paschal controversy

paschal controversy, an argument over the calculation of the date of Easter that constitutes a prominent theme in the ecclesiastical affairs of the 7th century. Easter was defined as the Sunday following the full moon of Pesach, the Jewish Passover, but because the Jewish calendar was based on lunar months, its date in relation to the western solar calendar is variable. Different methods of calculation for correlating the two calendars were tried in the 5th and 6th centuries. The Celtic churches of western Britain and Ireland adhered to an 84‐year cycle when Rome adopted what Irish computists judged to be a less accurate system; they continued to use this after Rome and the rest of the western church (and some eastern churches) had changed to a better nineteen‐year cycle. In the year 600 Columbanus in Italy had clashed with the local church over the date on which Easter was to be celebrated, and wrote to Pope Gregory the Great forcefully defending the Celtic position. Gregory's successors formed the mistaken impression that the Celtic churches celebrated Easter heretically on the day of the paschal moon rather than the Sunday following, and for thirty years there were strenuous efforts to persuade the Irish church to adopt the Roman practice. Attempts by Roman missionaries in England to move the Irish and the Welsh churches were resisted. By the late 620s, however, the matter was discussed by Irish synods. Envoys were sent to Rome and returned in 633 persuaded by the merits of unity and orthodoxy. As Bede indicates, most of the churches of Munster and Leinster conformed about this time. In the 660s Irish and Roman practice clashed again in Northumbria, where the Roman method was adopted following a synod at Whitby in 664. The churches of midland and northern Ireland did not adopt the Roman practice until persuaded to do so by Adomnán, who had been won over during a visit to Northumbria in the 680s. His own community in Iona was the last of the Irish churches to follow the older Celtic method, adopting the Roman practice only in 716. The Welsh church remained conservative until the late 8th century.

Richard Sharpe