Adelbrecht

Historical scholarship

Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.

• 1884From the archives

  Adelbrecht— “nobly bright”

  Æthelbryht, or Noble Splendour, named our first Christian king of Kent, also a brother of King Alfred’s, and a missionary of the royal blood of Northumbria, who preached in southern Germany, and died about the year 700, at Egmond, where, as St. Adelbrecht, he became patron. His name was taken at baptism by one who became archbishop of Magdeburg, who, in his turn, bestowed it on his pupil, the Bohemian Woyteich, Army-Help. This convert was afterwards bishop of Prague, and was…

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  Æthelbryht, or Noble Splendour, named our first Christian king of Kent, also a brother of King Alfred’s, and a missionary of the royal blood of Northumbria, who preached in southern Germany, and died about the year 700, at Egmond, where, as St. Adelbrecht, he became patron. His name was taken at baptism by one who became archbishop of Magdeburg, who, in his turn, bestowed it on his pupil, the Bohemian Woyteich, Army-Help. This convert was afterwards bishop of Prague, and was martyred near Dantzic while preaching to the heathen Prussians in 997. Adelbrecht could not fail to become national wherever the saint had set his foot; and when shortened to Albrecht, was adopted by Italy, and thence sent to Jerusalem with a Latin patriarch, who, being beatified, rendered Alberto freshly popular in the South. Albrecht, and the feminines Alberta and Albertine, were, however, almost entirely German, until the late Prince Consort brought the name to England, where it bids fair to become one of the most frequent of national names.…

  Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part VI, Chapter VI (Descriptive Names), Section I (Nobility) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)