Bede and the Old English Months

Bede finished his textbook on time-reckoning in 725. It is a technical work, written to equip monastic communities to compute the date of Easter, and it is the reason a great deal of astronomical competence survived in early medieval Latin Europe at all. Its fifteenth chapter, on the months of the English, is a short digression, and it is the only surviving account of the pre-Christian English calendar ^{1 ch. 15}.

What the chapter says

The English year, in Bede’s account, had two seasons and reckoned by lunar months. It began on 25 December, and the night before was called Modraniht.

The months, with his glosses: Giuli, used of two consecutive months either side of the turn of the year; Solmonath, a month of cakes, which he says were offered; Hrethmonath, named for a goddess Hreda, to whom they sacrificed; Eosturmonath, named for a goddess Eostre, in whose honour feasts were held then, and whose name was kept for the Paschal season; Thrimilchi, when cows were milked three times a day; Litha, again a doubled name covering June and July; Weodmonath, of weeds; Halegmonath, holy month, of offerings; Winterfilleth, the winter full moon; and Blodmonath, month of blood, when cattle were slaughtered and dedicated.

And an intercalation rule: in embolismic years a third Litha was inserted, making a year of thirteen months ^{1 ch. 15}.

That last item deserves more attention than it usually gets. A doubled month with a third inserted in some years is a description of a working lunisolar calendar with an intercalation rule, recorded for pre-Christian England by the one writer in the period who had professional reasons to describe calendar mechanics accurately. It is among the most concrete pieces of information in the Germanic material.

The two-season year is corroborated from outside. Tacitus, writing six centuries earlier about peoples on the far side of the Rhine, reports that they had names and meanings for winter, spring and summer and no word for autumn, and that they reckoned by nights rather than days and held assemblies at the new or full moon ^{2 chs. 11 and 26}. Two independent witnesses at six centuries’ distance agreeing on the shape of a year is as much corroboration as this domain ever supplies. The same two-season structure runs through the Old Icelandic reckoning: see The Old Icelandic Misseri Calendar.

Correction

Commonly saidBede describes the festivals of the Anglo-Saxon pagan year, including the spring festival of Eostre.

Bede describes months. The distinction carries most of the weight in this entry.

Of Eostre he says that the month was named for her and that feasts were held in it. He does not describe a rite, a date within the month, a place, or a participant. He does not mention hares, eggs, dawn, spring or resurrection. He does not call her pan-Germanic; he describes English practice ^{1 ch. 15}.

Of Modraniht he writes that the name was given, as he suspects, because of ceremonies performed through that night. The hedge is Bede’s own word and this entry keeps it. He does not say the night honoured ancestral mothers.

Of Litha he says nothing at all beyond the name and the intercalation. There is no midsummer festival in the chapter.

What stands in place of the withdrawn claim is a better Eostre. Bede had no motive to invent a pagan goddess to explain a name he was otherwise content to gloss as the Paschal month, and the name’s etymology, from the Indo-European root for dawn, is sound. The current reading takes her as a local goddess attached to a particular group or place, on the model of the Matronae, of whom over a thousand votive inscriptions survive from the Rhineland between the first and fifth centuries ³. A local goddess with a real cult in a real place is a stranger and more interesting figure than a pan-Germanic deity of spring, and she has inscriptional company.

Which edition to cite

Faith Wallis’s translation and commentary of 1999 has been the standard English edition for a quarter of a century, and the bulk of the literature cites its pagination ^{1 ch. 15}. A second, revised edition appeared in March 2025 with a rewritten introduction and commentary taking in the intervening scholarship ⁴. This site holds both and cites the 1999 edition for chapter 15 so that references can be followed in the literature that uses it.

What the chapter is doing there

Why an eighth-century monk recorded the month names of the religion his own people had abandoned has an ordinary answer. He was writing a manual for computing Easter, which requires reconciling a solar cycle, a lunar cycle and a weekly cycle, and a chapter on how other peoples had named and divided their months is ordinary comparative material in such a book. The survival of the only account of the pre-Christian English calendar is a side effect of the Church’s need to do arithmetic ⁵.

For the midwinter months this chapter names, see Yule; for the spring month and what was later built on it, see Ostara; for the June and July months, see Midsummer and St John's Eve.

Gap in the evidence

Whether Bede knew anything of the cults of Eostre and Hreda beyond the month names is unrecoverable. He is the only witness, and a single witness cannot be checked. His own suspicamur over Modraniht shows that he distinguished what he knew from what he inferred, which is a reason to trust the list and a reason to be careful with the glosses.

How the third Litha was decided in embolismic years, and by whom, is not stated. Somebody had to decide, and an intercalation rule implies an authority to apply it; the chapter names neither.

What the chapter says

Which edition to cite

What the chapter is doing there

References