Bede and Anglo-Saxon Paganism

As I said previously, the 8th-century Christian monk known as the Venerable Bede mentions pagan practices in his writings, although he is usually careful not to give too many details, not wanting his works to serve as a manual for anyone who wished to return to the pre-Christian modes of religious observance. Presumably, if some lapsed Christians were to use his writings to recreate the only-recently extirpated pagan practices of idolatry and thereby damned their eternal souls to hell, Bede would have felt to some degree responsible for their fate. Thus, he keeps his discussion of such practices rather generalized. On occasion, however, he does provide some tantalizing details. In a 1985 article in the academic journal Parergon entitled “Bede and Anglo-Saxon Paganism,” Macquarie University archaeologist Audrey L. Meaney provides a fresh translation of a passage in which Bede discusses the Anglo-Saxon pagans’ lunisolar calendar and some associated seasonal festivals. It is important to keep in mind, she says, that Bede was writing “within living memory of the demise of paganism” in Northumbria (modern-day northern England and southeast Scotland). This suggests to her mind that if Bede distorted the picture of pagan practices, there would have been people around to call him on it. Instead, Bede has a reputation for scrupulous honesty.

In the passage, taken from his De Temporum Ratione (“The Reckoning of Time”), Bede starts off by explaining that the pagans’ names for their months usually end with the term monath, derived from their word for the moon—a practice also followed by the Greeks and the Hebrews. The year began, he says, on December 25th—the eighth day before the Calends of January in the Julian calendar—on which the pagans held a festival called the Night of the Mothers (Modranect). Meaney connects this with the chthonic Triple Goddess figure common in both Celtic and Germanic traditions. Evidence remains of the veneration of such “Matronae” throughout the Roman Empire, including Britain. This is precisely the sort of pagan event that the Christians sought to co-opt by placing their most celebratory holiday, Christmas, on December 25th, in contravention of the clues as to the dating of the birth of the Christ child in the gospels. The month that followed, corresponding roughly to January, was called Giuli, according to Bede, from which descends our word Yule. The month takes its name, he says, “from the change of the sun in lengthening the day,” meaning the Winter Solstice; i.e., this month was thought of as the post-Winter Solstice month. This was followed by Solmonath, a term which Bede translates as “the month of cakes,” the Anglo-Saxon version of February. Despite the lack of evidence for a word sol in Old English referring to cakes, Meaney is willing to give Bede the benefit of the doubt. She recalls the description in a much later medieval text of a ceremony to mark the plowing of the year’s first furrow during this season. As part of the ritual, a flat cake was baked using various types of grain, milk, and holy water. The cake was then buried under the first furrow to ensure a prosperous harvest. She speculates that such a ceremony may have originated in the pagan culture Bede was describing. If so, it was likely connected with Imbolc rituals.

March and April among the Anglo-Saxons were known as Hrethmonath and Eosturmonath, respectively. Bede claims that these months were named in honor of the pagan goddesses Hretha and Eostre, though such deities are attested nowhere else in the extant literature. However, as Meaney points out, there are similar names for February or March in medieval German, such as Retmonat. She also notes that scholars have connected hreth with similar words in Old English meaning “swift, alert, or prompt,” “glory, fame, or triumph,” and “fierce, cruel, or rough” and feels that these would be appropriate characteristics for a goddess presiding over this stormy time of year. However, since a female weather deity would be unusual for either Celtic or Germanic mythology, she suggests that hreth may have resulted from a linguistic inversion of the word eorthe, female earth deities being much more common. She posits some connection, then, between Hretha and the Germanic fertility goddess Nerthus. As for Eostre, Bede notes that, like Christmas, the Christian celebration of the self-sacrifice of the Christ, elsewhere named for Passover (a Christianized Jewish holiday), was among the Anglo-Saxon peoples referred to as Easter, co-opting the pre-existing pagan spring fertility festival. Or as Bede puts it, the month “formerly had its name from their goddess who was called Eostre, and for whom they celebrated a feast in it. From whose name now they name the paschal time, calling a festival of new solemnity with the accustomed name of a former observance.” In Old High German, the festival was called Ostara, the name we have chosen to use, and modern German Christians celebrate Ostern or Osterfest as English speakers celebrate Easter. Since the Old High German word ôstar, like the Old Norse word austr, indicated “movement toward the rising sun,” scholars have postulated that Eostre was a goddess of the dawn, like Aurora and Eos in Greco-Roman mythology. As previously mentioned, other scholars, such as Ronald Hutton, remain unconvinced. Meaney maintains, though, that Bede was unlikely to invent these two goddesses, Hretha and Eostre, out of whole cloth, since he is here comparing paganism negatively to Christianity. If his purpose in getting so uncharacteristically specific was to denigrate paganism, she contends, it would have been more effective for him to focus on the well-known pagan gods for whom days of the week had been named (Odin, Thor, Frey) rather than picking (or making up) some obscure, minor goddesses. His failure to do so she takes as a paradoxical “indication of its veracity.” However, she also suggests that Bede may have seen less danger in speaking of these obscure goddesses if their worship had been in decline for some time—wayward apostates would be unlikely to resume worshiping them in that case, and Bede wouldn’t have to worry about contributing to such sinners’ damnation.

The Anglo-Saxons referred to May by the quirky name Thrimilchi (“Tri-Milky”). Bede says it “was so named because in it the herds were milked three times a day; for such was once the productiveness of Britain or Germany, from where the English nation invaded Britain.” It sounds a bit like Bede longed for those good old days when everything was better, not like the less productive present day when society’s going to hell in a handbasket. I guess some things never change. June and July were both called Litha, essentially being thought of as the pre-Summer Solstice month and the post-Summer Solstice month. According to Bede, the word Litha means pleasant or navigable, in the sense that “in each of those months, the gentleness of the winds is pleasant, and [the Anglo-Saxons] are accustomed to navigate the calm seas.” Since the lunar calendar does not keep pace with the solar year, a thirteenth month was periodically inserted. This was also called Litha and placed in the summer. Such years were, as a result, called Thrilithi (“Three-Litha”) years and served as their version of leap years. August the Anglo-Saxons named Weodmonath (“Weed-Month”), Bede says, “because then [weeds] flourish very greatly.” September corresponded to Halegmonath (“Holy Month”), “the month of sacred observances” related to the harvest.

October was known as Winterfilleth (“Winter Full Moon”). According to Bede, the Anglo-Saxons considered their year to be divided into two main periods, the waxing half (winter) and the waning half (summer). The wintry half of the year was said to start with the full moon of this month, hence the name. Bede does not indicate whether the pagans held any sort of festival on this date. November was called Blotmonath, “the month of sacrifices, because in it they dedicated the herds which were to be killed to their gods.” Meaney suggests, “it was the custom to kill off superfluous stock at this time, in order not to have to feed over the winter anything surplus to the next year’s breeding requirements.” Thus, a practical matter of animal husbandry was imbued with a ritualistic dimension by dedicating the slaughtered animals to the gods. These sacrificial rituals were called Blōt, a term still used by many Neo-Pagan groups such as Ásatrú. Also, as mentioned in my post on Samhain, historian Ronald Hutton has pointed out that this was the ideal time for the year’s most important tribal assemblies: the harvest had been completed, the livestock brought in from the pastures, and the normal seasons for warfare and trading closed. Thus, royalty, warriors, and peasants alike had some extra time on their hands—perfect for taking care of tribal business before the onset of winter. Like June and July, December shared its name, Giuli, with January, due to being primarily thought of as the pre-Winter Solstice month. As noted above, we still refer to this time of year as Yule.

Meaney points out that “Bede does not indicate at what stage of the moon the months are supposed to begin and end, but it would be logical to assume that the new month began with the appearance of the new moon. But if this were so, then winter must have been supposed to begin halfway through the month Winterfilleth, and end halfway through Eosturmonath.” Given this, it seems just as likely that the months may have begun with the full moon. The rest of Meaney’s article is given over to a description of the archeological site at Yeavering in Northumberland, located not too far from where Bede spent his time.