Easter Sunday

The History of Wales

Easter Sunday

The controversy surrounding the date of Easter;

Easter does not fall on a fixed date, but on the first Sunday after the full moon following the March equinox. However, the Celtic Church of the Early Middle Ages in Wales had developed its own method of the dating of Easter, and refused to conform to Archbishop Augustine's demand in 597 that the papal method be used.

Over the following century, when most of the churches in the Celtic-speaking lands came to accept the Roman Easter, Wales was the only territory still refusing to conform. The English historian Bede claimed in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731 that the Welsh "upheld their own bad customs against the true Easter of the Catholic Church."