Gone Medieval - Origins of Easter

Episode Date: April 16, 2022

Easter today is marked by chocolate eggs and two Bank Holidays - in the Medieval world it had a deeply spiritual significance.But it wasn’t without its share of celebration and merrymaking too.In this episode, Matt Lewis explains the origins of many Easter traditions in the Medieval period, and how our ancestors knew how to fuse together religious worship with a bit of fun.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Gone Medieval newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to Android or Apple store.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. Easter Sunday is one of the church's most significant festivals. Today it's marked by chocolate eggs and in the UK two bank holidays to denote its importance. In the medieval world it had a deeply spiritual significance that has lost its grip for many today. but it also had its share of celebration and merrymaking too. The importance of Easter in the medieval Christian calendar

can be seen by the 40 days of fasting that led up to it. The 40 days of fasting then became a reason to celebrate Easter, not only because of the salvation of the soul, but also the return of the food you'd been missing for so long. Mornay Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday meant a lot of time in church, but also ramped up the excitement for Easter Sunday and the feasts and fun that accompanied that most holy of moments. I think we consider medieval church life to have been a bit of a drag, but they knew how

to fuse together religious worship with a bit of fun. First things first though, where did the name Easter come from? Easter is another example of early Christianity's willingness to work with existing pagan festival times to ease the acceptance of the new religion. In the early medieval period, the spring season around which Easter is usually celebrated was widely associated with a pagan goddess of spring. Her name has very similar forms across dialects from Ostara in Old German to Astoron in Saxon and from Eustra in Mercian and West Saxon dialects to Astri in Old English. For a long time, there has been debate over whether Astri existed, though the

Discovery in 1958 of the Matronai-Austriahenae, more than 150 inscriptions dating from the second century, referring to these goddesses, tends to lend it more weight. The venerable bead, the famous 8th century Northumbrian monk, known as the father of English history, was thought to have made her up. He wrote very neatly about the crossover between pagan and Christian celebrations at this time of the year in his The Reckoning of Time. Oster Monath has a name which is now translated Paschal Month, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ostra, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month.

Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new right by the time-honoured name of the old observance. So it seems that both the time of year and the name of Easter are both leftovers of a pagan past. Spring was widely celebrated as the beginning of brighter times, warmer days and more food. All of that fit nicely with Christianity's portrayal of Christ's death and resurrection as a time of rebirth, fresh hope, a new light entering the world. It's no coincidence Christ is called the Lamb of God,

and his triumph over death is celebrated at just the moment lambs allitering the fields of the countryside and filling the air with the sand, of new life and fresh meat for the table, but perhaps we should gloss over that for the moment. The cross is a central symbol of Christianity. The crucifix is differentiated as a cross with a representation of Christ on it too. Crucifixes became less acceptable in Protestant countries during the Reformation, but remain important in Catholicism and the cross has kept its place throughout Christianity. The story of the cross is so central to Christianity that it isn't only recalled at Easter. The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is celebrated on

the 14th of September each year to commemorate three key moments in the story of the cross. The True Cross was reportedly found by St Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, in the 4th century. It also recalls the first churches built on the site of the Holy Sepulchre and Mount Calvary and the restoration of the true cross to Jerusalem in 629 after a 15-year absence in the hands of a Persian emperor. The importance of the cross, and particularly the true cross, is reinforced by the fact that fragments of the true cross were so highly prized as relics.

In fact, so many fragments probably existed that if they were put together, the cross might well have been massive, but believers wanted to believe. When Constantinople was sacked in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, parts of the vast treasures included segments of the True Cross, which it was claimed had been left there by Helena and had been painted and decorated with jewels. One night Robert de Claree claimed,

within this chapel were found many precious relics, for therein were found two pieces of the True Cross as thick as a man's leg and a fathom in length. They were split into many different fragments and distributed among the bishops, barons and knights present. They, in turn, took these home and donated them to local religious institutions across Europe. By the 16th century, the reformer John Calvin, perhaps reflecting the cynicism we might look back on this with, wrote, there is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places, there are large fragmentation.

as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poitiers and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that can be found were collected together, they would make a big shipload, yet the gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it. Did Edison really take credit for things he didn't invent? Were treadmills originally a form of corporal punishment? And would man have ever got to the moon? without the bra. You can expect answers to all these questions and more

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wherever you listen to your podcasts. There are a large number of people. different styles of cross still in circulation today. The Latin cross is perhaps the most recognisable in Western Christianity with its longer lower limb. A Greek cross has four arms of equal length and there are designs with flourishes at the ends of the arms that have been used in different places at different times. The Bible doesn't describe Christ's crucifixion as being on a cross in the shape that usually appears in Christian art and And neither does it state that Jesus was nailed to a cross,

with tying the limbs a more common and more likely practice. The story of doubting Thomas perhaps adds weight to the idea of wounds inflicted by nails, but these wouldn't have supported the body's weight alone. Medieval Western European art of the crucifixion, invariably, though not exclusively, shows Christ wearing little clothing nailed to a Latin-style cross. One mid-12th century Italian image attributed to Bonaventura Berlingeri shows Jesus crucified on a Y shape.

This image of suffering complemented the church's teaching that through his pain Jesus had secured forgiveness of man's sins and risen again. For a world in which life was often very hard, the idea that enduring it led to eternal life and happiness was a powerful one. Pilgrimage could be an important element of Easter. This was spectacularly combined with one of the worst elements of the use of the cross symbol in 1149. Louis V the 7th, King of France and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, set off on the Second Crusade in 1147. It was a disaster from beginning to end, really.

The symbol of the cross became inextricably linked with Crusades to the Holy Land. Those embarking on the journey would take the cross by sewing the symbol onto their clothes as a badge to identify them. The word crusade is derived from the Latin crux, meaning cross. It may be hard to appreciate the religious mindset of those fighting religious wars, though they do still go on today. But the marks left in parts of the world by religious conflict in the medieval period can be seen clearly today. any time we managed to equate religion with a desire to harm others, I think we've made a mistake. Louis' military reasons for being in the Holy Land founded and were eventually forgotten amid embarrassing setbacks.

The royal couple did reach Jerusalem though in May 1148, where more military failures ensued. Despite these, and a growing clamour from France for the king to return home, Louis sat tight in Jerusalem waiting for Easter. 1149. During this holy period, he gave arms to the poor and toured the sights associated with Christ's life, death and resurrection, and then he left. Doubtless, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Louis and Eleanor and those who remained with them, but it was almost as though all that loss of life along the way had only been so that Louis could spend the holiest days of the Christian calendar in the city where the events had played out 1100 years earlier. Food was on the minds of many in the run-up to Easter too.

After the 40 days of fasting in the lead-up to Easter, which remind the faithful of Jesus' time spent in the wilderness being tempted, Easter Sunday would come as a relief. It's easy to forget that for most people, all day was spent in manual labour, meaning that their caloric requirements were much higher than our recommended intake today. Some estimates suggest that medieval peasants would have needed to consume between 6,000 9,000 calories a day. Fasting was a really big deal. During Lent, no meat but fish could be eaten and that impacts your ability to take on calories. The Christian Church tended to require abstinence

from meat on certain days of every week. In England, it was on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. At Lent, Advent and Pentecost, this was extended to a prolonged period of fasting. Animal flesh was widely considered to lead to gluttony and lust. And dairy products were also forbidden as being what St Jerome had called molten flesh. On Easter Sunday, all bets were off. Landowners would invite their tenants in for feasts, as they had done around Christmas. Part of this mirrored the idea of the Last Supper at which Jesus fed his disciples. Posh bread and fine meat would have been an incredible way for poorer peasants to break their lenten fast.

One question was, how early could you indulge yourself on Easter Sunday? Well, you should attend Mass first, obviously. Unless your local rector was someone like the man at Nettlem near Lincoln in the late 14th century, he got into trouble with his local bishop for serving his congregation, ham and eggs, before the mass. Seems like my kind of guy. Lamb was often the central part of an Easter Sunday feast, particularly at the tables of bishops. It represented Jesus's position as the Lamb of God, but also fit the season and the idea of new life,

albeit new life that wouldn't see Easter Sunday. Lamb was a Jewish Passover food, which many thought would have featured at the Last Supper too, so Christianity here again borrowed from existing traditions. By the way, medieval cooks suggested pairing ginger sauce with roasted lamb. One food stuff that is still closely linked to Easter today, is eggs. Obviously there's no chocolates in medieval Europe, which is one of the main reasons that I'm glad to be alive today. But eggs had been associated with the festival for centuries. Anglo-Saxon pagans in England used them to represent renewal brought by the season.

Another part of the reason for the connection is that eggs were forbidden food during Lent, rather than waste the food stuff though, the production of which was hard to control. Any eggs laid during Lent tended to be hard-boiled. Once they were back on the menu, there was a stock of preserved eggs to draw on for a feast. In 1407, the Easter Sunday feast, thrown by Robert Mitford, the Bishop of Salisbury, included two lambs for the top table and 500 eggs. The accounts of Roger of Laborn show that during a break in hostilities while he was besieged in Rochester Castle by Simon de Montfort,

He used 1,400 eggs to feed the garrison on Easter Sunday. Eggs weren't only eaten during medieval Easter celebrations. In Germanic areas, they might be blown out, painted green and hung from trees, not unlike Christmas baubles. The Orthodox medieval church often used red to paint eggs to symbolise the blood of Christ spilled at Easter. One English trick was boiling the eggs with onions to give them the appearance of turning gold, while Edward I took this one step further in 1290

by having 450 eggs covered in gold leaf and given as gift to his household. There was also a tradition not dissimilar to was sailing during the Christmas season that saw costumed members of the community go door to door collecting eggs that were then donated to either the local church or landowner as an offering. Bunnies seem to have become associated with Easter

long after the medieval period, and chocolate arrived later too. But a lot of what we associate with Easter can be recognised from a medieval celebration, lamb, eggs, days off work, and loads of food. Perhaps one thing that is much less common now is the same kind of lent and fasting. I suspect lots of us will have given up some vice for lent, maybe as an excuse for a health kick. Perhaps we don't really stick to it and don't see why it matters. gave up chocolate and alcohol this year. So if you're listening to this episode, the Saturday before Easter Sunday, just know that I'm looking at chocolate like a vampire looks at a neck right now. Is it good for us to give a bit of thought to what we're grateful for or to stop taking some of those

things for granted? Did you give something up for Lent? If so, drop me a tweet or a comment and tell me what it was and whether you made it all the way to the end. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. And don't forget, also to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you have a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us wherever you listen to your podcasts, including Spotify now. It does help to lead new listeners to the podcast. If you're enjoying this and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter. Just follow the links in the show notes below and I'll

drop into your inbox every Monday with some hopefully, fascinating thoughts and anniversaries. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hit.