Oswiu of Northumbria - Eahlfrith and The Synod of Whitby

Eahlfrith and The Synod of Whitby

In 664 at the synod of Whitby, Oswiu accepted the usages of the Roman Church, which led to the departure of Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne. The reasons of the gathering, and its significance, have been closely studied, and the simplistic explanations offered by Bede, and by Eddius, the biographer of Wilfrid, are no longer accepted.

Bede writes that the dispute was brought to a head by Oswiu's son Eahlfrith, who had adopted Roman usages at the urging of Wilfrid. Eahlfrith had been brought up with Irish-Northumbrian usages, and his rejection of these, along with the expulsion of the future saints Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and Eata of Hexham from Ripon, is considered to have had a strong political component. Equally, 665 would be a year when, as Bede writes, "that Easter was kept twice in one year, so that when the King had ended Lent and was keeping Easter, the Queen and her attendants were still fasting and keeping Palm Sunday".