Bede's Ecclesiastical History of EnglandBede, the Venerable, Saint
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Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England
Bede, the Venerable, Saint
England -- Church history -- 449-1066
“If therefore it could be that the Lord’s day should always happen on the
fifteenth day of the first month, that is, on the fifteenth moon, we might
always celebrate the Passover at one and the same time with the ancient
people of God, though the nature of the mystery be different, as we do it
with one and the same faith. But inasmuch as the day of the week does not
keep pace exactly with the moon, the Apostolic tradition, which was
preached at Rome by the blessed Peter, and confirmed at Alexandria by Mark
the Evangelist,(963) his interpreter, appointed that when the first month
was come, and in it the evening of the fourteenth day, we should also wait
for the Lord’s day, between the fifteenth and the one-and-twentieth day of
the same month. For on whichever of those days it shall fall, Easter will
be rightly kept on the same; seeing that it is one of those seven days on
which the feast of unleavened bread is commanded to be kept. Thus it comes
to pass that our Easter never falls either before or after the third week
of the first month, but has for its observance either the whole of it, to
wit, the seven days of unleavened bread appointed by the law, or at least
some of them. For though it comprises but one of them, that is, the
seventh, which the Scripture so highly commends, saying,(964) ‘But the
seventh day shall be a more holy convocation, ye shall do no servile work
therein,’ none can lay it to our charge, that we do not rightly keep
Easter Sunday, which we received from the Gospel, in the third week of the
first month, as the Law prescribes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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