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Image: Whitby Abbey

The Synod of Whitby and how the date for Easter was agreed

As Christianity spread throughout England in the seventh century, there were differing views between Irish and Roman missionaries about how the date on which Easter is celebrated should be calculated. So how did they reconcile their differences – and why was Whitby Abbey chosen as the location for doing so? Charles Rowe talks to senior properties historian Michael Carter to find out

This is an edited transcript of a previous episode of The English Heritage Podcast. You can listen to the podcast in full here and explore all the previous episodes here. You can also subscribe to the podcast on your favourite podcast platform.

Image: family at Whitby Abbey

Charles Rowe, presenter: Let's go back to the year 664 to a clifftop location in the north-east of England. We're talking about Whitby in North Yorkshire, where, a few years before, a great monastery had been founded on the headland by Hild, the daughter of a nobleman. And it was here where English history was about to change forever. The problem was the spread of Christianity across the country, through Irish and Roman missionaries, meant it was being practised differently. And one of the biggest problems was when to observe Easter. So a synod was convened at Whitby to decide on a way forward. Joining me to explain more is Dr Michael Carter, senior properties historian at English Heritage. Michael, when we talk about the synod, what does that mean in plain modern English?

Dr Michael Carter: It's a meeting of the church, but it also involves royalty and aristocrats in mid-seventh-century Northumbria, the leading Anglo-Saxon kingdom in England at that time. An analogy would be a meeting of both houses of parliament, I suppose, both civil and ecclesiastical power in one place.

CR: So take us back to Northumbria in the seventh century. What was Whitby like in terms of the people and the politics then?

Image: Stained glass window at Christ Church, Oxford, depicting St Hild

MC: This is a time of huge dynamism, both political and religious. It's a time where the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria is establishing itself. And it's also a time of religious conversion. The Anglians who have settled Northumbria after the collapse of the Roman Empire are now converting to Christianity, and a monastery is founded at Whitby in 657 by King Oswiu of Northumbria, under the leadership of a remarkable woman called Hild. It's a dual house of both monks and nuns, and would have been a kind of small town – we've got a recording of a church, mention of houses for novices, and also 40 small huts where the community prayed. It really was a monastic culture, although there are threads of continuity through to what we think of as later medieval monasticism and indeed monasticism to this day. We're starting to get the introduction of the dominant form of religious life in the West, the rule of St Benedict, into England around this time. Indeed, one of the key players at the synod, Wilfrid, has been credited with the introduction of the rule of St Benedict to northern England. It's a time of great conversion and that's key to the synod and what was happening in the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria at this time.

CR: What's so important about Whitby? Why was Whitby chosen to host the synod?

Image: Whitby Abbey

MC: It’s because it's a royal foundation. It was founded by King Oswiu, and it's he who calls the synod. Whitby was also easy to get to as it's a coastal location. The only highways in Anglo-Saxon England at the time were Roman roads, some of which would be the best part of 600 years old and hadn't been properly maintained. Land transport was very difficult indeed, sea transport was so much easier. Also, another factor I'm sure is the leadership of Hild. She's mentioned as being very wise, someone to whom both princes and paupers turned to for her counsel.

CR: Why was a meeting about how to practise Christianity in a uniform way so important in those days?

MC: The dispute centres on the most important event in Christian belief, which is the the date of the resurrection of Christ, Christ's death on the cross and resurrection three days later. And there are two rival ways of doing things in Northumbria at this time connected to missionaries who converted the nobles at the Northumbrian core. First of all, missionaries who arrived in Kent, sent directly from Rome under St Paulinus, convert a number of Anglo-Saxon nobles and King Edwin. There's a bit of a disaster, Edwin's killed, the conversion process goes into abeyance. Then King Oswald is restored to the Northumbrian throne and he has been converted to Christianity according to an Irish practice. He was in exile in Ireland, had been to the monastery of Iona, and he comes back and brings Irish missionaries with him. They have different traditions, the Irish and the Roman missionaries, and that comes to a head over the calculation for the date of Easter.

Image: Whitby Abbey

CR: And that's, of course, the most important date in the Christian calendar.

MC: Absolutely. These are the fundamentals of Christianity, Christ offering humanity the chance of everlasting salvation, his sacrifice on the cross and resurrection, his conquering of death, which is key to the Christian message. And what we find is that, because there is this dispute about when to observe Easter, some recent converts in the Northumbrian court are thinking, 'Hey, hang on a second, have I converted in vain? Why have I done this when they can't agree on such a fundamental issue to their faith?'

CR: Why is it such an issue to have different sects worshipping in different ways?

MC: It wasn't really sects. They agree on the fundamentals in western Europe. There's agreement that Easter has to be on a Sunday – that's been agreed since the days of the earliest ecumenical council of the church, the Council of Nicaea, called in the early fourth century after the conversion of Constantine the Great. It also has to be on the first Sunday following the spring equinox. Now, the problem is there are differences between the Irish and the Romans on when the spring equinox falls and the day of the month. And it all gets very, very complicated and it leads to some major discrepancies on when Easter is being kept. We're told by Bede, who's the great Anglo-Saxon historian and monk, a great scandal arose one year because King Oswiu, who was following the Irish tradition, was already celebrating Easter, whereas his wife, who was brought up in the Kentish Roman tradition and had a Roman chaplain, was still keeping Palm Sunday. Lent is a great time of abstinence and self-denial. So you had within the same court two different observances going on at the same time. And that was thought to be very scandalous and worrying indeed. It could no longer be tolerated.

Image: Whitby Abbey

CR: OK. We've gone through the main reasons, Michael, for why the synod had to be convened. But there's also a more slightly frivolous reason for it. And I understand it's to do with haircuts.

MC: Yeah, it might seem frivolous to us, but it mattered immensely to people at that time. And it's the style of haircut worn by a monk – the monastic tonsure. There are three different ways of doing it around this time. There's a type that we're most familiar with, and that's the shaving of the top of the head. Bede tells us that's because it's an imitation of Christ and the crown of thorns. Then there's an eastern way of doing it, which is to shave the whole head. And then there's an Irish way of doing it, which is to shave the front of the head. This is mentioned as being another reason for the synod being convened, to settle this question as well. So it's showing, you know, are you an adherent of continental practices or are you claiming to follow another practice?

CR: Who attended this synod?

MC: There are three people we really need to be aware of. That's King Oswiu, who convenes the synod. Then we have his own bishop, Bishop Colmán of Lindisfarne, and he presents the Irish case. And then we have Wilfrid. Now, he's also a Northumbrian, he's a local boy, but he's been to Rome and adopted the continental forms of religious observance.

Image: Whitby Abbey at night

CR: And how did these three main parties come to their decision?

MC: Colmán is asked to present his case and he appeals to his tradition. He speaks quite honourably about it and he's given a good listening to. Then Wilfrid stands up to speak and a much longer speech is put into his mouth by Bede, because Bede is very much a supporter of Wilfrid's case. He appeals to universality. He says the Roman way of doing it is that of the universal church. It's the practice in Italy, it's the practice in Rome. In fact, it happens wherever the word of the universal Catholic church is spoken. Wilfrid is quite damning about the observance of Colmán and the Irish adherence. Most of Ireland had conformed to Roman observance on the day of Easter by the time of the synod. Wilfrid actually makes the point, he says, 'Are you going to be idiosyncratic, unlike everybody else, in just a small part of two remote islands out in the ocean?' Colmán says that his argument comes from the apostle St John the Evangelist. Wilfrid says, 'A-ha, my tradition comes from St Peter.' Christ had said to Peter, 'You are the rock on which I shall build my church,' and also gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Wilfrid says, 'Is this true Colmán?' and Colmán replies, 'Yes, it is.' And Wilfrid asks, 'Well, can you claim similar authority being given to your apostle?' Colmán says, 'No.' So King Oswiu says, 'Well, as Peter is the keeper of the keys to the kingdom of heaven, I'm not going to do anything to upset him when I appear before him and want admission to heaven.' He therefore decides in favour of Wilfrid and the Roman argument. Colmán won't adhere to it. He retires to Scotland and then ultimately to Iona, and he takes his adherence with him. But Hild and the community at Whitby, which had originally supported the Irish case, conform, as does the overwhelming majority of the Northumbrian church.

Image: Whitby Abbey

CR: So that was the decision made and that was the turning point in English history. Why was it so important as a turning point in English history?

MC: The Roman missionaries arrived in Britain in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons, it was St Augustine's mission, sent by Gregory the Great. There was an umbilical link between the Anglo-Saxon church and the papacy in Rome, and that endures until the Reformation. And what happens with the agreement of the synod is that the entire church in England, and ultimately in Britain, aligns itself with mainstream continental practice.

CR: And of course, later on, several hundred years later, there was going to be a split when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.

MC: Absolutely. It was absolutely horrible what happened in mid-16th-century England. People died, they were burned, beheaded, disembowelled for their beliefs in the monasteries and the defence of the monasteries. You only have to look at the decaying ruins of Whitby Abbey to get a sense of the enduring mark that has been left by the suppression of the monasteries – it extinguished a 1,000-year-old way of life in England. We can argue about the positive consequences of the English Reformation, but we also have to acknowledge just how destructive it was and what an enormous fissure it represented in English life, in English history.

CR: You mentioned that Whitby Abbey almost stands as an epitaph of what happened in the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries. We should point out, of course, that this is a later building that occupies the site where the synod would have taken place. It wouldn't have been in that building in 664.

Image: Whitby Abbey archway at night

MC: Nothing remains above ground of the monastery of St Hild. There's some excavated, near-contemporary remains of it. The monastery was refounded after the Norman Conquest by a knight called Reinfrid, who participated in the Harrying of the North, the brutal crushing of a northern rebellion against the rule of William the Conqueror. I mean, it was genocidal. The descriptions of what happened are, to this day, truly horrifying. Reinfrid was a Norman knight and he was overcome by emotion at the sight of the holy places of the Anglo-Saxon north, including Whitby. He put the sword to one side and determined to become a monk, coming to Whitby with a set of followers to resettle the site of the monastery and live as hermits. Ultimately the community there adopt Benedictine monasticism and started work on a church in the early 12th century. That's replaced from the early decades of the 13th century onwards with a magnificent monastery, the ruins of which you can see to this day.

CR: And that has now got a visitor centre, which has now been updated.

MC: There is a museum associated with the site and a visitor centre, that’s housed in a mansion built in the 17th century for the Cholmley family, who purchased Whitby Abbey after the suppression of the monasteries. Visitors will be able to experience a brand new museum telling the history of occupation on the headland from prehistoric, from Jurassic times actually, through to almost the present day.

Image: archive image of Whitby Abbey as viewed from the town (copyright Historic England)

MC: The headland at Whitby on which the monastery stands has been occupied by humans from probably the Bronze Age onwards. It's quite a remarkable site. Of course, today so many people will know it because of its association with Bram Stoker's Dracula, the ruins looming over the town of Whitby, the Demeter, on which Dracula lands in England, jumping ashore in the form of a monstrous dog. His first victim on English soil is attacked in the churchyard of St Mary's, with the ruins of the monastery behind. Whitby has also attracted so many other great artists – probably the greatest of all English artists, JMW Turner, sketched and painted the ruins of the abbey.

CR: One of the final things I'd like to ask, Michael, is what's your favourite exhibition or artefact from the new museum?

MC: There are fragments of crosses dating from the monastery founded there by St Hild, and they also have something called The Abbot's Book, which is a collection of charters and an early history of the monastery written by the monks themselves. I’ve spent so much of my time looking at crabby handwriting in medieval manuscripts and documents that it's quite lovely to see one of these on display at one of our sites, and its significance to understanding the history of Whitby Abbey explained to the visiting public. It's 700 years old. It's really quite a remarkable survival.

Listen to the full episode

This article is an edited version of the transcript to Episode 2 of the English Heritage podcast: Setting a date for Easter – the Synod of Whitby. Listen to the full podcast episode on SoundCloud now.