2022/04/03 by Richard Sermon · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Medieval Literature and History #Linguistics and language evolution #Historical and Archaeological Studies #Reinterpretation #Cult #History #Literature #Explication #Mythology #Germanic languages #Classics #Kingdom #Ancient history #Art #Philosophy #German #Linguistics #Archaeology
paper · doi:10.1080/0015587x.2021.1959143
openalex publication_date 2022/04/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The Venerable Bede (672–735 AD) provides our only account of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, which he claimed to be the origin of the Easter festival name in the English language. In the early nineteenth century the goddess was imagined to have been a pan-Germanic deity renamed Ostara, and subsequently suggested to be the Germanic reflex of a more ancient Indo-European dawn goddess. However, by the latter half of the twentieth century many academics began to question the reliability of Bede’s account, with these doubts now being reflected in wider reference publications. More recently Eostre has been thrown a linguistic lifeline, not as a pan-Germanic or Indo-European deity, but as a local goddess in eastern Kent, said to have been shaped by naming practices that parallel the Romano-Germanic matron cults of the Lower Rhine region. This article re-examines the principal evidence that underpins this ‘local goddess’ theory, offers an alternative explication for the Matronae Austriahenae, and argues that any reinterpretation of Eostre cannot simply ignore or dismiss the one piece of evidence Bede provides about her cult, namely the timing of her month (Eosturmonath) and celebrations.