Writing women back into history

St Hild debating Easter at the Synod of Whitby in A.D. 664.

I want to start by saying thank you to all who contributed to this post by commenting on a Note I posted earlier this week (linked here):

Antonia Taylor

Ali Pember

Darcey Rojas

and

Steph Wright

in particular - thank you!

“Abbess Hild, what is your opinion?”

A sea of eyes turned towards her and she felt a lump rise in her throat. Her heart seemed to skip a beat and her hands were trembling. She felt unqualified, ill-trained to be asked such a question and yet they had asked her here, to share her wisdom on the Controversy.

She had prepared her words before they came, practised them over and over in her little room, making sure to know the arguments inside out and back to front. She wanted to sound confident, to present the case clearly. She wanted to prove that she could debate with the finest scholars in the land.

She wanted to look good.

She knew she shouldn’t think like this, as a woman of God. But she couldn’t help herself.

She wanted to look good, as an intelligent woman before all these men.

All these men who couldn’t agree.

What was the Easter Controversy and why did it matter?

The Synod of Whitby, held in A.D. 664, was, essentially, the culmination of tensions that had been rising for some time between the two parties of the Roman and Irish churches, both influential in seventh-century England.

‘The debate at the heart of the Synod of Whitby revolved around two seemingly simple matters: the dating of Easter and the shape of a monk’s tonsure [hair style]. These may not seem the most exciting or significant issues, but the implications of the synod ran far deeper.’¹

The debate around the dating of Easter centred on when Passover fell, according to the Lunar calendar. I won’t bore you with the details (having been subjected to a 90-minute lecture on it myself once upon a time!), but essentially it meant that the two churches could, in some years, be celebrating Easter a week apart from each other.

Here is a summary of the debate in the words attributed to one of its main players, Bishop Wilfrid (representing the Roman church):

‘The Easter we keep is the same as we have seen universally celebrated in Rome, where the apostles St Peter and St Paul lived, taught, suffered, and were buried. We also found it in use everywhere in Italy and Gaul when we travelled through these countries for the purpose of study and prayer. We learned that it was observed at one and the same time in Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, and throughout the whole world, wherever the Church of Christ is scattered, amid various nations and languages. The only exceptions are these men and their accomplices in obstinacy, I mean the Picts and the Britons, who in these, the two remotest islands of the Ocean, and only in some parts of them, foolishly attempt to fight against the whole world.’²

For the Northumbrian court in particular, the Easter issue had worked its way into the most intimate of spaces: the king’s bed. Oswiu, having been brought up in the Irish tradition, was married to Eanflæd, an adherent of the Roman practice. This meant that, in some years, the king was feasting while his wife was fasting - which included fasting from intimacy. It is perhaps not surprising that once the issue began to affect his sex life, the king argued that decisive action needed to be taken!

How does the usual narrative obscure the role of women?

It is undeniable that men, as kings and bishops, were the major players in seventh-century politics. The documentary sources, therefore, largely record the actions of men because most high-level action was taken by men.

To suggest otherwise would be untruthful.

This is not to say that women weren’t involved, however, and this is, I think, where the usual narratives obscure the central roles played by women in the Easter controversy.

Let me share the stories of two women in particular, Abbess Hild and Queen Eanflæd.

Abbess Hild, a woman, hosted and contributed to the Synod in A.D. 664.

I wrote in detail about Abbess Hild in my International Women’s Day post (click here).

She was held in high esteem by secular and ecclesiastical elites, and they sought her counsel on the Easter Controversy. Her monastery at Whitby was chosen as the location for the decisive Synod - rather than any of the male-ruled monasteries - and it’s likely that she was involved in the actual debate as a supporter of the Irish tradition. It would be easy to miss her contribution in the written evidence, as Bede somewhat skips over her presence at the Synod - but given that she is listed as being there (in quite a short list of individuals), she must have had a central role.

The ruins of Whitby Abbey as they stand today. This church post-dates Hild but gives a feel for the type of landscape in which she lived and the Synod was held.

Hild is most commonly written back into the history of the Easter Controversy - but there’s another woman we shouldn’t overlook who played potentially an even bigger role.

Queen Eanflæd of the Northumbrians.

She’s not even mentioned in Bede’s account of the Synod, apart from the following reference:

‘Queen Eanflæd and her people also observed it as she had seen it done in Kent, having with her a Kentish priest named Romanus who followed the catholic observance. Hence it is said that in these days it sometimes happened that Easter was celebrated twice in the same year, so that the king had finished the fast and was keeping Easter Sunday, while the queen and her people were still in Lent and observing Palm Sunday.’

My hackles go up slightly at the suggestion of her passivity: she had this observance, Bede says, because of a man (Romanus) who set the direction for her religious practice…

I like to interpret this passage somewhat differently.

Eanflæd’s husband, King Oswiu, was the most powerful man in the British Isles, described by Bede as having overlordship of his own kingdom and all peoples south of the Humber, plus the Picts and the Irish.³ This was no easy feat in the seventh century, and Bede gives special mention to the small number of men who achieved it because of its rarity. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle would, in the ninth century, give a special name to this overlord: Bretwalda, or Britain-ruler.

And yet Eanflæd stood her ground on this issue.

She didn’t give in but stayed firm in her convictions, forcing her husband to bring together a meeting of the top clerics in the land to settle it once and for all.

She must have been pretty tough.

And she can possibly be seen as the catalyst for the Synod. At least, in a ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ kind of way, much like Henry VIII’s desire to marry Anne Boleyn precipitated the Reformation in England. It wasn’t the heart of the issue, but it forced decisive action on it.

And so I think Eanflæd deserves a more prominent role than England’s earliest historian gives her. She was gutsy and wasn’t pushed aside by her powerful husband. She ultimately lost her fight, but she should be celebrated for taking on such a formidable opponent.

So, what happens if we write women back into the history they’ve been hidden from?

• We restore their voices to the heart of events they shaped.

• We see a picture of strong individuals who had a say in high-level politics - when our traditional narratives would have us believe they were absent or silent.

• We begin to redress the gender balance in stories of medieval politics.

• We see a truer account of what really happened.

In short, we encounter history more like it actually happened, not as it has been affected by later gender politics.

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1. Janina Ramirez, The Private Lives of the Saints (2015), p.189.

2. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, III.25 (tr. McClure & Collins, p.155).

3. Ibid, II.5 (p. 78).