The Synod of Whitby

For thirty years the bishops of the Northumbrians had been Irish (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.26); Aidan, the first of them, and Colman, the third, had been sent from Iona (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.22) (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 4.4). They reckoned Easter differently from Rome and from the church of Kent at Canterbury. Bede says that King Oswiu, taught by the Irish, kept one Easter while his queen Eanfled, brought up in Kent, kept another, so that in some years the king had finished the fast and was feasting while the queen was still keeping Palm Sunday. Under Bishop Colman the dispute sharpened, and it extended to the shape of the clerical tonsure (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.25).

A synod was called at Streanaeshalch, the monastery ruled by Abbess Hilda, which is identified with Whitby. Oswiu and his son Alchfrid attended. For the Irish usage stood Colman and his clergy, with Hilda and her community and Bishop Cedd, who interpreted. For the Roman stood Agilbert, bishop of the West Saxons, his priest Agatho, the deacon James, and Wilfrid, abbot of Ripon, who spoke for Agilbert because he could do so in English (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.25).

Bede gives the speeches at length. Oswiu opened by saying that those who serve one God should keep one rule. Colman said that he kept the Easter he had received from his elders, that it went back to the apostle John, and that Columba and his successors had kept it. Wilfrid answered that the Easter he kept was observed at Rome, where Peter and Paul were buried, and throughout the world, and that only the Irish, the Picts and the Britons stood against it. He ended with the words of Christ to Peter (Matthew 16:18–19). The king asked Colman whether those words had truly been spoken to Peter and whether anything like them had been said to Columba. On Colman’s answer he declared that he would not oppose the keeper of the keys,

lest haply when I come to the gates of the kingdom of Heaven, there should be none to open them.

All present gave their assent (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.25). Stephen of Ripon, writing in Wilfrid’s own monastery, tells it more briefly: Wilfrid appeals to the council of Nicaea and its nineteen-year cycle, and the king, smiling, asks who is greater in the kingdom of heaven, Columba or Peter (Stephen of Ripon, Life of Wilfrid 10).

Colman would not change. He left with the Irish monks of Lindisfarne and about thirty English ones, went first to Iona and then founded monasteries in the west of Ireland (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.26) (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 4.4). Tuda, who followed him as bishop of the Northumbrians, kept the Roman Easter and tonsure (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.26). Bede, who took the Roman side and still wrote warmly of the Irish teachers’ poverty and zeal, records that Iona itself adopted the Roman reckoning in 716 (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 3.26) (Bede, Ecclesiastical History 5.22). The decision aligned the Northumbrian church with Rome and with the churches of southern England.