In Bede’s Ecclesiastical History book 3 chapter 29, he quotes a letter from Pope Vitalian to the Anglo-Saxon King Oswiu, encouraging him to adopt the new simpler Roman calculation of the date of Easter instead of the Irish method using the 89-year cycle of Victorius.
“To the most excellent lord, our son Oswiu, king of the Saxons, Bishop Vitalian, servant of the servants of God.
“We have received your Highness’s welcome letter. … Therefore your Highness must, as a member of Christ, always follow the holy rule of the chief of the apostles in all things, both in the celebration of Easter and in everything delivered by the holy apostles, Peter and Paul, who, like two heavenly lights, illuminate the world, while their teaching daily illuminates the hearts of believers.”
After some remarks about celebrating the true Easter uniformly throughout the whole world, he goes on:
“Finally, in view of the length of the journey, we are not at present able to find a man who is entirely suitable and fitted to be your bishop, as you request in your letter….
Bede says that he omits the “remarks about celebrating the true Easter uniformly throughout the whole world”, and the letter has not otherwise come down to us.
But, long ago Archbishop Ussher of Armagh drew attention to a manuscript from Whitby. This contained a potentially interesting item which he printed in his Veterum epistolarum Hibernicarum sylloge (1632), p.126 (online here). The book itself is a collection of papal and other letters directed to Ireland in the earliest times.
The entry begins (p.125), with Ussher’s own words in italics:
In the year of Christ 639, the Roman see being vacant through the death of Pope Severinus, these letters were written. Concerning which, and others similar sent 50 years before to by Pope Honorius to the same Irishmen , Bede wrote thus in book 2 of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 19. Pope Honorius sent letters to the Scottish race, whom he had learned were in error in the observation of Holy Pascha. ….
Then:
Deinde epistolam hanc adjungit: sed quae “de ratione Paschalis observantiae” in ea sunt exposita praetermittit. Quod & in superioribus Laurentii Cantuariensis ad Hibernos literis, & in aliis Vitaliani Romani Pontificis ad Oswium Nordanhumbrorum regem (quas penultimo 3. libri capiti inseruit) ab eo factum videmus, qui posteriorum illarum defectus ex antiquissimis fortasse Whitbiensis coenobii schedis aliquo modo suppleri poterit; in quibus, praefixo titulo “Vitalini” (“Vitaliani” haud dubie) Papae Urbis Romae, subjectum repperi.
Nunquam enim celebrare [debemus] sanctum Pascha, nisi secundum Apostolicam & Catholicam fidem, ut in toto orbe celebratur a Christiana plebe; id est, secundum Apostolicam regulam CCCXVIII sanctorum patrum, ac computum sancti Cyrilli & Dionysii. Nam in toto terrarum orbe sic Christi una columbam hoc est, ecclesia immaculata, sanctum Paschae resurrectionis diem celebrat. Nam Victoris sedes Apostolica non adprobavit regulam Paschae: ideo nec sequitur dispositionem eius pro Pascha.
I.e.
Then he appends this letter: but he omits what is set forth in it ‘concerning the manner of observing Easter.’ We see that he did the same both in the earlier letters of Laurence of Canterbury to the Irish, and in others of Vitalian, Roman Pontiff, to Oswiu, king of the Northumbrians (which he inserted in the penultimate chapter of Book 3). The deficiencies of the latter letters may perhaps in some way be supplied from very ancient documents of the monastery of Whitby; among these I found the following text, headed with the title ‘Vitalini’ (undoubtedly ‘Vitaliani’), ‘of Vitalian, Pope of the City of Rome.
For we ought never to celebrate the holy Easter except according to the Apostolic and Catholic faith, as it is celebrated throughout the whole world by the Christian people; that is, according to the apostolic rule of the 318 holy fathers, and according to the reckoning of St Cyril and Dionysius. For throughout the whole world the one dove of Christ—that is, the spotless Church—thus celebrates the holy day of the resurrection of Easter. For the Apostolic See did not approve Victor’s rule for Easter; therefore it does not follow his arrangement concerning Easter.
Ussher’s “Whitby manuscript” is not known today, but his text is almost the same as Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 63, folio 59v, which may perhaps be the same manuscript. It is likely enough that Ussher corrected his manuscript for publication. The Digby manuscript was written between 867 and 892, somewhere in the North of England. It does not seem to be online, but a recent publication tells us that it contains the following text:
VITA.LINI PAPE URBIS ROMAE
Numquam enim celebrare sanctum pascae nisi secundum apostolicam et chatholicam fidem ut in toto orbe caelebratur a christiane blebe; id est secundum apostolicam regulam CCCXVIII sanctorum patrum ac compototum sancti cirilli et dionisi. Nam in toto terrarum orbe sic Christi una columba, hoc est ecclesia inmaculata, sanctum pascae resurrectionis diem celebrat. Nam victoris sedis apostolica non adprobavit regulam pascae. Ideo nec sequitur dispositionem eius pro pascae.
Holy Easter must never be celebrated except according to the Catholic and apostolic faith, as it is celebrated in the whole world by the Christian people; to wit according to the apostolic rule of the 318 Holy Fathers and the computus of the venerable Cyril and Dionysius. For the one single dove of Christ, i.e. the immaculate Church, celebrates in this way throughout the whole world the day of Holy Easter of Resurrection. Indeed, the Apostolic See did not approve Victor’s Easter rule; thus, neither does it follow his dispositions for Easter.1
“Vitalinus” is apparently an ancient version of “Vitalianus”, and attested in one recension of the Liber Pontificalis, composed prior to 742 AD. Ussher believed that this was the missing chunk from Vitalian’s letter.
It is not surprising that Bede would omit this material. Despite what it says, the Easter reckoning of Victor was actually in full use in Rome only a few decades before Vitalian wrote his firm statement that it was not used in Rome.
So is this passage from Ussher/Digby actually from the letter of Vitalian? Well a recent open-access article thinks so:
The passage is well-known to scholarship since J. Ussher, Veterum epistolarum Hibernicarum sylloge, quae partim ab Hibernis, partim ad Hibernos, partim de Hibernis vel rebus Hibernicis sunt conscriptae (Dublin, 1632), p. 126; its authenticity was doubted by Mac Carthy, Annals of Ulster, vol. 4: Introduction and Index (Dublin, 1901), pp. cxlv–cxlvii, but vindicated by Jones, Bedae opera, pp. 102–4; the passage has been readily accessible to Bedan scholars through Plummer’s edition: Baedae Historiam ecclesiasticam II, 201; the commentary to the recent edition by M. Lapidge with Italian translation by P. Chiesa, Beda, Stroria degli inglesi (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum), 2 vols. (Rome, 2008) II, 568–9 reproduces Plummer’s account, except for his discussion of the Victorian dimension of this passage. See now also I. Warntjes, ‘Pope Vitalian’s Letter to King Oswiu of Northumbria and the Beginning of Armagh’s Claim to Primacy over the Irish Churches’, Revue Bénédictine 134 (2024), pagination tbc.2
Note the reference with “pagination tbc” – that should be “pp.5-43.”
But if this passage in Ussher/Digby is the missing portion of the letter of Vitalian, isn’t that really very convenient? Too convenient? How does this extract come to be made in the first place?
It is not easy to see why a scribe, who possessed a complete copy of the letter of Vitalian to Oswiu, one independent of Bede, would copy out of it only the few words which Bede does not reproduce? Which fit so exactly in the gap, so luckily for modern readers? It’s a bit too good to be true. The identification relies on the heading, and these are notoriously unreliable.
Interesting, then, but we should be sceptical.
- Luciana Cuppo, “Felix of Squillace and the Dionysiac computus II: Rome, Gaul, and the insular world” in: Late Antique Calendrical Thought and its Reception in the Early Middle Ages,(2017), pp 138-181; p.163.[↩]
- Tobit Loevenich and Immo Warntjes, “Theodore of Tarsus and the Study of Computus at the Canterbury School,” In: Anglo-Saxon England 50 (2023), 29-59, esp. pp.37-38.[↩]