From Theodulf to Rashi and Beyond Texts, Techniques, and Transfer in Western European Exegesis (800–1100) Edited by Johannes Heil Sumi Shimahara leiden | boston For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV Contents Acknowledgments xi Notes on Contributors xiii Introduction: The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages from Theodulf to Rashi 1 Johannes Heil and Sumi Shimahara, in cooperation with Hanna Liss 1 “Hebraica Veritas”: The History of a Christian Idea Frans van Liere 21 2 Julian of Toledo’s (642–690) “De Comprobatione Sextae Aetatis”: An Original Use of Biblical Exegesis in Late Visigothic Spain? 43 Bat-Sheva Albert 3 Bede, the Old Testament, and Easter Celia Chazelle 4 Functions and Sources of Vernacular Glosses in Hebrew-French Biblical Glossaries 100 Marc Kiwitt 5 “Hebraica and Gallica Veritas”: The Function of the Hebrew-French Glossaries in 12th Century Jewish and Christian Exegesis 119 Hanna Liss 6 Scribes as Active Readers: Manuscript Development and Jewish-Christian Polemic in Rashi and in the “Glossa Ordinaria” Devorah Schoenfeld 7 Finding Needles in Haystacks: Rabbinic Exegesis in Carolingian Bible Commentaries 163 Burton Van Name Edwards 8 “Latin Midrashim”, or: How to Treat Historically-Contradictory Evidence 183 Johannes Heil 63 147 For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV viii contents 9 Savoirs juifs et exégèse chrétienne à l’époque carolingienne: le cas du ms. Barcelona, Catedral 64 et de son commentaire anonyme sur les Chroniques 214 Sumi Shimahara 10 How to Turn Jews into Pagans and Heretics: Notes on the ‘Hermeneutical Jew’ in Haimo of Auxerre’s Biblical Exegesis Alfonso Hernández Rodríguez 11 From the “Rivers of Babylon” to the Rhine: The Itinerary of a Biblical Motif 259 Gianfranco Miletto 12 Prophétie et histoire dans l’exégèse latine sur Ezéchiel, ixe–xiie siècle 271 Guy Lobrichon 13 Hebrew Idiom and Figurative Reading between Theodulf of Orléans and the Victorines: An Unstable Textuality 294 Christopher Ocker 14 Karaite Attitudes towards the Biblical Text in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries in Byzantium 347 Luba R. Charlap 15 The Limits of Literalism in Medieval Karaite Translations of the Hebrew Bible into Arabic 368 Marzena Zawanowska 16 Rashi’s Commentary on the Book of Ruth Updated, or: The Revision of Interpretations from Manuscript to Manuscript 392 Ingeborg Lederer-Brüchner 17 Beyond Peshat and Derash: The Linguistic Dimension of Rashi’s Commentary on Deuteronomy 414 Jonathan Kearney 18 Corrections and Additions to Rashi’s Commentary on Amos by Rashi and His Students 427 Jordan S. Penkower 237 For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV ix contents 19 Nebuchadnezzar and Charlemagne: Exile in Ninth-Century Carolingian Exegesis 463 Steven A. Stofferahn Index of Manuscripts 485 Index of Biblical and Rabbinical Literature, Apocrypha Index of Persons, Places, Subjects 494 488 For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 3 Bede, the Old Testament, and Easter Celia Chazelle 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 Lenten 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— 1 Many 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): 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 2010–2011, it unfortunately has only been able to take partial account (in subsequent revisions) of 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). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004515833_005 For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 64 chazelle varying among the different tables—the feast would fall on the 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 8th-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” noted above. 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 7th century. Two by Columban, the Irish founder of Luxeuil and Bobbio, were written in the first years of the century to 2 See the bibliographies and references in the works mentioned above, n. 1. 3 Bede, De temporum ratione liber, ccsl 123B, ed. Charles W. Jones (Turnhout, 1977); Bede: Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis (above, n. 1). For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 65 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. 1 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. Easter, like Passover, is closely tied to the spring season. 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 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: 534– 551. 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. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 66 chazelle 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 “solemnity” 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 7 8 9 10 11 See Deuteronomy 16:1–8. “Mense secundo quartadecima die mensis ad uesperam cum azymis et lactucis agrestibus comedent illud.” “Mense autem primo quartadecima die mensis Phase Domini erit et quintadecima die sollemnitas septem diebus uescentur azymis.” “Profecti igitur de Ramesse mense primo quintadecima die mensis primi altera die phase filii Israhel in manu excelsa uidentibus cunctis Aegyptiis.” “Mense primo quartadecima die mensis ad uesperum Phase Domini est et quintadecima die mensis huius sollemnitas azymorum Domini est septem diebus azyma comedetis.” For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 67 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 lunarsolar. 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 haʿarbayim, “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 12 13 14 Matthew 26:17–27; Mark 14:16–15; Luke 22–23; John 13: 19. Arthur Spier, Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar Revised, Expanded Edition 5660–5860 1900– 2100 (3rd ed. Nanuet, NY, 1986): 1–2. For the name Nisan of the first month, see Nehemiah 2:1. Judah Bension Segal, The Hebrew Passover: From the Earliest Times to a.d.70 (London, 1963): 130–132 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): 357–358, 361–366. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 68 chazelle Most of the Christian liturgical year is based exclusively on the solar cycle, without consideration of the moon. By the mid-4th 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 6th 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-7th 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 4th 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 15 16 17 Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy (Oxford, 2002): 179–191; Stephen C. McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1998): 25–28. 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/Toronto, 2005): 83–93, with references to earlier scholarship. Bradshaw, Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: 179–182; McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures: 79–80; Strobel, Ursprung und Geschichte: 357–388. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 69 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 4th- and 5th-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-5th 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 4th century, the see of Alexandria chose the more astronomically correct date of 21 March as the official equinox. Its nineteenyear Easter cycle, which prevailed in the eastern Empire, placed the feast on a Sunday after that date. An insular text of the 6th or 7th 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-7th 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 18 19 20 21 22 Eusebius, Vita Constantini 3.5–6, 14, 18–20; see Strobel, Ursprung und Geschichte: 389– 392. 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): 161–178. McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures: 79–87. On the calendrical slippage of the true equinox in antiquity, Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time: xviii–xix. The diversity of Easter tables and computistical materials available in the 7th- and 8thcentury 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: lxiil–xxix. 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). Columbanus, Ep. 2, ed. Walker: 18, lines 9–16. Summary of developments in Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time: xliv–l, lvl–vi. Daniel McCarthy, “The Origin of the Latercus Paschal Cycle of the Insular Celtic Churches,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 70 chazelle 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 7th 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 English locales. By c. 630, it had reached Ireland either from England or the continent.23 Dionysius Exiguus created his table in 525 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 7th century, however, papal churches main- 23 24 25 28 (1994): 25–49, dates the cycle in Padua, Biblioteca Antoniana, ms i.27 to the early 5th century. This terminus ante quem is based on the date of Cummian’s letter: Walsh and Ó Cróinín, “Introduction,” Cummian’s Letter: 6–7. A.A. Mosshammer, The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era (Oxford, 2008), esp. p. 8; McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures: 84–87; Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time: 1-liv; Charles W. Jones, “The Victorian and Dionysiac Paschal Tables in the West,” Speculum 9 (1934): 408–421; 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 i (Aldershot, 1995): 39– 41. Bede, he 3.25, 5.19: 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: 12, 20–22, 98. See Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time: lxii–lxiii. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 71 tained 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 7th 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 26 27 28 29 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, 1992): 125– 152, repr. in Wesley M. Stevens, Cycles of Time and Scientific Learning, v. The Laterculus Malalianus, a treatise possibly written at Canterbury by Theodore (669–690) 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): 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: 431, lines 74–77; Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis: 128. Bede, he 3.25–26: 294–310; Stephen, Vita Wilfridi 10: 20–22. See Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions: 112–129. The attitudes and practices of Theodore and Wilfrid are analyzed in Clare Stancliffe, Bede, Wilfrid, and the Irish, Jarrow Lecture 2003 (Jarrow, 2003), passim. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 72 chazelle 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 706–709.30 Iona and its large network of affiliated houses celebrated 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 10th 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, Vic30 31 32 33 34 35 36 See Bede, he 5.19: 516–530; Stephen, Vita Wilfridi 60–65: 128–142; David Hugh Farmer, “Saint Wilfrid,” in Saint Wilfrid at Hexham, ed. D.P. Kirby (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1974): 35– 59. Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions: 150–168; McCarthy, “Origin of the Latercus Paschal Cycle,” p. 27 and n. 9. Editions by Krusch indicated above, n. 21. Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions: 4–11. Bede, De temporum ratione 66 (Anno Mundi 4591), ccsl 123B: 525 lines 1820–1825; Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis p. 228; Bede, he 2.19: 198–202; Stephen, Vita Wilfridi 12, 14, 15: 24, 30, 32. Bede, he 3.25: 302; Stephen, Vita Wilfridi 10: 20. The possibility of Irish Quartodecimanism before the 7th 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. 60–62. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 73 torian, 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 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 37 38 39 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: 25, 52, 110, 124,163, 166. Immo Warntjes, “The Munich Computus and the 84 (14)-Year Easter Reckoning,” in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature 107C (2007): 31–85, at 36–37. Warntjes, Munich Computus: xxxv–xl, esp. xxxviii. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 74 chazelle 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 2 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 7th 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 40 41 42 Jones, “Victorian and Dionysiac Paschal Tables,” 409–410, 413–414; Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions: 7–8; Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time: xxxiv–xxxvii, li–liii. Columbanus, Epp. 1–4, ed. Walker: 2–36; on likely dates of composition, see G.S.M. Walker, “Introduction,” pp. xxxvi–xxxviii. The first letter is to Pope Gregory (2–12), the second to the episcopal synod (12–22). Cummian, Ep., ed. Walsh and Ó Cróinín: 57–97; on the dating relative to Honorius’ letter, see Walsh and Ó Cróinín, “Introduction”: 3–7. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 75 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 Caesarea 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 and the Festival of Unleavened Bread, which Columbanus implies are the same observance, prefigured the “solemnity of the Lord’s 43 44 45 46 Cummian, Ep.: 92–94, lines 268–285. Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions: 87; Krusch, Studien ii: 30. Cummian, Ep.: 74, line 132 notes the charge of heresy. Columbanus, Ep. 2: 18, lines 9–16. Columbanus, Ep. 1: 3–4, 8, lines 6–18, 10 line 6, Ep. 2: 18 lines 12, 15 (transl. Walker). The Anatolian text is published in Krusch, Studien i: 311–327; for discussion, see Walsh and Ó Cróinín, “Introduction”: 32–35; Wallis, “Introduction,”Bede: The Reckoning of Time: lvi–lviii. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 76 chazelle Resurrection” (solemnitas dominicae resurrectionis), he states.47 The dating of Easter 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 47 48 49 50 51 52 Columbanus, Ep. 1: 4 line 1. Columbanus, Ep. 1: 2–4 lines 1–12: 6 lines 19–20. This error is stressed in Columbanus, Ep. 1: 3–4. See Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions: 26 and Table 2.3. Columbanus, Ep. 1: 4 lines 14–22: 6 lines 21–31. Other western churches “… vigesimam lunam non excedunt, ne sine auctoritate Veteris Testamenti sacramentum Novi Testamenti agant”: Columbanus, Ep. 2: 16, lines 15–17. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 77 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 53 54 55 56 57 58 “… aut numquid ipsorum esse recte credendum est decimae quartae lunae Pascha, et non potius Dei ipsius instituentis Phase esse fatendum est ….”: Columbanus, Ep. 1: 6, lines 17– 18, see lines 10–25; see Ep. 2: 20, lines 1–8. Cummian, Ep.: 56–58, lines 10–17. Cummian, Ep.: 58–64, lines 18–58. Cummian, Ep.: 64–68, lines 59–85. Cummian, Ep.: 68–74, lines 86–120. “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.: 72, lines 107–110, transl. Walsh and Ó Cróinín. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 78 chazelle 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. 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 Cummian, Ep.: 70, lines 91–95. “… 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.: 70, lines 90–93; the Councils of Nicea and Arles are noted at lines 93–98. The quoted phrase is from Dionysius Exiguus, Ep. ad Petronium, ed. Krusch, Studien ii: 66. Cummian, Ep.: 60, lines 36–50; Ambrosiaster, Liber Quaestionum, q. 83, 96, csel 50: 144, 170. The De ratione computandi, probably from Cummian’s circle, also draws on a wide array of sources, including Augustine as well Jerome, Ps.-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: 101–213. Cummian, Ep.: 82–88, lines 204–239. Cummian, Ep.: 82–86, line 218, see lines 204–220; “Anatolius” is discussed 84–86, lines 210– 212. No trace survives of a table from the Council of Nicea. See Walsh and Ó Croínín, “Introduction,” Cummian’s Letter: 29–47: 44–46, discussing the reference to a Nicene cycle. “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.: 74, lines 133–134, trans. Walsh and Ó Cróinín: 75; Isaiah 5:20, i Thessalonians 5:5. Cummian, Ep.: 86, line 223, see p. 88, line 237, and note 237. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 79 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 historicaltypological meanings of the Old Testament texts. As they both knew from scripture, Jewish festival days began and ended at sundown. But the Hebrew ben haʿarbayim 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 eightyfour 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. 66 67 68 The Canterbury School may have taught the same interpretation of the timing: see Laterculus Malalianus 10, ed. Stevenson: 132. See Der Liber Anatholi de ratione paschali 3–6, in Krusch, Studien i: 319–321. Bradshaw, Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: 181. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 80 chazelle 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 Béccán 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 trans69 70 71 72 Cummian, Ep.: 64 line 67. Cummian, Ep.: 60, lines 35–36. “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.: 62–64, lines 53–58. “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.: 72, lines 101–106, see p. 88, lines 237–239. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 81 formed 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.” 3 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 mea73 74 75 76 “… 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, Ep.: 64, lines 61–64. He omits the phrase aut prophetas from Matt. 5:17; see p. 74, lines 121–123. See e.g. Cummian, Ep.: 66, lines 75–76, 78–79, stressing the temporal separation between events. Cummian, Ep.: 74, lines 121–129, where he claims to quote Augustine, but the text has not been identified; see: 64, lines 61–62 (from Jerome, In Matheum 4:26.2, ccsl 77: 245). Bede, De temporibus liber, ccsl 123C, ed. C.W. Jones (Turnhout, 1980): 579–611. Translated For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 82 chazelle surement, 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 ca. 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 historicaltypological exegesis of the Genesis story of Creation in the light of Psalm 89:4 and iiPeter 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 77 78 79 80 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”: 2–3. Bede, De temporibus: 593–599, 599–600, 600–611. Bede, Epistola ad Pleguinam, ccsl 123C, ed. C.W. Jones (Turnhout, 1980): 613–626. Bede, Ep. ad Pleguinam 1–4, 15–17: 617–618, 624–626; Celia Chazelle, “Debating the End Times with Bede,” Irish Theological Quarterly 80 (2015): 212–232, with references to earlier scholarly literature. Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time: lxxvii. Jerome’s version of Eusebius’ chronicle is edited in Rudolf Helm (ed.), Die Chronik des Hieronymus, Die Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 47 (Berlin, 1956); translation into English available in Malcolm For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 83 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 English monks and clergy who, he expected, would help him advance moral and spiritual reform within the Northumbrian and English 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 81 82 83 84 Drew Donalson, A Translation of Jerome’s Chronicon with Historical Commentary (Lewiston/New York, 1996). Prologus Victorii Aquitani ad Hilarum archidiaconum 9, in Krusch, Studien ii: 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, 1988): 137–211, here 149–151; Brian Croke, “The Originality of Eusebius’ Chronicle,” The American Journal of Philology 103 (1982): 195–200. See Corning, Celtic and Roman Traditions: 162–166. Wallis, “Introduction,” Bede: The Reckoning of Time: xxx–xxxiv, lxiii–lxiv. he 5.21: 534–546; Bede, De temporum ratione, ccsl 123B: 418–460. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 84 chazelle 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 85 86 87 88 he 5.21: 538, 544, 546; e.g. Bede, De temporum ratione 35, 43, 59, 61, ccsl 123B: 393–394, 412–418, 449, 451–452. Alan Thacker, Bede and Augustine of Hippo: History and Figure in Sacred Text, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow, 2005): 14–28; also see Calvin B. Kendall, “Introduction,” On Genesis: Bede, trans. with introduction and notes by Calvin B. Kendall (Liverpool, 2008): 41–44. According to Bede, the Dionysian system agrees with “Hebraeorum quoque priscorum auctoritate”: Bede, De temporum ratione 45, ccsl 123B: 420, line 3. 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: lxiii–lvii. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 85 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 89 90 91 92 93 “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: 448, lines 31–33, 43–44. he 5.21: 540–542. Bede discusses the duration of Jewish festival days from sundown to sundown in De temporum ratione 5, 43, ccsl 123B: 290, lines 134–139, quoting Leviticus 23:32: 413–414, lines 33– 36; see c. 63, ccsl 123B: 454–456. Bede, De temporum ratione 47, ccsl 123B: 432, lines 90–97; see c. 61, ccsl 123B: 451, lines 33–37. Bede, De temporum ratione 24, ccsl 123B: 356; he 5.21: 534–536. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 86 chazelle 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 94 95 96 97 98 “Quid inter Pascha et Azyma distet”: Bede, De temporum ratione 63, ccsl 123B: 454. See he 5.21: 536–538. John 18:20: “… et ipsi non introierunt in praetorium ut non contaminarentur sed manducarent pascha.” Bede, De temporum ratione 63, ccsl 123B: 455, lines 39–49. Bede, De temporum ratione 63, ccsl 123B: 455–456, lines 49–63. he 5.21: 538; Bede, De temporum ratione 59, ccsl 123B: 447–448, lines 14–24. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 87 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 Ceolfrith 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 99 100 101 102 Quoted with translation and discussion in Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, “ ‘New Heresy for Old’: Pelagianism in Ireland and the Papal Letter of 640,” in idem, Early Irish History and Chronology (Dublin, 2003): 87–98, at 94–95; article first published in Speculum 60 (1985): 505–516. “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”: 95. “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: 538. See Bede, De temporum ratione 59, 61, 63: 447, lines 11–14: 451, lines 25–28: 455, lines 31–32. Bede, De temporum ratione 30, ccsl 123B: 375–376; he 5.21: 542. Also see Bede, De temporum ratione 6, 11, 50, 51, ccsl 123B: 291, lines 28–32; 313, lines 17–22; 436–437, lines 25–45; 437–441. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 88 chazelle 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 also 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 103 104 105 106 107 On the correct date of the equinox and against the date of 25 March, Bede, De temporum ratione 30, ccsl 123B: 371–376; see he 5.21: 542. “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”: Bede, De temporum ratione 50, ccsl 123B: 436, lines 25–28. “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: 437, lines 1–5. “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: 441, lines 86–89; slightly emended translation from Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis: 135. Victor of Capua’s text is lost. “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. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 89 the Victorian table were more likely to make than supporters of the eightyfour 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 108 109 110 111 112 See Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis: 145, n. 64. “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: 450–451, lines 17–25. Bede, De temporum ratione 62: 453–454, lines 14–45. See Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, “Commentary”: 351–352. “Nolite putare quoniam ueni soluere legem aut prophetas non ueni solvere sed adimplere”: Matthew 5:17. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 90 chazelle 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, 113 114 115 116 Bede, De temporum ratione 45, 67, ccsl 123B: 420, line 3: 535–536. “… 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: 451, lines 27–31; emended translation from Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, 146. 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): 73–85, esp. 78. Also see the nuanced analysis of Bede’s language regarding Jews in his commentary on Genesis, in Kendall, “Introduction,” On Genesis: Bede: 21–27. 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): 30–97. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 91 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 117 118 119 120 121 “[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: 239, lines 1643–1648. See ii Corinthians 4:13. On the inspiration Bede drew here from Augustine, Tugène, Thème des deux peuples: 75. Tugène, Thèmes des deux peuples, passim. “Neque enim sine ratione paschalis obseruantia temporis, qua mundi salutem et figurari et uenire decebat”: Bede, De temporum ratione 6, ccsl 123B: 292, lines 50–52; emended translation from Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis: 26. See Bede, De temporibus 15, ccsl 123C: 600, lines 4–5. See Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. Wallis, “Commentary”: 351; Augustine, Ep. 55, in Sancti Augustini Epistulae, Pars 2: Epistulae 31–123, ed. Alois Goldbacher, csel 34:2 (Prague, 1898): 169–213. “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 For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 92 chazelle 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 eightyfour 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 122 123 124 125 caelestium spiritu mentis nostrae sacramenta dominicae resurrectionis et ereptionis nostrae celebrare debemus”: he 5.21: 542; see Bede, De temporum ratione 64, ccsl 123B: 456, lines 11–17. “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 uocari et in ea nos annuatim paschali eiusdem resurrectionis uoluit festa celebrare ….”: he 5.21: 542–544. See Bede, De temporum ratione 64, ccsl 123B: 456, lines 23–30. he 5.21: 544. Thus the feast “temporis ordine foras quid intus habeat ostendat”: Bede, De temporum ratione 64: 456, line 8, see 456–458, lines 30–68. “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: 458, lines 68–71. See he 5.21: 544. Bede, De temporum ratione 64, ccsl 123B: 458–459, lines 88–117. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 93 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 4 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 126 127 128 he 2.19: 198–200. “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: 292, lines 46–50, see p. 293, lines 69–71; also Bede, De temporum ratione 50, ccsl 123B: 437, lines 36–45. 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): 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). For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 94 chazelle 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 English (Angle) Christians in his present. An additional factor, though, may have been its resonance with his worries about contemporary English 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 129 130 131 132 These intellectual trends are discussed in my monograph: The Codex Amiatinus and its “Sister” Bibles: Scripture, Liturgy, and Art in the Milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden, 2019), Ch. 2. he 1.27: 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): 5–17. he 1.27: 88–102. 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 For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 95 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 133 134 135 136 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: 53. Bede, In Genesim 4, ccsl 118A: 238–242. “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: 240, lines 1671–1673. Bede, In Genesim 4, ccsl 118A: 240, lines 1674–1692. “Qui ita demum nobis hanc gratiam prodesse confirmant si etiam circumcisione iuxta legis ritum consecremur … sed per intentionem animi carnalis ad uetus testamentum For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 96 chazelle 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 WearmouthJarrow 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. Bibliography Sources 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. 137 138 139 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: 242, lines 1737–1747. Bede, In Genesim 4, ccsl 118A: 242, lines 1752–1761. Further instances are discussed in my monograph; above, n. 129. 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): 130–153; and e.g. Scott DeGregorio, “Bede’s In Ezram et Neemiam and the Reform of the Northumbrian Church,” Speculum 79 (2004): 1–25; idem, “ ‘Nostrorum socordiam temporum’: The Reforming Impulse of Bede’s Later Exegesis,” Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002): 107–122; idem, “Introduction,” Bede: On Ezra and Nehemiah, trans. with an introduction and notes by Scott DeGregorio (Liverpool, 2006): xiii–xliv, esp. pp. xxv–xxxvi. 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Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian, ed. Bernhard Bischoff and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge, 1994). Cummian’s Letter De controversia paschali and the De ratione conputandi, ed. Maura Walsh and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Toronto, 1988). Helm, Rudolf (ed.), Die Chronik des Hieronymus, Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 47 (Berlin, 1956). Jane Stevenson (ed.), The ‘Laterculus Malalianus’ and the School of Archbishop Theodore (Cambridge, 1995). Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. G.S.M. Walker (Dublin, 1970). Donalson, Malcolm Drew, A Translation of Jerome’s Chronicon with Historical Commentary (Lewiston, New York, 1996). The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus: Text, Translation, and Notes, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927). Literature Bradshaw, Paul F., The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy (Oxford, 2002). Carragáin, Éamonn Ó., Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (London/Toronto, 2005). Charles-Edwards, T.M., Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge, 2000). Chazelle, Celia, “Debating the End Times with Bede,” Irish Theological Quarterly 80 (2015): 212–232. Chazelle, Celia, The Codex Amiatinus and its “Sister” Bibles: Scripture, Liturgy, and Art in the Milieu of the Venerable Bede (Leiden, 2019). Corning, Caitlin, The Celtic and Roman Traditions: Conflict and Consensus in the Early Medieval Church (New York, 2006). Croke, Brian, “The Originality of Eusebius’ Chronicle,” The American Journal of Philology 103 (1982): 195–200. For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV 98 chazelle DeGregorio, Scott, “‘Nostrorum socordiam temporum’: The Reforming Impulse of Bede’s Later Exegesis,” Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002): 107–122. DeGregorio, Scott, “Bede’s In Ezram et Neemiam and the Reform of the Northumbrian Church,” Speculum 79 (2004): 1–25. DeGregorio, Scott, “Introduction,”Bede: On Ezra and Nehemiah, trans. with an introduction and notes by Scott DeGregorio (Liverpool, 2006). Farmer, David Hugh, “Saint Wilfrid,” in Saint Wilfrid at Hexham, ed. D.P. Kirby (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1974): 35–59. Grumel, Venance, “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): 161– 178. Herren, Michael W. and Brown, Shirley Ann, Christ in Celtic Christianity: Britain and Ireland from the Fifth to the Tenth Century (Woodbridge/Suffolk, 2002). Jones, Charles W., “The Victorian and Dionysiac Paschal Tables in the West,” Speculum 9 (1934): 408–421. Kendall, Calvin B., “Introduction,” On Genesis: Bede, trans. with introduction and notes by Calvin B. Kendall (Liverpool, 2008): 41–44. Krusch, Bruno, Studien zur christlich-mittelalterlichen Chronologie: Der 84-Jährige Ostercyclus und seine Quellen (Leipzig, 1880). Krusch, Bruno, Studien zur christlich-mittelalterlichen Chronologie: Die Entstehung unserer heutigen Zeitrechnung, 1. Victorius, ii. Dionysius Exiguus (Berlin, 1938). Landes, Richard, “‘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, 1988). Lapidge, Michael, “The Career of Archbishop Theodore,” in Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence, ed. Michael Lapidge (Cambridge, 1995). McCarthy, Daniel, “The Origin of the Latercus Paschal Cycle of the Insular Celtic Churches,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 28 (1994): 25–49. McCluskey, Stephen C., Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1998). McNamara, Martin, The Psalms in the Early Irish Church (Sheffield, UK, 2000). Meens, Rob, “A Background to Augustine’s Mission to Anglo-Saxon England,” AngloSaxon England 23 (1994): 5–17. Mosshammer, Alden A., The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era (Oxford, 2008). Ó Cróinín, Dáibhí, “‘New Heresy for Old’: Pelagianism in Ireland and the Papal Letter of 640,” in Cróinín, Dáibhí Ó., Early Irish History and Chronology (Dublin, 2003): 87–98 (article first published in Speculum 60 (1985): 505–516). Ó Cróinín, Dáibhí, Early Irish History and Chronology (Dublin, 2003). For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV bede, the old testament, and easter 99 Scheil, Andrew P., The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor, 2004): 30–97. Segal, Judah Bension, The Hebrew Passover: From the Earliest Times to a.d.70 (London, 1963). Smyth, Marina, Understanding the Universe in Seventh-Century Ireland (Woodbridge, UK, 1996). Spier, Arthur, Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar Revised, Expanded Edition 5660–5860 1900–2100 (3rd ed., Nanuet, NY, 1986). Stancliffe, Clare, Bede, Wilfrid, and the Irish, Jarrow Lecture 2003 (Jarrow, 2003). Stevens, Wesley M., “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 i (Aldershot, 1995): 39–41. Stevens, Wesley M., “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, 1992): 125–152. Strobel, August, Ursprung und Geschichte des frühchristlichen Osterkalendars (Berlin, 1977). Thacker, Alan, “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): 130–153. Thacker, Alan, Bede and Augustine of Hippo: History and Figure in Sacred Text, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow, 2005). Tugène, Georges, “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). Warntjes, Immo, Computus and its Cultural Context in the Latin West, ad300–1200, ed. Immo Warntjes and Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (Turnhout, 2010). Warntjes, Immo, The Munich Computus: Text and Translation: Irish Computistics Between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede and its Reception in Carolingian Times (Stuttgart, 2010). For use by the Author only | © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV