The lunar months of the Anglo-Saxons according to Bede the Venerable

One of the rare direct documents on the calendar of the pre-Christian Germanic peoples is found in a treatise on the science of time written in a Northumbrian monastery. In 725 Bede the Venerable, in the fifteenth chapter of De temporum ratione, describes the months formerly used by the Angles. His account is short, but it reveals a lunar calendar with an intercalary month and with names tied to farming life and to worship, recorded when conversion to Christianity was still recent.

Months named after the Moon

Bede states that the ancient Angles reckoned their months by the course of the Moon, and that the very name of the month derived from that of the Moon, as happens in many Germanic languages. The year began on 25 December, the day on which Christmas was celebrated in his time, and the preceding night was called Modranecht, the night of the mothers, because, Bede writes, of the ceremonies suspected to be performed then.

Bede adds that the common year had twelve lunar months, while the embolismic year of thirteen months added a month in summer: in that case the months called Litha became three, and the year was called Thrilithi. As among the Babylonians, Jews and Greeks, the problem here too was keeping the Moon in step with the seasons, and the solution was the same: an extra month.

The names of the months

The names Bede gives are, in the order of the year: Giuli for December and January, then Solmonath, Hrethmonath, Eosturmonath, Thrimilchi, Litha for June and July, Weodmonath, Halegmonath, Winterfilleth and Blodmonath. Bede also explains their meaning: Solmonath is said to be the month of cakes offered to the gods, Thrimilchi the month in which cows were milked three times a day, Weodmonath the month of weeds.

Halegmonath is the month of sacred rites, Blodmonath the month of blood, in which according to Bede the animals destined for slaughter were dedicated to the gods. Winterfilleth, instead, joins the words winter and full moon: Bede explains that winter was reckoned to begin from the full moon of that month. It is one of the clearest cases in which a lunar phase marks the start of a season.

Eostre and the name of Easter

The most debated passage concerns Eosturmonath. Bede links it to a goddess called Eostre, in whose honour festivals were supposedly held in that month, and adds that the name passed to the Easter solemnity. From here comes the English word Easter, a relative of the German Ostern. Since Bede is the only ancient source to name this goddess, some scholars doubt her, while others consider his testimony plausible.

In the same way Hrethmonath is said to be dedicated to a goddess Hretha, otherwise unknown. The value of Bede's account lies in any case in its nature as near-direct testimony: he was writing little more than a century after the start of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, begun with the mission of Augustine of Canterbury in 597, when the memory of the old customs was still alive.

Bede's chapter reminds us that in northern Europe, too, time was measured by the Moon before the Julian calendar prevailed. His words, written by a monk attentive to the exact calculation of Easter, have preserved a fragment of a vanished world. Without that page, the origin of the English name for Easter and many aspects of Anglo-Saxon religion would be far more obscure.