Anglia Sacra, II, p. x.xii; Hardy, Catalogue of Materials, I, 495; Stubbs in Diet, of Christian Biography. II, 213; Chevalier, Repertoire, I, 1365; Hlnt in Diet. Xal. Biog., XVIII. 17; Stanto.n, MenologiJ-
Patrick Ryan.
Ethelbert, S.unt, Iving of Kent, b. 552; d. 24 February, 616; son of Eormenric, through whom he was descended from Hengest. He succeeded his fa- ther, in 560, as Iving of Kent and made an unsuccess- ful attempt to win from Ceawlin of Wessex the over- lordship of Britain. His political importance was doubtless advanced by his marriage with Bertha, daughter of Charibert., King of the Franks (see Ber- TH,\. I). A noble disposition to fair dealing is argued by his giving her the old Roman church of St. Martin in his capital of Cantwaraburh (Canterbury) and affording her every opportunity for the exercise of her religion, although he himself had been reared, and re- mained, a worshipper of Odin. The same natural virtue, combined with a quaint spiritual caution and, on the other hand, a large instinct of hospitality, ap- pears in his message to St. .\ugustine when, in 597, the Apostle of England landed on the Kentish coast (see Augustine of Canterbury).
In the interval between Ethelbert's defeat by Ceaw- lin and the arrival of the Roman missionaries, the death of the Wessex king had left Ethelbert, at least virtually, supreme in southern Britain, and his bap- tism, which took place on Whitsunday next following the landing of .-Vugustine (2 June, 597) had such an effect in deciding the minds of his wavering country- men that as many as 10,000 are said to have followed his example within a few months. Thenceforward Ethelbert became the watchful father of the infant Anglo-Saxon Church. He fountled the church which in after-ages was to be the primatial catlicdral of all England, besides other churches at Rochester and Canterbiu-y. But, although he permitted, and even helped, Augustine to con\-ert a heathen temple into the church of St. Pancras (Canterbury), he never com- pelled his heathen subjects to accept baptism. More- over, as the lawgiver who issueil their hrst written laws to the English people (the ninety "Dooms of Ethelbert", A. D. 604) he holds in English history a place thoroughly consistent with his character asthe temporal founder of that see which diil more than any other for the upbuilding of free and orderly political institutions in Christendom. When .St. Mcllitus had converted Siel)ert, King of the East Saxons, whoso capital was London, and it was proposed to make that sec the metropolitan, Ethell)crt, supported by .\ugu.s- tine, successfully resisted the attempt, and thus fixed for more than nine centuries the individual character of the English Church. He left three children, of whom the only son, Eadbald, lived and died a pagan.
