Peter CostelloOne of the curious facts of 2,000 years of Christian history is the readiness with which Christians will dispute their traditions and the dates appropriate to them, especially in relation to the nature, date and place of Easter, the most important date in the whole Christian calendar that is celebrated this weekend.
Historically, the most recent of such disputes centred on the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar.
The Gregorian calendar is the established method for fixing the date of Easter that was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in the year 1582AD. It is based on the movement of the earth around the sun (which means it’s a solar calendar) and includes leap years.
But it has to be kept in mind that dates of events in the New Testament have been uncertain from the time that the Asian scholar Dionysius Exiguous, writing in the 6th Century, was up to five years out (according to modern scholars) in placing the date of the birth of Jesus.
Initially this reformed calendar was used in Catholic states of Europe and their oversea colonies. The Orthodox tradition maintains the older Julian calendar. Indeed the Gregorian calendar was only introduced for civil matters in Greece itself in 1923.
When it was introduced into Britain in 1752 it caused great controversy – people demanding the return of their “lost 11 days”. However, the Papal reform carried the day, and is now in global use, though for many purposes Orthodox cultures and Muslim states still retain their traditional systems.
Overall the calendar caused great controversy, and still does. But the essential reform the Pope introduced retains its central position, though over the centuries the controversy was intense. Hence in Ireland the Greek Easter will this year be celebrated 11 days later than the Catholic one.
But further back in time, the matter discussed in the North of England at the Synod of Whitby in 664 was of essentially of far greater import for Ireland.
This synod which directly affected the early Christian Church in Ireland, nowadays styled by many the ‘Celtic Church’. At this date Ireland was still an independent entity, and not part of Britain or Scotland, its ecclesiastical authority resting in Armagh.
So strictly the decision made by a minor British king for a foreign Church had no relevance here. But things in these islands are never that simple.
A dispute to be decided by the king of Northumbria concerned the date of Easter, whether it should follow Rome or Alexandria; and also the style of monastic tonsure, whether that too should follow an Eastern style, as in Ireland, or the habit of Rome. Irish missionaries in Britain had introduced the customs of Ireland to parts of that island.
The synod decided in favour of Rome though the matter was a little more complex. But it was a decision that affected England only; it did not, as is often said, mean the rejection of the Celtic church by Rome, the suppression of an independent Irish church.
Certainly Ireland saw itself as an adherent of Rome, though one where the influence of the East was plain to see.
This debate over Easter and the mode of tonsure was also taking place in Ireland, and in other places too, in recognition of the need to maintain nearly their received tradition from Apostolic times.
But over the coming centuries the increasing disputes of Rome and Byzantium lead to the Great Schism in July 1054.
It was an unhappy matter which might well have been better handled more diplomatically. But human nature being human nature, conflict all too easily arises over different opinions which move to differences of creed. Yet given the importance attached to Easter Christians might have tried to follow more closely the imperatives of the Gospel to love one another.