Bede and the Paschal Controversy
THE work was soon done. When Roman missionaries came to Kent in 597, they introduced handy tables devised in Alexandria for determining the Paschal moon, and March 21st as a convenient first day of Spring.
Nonetheless, older methods remained in circulation, and in 635 St Aidan brought a peculiarly Irish one to Northumbria.* Seven years later, the two calendars collided, after King Oswy of Northumbria married Eanflaed, granddaughter of King Ethelbert of Kent. Oswy adopted Eanflaed’s Roman Easter in 664, convinced by a Synod in Whitby of its superiority.*
The Synod acquired international significance in 725 when Bede, a Northumbrian monk, published a brilliant treatise on the Paschal maths of Rome and the East. Europe was completely won over by it; and soon the Englishman had the whole Church, East and West, keeping the day of Christ’s bright resurrection together at Passover. “God has made Bede rise from the West” exclaimed Notker the Stammerer in Switzerland “as a new Sun to illuminate the whole Earth”.*
The Irish Easter was calculated accoring to an idiosyncratic system with roots in fourth-century Gaul and Rome. They allowed Easter Sunday to fall on the first day of Passover or even the day before, which some thought obscured the crucifixion, and their celebrations also lasted just one day, whereas for many churches worldwide Easter had always been a three-day event.
The argument was based on maths, the Nicene Council, and on what St Peter would have wanted. See The Synod of Whitby. Rome herself had been persuaded to come into line in part by St Ambrose of Milan, after their Easters did not match in 386. Work continued, and by the later fifth century the calculation devised at Alexandria commanded universal respect, except for some pockets of resistance such as Ireland.
For the story of how Bede’s hard-won harmony was broken in the 16th century, see The Calendar ‘English Style’.