Bede The Old Testament and Easter PDF

Bede, the Old Testament, and Easter
© Celia Chazelle
Department of History
The College of New Jersey
[This article was written in 2010–11 for an edited volume of essays, the publication of which
seems to be on hold: From Theodulf to Rashi and Beyond: Texts, Techniques, and Transfer in
Western European Exegesis (650 – 1100), ed. Johannes Heil, et al. (Leiden: Brill Publishers)]
The early medieval quarrels over the timing of Easter, the principal movable feast in the
Christian liturgical calendar, were unusual for the central role given to literal and historical
exegesis of the Old Testament. The scriptural basis of the conflicts over the relationship between
Christ’s divinity and humanity in the fourth through seventh centuries was primarily New
Testament. A central issue of the debates over the validity of artistic representations in the eighth
and ninth centuries was whether the Old Testament prohibition of images applied in the Christian
era. But the Easter controversies hinged not on disagreement over whether or not Christians
should attend to the “letter” of the ancient injunctions concerning Passover and the Festival of
Unleavened Bread, but on how to do so in the light of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection.
The most vigorous conflicts over Easter reckoning outside the Mediterranean, to judge
from surviving sources, took place in the British Isles during the seventh and eighth centuries.1
Each year, Christian communities needed to identify the Sunday for Easter sufficiently in
advance to start the Lentan fast on the correct day. In order to help with this task and encourage
uniform dating, tables that noted the Sundays for years into the future, composed according to
diverse systems or principles of reckoning, circulated in early medieval Europe. Since the
calculations depended on the movements of the moon and the sun, the lists of dates were
cyclical. After a certain period – varying among the different tables – the feast would fall on the
Chazelle, Bede, the Old Testament, and Easter 2
same day in the lunar or solar calendar as in a previous cycle. Numerous modern studies have
examined the tensions in the seventh and eighth centuries between insular (mainly British and
Irish) churches and monasteries that retained an eighty-four year cycle sometimes identified as
Celtic, and the growing number that shifted to a table created by the sixth-century Scythian
monk, Dionysius Exiguus, based on the Alexandrian nineteen-year cycle.2 The primary concern
of this article, though, is a different possible arena of controversy, one that may have arisen in
early eighth-century Northumbria and perhaps more specifically at the Northumbrian monastery
of Wearmouth–Jarrow, over the Easter table of Victorius of Aquitaine.
The major source for tracing possible disagreements over Victorius’ table at Wearmouth–
Jarrow is the Reckoning of Time, a monumental treatise on the structure of time, the science of its
measurement, and world chronology that the monastery’s famous monk-scholar, Bede completed
in 725.3 Most analyses of Bede’s teachings on Easter primarily or only discuss his defense of the
Dionysian table against the practices of Columban (Irish) monasteries, such as the western
Scottish monastery of Iona, which adhered to the eighty-four year cycle. Bede’s arguments
against the Victorian table have received comparatively little study. Yet the Reckoning of Time
attacks Victorius and his work more frequently and vehemently than it does the eighty-four year
cycle, and several passages imply opposition to Bede’s promotion of the Dionysian table from
supporters of the Victorian table in his midst, possibly fellow monks. We can better understand
the environment in which Bede taught, preached, and wrote if we attend to evidence like this of
challenges or resistance to his teachings from peers. While the attitudes and beliefs of the
interlocutors on this issue to whom he alludes necessarily remain more obscure than Bede’s,
since they have left no known writings of their own, some insight is possible if we set his
references to their views alongside other literature illumining the reception of Victorius’ work in
early medieval, especially insular centers.

The following pages first survey the exegetical and theological issues involved in timing
Easter and some of the solutions reported in ancient and early medieval literature. We will then
analyze the doctrine of Easter reckoning presented in three letters of the early seventh century.
Two by Columbanus, the Irish founder of Luxeuil and Bobbio, were written in the first years of
the century to defend the eighty-four-year cycle against the Victorian system of Easter
reckoning, while the third letter, defending Victorian principles against those that underlay the
eighty-four-year cycle, was written c. 632 by Cummian, an abbot or bishop in southern Ireland.4
The rest of the article examines writings by Bede, primarily the discussions of Easter in the
Reckoning of Time, and the letter sent from Wearmouth-Jarrow to the Pictish king Nechtan c.
712, which Bede quotes in his Ecclesiastical History, completed c. 731.5 Although the letter was
written in the name of Bede’s abbot Ceolfrith, historians generally agree that it is expressive of
Bede’s doctrinal outlook and that he most likely assisted with its composition. It is impossible to
provide a comprehensive analysis of any of these documents in a single article. While other
aspects will also require some discussion, our chief concern will be the insight they offer into the
dispute in which the Reckoning of Time implies that Bede engaged with defenders of Victorius’
work, and into the different exegetical and theological approaches that may have fueled the
disagreement. In the final pages, we will briefly consider some possible analogies with other
doctrinal conflicts to which Bede alludes in other writings.
Exegesis and Liturgy
Whereas the New Testament gives no indication of the month or day when Jesus was
born, all four canonical Gospels link his death to the Jewish Passover. The most detailed biblical
account of Passover and its commemoration occurs in Exodus 12:1-20. To summarize the story
as it appears in the Vulgate translation, Bede’s preferred version of the Old Testament: God
commanded the Israelites in Egypt to select lambs on the tenth day of the “first month of the
year” (Exodus 12.2: mensis iste … principium mensuum primus … in mensibus anni) and sacrifice
them “on the fourteenth day at evening” (Exodus 12.6: ad quartamdecimam diem mensis huius …
ad uesperam).6 After the lambs’ slaughter, the Lord came to kill the Egyptian firstborn but
passed over the Jewish homes, where the doorposts were sprinkled with the lambs’ blood. When
Pharaoh saw the devastation that same night, he ordered the Israelites to depart immediately.
Every year, God told Moses, the Jews should celebrate a memorial feast on the same day (hanc
diem) and observe a seven-day Festival of Unleavened Bread. The Passover feast, the first meal
with unleavened bread, should occur ad uesperam of the fourteenth day, and the Festival of
Unleavened Bread should last from then until the twenty-first day (Exodus 12.14–20).
Other Old Testament texts give similar, though at times not entirely consistent
instructions. Deuteronomy 16 states that the Passover observances should take place in the
“month of new fruits and the first [month] of the green time” (mensem nouarum frugum et uerni
primum temporis: Deuteronomy 16:1). Although the dates are not noted, the sacrifice of lambs is
said to occur “at evening on the first day” (uesperi in die primo: Deuteronomy 16:4) of the
Festival of Unleavened Bread.7 Numbers 9:3 reports that during their journey in the wilderness,
the Israelites commemorated Passover in the first month, “at evening on the fourteenth day”
(quartadecima die mensis huius ad uesperam), and Numbers 9:11 notes that the Lord permitted
those who were unclean to eat the Passover meal “on the fourteenth day of the [second] month at
evening with unleavened bread and wild lettuces.”8 According to Numbers 28:16-17, the “Phase
of the Lord” should be commemorated on the fourteenth of the first month, with no mention of
evening; but the next verse refers to a “sollemnity” on the fifteenth and then to seven days of
unleavened bread, without indicating the week’s start or end date.9 Numbers 33:3 does not refer
to the Passover meal or unleavened bread but does mention the Israelites’ flight from Egypt “on
the fifteenth day of the first month, the day after the Phase.”10 And in Leviticus 23.5-6 we find:
The first month, the fourteenth day of the month at evening [ad uesperum], is the Phase
of the Lord: And the fifteenth day of the same month is the solemnity of the unleavened
bread of the Lord. Seven days shall you eat unleavened bread.11
Finally, the synoptic Gospels, without numbering the days, indicate that the Passover
meal – the Last Supper – coincided with the start of the Festival of Unleavened Bread. John’s
Gospel places both the Last Supper and the Crucifixion before Passover began, without
numbering the days or mentioning the Festival of Unleavened Bread.12
The Jewish liturgical calendar to which these texts variously refer is lunar-solar. Each
month of twenty-nine or thirty days roughly corresponds to a lunar cycle. The first day of a new
month is counted from the moon’s first appearance, which makes the fourteenth (luna 14) the
approximate date of the full moon. The lunar cycle with which spring begins, named Nisan after
the Babylonian Exile, is designated the “first month”; but since the solar cycle corresponds to
approximately 12.4 lunar cycles, as the years progress, a given lunar cycle shifts to different
seasons. In order to assure that Nisan always coincided with spring, a committee appointed by
the ancient Sanhedrin, Jerusalem’s Supreme Court, searched for astronomical, agricultural, and
climactic signs of the season’s arrival, among them the vernal equinox, the ending of the winter
rains, and the growth of new plants. When it became apparent every two or three years that the
twelve-month lunar calendar had slipped behind the seasons, a thirteenth month was added to the
old year so that the first month of the next year would again fall in springtime – though different
diaspora Jewish communities seem to have inserted the extra month in different years.13
As for the dating of Passover within the first month, diverse interpretations of the moon’s
phases probably added to the discrepancies between locales, yet the rules themselves seem to
have been understood in a uniform fashion. Jewish festival days extended from sundown to
sundown. The Hebrew behind the Vulgate ad uesperam in Exodus 12 and Numbers 9 is ben
ha‘arbayim, “between the evenings,” but it more specifically refers to the evening with which a
day concluded. Passover was an exceptional festival in ancient Judaism because it commenced at
the end of a day; the reason, J.B. Segal notes, may have been to assure that the “night of
watching” was complete. Thus the lambs were sacrificed as nightfall approached at the close of
luna 14, the evening transition from luna 14 to luna 15.14
Most of the Christian liturgical year is based exclusively on the solar cycle, without
consideration of the moon. By the mid-fourth century, the western Roman Empire celebrated the
Nativity on 25 December, the official date for the winter solstice in Rome’s Julian calendar, a
solar calendar; the eastern Empire celebrated the same event on 6 January, which became the
Feast of Epiphany in the West. Gradually, other feasts and observances were added to the
calendar around these dates. By the late sixth century, for example, a feast on 24 June, the date of
the summer solstice in the Julian calendar, honored the birth of John the Baptist six months
before Christ’s birth. The feast of the Annunciation on 25 March, Rome’s official date of the
spring equinox, is first mentioned in a canon of the mid-seventh century; and other festivals
honoring Christ, Mary, and other saints accumulated over the same and later centuries.15
Because the Gospels are fairly precise about when Jesus died, however, any desire for an
annual commemoration of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, in addition to the weekly
commemoration on Sunday, raised the issue of whether the timing of Passover should influence
the date. Between the second and fourth centuries, a multiplicity of local practices for annual
feasts honoring the Passion and Resurrection developed around the Mediterranean. Certain
Christian communities held ceremonies on a Sunday close to Passover; others organized rituals
for the same night as the Passover meal, regardless of the weekday on which this fell. Since
Jewish communities might schedule Passover differently, so, too, did Christian groups that
followed their lead. Still other Christian communities selected different “fixed” dates near the
spring equinox from the solar calendar. Some chose 25 March, the Roman calendrical date for
the Crucifixion as well as Jesus’ conception (the Annunciation).16 Some timed “Easter” festivals
according to the full moon in the first spring month of the Julian calendar, and others adopted
other criteria.17
By the fourth century, the idea had gained prominence in the Christian Mediterranean
that all Christians should celebrate Easter on the same day. The historian Eusebius wrote that
Constantine convened the Council of Nicea (325) to establish unity on exactly this issue.
According to a letter sent by the emperor to all churches after the council, quoted in Eusebius’
Life of Constantine, the bishops decided that Easter reckoning should be consistent throughout
the Empire and the dates selected without regard for Jewish practice; but there is no evidence the
council sanctioned a particular computing method.18 Although fourth- and fifth-century
Christian sources indicate widespread agreement that Easter should occur on a Sunday chosen
with some thought for Passover and the vernal equinox, local and regional customs still varied.19
Moreover, until the mid-fifth century, Rome kept to its customary eighty-four year cycle, which
placed Easter each year on a Sunday after an equinox dated to 25 March, but over the centuries
the Julian calendar had fallen increasingly out of line with the astronomical data. In the fourth
century, the see of Alexandria chose the more astronomically correct date of 21 March as the
official equinox. Its nineteen-year Easter cycle, which prevailed in the eastern Empire, placed the
feast on a Sunday after that date. An insular text of the sixth or seventh century suggests that
parts of Gaul still held an annual Feast of the Resurrection on the fixed date in the solar calendar
of 25 March. Surviving Easter tables and other literature make clear that diverse customs also
persisted elsewhere in western Europe.20
All three cycles of Easter dates associated with the insular controversy, the eighty-four
year, the Dionysian, and the Victorian, along with hybrids and variants, are documented in the
British Isles by the mid-seventh century.21 It is uncertain when the eighty-four year cycle, a
variant of that associated with fourth- and fifth-century Rome, first appeared in Britain or
Ireland, but Columbanus believed that it represented long established Irish practice.22 Victorius
of Aquitaine completed his Easter table in 457 in response to a request from Archdeacon Hilarus
of Rome, on behalf of Pope Leo I, for help resolving the discrepancies between Rome’s Easter
dates and those of Alexandria. Victorius provided a nineteen-year cycle for his table, as followed
in Alexandria, but in one column he listed dates computed according to the traditional Roman or
“Latin” lunar limits of the paschal week (discussed below), while alongside he placed those dates
– whenever they differed – that he thought were Alexandrian or “Greek.” In years with divergent
dates, the pope was invited to select the one appropriate for the western churches. The table had
errors in both lists, but its connection with the papacy (Hilarus succeeded Leo as pope in 461)
encouraged its diffusion, and the 541 Council of Orléans mandated its usage. The papacy
probably used a Victorian table at least into the early seventh century, which suggests that the
same table guided Easter celebrations at Canterbury after Augustine’s arrival there in 597; it
likely spread from Canterbury to other Anglo-Saxon locales. By c. 630, it had reached Ireland
either from England or the continent.23
Dionysius Exiguus created his table in 532 at the request of the papal chancellor. A
translation and continuation of a table by pseudo-Cyril of Alexandria, to which Dionysius added
an explanatory prologue, this consistently adhered to Alexandrian criteria.24 Wilfrid of Ripon
studied Dionysius’ methods while visiting Rome in the early 650s. By then if not earlier, the
papacy may have adopted the Dionysian table, though since the dates in one or the other of
Victorius’ columns usually agreed with Alexandrian dates, such a change would have often made
little or no difference in the timing of Rome’s celebrations. When Wilfrid returned to England,
he pushed for the dissemination of the Dionysian cycle.25 Through the seventh century,
however, papal churches maintained certain customs linked with the traditional Roman criteria
underlying Victorius’ Latin dates.26
As the Victorian and then the Dionysian tables spread in Ireland and Britain during the
seventh century, tensions grew between parties that adhered to these “Roman” systems of
reckoning and parties that favored the eighty-four year cycle. At a synod convened at the
monastery of Whitby in 664, Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne, who had been educated at Iona,
defended the eighty-four year cycle against Wilfrid, who spoke on behalf of the Dionysian
system. Although the reports of the Whitby assembly in the early eighth-century Life of Wilfrid
by Stephen of Ripon, a member of Wilfrid’s circle, and in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History differ in
some respects, they agree that Wilfrid’s arguments were decisive.27 The meeting took place in
the presence of the Northumbrian king Oswiu, who until then had followed the Columban Easter
dating. At Whitby, Oswiu gave his support to the Dionysian system, and Colman returned to
Iona with fellow monks from Lindisfarne who refused to abandon the eighty-four year cycle.
The decision at Whitby precipitated a decline in the importance of Iona and Lindisfarne in
Northumbrian political affairs as well as the growing predominance of the Dionysian table. Over
the next decades, monasteries that continued to follow the eighty-four year cycle experienced
significant pressure to convert.28 Theodore of Canterbury, for instance, archbishop from 669 to
690, excommunicated such communities, though he may have softened his stance toward the end
of his life. Wilfrid excommunicated houses that adhered to the eighty-four year cycle and also
those that followed “Roman” practices but remained in communion with them.29
Wearmouth-Jarrow’s ties with Iona, the final stronghold of the eighty-four year cycle,
were a possible cause of tension between Ceolfrith and Bede on the one hand and Wilfrid on the
other. Wilfrid served at several intervals as the bishop of Wearmouth-Jarrow: his episcopal seat
was first at York and twice later at Hexham, the last time in 706-9.30 Iona and its large network
of affiliated houses celebrated the Easter according to the eighty-four year cycle until c. 716,
when Iona converted to the Dionysian system. Some British Christians still followed the
eighty-four year cycle in 768, however, and interest in Victorius’ work is evident in Ireland
through the tenth century.31
The Columban, Victorian, and Dionysian systems of reckoning agreed on two principles
linking Easter with Passover.32 Each set the Christian feast near the start of the spring season,
and each took the full moon into account in choosing dates: Easter in all three systems was
invariably scheduled on or after luna 14, the day of the full moon when the lambs were killed for
Passover. While Passover might fall on any day of the week, though, all three systems of Easter
computing restricted the feast to Sunday.33 Bede’s chronicle in chapter 66 of the Reckoning of
Time reports that Pope Honorius (d. 638) and his successor, John IV (d. 642) wrote letters
accusing Irish groups of Quartodecimanism, a term that sometimes designates the custom of
holding Easter on the same day as Passover regardless of the weekday. Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History quotes a passage from John’s letter implying the same accusation, and the charge also
appears in Stephen’s Life of Wilfrid.34 Both Stephen and Bede affirm, though, that Columban
centers always held Easter on Sunday.35 While it is possible that some early Irish Christian
communities were Quartodeciman, if so, the practice seems to have disappeared before the
Synod of Whitby.36
Given the agreement on the basic criteria noted above, it is unsurprising that occasionally
in the seventh and early eighth centuries the eighty-four year, Victorian, and Dionysian cycles all
gave the same Sundays for Easter. As already noted, the dates of the Dionysian table and one or
the other column in the Victorian table typically coincided. Still, the eighty-four year cycle was
more likely to diverge from both the Dionysian and the Victorian cycles, sometimes by a week,
occasionally by as many as four weeks.37 These divergences had a number of causes, but the
insular controversy centered on two key issues. One concerned how to decide which lunar cycle
was the first month of spring and thus the “paschal month.” The eighty-four year cycle took the
traditional Roman date of 25 March for the vernal equinox and did not allow Easter to be
celebrated before 26 March; but the earliest permitted date for the paschal full moon of luna 14
was the same date assigned to the equinox in Alexandria. The full moon identifying a lunar cycle
as the paschal month, in other words, could occur as early as 21 March, so long as the next
Sunday was no earlier than 26 March. If the Sunday fell earlier, Easter was moved to the next
lunar cycle. (By the early eighth century, cyclic error in the eighty-four year table led to dates for
luna 14 falling four to five days earlier than the actual full moon.38) In an effort to compromise
between Roman and Alexandrian principles, the earliest date that Victorius allowed for the full
moon (luna 14) identifying the paschal month was 20 March.39 In the Victorian table, however,
the earliest that Easter Sunday could be celebrated was 22 March, one day after the official
Alexandrian equinox. If the Sunday after the full moon fell earlier, Victorius recommended that
Easter be celebrated on his Greek date, which placed the feast in the next lunar cycle. The
earliest allowed date of the paschal full moon in Dionysius’ table was 21 March, and the first
permitted date for Easter Sunday was 22 March, as in Alexandria.
The second critical difference lay in how each system defined the limits of the paschal
week, the start and end dates of the seven-day stretch during the paschal lunar month in which
the Sunday for Easter was sought. The limits of this week according to the eighty-four year cycle
were the fourteenth (the full moon) and twentieth days of the lunar cycle (luna 14–20). So long
as the Sunday of Easter did not precede 26 March, it could occur on any date that fell within
these limits; the practice of holding the feast as early as luna 14 may have encouraged the charge
that the cycle was Quartodeciman. In accordance with fourth- and fifth-century Roman custom,
Victorius set limits of luna 16–22 for the paschal week in his Latin column. Easter could be held
on the Sunday between these dates so long as it fell after 21 March. The limits of the paschal
week for Victorius’ Greek dates were luna 15-21, as in Alexandria and according to the
Dionysian table.40
Columbanus and Cummian
The foregoing sketch of the development of Easter reckoning and the principles of the
eighty-four year, Victorian, and Dionysian cycles provides enough background for understanding
the main issues addressed in the letters of Columbanus and Cummian. While it is necessary to
pay some attention to their treatment of these technicalities, our chief concern is with the
exegetical and theological reasoning behind their defense of the different criteria. Four letters
written by Columbanus within the first dozen or so years of the seventh century allude to a
controversy that broke out when Frankish bishops learned his monastic foundation at Luxeuil
adhered to the eighty-four year cycle. At the time, as emerges from Columbanus’ letters, the
papacy and the bishops followed the Victorian table. Two of the letters shed some light on why
Columbanus viewed the eighty-four year cycle as superior. The first and most informative letter
was sent to Pope Gregory the Great c. 600, the second about three years later to an episcopal
synod that probably met at Chalons.41 Cummian’s letter, directed c. 632 to Abbot Ségéne of
Iona and the hermit Béccán, refers to a regional synod convened about two years beforehand at
Mag Lène, in southern Ireland, to deliberate on Easter computing. The impetus for the synod
may have come from Pope Honorius’ letter.42 Cummian indicates that in order to conform to
Rome, the synod had decided to follow the Victorian table, and his letter defends its Latin
paschal week limits. After one participant protested the council’s decision, a delegation was sent
to Rome, returning with confirmation that the Easter liturgy witnessed there occurred on the date
given in the Victorian table. Since for the early 630s, Victorius noted only Latin dates that agreed
with the Dionysian (Alexandrian) dates, it is possible that the Easter celebrated by the delegates
in Rome was in fact scheduled according to Dionysius’ table.43 In the meantime, Ségéne and
Béccán had written the southern Irish to denounce the decision at Mag Lène and declare the
council heretical. Cummian replies to their criticisms.44
In his letter to the Council of Chalons, Columbanus complains that the Victorian table
“defines nothing” (nihil definientem), an allusion to Victorius’ proposal that in years when there
was disagreement, the pope should choose between Latin and Greek dates. Columbanus also
criticizes the Victorian table for being “recent” (nuper) since it postdated Martin of Tours,
Jerome, and Pope Damasus (d. 384). Asserting the greater antiquity of the eighty-four year cycle,
he declares that it represents the “tradition of his homeland” (traditio patriae meae) and had the
support of the third-century Syrian bishop Anatolius, whom Eusebius of Caesaria and Jerome
commended.45 The reference here is to the Book of Anatolius (Liber Anatolii), an early Irish tract
combining genuine text by that bishop with pseudonymous material. The Liber Anatolii upholds
the nineteen-year cycle of Alexandria, which both Victorius and Dionysius adopted, yet with the
traditional Roman date of 25 March for the spring equinox and the eighty-four year cycle limits
of luna 14–20 for the paschal week. Besides Anatolius, the patristic authority that Columbanus
most frequently praises is the “holy” (sanctus), “learned” (doctus), and “master” (domnus)
Jerome. Anyone in the western churches who deviates from Jerome’s teachings is a “heretic or
reprobate” (hereticus seu respuendus), Columbanus proclaims.46
But the arguments that Columbanus expounds at greatest length, in his letter to Pope
Gregory, are grounded in biblical exegesis. The exegesis keeps close to the literal sense of the
Old Testament while stressing the passages’ historical-typological ties to New Testament events
and Easter. Supporters of the Victorian table – the Gallican bishops – are accused of deviating
from the Old Testament injunctions and hence from the lunar-solar timing of Christ’s
Resurrection. Passover (Phase) and the Festival of Unleavened Bread, which Columbanus
implies are the same observance, prefigured the “solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection”
(solemnitas dominicae resurrectionis), he states.47 The dating of Easter (Pascha) must obey the
Hebrew commands. Since Easter like Passover is a festival of light, it must occur when light
exceeds darkness, meaning, for Columbanus, both when the moon is full and after the spring
equinox. Only God knows why the Exodus coincided with the full moon, he suggests, yet the
natural light properly occurring at the time of the Jewish and Christian observances is a critical
symbol of Christ’s victory and (it is implied) the Jews’ liberation. Denial of the necessity of this
light, he implies through an excerpt from the Liber Anatolii, imperils the soul.48
It should be recalled that Columbanus’ emphasis on the role of light fits with the reality
of the eighty-four year cycle, since its criteria allowed more sunlight and moonlight on Easter
than did the Victorian or Dionysian systems. Easter according to the eighty-four year cycle
always took place after not only the Alexandrian, but also the traditional Roman date for the
spring equinox, when days were clearly longer than nights. In addition, Easter was allowed to
occur on luna 14, the very day of the full moon; and it never fell later than the twentieth day of
the lunar cycle. A critical error of the Victorian table, Columbanus argues, is to permit Easter
celebrations in darkness.49 Two factors were involved, in his belief: First, the feast could fall
before 25 March, the traditional Roman date of the equinox. Because this was also the
anniversary of the Crucifixion, Columbanus further criticizes the Victorian system for upending
biblical chronology by permitting the Resurrection to be commemorated before the Passion.

Second, the Victorian table allowed Easter on the twenty-first or twenty-second day of the lunar
cycle, when the moon was well past fullness and rose late. During most of the night on those
days, there is no moonlight.50 The twenty-first and twenty-second days are “outside the law of
light” (extra ius lucis), Columbanus writes, beyond the time when the law commands that
Passover be eaten. Moreover, to hold Easter on one of those days exceeds the divine mandate of
seven, not nine days for the Festival of Unleavened Bread and thus disobeys the command in
Deuteronomy to neither add to nor diminish God’s word.51 Not only do the bishops at Chalons
depart from the practices of other churches in the West, Columbanus informs them. They
“conduct a sacrament of the New Testament without the authority of the Old Testament.”52
Responding to the charge – no doubt made by the Frankish bishops – that the eighty-four
year cycle judaizes, Columbanus argues that Christians must respect the Jewish injunctions, for
the “Easter (Pascha) of the fourteenth moon” is the “Passover (Phase) of God himself, the
institutor.” But the context makes clear that for him, this relationship signals a decisive break
between Judaism and Christianity. There is only one Pasch, for which the ancient Jews were
God’s appointed guardians until the coming of Christ, yet it never belonged to them, only to
God. The destruction of the Temple, the Jews’ expulsion from Jerusalem, and their killing of
Christ prove that they have lost this blessing, Columbanus indicates. God has transferred the
Passover observance and, it seems, every facet of the ancient law to Christians.53 Responsibility
for obeying the law, even its literal sense, now rests on Christians alone.
Cummian begins his letter by recalling that after the synod held at Mag Lène, he spent a
year examining scripture, histories, and Easter cycles to determine whether the Victorian was
indeed the best table. The defense he sends to Ségéne and Béccán is based on those studies.54
Drawing on biblical and patristic literature, he first analyzes the chronology of the Old
Testament events and observances with special attention to Passover and the Festival of
Unleavened Bread.55 He then surveys New Testament events from the Last Supper through
Pentecost and declares that there are three “weeks” of Christian commemoration: luna 14–20 for
the Passion, luna 15–21 for Christ’s burial, and luna 16–22 for the Resurrection.56 From here,
Cummian turns to the matter of ecclesiastical unity.57 The rest of the world is united in its timing
of Easter, he asserts. The only people left apart are the British and Irish, who live “almost at the
end of the earth” and are “pimples on the earth’s face.”58 Failure to accept the Victorian system
disobeys the canons of the “fourfold apostolic see, namely of Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch and
Alexandria,” all of which agreed “on the unity of Easter.” He recalls that the Councils of Nicea
(325) and Arles (314) enjoined unity in dating the feast,59 and he implies that anyone who
departs from the councils of the universal church by rejecting the Victorian table deserves
excommunication.60 Among the church fathers he cites are Cyprian, Origen, Gregory the Great,
Augustine, and – the most frequently named father – Jerome, including pseudo-Jerome
(Ambrosiaster) for his Book of Questions.61 As for Easter cycles, Cummian claims to have
studied ten that he ascribes to Patrick, Anatolius, Dionysius, Augustine, Victorius, and the
Council of Nicea, among other authorities.62 He points out that “Anatolius,” whom Ségéne and
Béccán evidently praised, rejected the eighty-four year cycle, which for Cummian shows that the
Liber Anatolii did not support its system. The eighty-four year cycle also deviates from the
astronomical and calendrical criteria that the Nicene bishops noted “by the right law” (recto
iure), he states.63
Like Columbanus, Ségéne and Béccán may have argued that the Victorian table wrongly
permitted Easter in times of darkness. “Woe to you who call evil good, and good evil, who put
darkness for light and light for darkness. For we are sons of the day, not of night or shadows,”
Cummian writes, quoting Isaiah and Paul.64 Yet aside from this comment, his letter does not
allude to Easter or Passover as a festival of light, and while he mentions the equinox in
connection with the cycle he attributes to the Nicene Council, he offers no explanation of how it
should guide the selection of dates.65 Overall, he seems less interested than Columbanus in
Easter’s symbolic connection to sunlight or moonlight. The issue does not seem to inform his
reading of scripture or patristic and conciliar authorities.
Before discussing Cummian’s letter further, one other aspect of his and Columbanus’
interpretation of the timing of the Jewish observances needs to be clarified. Like Columbanus,
Cummian focused on the literal and historical-typological meanings of the Old Testament texts.
As they both knew from scripture, Jewish festival days began and ended at sundown. But the
Hebrew ben ha‘arbayim in Exodus 12 and Numbers 9 specifies that the sacrifice of lambs took
place toward the evening with which the fourteenth ended and the fifteenth began, while both
Irish authors clearly believed that the killing occurred at the beginning of the fourteenth day, in
the evening that marked the transition from the thirteenth.66 The slaughter, Passover, and the
following daytime belonged to the same fourteenth day. This interpretation of ad uesperam was
likely typical in Columban and British circles. It probably owes something to Genesis 1, which
describes each day of Creation as consisting of first an evening, then a morning (e.g. uespere et
mane dies unus: Genesis 1:5).
Columbanus thought that the Festival of Unleavened Bread began with the Passover meal
at the start of the fourteenth day and extended through the twentieth lunar day. In his view, his
letter to Pope Gregory suggests, the observance of Easter as early as luna 14 affirmed the feast’s
ties to every Old Testament event assigned to this one day – the sacrifice of lambs, Passover, its
commemorative meal, and the first eating of unleavened bread. It is noteworthy that the Liber
Anatolii, from which Columbanus quotes in support of the eighty-four year cycle, links Easter
repeatedly with the “paschal sacrifice” of the Jews and identifies the period of unleavened bread
as the week when the Pasch was immolated.67 The language recalls the earliest Christian custom
of focusing Easter services on remembrance of the Passion – Christ the new paschal lamb –more
than the Resurrection.68 Perhaps influenced by the Liber Anatolii, Columbanus’ letter to
Gregory implies a strong sense of the two events’ theological unity. While recognizing Easter as
a celebration of the risen Christ and therefore rightly a festival of light, he seems to have
envisaged Christ’s triumph as the endpoint of a unified process that began with the Crucifixion.
The temporal unity of the lambs’ slaughter, Passover, its feast, and the first day of unleavened
bread prefigured the theological unity of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and passing over from
death to life.
Cummian indicates that the Last Supper, not mentioned by Columbanus, was a Passover
observance held “as evening proceeded” (uespera procedente) on the same fourteenth day as the
lambs’ sacrifice.69 But he implies that the Festival of Unleavened Bread began the next day, luna
15, the date given in Leviticus 23, and endured until luna 21.70 While the Crucifixion paralleled
the lambs’ sacrifice on luna 14, Christ’s body resting in the tomb (luna 15) corresponded to the
Festival of Unleavened Bread. Still, Cummian was also aware of the scripture that notes the
Passover meal included unleavened bread. To reconcile the various texts, he quotes a passage
from Origen’s homily on Leviticus (Rufinus’ translation) that differentiates the “solemnity of the
Pasch” from the “solemnity of unleavened bread” and states that only the day of the lambs’
killing is the Pasch, yet the “beginning of unleavened bread is joined to the end of the Pasch.”71
This passage, Cummian implies, confirms the distinct yet associated meanings of the two Jewish
ceremonies and foreshadows a parallel relationship between the New Testament events.
Like Columbanus, Cummian seems to have viewed the relation of Judaism to Christianity
as a matter of linear, historical or chronological succession. The Jews had God’s blessing under
the Old Testament but lost it when they failed to accept Christ. God ended their covenant and
transferred their law to a new chosen people, who now bear sole responsibility for its commands.
Since the Incarnation, obedience to the law has been possible only inside the church. An excerpt
from Jerome that underscores Cummian’s hostility toward Jews warns Ségéne and Béccan to
beware “lest we eat the type of the lamb outside the one house against the precept of the law,
‘that is outside’ the universal church”; for “it is clear that Jews and heretics … who do not eat the
lamb in the one church eat the flesh not of the lamb but of the dragon.”72 Yet Jesus’ statement in
Matthew 5.17, “I have come not to do away with the law…. but to fulfill,” means, Cummian
explains, that Christ “added” to the law, a term that for him again connotes temporal sequence
(e.g. the “adding” of days), and thus the divorce of the new faith from the old. The law as it
applies to Christians calls for a transformed paschal observance effectively disconnected from
that of the Jews.73 This is why the correct limits for the paschal week, luna 16–22, are days with
no special role in the Jewish calendar. Confirmation, Cummian believes, comes from the
Gospels. The Resurrection, an event without Old Testament analogue, took place on a later day
than the Crucifixion or Christ’s burial, and accordingly on a later day than Passover or the first
day of unleavened bread.74
Like Columbanus, Cummian pays close attention to the literal sense of the biblical texts
and the historical-typological relation of the Old to the New Testament. For him, too, getting the
chronology of the scriptural events right was crucial to dating Easter and respecting its
symbolism. Unlike Columbanus’ letter to Gregory, however, which implies that the temporal
unity of the Jewish events prefigured the theological unity of the Gospel events, Cummian’s
letter emphasizes their disjunction. He seems to envisage the dates as discrete points spaced out
along a timeline: the lambs’ sacrifice, Passover, the Festival of Unleavened Bread “joined to the
end of the Pasch”; the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the burial, the Resurrection. Christians
respect the ancient law when they celebrate Christ’s Resurrection the third day after his Passion.
The temporal uniqueness of Christ’s rising from the dead matches the event’s theological
uniqueness; while Passover prefigured the Crucifixion, the lambs of the Jews – the “shadow”
(umbra) – remained dead, but the Truth was brought back to life.75 Only if Easter is set no
earlier than luna 16, distanced by the right number of days from Passover and the Crucifixion on
luna 14 and the first day of unleavened bread and Christ’s burial on luna 15, Cummian suggests,
does its timing fit biblical chronology and respect both the law and Christ’s “addition.”
Ceolfrith and Bede
Bede’s earliest discussion of Easter occurs in On Times, completed in 703, one of his first
treatises.76 After expounding on the different units of time measurement, he explains the
components and principles of the Dionysian table (chapters 11-14) and then discusses Easter’s
spiritual significance (chapter 15). The remaining chapters (16-22) present a brief chronicle of
world history.77 There is no mention of Easter tables other than the Dionysian and no hint that,
when writing On Times, Bede was aware of opposition to its contents. Tensions had surfaced by
the time he wrote his letter of 708 to Plegwin, a member of Bishop Wilfrid’s entourage, but the
tensions apparently did not concern Easter reckoning.78 Although we do not know how a copy
of On Times reached Wilfrid’s circle, conceivably it was sent from Wearmouth-Jarrow soon after
Wilfrid regained the episcopal seat at Hexham in 706. Bede may have hoped that the treatise’s
exposition of the Dionysian cycle would reassure the bishop about the orthodoxy of
Wearmouth-Jarrow, despite its ties to Iona. The letter to Plegwin notes, however, that the treatise
had, if anything, the opposite effect. One or more monks affiliated with Wilfrid accused Bede of
heresy because the chronicle in On Times reported that 3952 years had passed between Creation
and the Incarnation.
Bede’s calculation of the anno mundi of Christ’s birth conflicted with eschatological
beliefs in Wilfrid’s circle that were based in part on historical-typological exegesis of the
Genesis story of Creation in the light of Psalm 89.4 and II Peter 3.8. With God, both verses
assert, a thousand years are like a single day. The six or seven days of Creation thus reveal God’s
plan for a total of six or seven millennia of history between the beginning of the world and the
Eschaton, a notion that Bede firmly rejected. The letter to Plegwin implies, though, that some
Wearmouth-Jarrow brethren held such views.79 Victorius’ work, a copy of which was at
Wearmouth-Jarrow, may have been a source to which they turned for support. The manuscript
included selections from Jerome’s continuation and translation of Eusebius’ world chronicle and
Victorius’ prologue, which contained a chronicle modeled on that of Eusebius. Eusebius/Jerome
and Victorius made the world significantly older than did Bede’s chronicle.80 According to
Eusebius, Christ began his ministry 5228 years after Creation; according to Victorius, 5228 years
had transpired between Creation and the Passion.81
Why does the Reckoning of Time attack Victorius and his Easter table? Since the same
treatise by Bede again attacks millenarian ideas, implying that they continued (in 725) to have
support in his milieu, one consideration may have been the world chronicle prefacing the
Victorian table. Yet the main target of criticisms of Victorius’ work in the Reckoning of Time is
not its chronicle but its system of Easter reckoning. Such concern was possibly linked with the
conversion of Iona and its affiliates to the Dionysian cycle. After ca. 717, the only insular
communities that continued to follow the eighty-four year cycle were British, communities that
Bede regarded as schismatic.82 The Reckoning of Time was intended for the instruction of fellow
Anglo-Saxon monks and clergy who, he expected, would help him advance moral and spiritual
reform within the Northumbrian and Anglo-Saxon church.83 As he wrote the Reckoning of Time
in the early 720s, any interest in the Victorian system of dating Easter among his peers would
surely have seemed to him a significant obstacle to that endeavor.

Although the Reckoning of Time discusses Easter at greater length than does the letter to
King Nechtan, the lines of thought in the two texts are so similar that it makes sense to examine
them together. The letter covers nine pages in the Colgrave and Mynors edition of Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History; over six pages concern Easter reckoning, while the rest of the letter
discusses monastic tonsures. Twenty-two of the seventy-one chapters in the Reckoning of Time
(44-65) analyze the Dionysian table and its principles, with reference to the principles of the
eighty-four year cycle and (to a much greater extent) of the Victorian table, and the meaning of
Easter, subjects that receive some attention in preceding chapters.84 One refrain of the letter and
the Reckoning of Time is that more than other systems of Easter reckoning, the Dionysian
respects apostolic, patristic, and conciliar authority. The letter to Nechtan links the Dionysian
cycle with the authority of Saints Peter and Mark, Rome and Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea,
Theophilus, and Cyril of Alexandria. The Reckoning of Time cites – among other authorities –
the Council of Nicea, Cyril, Anatolius, Theophilus, and Jerome.85
But the core arguments in favor of the Dionysian cycle in the letter and the Reckoning of
Time concern biblical exegesis. In his commentaries, Bede tends to proceed systematically,
verse-by-verse, through the scripture. While his Old Testament commentaries generally
emphasize spiritual exegesis, like his New Testament commentaries, they show his mindfulness
of the scripture’s literal or historical sense and often incorporate interpretations at that level. As
Alan Thacker has demonstrated, Bede followed Augustine in believing that accurate knowledge
of the letter of scripture and its historical context should always direct and control the search for
mystical meanings.86 This exegetical strategy is apparent in both the letter to Nechtan and the
Reckoning of Time. Both works stress, first, the need to attend carefully to the Old and New
Testament texts in order to understand correctly the history and the chronology of the narrated
events and observances, guided by appropriate patristic and other authorities. Christians must
respect the letter of the Jewish scriptures as well as of the New Testament.87 The Reckoning of
Time reinforces the arguments from the biblical material with detailed commentary on
astronomical and calendrical lore. This again starts with “literal” exegesis: the observed reality of
solar, lunar, and stellar phenomena, the technical aspects of calendars, and the components of
Easter cycles, matters on which Bede draws information from a range of Christian and classical
sources.88 A governing theme of his discussion of Easter in the Reckoning of Time is that the
Dionysian table aligns the Christian feast as closely as imperfect human calculations and
calendars allow with the ancient Jewish law and the movements of sun, moon, and stars that the
law respected.
The errors of the eighty-four year and Victorian cycles regarding the limits of the paschal
week are equally serious, the letter to Nechtan and the Reckoning of Time suggest. Both “those
who think that Easter Sunday ought to be celebrated from the sixteenth to the twenty-second
moon” and “those who swerve from the way of truth in the other direction” contravene the
ancient commands, Bede declares in chapter 59 of the treatise.89 The eighty-four year cycle
allows Easter vigils as early as the evening of luna 13 while excluding luna 21, the last day of the
biblically mandated Festival of Unleavened Bread. Both the start and end dates of luna 16–22 in
the Victorian system, like luna 13, lie outside “Easter’s legal limits” (legitimos… terminos
paschae).90 To make sense of the accusation that the eighty-four year cycle wrongly allowed
Easter on luna 13, it should be recalled that Columbanus and Cummian believed that the lambs’
sacrifice and Passover took place in the evening with which luna 14 began, the transition from
the thirteenth day. Bede and Ceolfrith recognized, however, that the correct interpretation of the
biblical texts assigned the lambs’ slaughter, the Passover feast, and accordingly Jesus’ Last
Supper to the evening transition from the fourteenth to the fifteenth day.91 The Israelites escaped
Egypt in the night that began luna 15; the Crucifixion took place later the same day; Christ lay in
the tomb after sundown, the beginning of luna 16; he rose from the dead on luna 17.92 In the
Reckoning of Time, Bede confirms this understanding of the scripture by reference to lunar
observation. The “fifteenth moon” – the moon visible in the evening transition from the
fourteenth to the fifteenth day – is the proper start date for the paschal week in part because the
moon shines then for a full twelve hours.93
That the lambs were killed at the close of luna 14, not its start, as Columbanus and
Cummian thought, also clarifies how Bede and his abbot understood the relationship between
Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Like Cummian’s letter, the letter to Nechtan and
the Reckoning of Time differentiate the two events, identifying Passover with luna 14 and the
unleavened bread with luna 15. The Reckoning of Time devotes an entire chapter to the
difference between the Pasch and the unleavened bread.94 Yet Cummian implies that the
Passover meal and the first day of unleavened bread truly belonged to separate days, whereas for
Ceolfrith and Bede, the commemoration of Passover in the evening between the fourteenth and
fifteenth days accorded with the meal’s status as both part and not part of the Festival of
Unleavened Bread. Similarly, they thought, the search for the Sunday of Easter within the limits
of luna 15–21 conformed to the ancient law because this was the entire period of
Passover/Unleavened Bread. Merging the divergent chronologies of the Passion narratives
according to John’s Gospel and the synoptics, in chapter 63 of the Reckoning of Time, Bede
suggests that John 18:28 (“And they did not enter the praetorium, lest they be polluted and not be
able to eat the Pasch”) refers not to a forthcoming Passover observance but to the continuation of
the day that commenced the previous evening: the fifteenth, the first day of Unleavened Bread.95
John calls the day when Jesus was crucified the Pasch, Bede explains, because of its nearness to
the Pasch. This is again evidence that the Gospel is not contrary to the law, he notes, but rather
instills knowledge of its mystery.96 The chapter concludes with moral exegesis that reinforces
this image of distinct yet interlocking events by exploring the connection between the Old
Testament ceremonies, Easter, baptism, and the Christian life. Baptism and Easter both
mystically effect our escape from “spiritual darkness” (spiritales tenebras), Bede tells his
readers. The seven days of Unleavened Bread symbolize our ensuing life-long pilgrimage, during
which we must daily continue to pass over or progress “toward better things” (ad meliora).97
The letter to Nechtan and the Reckoning of Time imply that the Easter liturgy familiar to
Ceolfrith and Bede conformed to this conception of its relation to both Jewish observances. A
service of lessons, prayers, and Mass – the paschal oblation and “mystery of the flesh and blood
of the immaculate lamb” (mysterium carnis et sanguinis agni inmaculati) – took place Saturday
evening; how long into the night it endured is not indicated. A separate service the following
dawn, the start of Easter week, recalled the beginning of the period of unleavened bread.98
We can better appreciate the distinctiveness of Bede and Ceolfrith’s arguments if we
compare them with the defense of the Dionysian limits for the paschal week that Bishop Braulio
of Zaragoza presents in a letter written 640/1.99 Braulio defends the dating of Easter between
luna 15 and luna 21 partly by asserting that this represents ecclesiastical tradition; the authorities
he cites include Theophilus, Cyril, Dionysius, Pope Leo I, and Isidore of Seville. But Braulio
also contends that, in keeping with the Nicene Council’s prohibition, both the limits of luna 15–
21 and the restriction of Easter to Sunday separate the Christian from the Jewish festival. In 641,
he notes, the Jews will observe Passover on Sunday, 1 April, yet since this is luna 14, a date
“from the Old and not from the New Testament,” it is too early for Easter.100 The Christian feast
must be held after Passover, between the fifteenth and twenty-first days, he argues, to signify that
the New Testament comes after the Old, since Christians do not celebrate with Jews. In contrast,
Bede and Ceolfrid insist that to observe Easter on a Sunday constitutes the unique difference
between the Jewish and Christian festivals. “If it could happen that the Lord’s Day always
occurred on the fifteenth day of the first month, that is, on the fifteenth moon,” Nechtan is
informed, “we could always celebrate the Pasch at one and the same time with the ancient people
of God.” Since this is impossible, the correct Sunday is located between luna 15 and luna 21, the
third week of the lunar cycle, the same temporal boundaries (Bede and Ceolfrith claim) as
Passover/the Festival of Unleavened Bread.101
Regarding the choice of which lunar cycle, again Ceolfrith and Bede stress adherence to
the Hebrew commands. The Reckoning of Time and more briefly the letter to Nechtan indicate
that obedience to the law on this matter requires knowledge of the sun’s movement. The “first
month” of spring can only be identified by reference to the vernal equinox, it is argued, which
sundial observations prove happens on 21 March. Both texts are emphatic that luna 14 (the full
moon) must fall on or after this date.102 The traditional dating of the equinox to 25 March that
underlies the eighty-four year cycle is explicitly rejected in the Reckoning of Time, implicitly in
the letter to Nechtan, but criticism is suggested of the Victorian table, particularly in Bede’s
treatise.103
Most passages of the Reckoning of Time that imply Bede faced interlocutors who
defended Victorius and his system of Easter reckoning concern the role of the equinox in dating
the feast. If the challenges to which he alludes provide a window into a situation he actually
faced in his milieu, they suggest that his interlocutors were monks or clergy sufficiently educated
to be capable of citing scripture against him. Permitting the paschal full moon to precede the
equinox is a “great” error, Bede warns in Chapter 50.104 Chapter 51 makes it evident that the
Victorian system is Bede’s target; Victorius is named as the source, and he and his unidentified
followers are accused of establishing “wicked laws” and writing “injustice.”105 The chapter ends
with a passage from Victor of Capua aimed, Bede states, at “lovers of Victorius” lest they
“accuse us of having attacked him blindly.” As Victorius “was shown to have failed … in the
past,” Victor wrote, let him “lack authority and renounce any occasion for evil persuasion in the
present and future.”106
In Chapter 61, Bede responds to “anyone” who “should object” (si quis obiecerit) that the
equinox is not mentioned in the Old Testament mandates. It should be remembered that,
although the ancient Sanhedrin considered astronomical and climactic phenomena in determining
the start of spring, the key criterion implied in the Old Testament is agricultural. As reported in
Deuteronomy 16, for example, the lunar cycle of Passover is the “month of new fruits.”107 The
objection to which Bede refers in Chapter 61 is one that defenders of the Victorian table were
more likely to make than supporters of the eighty-four year cycle: Obedience to the law did not
require taking the equinox into account.108 In response, Bede asserts that when the “lawgiver”
[legiferus, i.e. Moses] demanded the keeping of the Pasch “from the full moon of the first
month” and in its third week, he necessarily meant the equinox had passed.109 In Chapter 62 of
the Reckoning of Time, Bede apologizes for repeating himself on this issue but suggests it is
necessary because of resistance.110
A final notable feature of the discussions of Easter in the letter to Nechtan and the
Reckoning of Time is the space given to figurative exegesis. Columbanus discusses the light
symbolism of Passover and Easter in his letter to Pope Gregory, and he and Cummian link Old
and New Testament events and observances typologically. Otherwise, though, their exegesis
remains largely confined to literal and historical modes of interpretation. Bede’s claim that
supporters of Victorius believed the equinox irrelevant to dating Easter, because it is not
mentioned in the Hebrew injunctions, hints at a similar exegetical approach. But for Bede and
Ceolfrith, opponents of the Dionysian system erred first by misinterpreting the letter of scripture
and the observed movements of the sun and moon, and further in their neglect of the allegorical
meaning.111 In Bede’s belief, Matthew 5.17 (“Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or
the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill”) testified to the importance of this exegetical
approach.112 Cummian linked Christ’s “fulfillment” of the law to the separation of Christianity
from Judaism, the termination of God’s blessing of the Jews, and the transformation of the Old
Testament commands. Bede seems to have thought more in terms of incorporation, both of the
Hebrew law and the Jews who followed it. The Old Testament had become part of a new corpus
of sacred text, where its letter remained deserving of respect; hence Bede’s adoption of Jerome’s
term, “Hebraic Truth” (hebraica ueritate) for the Vulgate Old Testament and his praise of the
Dionysian table for its respect of Hebraic authority.113 Yet the New Testament enhances the
ancient record of divine wisdom through its revelation that Christ has brought the promise of the
old covenant to completion. This incorporation but also enhancement of the old in the new
covenant is paralleled in the Christian paschal liturgy. As Bede notes in Chapter 61 of the
Reckoning of Time, “we honor the solemnities of the same Pasch [as under the law] with other
kinds of sacraments…. nor thus indeed do we do away with the law or the prophets, but rather
we fulfill them with the sacraments of evangelical grace.”114 Such a relationship of the Old to
the New Testament – the new preserving and respecting the old while illumining its significance
– was, for Bede, fundamental to the Christian Bible’s unity.
The foregoing remarks by no means negate Bede’s ambivalence toward Jews. Georges
Tugène has noted how ancient and medieval Christian literature presents a spectrum of attitudes
toward Judaism, ranging from the idea of a complete rupture between the two faiths to emphasis
on their continuities.115 The letters of Columbanus and Cummian intimate an attitude
somewhere toward the former end of the spectrum, and so do a number of Bede’s writings, in
particular where he seems primarily concerned about Jews since the Incarnation. While he
followed Augustine in believing that Jews would convert at the Eschaton, he frequently
denounces Jews of his era for rejecting Christ and the church. Where his writing concentrates on
the history of ancient Israel, Jews before the Incarnation, or the apostolic era, however, he shows
greater interest in the continuities.116 A prominent motif of such texts is again incorporation,
along the lines of his vision of the place of the Old Testament in Christian scripture. As he
declares, for instance, in Book 4 of his Commentary on Genesis, Paul “does not condemn the
Old Testament… nor would he prefer the apostles and the evangelists in any way to Moses and
the prophets who established the Old Testament.” Rather, concerning their “shared grace of
spirit, virtue, and faith, he [Paul] elsewhere says, ‘But having the same spirit of faith….’”117
Similarly, Bede’s commentary on the wilderness Tabernacle, the focus of Tugène’s article,
draws on Augustine to affirm Christ’s spiritual presence to the ancient Jews, the salvation of the
entire people of the Old Testament through their obedience to the law, and their membership in
the one Church existing from Creation to the Last Day.118
An analogous perspective seems apparent in the letter to Nechtan and the Reckoning of
Time. Judaism and Christianity are portrayed as joined together through shared paschal
observances grounded in shared law, faith, and grace. Yet Easter excels Passover in sacred
mystery. Not only does the Christian feast signify the fulfillment of the promise made to the
Jews; by means of its observance, Bede states in Chapter 6 of the treatise, the “world’s salvation
is both symbolized and comes to pass.”119 Figurative exegesis, which has its starting point in the
letter of scripture just as the Christian feast had its historical origin in the letter of the Jewish law,
provides the outstanding testimony of this relationship, Bede believes. The exegete’s search for
the spiritual meaning embedded in the Old Testament shows that even before the Incarnation, the
Jewish scriptures pointed toward the truth Christ manifested – a truth that the letter to Nechtan
and Reckoning of Time emphatically identify with Christ’s gift of grace and spirit. The main
patristic model for the allegorical interpretation of Easter in both works is Augustine’s letter on
the feast to Bishop Januarius.120 Easter, like Passover, is held in the first month, Nechtan is
informed, so as to celebrate the sacraments of the Lord’s Resurrection and the deliverance of
believers in a season when the “spirit of our mind” is renewed to the “love of heavenly
things.”121 Like the Jewish observances, the Christian feast occurs in the third week of the
month, a reminder of Christ’s Resurrection on the third day and inauguration of the world’s third
age, the era of grace, completing the promise made before the law and under the law. Having
been immolated as our Pasch but rising from the dead, Christ wishes us to celebrate the “paschal
feasts of his Resurrection” (paschalia eiusdem resurrectionis…festa) – a phrase expressive of
Bede and Ceolfrith’s belief that Easter preserves the ancient observance while surpassing it,
since the new feast honors the resurrected victim.122 The paschal full moon as well as the feast
must occur after the equinox, they assert, because Christ, the “sun of justice,” (sol iustitiae) first
rose and ascended to heaven, then filled his church with the inner light of grace by sending down
the spirit, symbolized in the moon.123 To these “indices of the paschal season obtained from
observation of the law, we heirs of the New Testament” add the requirement that Easter be on
Sunday, in remembrance of Christ’s and our own resurrection.124 Morally, Easter’s coincidence
with Passover commends the Christian passage from vice to virtue. Its celebration of light
signifies our desired separation “from the darkness of sin” (a peccati tenebris). The gradual
turning of the moon toward heaven in the third week reminds us to thank God for the grace
poured out in the third age.125 Additional figurative meanings are mentioned, as well.
Although Bede and Ceolfrith worried that the Easter dates of the eighty-four year cycle
showed disregard for the feast’s mystical meaning, the Victorian system seemed to Bede, by 725,
to present a more serious danger. By allowing limits of luna 16–22 for the paschal week and
allowing the paschal full moon before the equinox, the system ignored the feast’s essential
connection to the light of both sun and moon. The issue extended beyond symbolism: Easter was
a channel of grace and spirit, but only if timed with proper respect for the light of God’s creation.
Whereas the letter of Pope John IV to the Irish appears to have identified the eighty-four year
cycle with Pelagianism,126 Bede’s De temporum ratione implies that Victorius’ system poses a
greater risk of that heresy. “If anyone should argue that the paschal full moon can occur before
the equinox,” Bede declares in the Reckoning of Time, “let him show either that the holy church
was perfected before the Savior came in the flesh, or that any of the faithful can have something
of the supernal light before [Christ’s] grace is bestowed.”127
Beyond Easter
The limited insight that Bede provides into the attitudes and beliefs of contemporary
defenders of the Victorian system suggests that they demonstrated a penchant for literal,
historical, and historical-typological exegesis of the Old Testament analogous to that behind the
millenarian eschatology criticized in the letter to Plegwin. A broadly similar exegetical approach
is apparent in the letters of Columbanus and Cummian discussed earlier. Although this cannot be
discussed here, it is worth noting that analogies are also evident in the exegesis of the Song of
Songs by the Pelagian, Julian of Eclanum, a work criticized in the opening book of Bede’s Song
of Songs commentary because some of his brethren evidently read Julian with interest. And
comparison can be made, as well, to the predominantly Antiochene exegesis of writings from the
Canterbury School of Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian. Possibly, some of Bede’s
Wearmouth-Jarrow brethren had studied at centers like Canterbury or Irish monasteries where,
before coming to Wearmouth–Jarrow, they developed exegetical and doctrinal preferences at
odds with those that he taught.128 Reading between the lines of his criticisms in the letter to
Plegwin, the Song of Songs commentary, and the Reckoning of Time, it seems that the
intellectual currents that disturbed Bede may have included not only an emphasis on literalizing
modes of Old Testament exegesis but also a strong reverence for Jerome among the Latin
fathers, disinterest in or unfamiliarity with Augustine’s theology of original sin and grace,
greater hostility toward the ancient Jews than Bede favored, and accordingly a tendency to stress
the rupture between ancient Judaism and Christianity more than the continuities.129 It is most
unlikely that all these traits belonged to every proponent of ideas that Bede criticizes in the noted
writings, but groups seem to have overlapped.
The privileging of literalist interpretations of the Old Testament in his own milieu may
have been a consideration behind some texts in which Bede challenges such exegesis without
mentioning contemporary opponents or other interlocutors. One text worth considering in this
vein is the Little Book of Responses (Libellus Responsionum) that he paraphrased in Book 1 of
his Ecclesiastical History. Pope Gregory I evidently wrote and sent the original tract to
Augustine of Canterbury in 601, to respond to questions from Augustine about how to administer
the English church.130 The last two of Gregory’s responses, as presented by Bede, refer to
British Christian practices that troubled Augustine: among them, the denial of baptism to
pregnant women, of entrance into churches to women who had recently given birth, and of
communion to menstruating women and men who experienced nocturnal emissions. Gregory
condemns these practices partly as evidence of overly literalist interpretations of Old Testament
mandates that he states must be understood figuratively.131 Bede included Gregory’s Libellus
because of its importance in tracing the history of the English church, his admiration of Gregory,
and the continued schism between British and Anglo-Saxon Christians in his present. An
additional factor, though, may have been its resonance with his worries about contemporary
Anglo-Saxon religious and clergy who seemed excessively interested in the letter of Hebrew law
and insufficiently attentive to its spiritual meaning.
Similar worries may have informed the conclusion to his commentary On Genesis,
probably finished in the early to mid-720s.132 The treatise closes with a lengthy exposition on
Genesis 21:9-10, the verses in which Sarah tells Abraham to expel Hagar and Ishmael.133 Bede’s
decision to end his commentary at this point was likely significant: the verses provided a context
for exploring the relation of the Old to the New Testament and Judaism to Christianity, one of
his favored exegetical themes. In line with Paul’s exegesis of Sarah and Hagar in Galatians
4:21-31, Bede reads the Old Testament story as an allegory of the relationship between the two
faiths. Yet while Paul stresses their dichotomy, Bede’s emphasis is on the continuities – the
preservation of the old covenant in the new era, when it has been illumined through the grace
that enables Christians to understand and carry out the ancient law spiritually. What Paul means,
Bede contends, is that “neither the writings nor the writers of the Old Testament should be driven
from the boundaries of the church, like the slave girl and her son.”134 Under the “grace and
freedom of the gospel” (gratia et libertas Euangelii), the “carnal observance of the [Old]
Testament” (carnalem eiusdem testamenti obseruantiam) is past, having been transformed into
the spiritual sense. Yet those parts of the law and the prophets that refer to the “faith of truth and
works of justice and purification of the heart for seeing God” (de fide ueritatis et operum
iustitiae cordisque purificatione ad uidendum Deum) can still be interpreted literally, while other
elements are read spiritually, “until all things are done” (donec omnia fiant: Matthew 5:18).135
Bede then denounces “false teachers” (falsi doctores) who “confirm that this grace will benefit
us at last, if we are also consecrated by circumcision according to the ritual of the law.” Just as
the law – the promise – came before its fulfillment in Christ, these ministers supposedly teach
that good works adhering to the letter of the ancient injunctions can precede the gift of grace –
the heresy of Pelagius. Bede goes on to link their fidelity to the “carnal” sense of the Old
Testament with a desire for temporal benefits and neglect of spiritual things. Possibly his
references to false teachers and circumcision have no topical relevance, but his shift here to
present tense and a first person plural verb is noteworthy.136 His anger seems at least partly
directed at contemporaries. Did he know of insular monks or clergy of his day who, he thought,
not only pursued worldly pleasures and ignored spiritual goods, but advocated circumcision?
Given the evidence already discussed of devotion to the letter of Jewish law in his milieu, we
should not rule out the possibility. Bede ends his treatise with a warning that the targets of his
wrath will face eternal exile from heaven at the Last Judgment.137
Many other passages in Bede’s vast corpus seem to echo disagreements between him and
contemporaries about proper exegesis.138 What inspired his prodigious output, above all the
writing of commentary after commentary on scripture, especially the Old Testament? Again,
numerous factors were certainly involved: his innate brilliance, the education he received at
Wearmouth-Jarrow from the age of seven, his deep devotion to the Bible, his passion for
knowledge, his access to Wearmouth-Jarrow’s large library, and others. Recently, historians
seeking to understand his productivity have rightly also drawn attention to his profound concern,
evident especially in his later writings, with moral corruption in the Northumbrian church.139
But we should also give thought to the evidence of his anxiety about deviant intellectual currents
reaching into his circle, even at Wearmouth-Jarrow, and of the drive he apparently felt to combat
them as well.
1
Numerous excellent studies that analyze these quarrels have appeared in the last several
decades. To note only a selection here: Cummian’s Letter De controversia paschali and the De
ratione conputandi, ed. Maura Walsh and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Toronto, 1988); Bede: The
Reckoning of Time, translated, with introduction, notes and commentary by Faith Wallis
(Liverpool, 1999); T.M. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, Chapter 9: The Paschal
Controversy (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 391-415; Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Irish History and
Chronology (Dublin, 2003); Caitlin Corning, The Celtic and Roman Traditions: Conflict and
Consensus in the Early Medieval Church (New York, 2006). Since this article was initially
written in 2010–11, it unfortunately has only been able to take partial account (in subsequent
revisions) of some more recent, important scholarly works on early medieval Easter reckoning,
among them, Immo Warntjes, The Munich Computus: Text and Translation: Irish Computistics
Between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede and its Reception in Carolingian Times
(Stuttgart, 2010); and Computus and its Cultural Context in the Latin West, AD 300 – 1200, ed.
Immo Warntjes and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Turnhout, 2010).

2
See the bibliographies and references in the works mentioned above, n. 1.
3
Bede, De temporum ratione liber, CCSL 123B, ed. C.W. Jones (Turnhout, 1977); Bede:
Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis (above, n. 2).

4
Edited with English translation in Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. G.S.M. Walker (Dublin,
1970), and in Cummian’s Letter, ed. Walsh and Ó Cróinín, above n. 1.

5
Edited with English translation in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed.
Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969) (henceforth HE), Book 5, Chapter 21, pp.
534-51.
6
All biblical references are to the Vulgate for the Latin and the Douay-Rheims Bible for its
English translation unless otherwise stated. Both are online at: http://www.drbo.org/
and http://www.drbo.org/lvb/index.htm .
7
See Deuteronomy 16:1-8.
8
“Mense secundo quartadecima die mensis ad uesperam cum azymis et lactucis agrestibus
comedent illud.”
9
“Mense autem primo quartadecima die mensis Phase Domini erit et quintadecima die
sollemnitas septem diebus uescentur azymis.”

10
“Profecti igitur de Ramesse mense primo quintadecima die mensis primi altera die phase filii
Israhel in manu excelsa uidentibus cunctis Aegyptiis.”

11
“Mense primo quartadecima die mensis ad uesperum Phase Domini est et quintadecima die
mensis huius sollemnitas azymorum Domini est septem diebus azyma comedetis.”
12
Matthew 26:17-27; Mark 14:16-15; Luke 22-23; John 13, 19.
13
Arthur Spier, Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar Revised, Expanded Edition 5660-5860
1900-2100 (Nanuet, NY: Feldheim Publishers, 3rd revised edition, 1986), pp. 1-2. For the name
Nisan of the first month, see Nehemiah 2:1.

14
J.B. Segal, The Hebrew Passover: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 70 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1963), pp. 130-2 and p. 131 n. 1. On the lack of unity in timing Passover
among diaspora Jews, see August Strobel, Ursprung und Geschichte des Frühchristlichen
Osterkalendars (Berlin, 1977), pp. 357-8, 361-6.

15
Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for
the Study of Early Liturgy (Oxford, 2002), pp. 179-91; Stephen C. McCluskey, Astronomies and
Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 25-8.

16
On the liturgical significance of 25 March, Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood:
Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (London and
Toronto, 2005), pp. 83-93, with references to earlier scholarship.

17
Bradshaw, Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, pp. 179-82; McCluskey, Astronomies
and Cultures, pp. 79-80; Schobel, Ursprung und Geschichte, pp. 357-88.
18
Eusebius, Vita Constantini 3.5-6, 14, 18-20; see Strobel, Ursprung und Geschichte, pp.
389-92.
19
See V. Grumel, “Le problème de la date paschale aux IIIe et IVe siècle: L’Origine du conflit:
Le Nouveau cadre du comput juif,” Revue des études byzantines 18 (1960), pp. 161-78.
20
McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures, pp. 79-87. On the calendrical slippage of the true
equinox in antiquity, Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time, pp. xviii-xix.
21
The diversity of Easter tables and computistical materials available in the seventh- and
eighth-century British Isles is illustrated by Bede’s sources, among them the “Sirmond
manuscript” (Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 309), discussed in Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede:
The Reckoning of Time, pp. lxii-lxxix. The studies and editions of the three cycles by Bruno
Krusch have been foundational for subsequent scholarship; Studien zur
christlich-mittelalterlichen Chronologie: Der 84-Jährige Ostercyclus und seine Quellen
(Leipzig, 1880; henceforth Krusch, Studien I); idem, Studien zur christlich-mittelalterlichen
Chronologie: Die Entstehung unserer heutigen Zeitrechnung, 1. Victorius, II. Dionysius Exiguus
(Berlin, 1938; henceforth Krusch, Studien II).

22
Columbanus, Ep. 2, ed. Walker, p. 18 lines 9-16. Summary of developments in Wallis,
“Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time, pp. xliv-l, lv-lvi. Daniel McCarthy, “The Origin of
the Latercus Paschal Cycle of the Insular Celtic Churches,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies
28 (1994), pp. 25-49, dates the cycle in Padua, Biblioteca Antoniana, MS I.27 to the early fifth
century.
23
This terminus ante quem is based on the date of Cummian’s letter: Walsh and O Croinin,
“Introduction,” Cummian’s Letter, pp. 6-7.

24
On the developments just outlined, see McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures, pp. 84-7;
Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time, pp. 1-liv; Charles W. Jones, “The
Victorian and Dionysiac Paschal Tables in the West,” Speculum 9 (1934), pp. 408-21; Wesley
M. Stevens, “Cycles of Time: Calendrical and Astronomical Reckonings in Early Science,” in
Time and Process: The Study of Time VII, ed. J.T. Fraser and L. Rowell (Madison, 1993), repr. in
Wesley M. Stevens, Cycles of Time and Scientific Learning in Medieval Europe, Variorum
Collected Studies (Aldershot, 1995), I, pp. 39-41.

25
Bede, HE 3.25, 5.19, pp. 296-306, 520; The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus: Text,
Translation, and Notes, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927) (henceforth Stephen,
Vita Wilfridi), Chapters 5, 10, 47, pp. 12, 20-2, 98. See Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The
Reckoning of Time, pp. lxii-lxiii.

26
See Wesley M. Stevens, “Sidereal Time in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Voyage to the Other
World: The Legacy of Sutton Hoo, ed. C.V. Kendall and P.S. Wells (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 125-52, repr. in Wesley M. Stevens, Cycles of Time and Scientific
Learning, V. The Laterculus Malalianus, a treatise probably written at Canterbury by Theodore
(669-90) or one of his disciples and reflecting elements of contemporary Roman custom, dates
the Resurrection to the sixteenth day of the lunar cycle: Laterculus Malalianus 11, ed. in Jane
Stevenson, The ‘Laterculus Malalianus’ and the School of Archbishop Theodore (Cambridge,
1995), p. 134. Bede’s Reckoning of Time reports that some of his brothers, while in Rome in 701,
noticed that years inscribed on Easter candles in the church of St. Mary’s were calculated from
Christ’s Passion, the dating scheme of the Victorian table (though Bede does not point this out).
Dionysius dated from the year of the Incarnation: De temporum ratione 47, CCSL 123B, p. 431
lines 74-7; Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, p. 128.

27
Bede, HE 3.25-6, pp. 294-310; Stephen, Vita Wilfridi 10, pp. 20-2.
28
See Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions, pp. 112-29.
29
The attitudes and practices of Theodore and Wilfrid are analyzed in Clare Stancliffe, Bede,
Wilfrid, and the Irish, Jarrow Lecture 2003 (Jarrow, 2003), passim.
30
See Bede, HE 5.19, pp. 516-30; Stephen, Vita Wilfridi 60-5, pp. 128-42; D.H. Farmer, “Saint
Wilfrid,” in Saint Wilfrid at Hexham, ed. D.P. Kirby (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1974), pp. 35-59.
31
Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions, pp. 150-68; McCarthy, “Origin of the Latercus
Paschal Cycle,” p. 27 and n. 9.

32
Editions by Krusch indicated above, n. 21.
33
Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions, pp. 4-11.
34
Bede, De temporum ratione 66 (Anno Mundi 4591), CCSL 123B, p. 525 lines 1820-5; Bede:
The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis p. 228; Bede, HE 2.19, pp. 198-202; Stephen, Vita Wilfridi
12, 14, 15, pp. 24, 30, 32.

35
Bede, HE 3.25, p. 302; Stephen, Vita Wilfridi 10, p. 20.
36
The possibility of Irish Quartodecimanism before the seventh century is discussed in Michael
W. Herren and Shirley Ann Brown, Christ in Celtic Christianity: Britain and Ireland from the
Fifth to the Tenth Century (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2002), esp. pp. 60-2.
37
Tables comparing Easter dates among the three cycles are provided in Corning, Celtic and
Roman Traditions, Tables 2.2, 3.1, 6.1, 7.2, 9.2, 9.3, pp. 25, 52, 110, 124,163, 166.
38
Immo Warntjes, “The Munich Computus and the 84 (14)-Year Easter Reckoning,”
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature 107C
(2007): 31–85, at 36–37.

39
Warntjes, Munich Computus, pp. xxxv–xl, esp. p. xxxviii.
40
Jones, “Victorian and Dionysiac Paschal Tables,” pp. 409-10, 413-4; Corning, Celtic and
Roman Traditions, pp. 7-8; Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time, pp.
xxxiv-xxxvii, li-liii.
41
Columbanus, Epp. 1-4, ed. Walker, pp. 2-36; on likely dates of composition, see G.S.M.
Walker, “Introduction,” pp. xxxvi-xxxviii. The first letter is to Pope Gregory (pp. 2-12), the
second to the episcopal synod (pp. 12-22).

42
Cummian, Ep., ed. Walsh and Ó Cróinín, pp. 57-97; on the dating relative to Honorius’ letter,
see Walsh and Ó Cróinín, “Introduction,” pp. 3-7.

43
Cummian, Ep., pp. 92-4 lines 268-85. Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions, p. 87; Krusch,
Studien II, p. 30.

44
Cummian, Ep., p. 74 line 132 notes the charge of heresy.
45
Columbanus, Ep. 2, p. 18 lines 9-16.
46
Columbanus, Ep. 1, pp. 3-4, 8 lines 6-18, 10 line 6, Ep. 2, p. 18 lines 12, 15 (transl. Walker).
The Anatolian text is published in Krusch, Studien I, pp. 311-27; for discussion, see Walsh and Ó
Cróinín, “Introduction,” pp. 32-5; Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time, pp.
lvi-lviii.
47
Columbanus, Ep. 1, p. 4 line 1.
48
Columbanus, Ep. 1, pp. 2-4 lines 1-12, p. 6 lines 19-20.
49
This error is stressed in Columbanus, Ep. 1, pp. 3-4.
50
See Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions, p. 26 and Table 2.3.
51
Columbanus, Ep. 1, p. 4 lines 14-22, p. 6 lines 21-31.
52
Other western churches “…vigesimam lunam non excedunt, ne sine auctoritate Veteris
Testamenti sacramentum Novi Testamenti agant”: Columbanus, Ep. 2, p. 16 lines 15-17.

53
“… aut numquid ipsorum esse recte credendum est decimae quartae lunae Pascha, et non
potius Dei ipsius instituentis Phase esse fatendum est….”: Columbanus, Ep. 1, p. 6 lines 17-18,
see lines 10-25; see Ep. 2, p. 20 lines 1-8.

54
Cummian, Ep., pp. 56-8 lines 10-17.
55
56
57
Cummian, pp. 68-74, lines 86-120.
58
“Et hoc uereor: sed uos considerate quae sunt couenticula quae dixi: utrum Haebrei et Greci et
Latini et Aegiptii, simul in obseruatione precipuarum solennitatum uniti, an Britonum

Scottorumque particula, qui sunt pene extremi et, ut ita dicam, mentagrae orbis terrarum”:
Cummian, Ep., p. 72 lines 107-10, transl. Walsh and Ó Cróinín.

59
Cummian, Ep., p. 70 lines 91-5.
60
“… inueni scriptum ‘excommunicandos et de ecclesia pellendos’ et anathematizandos eos, qui
contra statuta canonica quaternae sedis apostolicae, Romanae uidelicet Ierosolimitanae,
Antiochenae, Alexandrinae, ueniunt, concordantibus his in unitate paschae”: Cummian, Ep., p.
70 lines 90-3; the Councils of Nicea and Arles are noted at lines 93-8. The quoted phrase is from
Dionysius Exiguus, Ep. ad Petronium, Krusch, Studien II, p. 66.

61
Cummian, Ep., p. 60 lines 36-50; Ambrosiaster, Liber Quaestionum, q. 83, 96, CSEL 50, pp.
144, 170. The De ratione computandi, probably from Cummian’s circle, also draws on a wide
array of sources, including Augustine as well Jerome, pseudo-Anatolius, and Isidore. The treatise
is edited in the same volume: Cummian’s Letter De controversia paschali and the De ratione
conputandi, ed. Walsh and Ó Cróinín, pp. 101-213.

62
63
Cummian, Ep., pp. 82-6 line 218, see lines 204-20; “Anatolius” is discussed pp. 84-6 lines
210-12. No trace survives of a table from the Council of Nicea. See Walsh and Ó Croínín,
“Introduction,” Cummian’s Letter, pp. 29-47, pp. 44-6 discussing the reference to a Nicene
cycle. Cummian, Ep., pp. 86-8 lines 220-9.

64
“Ue qui dicitis bonum malum et malum bonum ponentes tenebras lucem et lucem in tenebras.
Diei enim sumus filii, non noctis neque tenebrarum”: Cummian, Ep., p. 74 lines 133-4, trans.
Walsh and Ó Cróinín, p. 75; Isaiah 5:20, I Thessalonians 5:5.

65
Cummian, Ep., p. 86 line 223, see p. 88 line 237 and note 237.
66
The Canterbury School may have taught the same interpretation of the timing: see Laterculus
Malalianus 10, ed. Stevenson, p. 132.

67
See Der Liber Anatholi de ratione paschali 3-6, in Krusch, Studien I, pp. 319-21.
68
Bradshaw, Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, p. 181.
69
Cummian, Ep., p. 64 line 67.
70
Cummian, Ep., p. 60 lines 35-6.
71
“Est quidem sollennis dies in mense primo: alia sollennitas paschae, alia sollennitas
azimorum, licet iuncta uideatur azimis paschae sollennitas. Principium namque azimorum ad
finem paschae coniungitur”: Cummian, Ep., pp. 62-4 lines 53-8.

72
“Unde cauendum est, ut Ieronimus ait, ne extra unam domum contra preceptum legis, ‘id est
extra’ aecclesiam uniuersalem, ‘agnum’ typicum comedamus. ‘Ex quo manifestum est’, inquit,
‘quod Iudei et heretici et omnia conuenticula dogmatum peruersorum, qui agnum in una
aecclesia non comedunt, non eos agni carnes comedere sed draconis….”: Cummian, Ep., p. 72
lines 101-6, see p. 88 lines 237-9.

73
“… quod Ieronimus explanat: ‘Finem’, inquiens, ‘carnali festiuitati uolens imponere
umbraque transeunte paschae reddere ueritatem’ complens legem sicut dixit: ‘non ueni soluere
legem sed adimplere’ [Matt. 5.17], hoc est addere. Unde ad passionem ueniens uetusque
cons(umm)ans testamentum et nouum inchoans….”: Cummian, p. 64 lines 61-4. He omits the
phrase aut prophetas from Matt. 5.17; see p. 74 lines 121-3.

74
See e.g. Cummian, Ep., p. 66 lines 75-6, 78-9, stressing the temporal separation between
events.
75
Cummian, Ep., p. 74 lines 121-9, where he claims to quote Augustine, but the text has not
been identified; see p. 64 lines 61-2 (from Jerome, In Matheum 4:26.2, CCSL 77, p. 245).
76
Bede, De temporibus liber, CCSL 123C, ed. C.W. Jones (Turnhout, 1980), pp. 579-611.
Translated and discussed in Bede: On the Nature of Things and On Times, trans. with
introduction, notes and commentary by Calvin B. Kendall and Faith Wallis (Liverpool, 2010); on
the date, Kendall and Wallis, “Introduction,” pp. 2-3.

77
Bede, De temporibus, pp. 593-9, 599-600, 600-11.
78
Bede, Epistola ad Pleguinam, CCSL 123C, ed. C.W. Jones (Turnhout, 1980), pp. 613-26.
79
Bede, Ep. ad Pleguinam 1-4, 15-17, pp. 617-18, 624-6; Celia Chazelle, “Debating the End
Times with Bede,” Irish Theological Quarterly 80 (2015): 212-32, with references to earlier
scholarly literature.
80
Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time, p. lxxvii. Jerome’s version of Eusebius’
chronicle is edited in, Rudolf Helm, ed. Die Chronik des Hieronymus, Griechischen christlichen
Schriftsteller 47 (Berlin, 1956); translation into English available in Malcolm Drew Donalson, A
Translation of Jerome’s Chronicon with Historical Commentary (Lewiston, New York, 1996).
81
Prologus Victorii Aquitani ad Hilarum archidiaconum 9, in Krusch, Studien II, p. 24 lines
16-18. See Richard Landes, “Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations and the
Pattern of Western Chronography 100-800 CE,” in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the
Middle Ages, ed. Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen (Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 1988), pp. 137-211, at pp. 149-51; Brian Croke, “The Originality of
Eusebius’ Chronicle,” The American Journal of Philology 103 (1982), pp. 195-200.
82
See Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions, pp. 162-6.
83
Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time, pp. xxx-xxxiv, lxiii-lxiv.
84
HE 5.21, pp. 534-46; Bede, De temporum ratione, CCSL 123B, pp. 418-60.
85
HE 5.21, pp. 538, 544, 546; e.g. Bede, De temporum ratione 35, 43, 59, 61, CCSL 123B, pp.
393-4, 412-18, 449, 451-2.

86
Alan Thacker, Bede and Augustine of Hippo: History and Figure in Sacred Text, Jarrow
Lecture (Jarrow, 2005), pp. 14-28; also see Calvin B. Kendall, “Introduction,” On Genesis: Bede,
trans. with introduction and notes by Calvin B. Kendall (Liverpool, 2008), pp. 4-14.
87
The Dionysian system is noted for its agreement “Hebraeorum quoque priscorum auctoritate”:
Bede, De temporum ratione 45, CCSL 123B, p. 420 line 3.

88
Bede’s discussion of Easter reckoning in chapters 44-65 assumes the reader is familiar with
the treatment of astronomy and calendars in previous chapters. See Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede:
The Reckoning of Time, pp. lxiii-lvii.

89
“At contra hi qui dominicum paschae diem a sexta decima luna usque ad uicesimam
secundam celebrandum aestimant duplici miseria laborant….”; “Sunt qui in alteram partem a uia
ueritatis sed non minore labantur errore….”: Bede, De temporum ratione 59, CCSL 123B, p. 448
lines 31-3, 43-4.

90
HE 5.21, pp. 540-2.
91
Bede discusses the duration of Jewish festival days from sundown to sundown in De
temporum ratione 5, 43, CCSL 123B, pp. 290 lines 134-9, quoting Leviticus 23:32, pp. 413-14
lines 33-6; see c. 63, CCSL 123B, pp. 454-6.

92
Bede, De temporum ratione 47, CCSL 123B, p. 432 lines 90-7; see c. 61, CCSL 123B, p. 451
lines 33-7.
93
Bede, De temporum ratione 24, CCSL 123B, p. 356; HE 5.21, pp. 534-6.
94
“Quid inter Pascha et Azyma distet”: Bede, De temporum ratione 63, CCSL 123B, p. 454. See
HE 5.21, pp. 536-8.

95
John 18:20: “…et ipsi non introierunt in praetorium ut non contaminarentur sed manducarent
pascha.”
96
Bede, De temporum ratione 63, CCSL 123B, p. 455 lines 39-49.
97
Bede, De temporum ratione 63, CCSL 123B, pp. 455-6 lines 49-63.
98
HE 5.21, p. 538; Bede, De temporum ratione 59, CCSL 123B, pp. 447-8 lines 14-24.
99
Quoted with translation and discussion in Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, “‘New Heresy for Old’:
Pelgaianism in Ireland and the Papal Letter of 640,” in idem, Early Irish History and Chronology
(Dublin, 2003), pp. 87-98, at pp. 94-5; article first published in Speculum 60 (1985), pp. 505-16.
100
“Nam in Kalendis Aprilibus [1 April] hoc anno non Christianorum, sed Pascha occurrit
Iudaeorum, ex ueteri et non ex nouo testamento”: Ó Cróinín, “New Heresy for Old,” p. 95.
101
“Si ergo fieri posset, ut semper in diem quintum decimum primi mensis, id est in lunam
quintam decimam, dominica dies incurreret, uno semper eodemque tempore cum antiquo Dei
populo, quanquam sacramentorum genere discreto, sicut una eademque fide, pascha celebrare
possemus”: HE 5.21, p. 538. See Bede, De temporum ratione 59, 61, 63, p. 447 lines 11-14, p.
451 lines 25-8, p. 455 lines 31-2.

102
Bede, De temporum ratione 30, CCSL 123B, pp. 375-6; HE 5.21, p. 542. Also see Bede, De
temporum ratione 6, 11, 50, 51, CCSL 123B, pp. 291 lines 28-32, p. 313 lines 17-22, pp. 436-7
lines 25-45, pp. 437-41.

103
On the correct date of the equinox and against the date of 25 March, Bede, De temporum
ratione 30, CCSL 123B, pp. 371-6; see HE 5.21, p. 542.

104
“Unde multum errare constat eos qui lunae paschalis initium a tertio non. Martiarum die
quaerendum definiunt, quia uidelicet ibi nata luna ante tempus aequinoctii plenilunium ostendit”:

105
“Sed error eorum qui aliter sapiunt, uide an ipsis saltim qui huiusmodi condunt leges iniquas
et scribentes iniustitiam scribunt, ratus ac ueritate uideatur esse suffultus. Victorius, qui illorum
circulos scripsit….”: Bede, De temporum ratione 51, CCSL 123B, p. 437 lines 1-5. Bede’s
accusations here against Victorius are misleading, perhaps deliberately so, as Immo Warntjes has
shown: Warntjes, Munich Computus, p. xlix and n. 112.

106
“Verum ne nos amatores Victorii temere illum adgressos esse lacerent, legant librum
doctissimi et sanctissimi uiri, Victoris uidelicet Capuani episcopi De Pascha…. ‘…ut cum in
praeteritis ostensus hoc modo fuerit deliquisse in praesentibus ac futuris et auctoritate careat et
occasionem prauae persuasionis amittat’”: Bede, De temporum ratione 51, p. 441 lines 86-9;
slightly emended translation from Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, p. 135. Victor of
Capua’s text is lost.

107
“Obserua mensem nouarum frugum et uerni primum temporis ut facias phase Domino Deo tuo
quoniam in isto mense eduxit te Dominus Deus tuus de Aegypto nocte”: Deuteronomy 16:1.
108
See Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, p. 145 n. 64.
109
“Quod si quis obiecerit non aequinoctii memoriam sed tantum primi mensis et tertiae in eo
septimanae posuisse legiferum, sciat quia etsi aequinoctium nominatim non exprimit, in hoc
tamen ipso quod a plenilunio primi mensis pascha faciendum praecipit, aequinoctii transcensum
plenaria ratione depromit. Quoniam absque ulla dubietate constat eam quae prima transito
aequinoctio plenum suum globum ostenderit, primi mensis existere lunam”: Bede, De temporum
ratione 61, CCSL 123B, pp. 450-1 lines 17-25.

110
Bede, De temporum ratione 62, pp. 453-4 lines 14-45.
111
See Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, “Commentary,” pp. 351-2.
112
“Nolite putare quoniam ueni soluere legem aut prophetas non ueni solvere sed adimplere”:
Matthew 5:17.
113
Bede, De temporum ratione 45, 67, CCSL 123B, p. 420 line 3, pp. 535-6.
114
“… quamuis aliis sacramentorum generibus eiusdem paschae solemnia colimus…. nec sic
quidem legem aut prophetas soluimus sed euangelicae potius gratiae sacramentis adimplemus”:
Bede, De temporum ratione 61, CCSL 123B p. 451 lines 27-31; emended translation from Bede:
The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis p. 146.

115
Georges Tugène, “Le Thème des deux peuples dans le De Tabernaculo de Bède,” in Bède le
Vénérable entre tradition et postérité/ The Venerable Bede. Tradition and Posterity, ed.
Stéphane Lebecq, Michel Perrin, Olivier Szerwiniack (Lille, 2005), pp. 73-85, esp. p. 78.
116
Also see the nuanced analysis of Bede’s language regarding Jews in his commentary on
Genesis, in Kendall, “Introduction,” On Genesis: Bede, pp. 21-7. On the range of Bede’s thought
about Jews, Andrew P. Scheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon
England (Ann Arbor, 2004), pp. 30-97.

117
“[Paulus] non uetus testamentum, quasi contrarium nouo, condemnat,… neque enim
apostolus [PL 91, col. 187D has apostolos, which is more likely correct] et euangelistas Moysi et
prophetis, qui uetus testamentum condiderunt, ulla ratione praeferret. De quorum communi gratia
spiritus uirtutis et fidei alibi dicit, ‘Habentes autem eundem spiritum fidei….”: Bede, In Genesim
4, CCSL 118A, p. 239 lines 1643-8. See II Corinthians 4:13. On the inspiration Bede drew here
from Augustine, Tugène, “Thème des deux peuples,” p. 75.

118
Tugène, “Thèmes des deux peuples,” passim.
119
“Neque enim sine ratione paschalis obseruantia temporis, qua mundi salutem et figurari et
uenire decebat”: Bede, De temporum ratione 6, CCSL 123B, p. 292 lines 50-2; emended
translation from Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, p. 26. See Bede, De temporibus 15,
CCSL 123C, p. 600 lines 4-5.

120
See Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, “Commentary,” p. 351; Augustine, Ep. 55,
in Sancti Augustini Epistulae Pars 2 Epistulae 31-123, ed. Al. Goldbacher, CSEL 34:2 (Prague,
1898), pp. 169-213.

121
“Quod si mysticam quoque uos in his rationem audire delectat, primo mense anni, qui etiam
mensis nouorum dictus est, pascha facere iubemur, quia renouato ad amorem caelestium spiritu
mentis nostrae sacramenta dominicae resurrectionis et ereptionis nostrae celebrare debemus”: HE
5.21, p. 542; see Bede, De temporum ratione 64, CCSL 123B, p. 456 lines 11-17.
122
“Tertia eiusem mensis septimana facere praecipimur, quia ante legem et sub lege promissus,
tertio tempore saeculi cum gratia uenit ipse, qui pascha nostrum immolaretur, Christus; quia
tertia post immolationem suae passionis die resurgens a mortuis, hanc dominicam ucari et in ea
nos annuatim paschali eiusdem resurrectionis uoluit festa celebrare….”: HE 5.21, pp. 542-4. See

123
HE 5.21, p. 544. Thus the feast “temporis ordine foras quid intus habeat ostendat”: Bede, De
temporum ratione 64, p. 456 line 8, see pp. 456-8 lines 30-68.
124
“His quidem paschalis temporis a legis obseruatione sumptis indiciis, haeredes Noui
Testamenti etiam diem dominicam, quam scriptura unam siue primam sabbati cognominat,
adnectimus”: Bede, De temporum ratione 64, CCSL 123B, p. 458 lines 68-71. See HE 5.21, p.
544.
125
Bede, De temporum ratione 64, CCSL 123B, pp. 458-9 lines 88-117.
126
HE 2.19, pp. 198-200.
127
“Nam si qui plenilunium paschale ante aequinoctium fieri posse contenderit, ostendat uel
ecclesiam sanctam priusquam saluator in carne ueniret extitisse perfectam uel quemlibet fidelium
ante praeuentum gratiae illius aliquid posse supernae lucis habere”: Bede, De temporum ratione
6, CCSL 123B, p. 292 lines 46-50, see p. 293 lines 69-71; also Bede, De temporum ratione 50,
CCSL 123B, p. 437 lines 36-45.

128
On the Canterbury School, see Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of
Theodore and Hadrian, ed. Bernhard Bischoff and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge, 1994); Michael
Lapidge, “The Career of Archbishop Theodore,” in Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative
Studies on his Life and Influence, ed. Michael Lapidge (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1-29. On early
Irish biblical studies, e.g. Martin McNamara, The Psalms in the Early Irish Church (Sheffield,
UK, 2000). Also noteworthy is Marina Smyth, Understanding the Universe in Seventh-Century
Ireland (Woodbridge, UK, 1996).

129
These intellectual trends are discussed in my monograph in progress: The Codex Amiatinus
and its Sister Bibles: Scripture, Liturgy, and Art in the Circle of the Venerable Bede.
130
HE 1.27, pp. 78-102. Augustine’s initiating query to Gregory is lost. On the likely
authenticity of Gregory’s text and Augustine’s concern with British Christian attitudes and
practices, see Rob Meens, “A Background to Augustine’s Mission to Anglo-Saxon England,”
Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994), pp. 5-17.

131
HE 1.27, pp. 88-102.
132
Bede, Libri quatuor in principium Genesis usque ad natiuitatem Isaac et eiectionem
Ismahelis (henceforth In Genesim), CCSL 118A, ed. C.W. Jones (Turnhout, 1967); translated
with introduction in On Genesis: Bede, trans. Kendall (above, n. 86). On the date, though
emphasizing that his thesis is “conjectural,” Kendall, “Introduction,” On Genesis: Bede, p. 53.
133
Bede, In Genesim 4, CCSL 118A, pp. 238-42.
134
“Quibus uerbis patenter ostendit quia non scripturas neque scriptores testamenti ueteris quasi
ancillam et filium eius de finibus ecclesiae pellendos esse docet… quod ea quae lex prophetae
manifeste de fide ueritatis et operum iustitiae cordisque purificatione ad uidendum Deum
loquuntur, semper debeant ad litteram suscepi”: Bede, In Genesim 4, CCSL 118A, p. 240 lines
1671-3.
135
Bede, In Genesim 4, CCSL 118A, p. 240 lines 1674-92.
136
“Qui ita demum nobis hanc gratiam prodesse confirmant si etiam circumcisione iuxta legis
ritum consecremur… sed per intentionem animi carnalis ad uetus testamentum atque ad figuram
Agar et Ismahel pertinentes – non quod uere ueteris testamenti mandata sectentur, ex quibus
Dominus ait, ‘Si uis uenire ad uitam, serua mandata’, sed quia temporalia a Domino beneficia
neglectis aeternis requirunt”: Bede, In Genesim, CCSL 118A, p. 242 lines 1737-47.
137
Bede, In Genesim 4, CCSL 118A, p. 242 lines 1752-61.
138
Further instances are discussed in my monograph in preparation; above, n. 129.
139
In particular, the foundational work of Alan Thacker and recent studies by Scott DeGregorio
on these issues should be noted: Alan Thacker, “Bede’s Ideal of Reform,” in Ideal and Reality in
Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J.M. Wallice-Hadrill, ed. Patrick
Wormald with Donald Bullough and Roger Collins (Oxford, 1983), pp. 130-53; and e.g. Scott
DeGregorio, “Bede’s In Ezram et Neemiam and the Reform of the Northumbrian Church,”
Speculum 79 (2004), pp. 1-25; idem, “ ‘Nostrorum socordiam temporum’: The Reforming
Impulse of Bede’s Later Exegesis,” Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002), pp. 107-22; idem,
“Introduction,” Bede: On Ezra and Nehemia, trans. with an introduction and notes by Scott
DeGregorio (Liverpool, 2006), pp. xiii-xliv, esp. pp. xxv-xxxvi.

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Bede, the Old Testament, and Easter

The College of New Jersey

of Wearmouth–Jarrow, over the Easter table of Victorius of Aquitaine.

early medieval, especially insular centers.

doctrinal conflicts to which Bede alludes in other writings.

Exegesis and Liturgy

numbering the days or mentioning the Festival of Unleavened Bread.12

luna 14, the evening transition from luna 14 to luna 15.14

annual commemoration of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, in addition to the weekly

council sanctioned a particular computing method.18 Although fourth- and fifth-century

persisted elsewhere in western Europe.20

either from England or the continent.23

translation and continuation of a table by pseudo-Cyril of Alexandria, to which Dionysius added

an explanatory prologue, this consistently adhered to Alexandrian criteria.24 Wilfrid of Ripon

underlying Victorius’ Latin dates.26

through the tenth century.31

permitted date for Easter Sunday was 22 March, as in Alexandria.

Columbanus and Cummian

council heretical. Cummian replies to their criticisms.44

reprobate” (hereticus seu respuendus), Columbanus proclaims.46

biblical chronology by permitting the Resurrection to be commemorated before the Passion.

reading of scripture or patristic and conciliar authorities.

mane dies unus: Genesis 1:5).

day of unleavened bread.74

Ceolfrith and Bede

and the Incarnation.

Victorius’ prologue, which contained a chronicle modeled on that of Eusebius. Eusebius/Jerome

had transpired between Creation and the Passion.81

surely have seemed to him a significant obstacle to that endeavor.

the Council of Nicea, Cyril, Anatolius, Theophilus, and Jerome.85

moon shines then for a full twelve hours.93

Passover/Unleavened Bread. Merging the divergent chronologies of the Passion narratives

We can better appreciate the distinctiveness of Bede and Ceolfrith’s arguments if we

Passover/the Festival of Unleavened Bread.101

present and future.”106

necessary because of resistance.110

– was, for Bede, fundamental to the Christian Bible’s unity.

on their continuities.115 The letters of Columbanus and Cummian intimate an attitude

the one Church existing from Creation to the Last Day.118

feasts of his Resurrection” (paschalia eiusdem resurrectionis…festa) – a phrase expressive of

of the supernal light before [Christ’s] grace is bestowed.”127

before coming to Wearmouth–Jarrow, they developed exegetical and doctrinal preferences at

writings, but groups seem to have overlapped.

and insufficiently attentive to its spiritual meaning.

Immo Warntjes and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Turnhout, 2010).

Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis (above, n. 2).

1970), and in Cummian’s Letter, ed. Walsh and Ó Cróinín, above n. 1.

sollemnitas septem diebus uescentur azymis.”

Israhel in manu excelsa uidentibus cunctis Aegyptiis.”

Nisan of the first month, see Nehemiah 2:1.

Osterkalendars (Berlin, 1977), pp. 357-8, 361-6.

Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 25-8.

Toronto, 2005), pp. 83-93, with references to earlier scholarship.

Krusch have been foundational for subsequent scholarship; Studien zur

christlich-mittelalterlichen Chronologie: Der 84-Jährige Ostercyclus und seine Quellen

(Berlin, 1938; henceforth Krusch, Studien II).

“Introduction,” Cummian’s Letter, pp. 6-7.

M. Stevens, “Cycles of Time: Calendrical and Astronomical Reckonings in Early Science,” in

Collected Studies (Aldershot, 1995), I, pp. 39-41.

Reckoning of Time, pp. lxii-lxiii.

Learning, V. The Laterculus Malalianus, a treatise probably written at Canterbury by Theodore

lines 74-7; Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, p. 128.

Paschal Cycle,” p. 27 and n. 9.