 After his death, Æthelberht was canonised by the Church. He became the subject of a series of vitae that date from the eleventh century and he was venerated in religious cults in both East Anglia and at Hereford. The Anglo-Saxon church of the episcopal estate at Hoxne was one of several dedicated to Æthelberht in Suffolk, a possible indication of the existence of a religious cult devoted to the saintly king. Only three dedications for Æthelberht are near where he died - Marden, Hereford Cathedral and Littledean - the other eleven being in Norfolk or Suffolk. Lawrence Butler has argued that this unusual pattern may be explained by the existence of a royal cult in East Anglia, which represented a "revival of Christianity after the Danish settlement by commemorating a politically'safe' and corporeally distant local ruler".
