Family tree Snelder - Versteegh » Queen Emma of Austrasia (????-± 643)

Personal data Queen Emma of Austrasia 

• She was born in Austrasia, France.
• She died about 643 in Kent, England. She was about 71-72 years old.
• A child of Theudebert II of Austrasia and Bilichildis

Household of Queen Emma of Austrasia

She is married to Eadbald of Kent.

They got married

Child(ren):

1. Eorcenberht of Kent  ????-664 
2. Eormenred of Kent  ????-664 

Notes about Queen Emma of Austrasia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_of_Austrasia

 

Emma (fl. early seventh century) was a member of the Austrasian royal family. She is sometimes identified with the Emma (or Ymma) who married Eadbald of Kent.

Emma was a daughter of Theudebert II, King of Austrasia from 595 to 612. He had previously shown little interest in the Kingdom of Kent, but Gregory the Great had written to him in 601, encouraging him to back Paulinus and Mellitus' missionary campaign, which was to be based in Canterbury.^[1]

In 616, Eadbald came to the throne of Kent. His mother appears to have been Bertha, a Merovingian princess. He came to throne following traditional Germanic religion, but was converted and gave up his first wife who, as his stepmother, was not considered acceptable by the Christian church.^[2] This development appears to have initiated closer relations between Kent and the Frankish kingdom.^[3] Eadbald made a second marriage, to a Christian named Emma, who is identified in the annals of St Augustine's Abbey as the daughter of a Frankish king - implying Emma, daughter of Theudebert.^[2] If this identification is correct, then Emma represents a possible line of descent from the Merovingians to the present, although her line fades into obscurity after a few generations.

However, S. E. Kelly, writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, holds that the belief that Eadbald married a daughter of Theudebert is the result of confusion between him and Adaloald, King of the Lombards. Kelly gives more credence to a suggestion that Eadbald's wife was the daughter of Erchinoald, the mayor of the palace in the Frankish kingdom of Neustria from 641 to 658.^[2]

The Emma who married Eadbald had, as described in the Kentish Royal Legend, three children: Eormenred, Eorcenberht and Eanswith.^[4]

She is known to have died in 642, two years after her husband. She was buried alongside Eadbald in the Church of St Mary, which he had built in the precincts of the monastery of St Peter and St Paul in Canterbury (a church later incorporated within the Norman edifice of St Augustine's).^[2] At that time, her relics were probably translated along with Eadbald's for reburial in the south transept ca. A.D. 1087.^[5]

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