Eostre- Germanic GodDeity"Goddess of the Dawn"

Bede's Testimony

Nearly everything known about Eostre comes from a single passage in the Venerable Bede's De temporum ratione, written around 725 CE. In his chapter on the English months, Bede notes that Ēosturmōnaþ (April) "was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ēostre, in whose honor feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honored name of the old observance."

That is all. No description of her appearance, no myths, no details of worship beyond the existence of feasts. Bede treats the information as a note on calendar naming, alongside another goddess, Hrēþa, who gave her name to March. He was writing in eighth-century Northumbria, close enough to the conversion that living memory of the old calendar still held.

The Altars at Morken-Harff

For centuries, Bede's single mention stood alone. Then votive inscriptions from the 2nd and 3rd centuries were found near Morken-Harff in the Rhineland, dedicated to a group of goddesses called the Matronae Austriahenae. The name derives from the same Germanic root as Eostre: *austrōn, meaning "east" or "dawn." Soldiers and civilians in the Roman Rhineland carved these stone altars. Dawn-related goddesses had been venerated on the continent centuries before Bede wrote his chapter.

The Old High German month-name Ōstarmānoth, recorded in Einhard's account of Charlemagne's calendar reforms, pointed the same way. The spring month bore the goddess's name on the continent as well as in England.

The April Feasts

Eostre's April feasts occupied a place in a broader Anglo-Saxon religious calendar. Bede records that February was Solmōnaþ, the "month of cakes" when offerings were made to the gods, and that the winter solstice was celebrated as Mōdraniht, "Mothers' Night," with ceremonies lasting through the darkness. Between these observances, Eostre's spring festival marked the return of longer days.

What her worshippers did during those April feasts, Bede does not say. The continental Matronae altars suggest offerings of grain and carved stone dedications. Spring bonfires on hilltops, which Jacob Grimm connected to Eostre in his Deutsche Mythologie (1835), are attested in German Easter folk custom, but no source connects them to pagan worship of Eostre.

The Name That Survived

English "Easter" and German "Ostern" both derive from Eostre's name. They are the only major European terms for the Christian Paschal celebration unrelated to Pesach or Passover. By Bede's time the identification was already settled and unremarkable. A pagan goddess's name had become the word for the resurrection feast, and it has remained so for over a millennium.