Why the Easter Bunny Speaks Latin

Imagine a cold, crisp April day in 731, with sunshine bouncing out from behind the clouds every so often and clear air between you and the estuary at Jarrow – in the county of England now known as Tyne and Wear, after the two rivers. It’s a new year, and memories of Yuletide, last winter, are fading. For Christians in Europe the new year of the Julian calendar started in April – or Éostre monath in the Anglo-Saxon, and an elderly priest was putting the finishing touches to a manuscript that he had little idea would become one of the most important sources for scholars of English history. The man was known as Bede – and that may even have been the name his parents gave him – and he was referred to as the Venerable Bede for his position as a monk and later priest who produced copious textbooks on subjects as various as mathematics and music. Religious elders were often referred to as saints– as in Saint Patrick, for example (canonization in the Roman Catholic church did not begin until 993) – so Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede was truly renowned as a scholar, priest, and teacher. The library at Jarrow monastery had hundreds of books, and that was an amazing number for the times. Bede himself may have copied some of them. The next time you ask your library for a copy of a particular book, be glad you don’t have to do what the monks who had any aptitude for it were trained to do back then – and that’s literally copy out the text by hand. (It would make me think twice about borrowing anything by James Michener.)

Bede recorded the history of England in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (An Ecclesiastical History of the English People), and one of the most interesting incidents he records describes the Council of Whitby in 664. The synod met to discuss and rule on a couple of matters, including the date of Easter and the style and regulation of the tonsure (this second one – hair styles – might not seem so important, but it was a big deal in the cold and frosty north, I’ll bet ya).

The date of Easter? It’s a pagan celebration of Spring, the new year, renewal and regeneration surrounding the vernal equinox at the end of March, so why would anyone want to mess with it, anyway? Eostre was, according to Bede, a pagan goddess of the dawn, an appropriate deity for the regeneration of life after winter’s dark days. With the advent of Christianity, the pagan celebration was adapted to become a holy day, or holiday, commemorating the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. This incorporation meant that the holy days were a “moveable feast,” as the vernal equinox has the wayward habit of not falling on the same day every year. Add to this the fact that the Celtic Christians had, in their long and separate development in Ireland, come up with some ideas and traditions that were in opposition to Roman practices (although both traditions were able to co-exist quite amicably for a while in northern England, until it all got too confusing and the synod was gathered at Whitby, then known as Streonshalh). The biggest bone of contention surrounded the celebration of Easter.

Now, the First Council of Nicaea in 325 had decided that Easter should fall on a Sunday every year (to celebrate the resurrection), even though John 19:14 clearly states that Jesus was crucified on the day before Passover began (and Passover began on the 15^th day of the month of Nisan, which was the first month of the year in the Hebrew calendar). But the monks in Ireland were still following the earlier calculation of the date, no matter what day of the week it was, and this got confusing for everybody (people in Gaul were distinctly upset, and that isn’t good for the digestion). So the synod was gathered at St. Hilda’s place in Streonshalh and clerics from all over Britain began the debate: no holds barred, sleeves rolled up, and tonsures uncovered for a fight to the finish. Rome won, and the Lindisfarne monks, who had been betting on the Celtics winning, slunk off home, later retreating to Iona in a huff. And ever since then, the Easter Bunny has had to speak Latin.