04 — The Easter Controversy
The centrepiece of the documentary Columbanus: his bold letters to the popes over the dating of Easter. The Irish used an older 84-year computus that the Roman and Gallic churches had abandoned for the newer Alexandrian-Victorian reckonings, and Columbanus, attacked by the Frankish bishops for keeping the “wrong” Easter, defended the Irish custom in extraordinary letters — to Gregory the Great (c. 600) and, after a Gallic synod, to Pope Boniface IV — at once deferential to Rome and fiercely independent. These files present the letters and the ecclesiology they reveal, from both sides and without polemic.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism; Celtic; missionary to the Continent)
The Easter question is the place where Columbanus speaks most fully in his own voice on the relation of his church to Rome, and it is therefore the heart of any honest account of him. The dispute was technical — a quarrel over computistical cycles, not over the faith — but it forced into the open a question of church order: how a fully catholic church, in communion with Rome and revering the see of Peter, could yet hold to its own ancient custom against Roman usage. Columbanus’s answer, worked out across his letters, is neither schismatic defiance nor abject submission but something more subtle, and it has been read very differently by scholars and by the confessions. This section follows METHODOLOGY §4: the computus, the deference, and the independence are all set out with sourcing on both sides.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Letters to the Popes | The Easter computus and why the Irish and Roman reckonings diverged; Columbanus’s Epistula 1 to Gregory the Great (c. 600) and Epistula 3 to Boniface IV; the content and the astonishing tone of letters that lecture popes — presented from both sides. |
| Rome and the Celtic Churches | The ecclesiology of the letters: “we are all disciples of Peter,” the honour of Rome as the see of Peter, yet the insistence on Irish custom and the refusal of the Gallic bishops’ jurisdiction; how the evidence is read across the traditions, even-handedly. |
See Also
- The Frankish Bishops and Queen Brunhild — the episcopal hostility the Easter difference helped provoke
- The Celtic Church and Rome — the wider pre-Whitby question
- St. Gregory the Dialogist — Pope Gregory the Great, recipient of the first letter
- Orthodoxy: Orthodox vs Catholic — the question of Roman primacy that the letters touch
References
- Columbanus. Epistulae 1–5. In Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. and trans. G. S. M. Walker. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957.
- Charles-Edwards, T. M. Early Christian Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- Stancliffe, Clare. “Columbanus’s Letters to the Popes.” In Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe, ed. Alexander O’Hara. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
- Wood, Ian. The Missionary Life. Harlow: Longman, 2001.