So, you thought the date of Easter, which rambles irritatingly round the spring calendar, was settled by the Synod of Whitby, no? That gathering in 664 AD, which established that Northumbria would celebrate Easter in the Roman calendar, used to be one of the events that Every Schoolboy Knows, though probably not now.
There were two rival ways of computing Easter, the Celtic and the Roman, and the problem was that King Oswald belonged to the Irish/Iona tradition, and his wife, Eanflaed, kept the Roman calendar. One bit of the court would be in Lent and fasting, vegan-style, and abstaining from sex and fighting, while the other was celebrating Easter, gorging on Paschal lamb and presumably up for conjugal relations and brawling.
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