It’s time to talk about Easter! How did the Tudors celebrate? What of their celebrations have stayed with us today? This is a short and sweet springtime episode.
The Book Recommendation:
Pleasures and Pastimes in Tudor England by Alison Sim
Rough Transcript for Episode 165: A Tudor Easter
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity. This is Episode 165 – it’s a bit shorter than normal, and it’s on Tudor Easter Celebrations.
But first:
Intelligent Speech
Tudorcon
It’s Easter week, which here in Spain normally means a week of processions, parades, and the entire town smelling like incense. Of course it hasn’t been like that the past two years because of the pandemic, but those ancient celebrations remind me of what Easter would have been like for our Tudor friends. Of course, one big difference to how Catholic Spain and Tudor England would have celebrated is just in the name Easter. The Venerable Bede wrote in the 8th century, that the name Easter derived from Eostre, or Eostrae, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility. Also, England had that whole bit with the Reformation going on in the middle of the century, so that Easter in 1600 looked quite different in much of the country than it did in 1500.
But there are some rituals that stayed consistent, and in this episode I’m going to just give a quick overview as to how our Tudor friends would have commemorated Eastertide.
Of course, Easter is the end of Lent, a period of fasting and meditation on sacrifice and loss, which coincided beautifully with perhaps the hungriest period of the year, before all of the summer fruits are available, and when the meat from animals slaughtered in the autumn is running low, and it’s still many months before a grain harvest, but a time when a lot of work also needs to be done to get the fields ready for planting, and that’s all done on an empty stomach. These days many of us give something up for Lent like chocolate or meat, just as a way of keeping that ritual of fasting and sacrifice front of mind as we enter into the period of the celebration of the Resurrection, the holiest celebration for Christians, for whom their entire religion is based on the Resurrection of Christ.
The Lent fast lasted for about 6 weeks – 40 days – and began on Shrovetide. I grew up in Amish country in Pennsylvania, and even in that area highly influenced by Lutherans and Anabaptists, we still had Fasnacht Day where we ate fried donuts on Shrove Tuesday. Our Tudor friends would have indulged in the same way, eating perhaps some of the last stores of food before the fasting season began.
During Lent, people were forbidden from eating meat, eggs, and cheese, so during the Shrovetide period, people would often eat up all of that food that wouldn’t keep until Easter. Shrovetide celebrations also included plays, music, and masques, and even games that we would consider cruel today, like burying a chicken up to its neck and blindfolding people, and then throwing stones at the chicken to see who could kill it first. For many people it was one big final release in the middle of the cold winter, before the hardest time of the year began.
But once Lent began, things calmed down. Lots of activity was forbidden, including a lot of various foods, and even sex. Churches were decorated in different ways, sometimes hiding the lectern under various cloths to symbolise the mystery and hidden nature of salvation.
After 40 days, you have Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, when the story of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem was told in church, and then bunches of greens were blessed and used in a procession that would happen after the service. Of course here in Spain we use actual palm branches, but in England they didn’t have palm trees, and they would just use whatever was available locally, like yew and willow, and have it blessed by a priest. The crosses were seen as a protection against any evil, and there would be a big parade through the church.
Holy Thursday, also called Maundy Thursday, commemorates the Last Supper. In Tudor times this day was spent cleaning the church, people going to confession and taking communion, and some may have participated in the washing of the feet on this day, just as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples before giving them the bread and wine. Maundy Thursday begins the three holiest days in the Christian year, which find Jesus going from the upper room, to Gethsemane, before Pontius Pilate, and to the cross. Even in many churches today, you’ll find the altar dressed in black to commemorate this journey of sacrifice.
On Friday, people participated in the creeping to the Cross. Clergy would go on on their hands and knees to a crucifix and prostrate themselves before it, then the regular people would follow suit.
Another tradition that was practiced in pre Reformation England was the blessing of rings. Catholic monarchs from Edward III to Mary I had held rings in their royal hands, blessing them and asking God to infuse them with healing power before giving them out to those in need. Known as cramp rings for their supposed ability to cure cramps and epilepsy, the rings were blessed by the king or queen and sprinkled with holy water before being distributed from the chapel at St. James Palace on Good Friday. Elizabeth I ended this practice.
Then we get into my very favorite service, the great Easter Vigil, or the Paschal service. In church there would be an image of Christ and the consecrated host; something to represent the tomb of Christ, covered with a cloth. Members of the congregation would watch over it, and take care of the candles surrounding it. In Anglican services today, you gather outside at dusk with the candle that comes from the new fire that is lit, representing the light of Christ. This service is probably the closest of any modern services to the mysticism and ritual that pre-Reformation English Christians would have experienced – it’s steeped in history and ritual, and is one reason I love going to Paschal service so much. The Paschal candle is lit, everyone takes light for their own taper candles from that main light, and there’s sprinkling of holy water, and incense, and because it is a meditative service, there isn’t much light, and your sense are just filled with smells, and sounds of chanting, and the sight of the altar wrapped in black, and it’s just a magical service. And it’s at the end of that service where the Resurrection is celebrated, and the word Alleluia is said for the first time since Lent.
The Easter Day service ended Lent, and celebrations could start – though you didn’t have hot cross buns in England at Easter until the 18th century.
During the Reformation, the creeping to the cross, the blessing of the greenery, and the easter Sepulcre services were all banned. Though Easter would continue to be celebrated, just in a less ritualistic way, though as I shared with my own experiences going to Anglican and Episcopalian churches, there is still ritual that has remained intact.
Easter Monday was a time for people to party – you would show off new clothes if you had them, you would play sports, and attend fairs. In Tudor England people would also celebrate the Feast of St George on April 23, which was usually close to Easter, so often those two celebrations would go together.
So that’s it for this week. The Book recommendation this week is Pleasures and Pastimes in Tudor England by Alison Sim. I’ll have a link to purchase in the show notes at englandcast.com/easter. Let me know what you thought about this episode -You can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 801 6TEYSKO or join the new Tudor Learning Circle, which is a free social network just for Tudor history nerds. Thanks so much for listening!