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Article: The St Brice's Day massacre: November 13th, 1002. (Months Past).
- Article from:
- History Today
- Article date:
- November 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 History Today Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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WHY ST BRICE BECAME so popular in glo-Saxon England is a mystery. A Gaulish cleric of the fourth century, he succeeded St Martin as Bishop of Tours and behaved so badly that he was driven out of his diocese, but he changed his ways and was greatly revered by the time he died in 444.
Little memory of him survives today, except for the massacre ordered on his festival day by King Ethelred of England.
Ethelred the Unready, or the Ill-Advised, had been king since the age of twelve in 978, after his step-brother had been murdered at Corfe on the orders of Ethelred's mother. The pretence that all the leading magnates and churchmen of England had preferred ...