From Eostre to Easter: a pagan cult resignification in Medieval England?

Abstract

At the beginning of the eighth century, in De Tempora Ratione, the monk Bede, the Venerable, presented a report that linked the month of April from the old English calendar with Eostre, a probable goddess of spring, whose worship would have been resignified by the Christian Easter. Due to the lack of other evidence attesting that worship, Beda was sometimes accused to have created this relationship, which was just an etymological fantasy around a pagan influence in one of the biggest celebrations of the liturgical calendar of the medieval Church. But what elements could be considered in the study of this assertion from Beda? With the help of linguistic studies, the etymological relationship with the plates of Matronae Autriahenae and the letter from Pope Gregory I to Augustine's mission in southern Britain in 600 AD, the goal of the present work is to investigate the possible existence of a cult for Eostre and its resignification from the Christian Easter in England in the centuries VII and VIII.