Christianity
The Christian Tradition of Forty Days of Lent: Origins and History
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Origin of the Word, Lent
The Teutonic word, Lent, is the 40 days before Easter, and originally meant no more than the spring season. The word “lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word lencten which means spring, which was derived from the Anglo-Saxon word lenctentid, referring to the lengthening days in spring. Lent (0ld English lencten, “spring”, Middle English lenten, lente, lent, Dutch lente, German Lenz, “spring”, Old High German lenzin, lengizin, lenzo, from the same root as “long”). The entire spring season was called Lenctentid. As Easter is near the solstice, and this fast falls before it in the early part of the year, it was confused with the season, and the word Lent, originally meaning the season of spring was used to mean the period of fasting spring. Since Easter always falls on a Sunday, Lent always begins on a Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, but the Eastern Orthodox Church does not celebrate Ash Wednesday.
The Latin name for the fast, Quadragesima (whence Italian quaresima, Spanish cuaresma, Croatian korizma, Irish carghas, Welsh carawys, and French careme), and the Greek Tessarakoste—a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste), used for the Jewish festival before New Testament times—are derived from the fortieth day before Easter. In the late Middle Ages, as sermons began to be given in the vernacular instead of Latin, the English word “Lent” was adopted.
Origin of the Custom
In the Christian Church, Lent is the time of fasting in readiness for Easter. The Catholic Catechism links it to the 40 days Christ was tempted in the desert, saying, “By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert”. It is, though, a rationalization of an ancient tradition. The Christian holiday of Easter is linked to the Jewish festival of Passover, but the bible has no mention of Jews or Christians observing any annual period of 40 days of fasting and abstinence before Passover. Yet today most of the Christian world observes the 40 day period called Lent preceding Easter Sunday. What then is the origin of Lent?
Many of our major feasts have a connexion with the pre-Christian Pagan feasts celebrated about the same time of year—feasts celebrating the harvest, the rebirth of the sun at the winter solstice, the renewal of Nature in spring, etc. The ancient Pagan roots of Easter lie in celebrating the spring equinox, for millennia an important holiday everywhere. Occurring each year around 21 March, the spring equinox is when the day is at last longer than the night, so winter has gone and spring has sprung. Biologically and culturally, it is for northern climates the end of a dead season and the rebirth of life in fertility and reproduction. Lenten frugality under the system of subsistence agriculture might have been a necessity rather than a feature, as food stored away in the previous autumn was running out or going bad in store, and little new could be expected soon. So the Easter period of joy was preceded by the forced fast at the end of winter, as stocks ran low.
The ancient Anglo-Saxons and other north European Pagans celebrated the return of spring with fertility festivals commemorating their goddess of fertility and of springtime, Eastre. Easter is derived from the Scandinavian Ostara and the Teutonic Ostern or Eastre, both pagan goddesses. The month of April was called “Eostur monath” and the entire month dedicated to Eostre. A Teutonic myth was that Eostre changed a bird into a rabbit, whence the Easter Bunny, a popular symbol of Easter—rabbits symbolizing fertility. Most ancient races, including the Anglo-Saxons, included spring festivals to celebrate the rebirth of life, using the egg was a symbol of fertility, life and rebirth. An old Latin proverb was “all life comes from an egg”. So, much of what people commonly associate with Easter is pagan.
Some of the Fathers, as early as the fifth century, claimed that Lent was of apostolic institution. For example, S Leo (d 461 AD) exhorts his hearers to abstain that they may “fulfill with their fasts the Apostolic institution of the forty days”, and the historian Socrates (d 433 AD) and S Jerome (d 420 AD) use similar language. The claim is doubtful.
The Church in the Apostolic Age commemorated the Resurrection of Christ every week! The Sunday liturgy was the weekly memorial of the Resurrection, and the Friday fast mourned the Death of Christ. The primitive Church were united over the weekly observance of the Sunday and the Friday, but the annual Easter festival was superimposed, influenced by conditions locally in the different Churches of the East and West. Moreover, with the Easter festival a preliminary fast was established, nowhere exceeding a week in duration, but severe in character, commemorating the Passion, or “the days on which the bridegroom was taken away”.
Duration of the Fast
The evidence that remains from the early years of Christianity shows both considerable diversity of practice regarding the fast before Easter and also a gradual process of development in the matter of its duration. From the earliest Christian times everyone agreed that a penitential season should precede the solemnities of Easter, but for the first three centuries there was no agreement over how long that should be. The length of this fast and the rigor with which it has been observed have varied greatly at different times and in different countries. In the time of Irenaeus the fast before Easter was short, but severe:
For some think they ought to fast for one day, others for two days, and others even for several, while other reckon forty hours both of day and night to their fast.Irenaeus, Letter to Pope Victor
This passage was quoted by Eusebius (EH 5:24). As he implies this controversy had gone on since early days, any apostolic institution is unlikely. Rufinus, who translated Eusebius into Latin towards the close of the fourth century, punctuated this passage as to make Irenaeus say that some people fasted for forty days, but modern criticism pronounces strongly in favor of the text translated here. So, Irenaeus about the year 190 AD knew nothing of any Easter fast of forty days. If Rufinus marked up his translation in error, he might have been innocently responsible for extending a forty hour fast to a forty day one.
Tertullian only a few years later, writing while still a Montanist, contrasts the slender term of fasting observed by the Catholics, “the days on which the bridegroom was taken away”, probably meaning the friday and saturday of Holy Week, with the longer period of a fortnight kept by the Montanists. He was speaking of strict fasting (xerophagiæ, nil by mouth), but, though he wrote much on the subject, he knew of no period of forty days continuous fasting. All the pre-Nicene Fathers were equally silent, though many must have mentioned such an Apostolic institution, if it had existed. There is no mention of Lent in S Dionysius of Alexandria or in the Didascalia, which Funk dates about the year 250 AD, yet both speak of the paschal fast.
About the middle of the 3rd century in Alexandria, it was already customary to fast during Holy Week, still not as much as the Montanists had already boasted. In the early years of the fourth century, the first mention of the Greek Tessarakoste or Latin Quadragesima for the Lenten fast is in the fifth canon of the council of Nicaea (325 AD), and from this time it is frequently referred to, but chiefly as a season of preparation of catachumens for baptism, of absolution of penitents, or of retreat and recollection. In this season fasting played a part, but it was not universally nor rigorously enforced. At Rome, for instance, the whole period of fasting was but three weeks, according to the historian Socrates, these three weeks, possibly not being continuous but, following the primitive Roman custom, broken by intervals.
Gradually, however, the fast as observed in East and West became more rigorously defined. In the fourth century, Saint Athanasius, recently back from a trip to Rome and over the greater part of Europe, enjoined the people of Alexandria to observe a forty day period of fasting prior to Easter, indicating that this was the mode now practiced throughout Christendom:
While all the world is fasting, we who are in Egypt should not become a laughing stock as the only people who do not fast but take pleasure in those days.Athanasius, 339 AD
In the East, where after the example of the Church of Antioch the Quadragesima fast had been kept distinct from that of Holy Week, the whole fast came to last for seven weeks, both Saturdays and Sundays (except Holy Saturday) being excluded. In Rome and Alexandria, and even in Jerusalem, Holy Week was included in Lent and the whole fast lasted but six weeks, Saturdays not being exempt. Both at Rome and Constantinople, therefore, the actual fast was thirty six days. Some Churches still continued the three weeks’ fast, but by the middle of the 5th century most of these divergences had ceased and the usages of Antioch-Constantinople and Rome-Alexandria had become stereotyped in their respective spheres of influence.
The thirty six days, as forming a tenth part of the year and therefore matching the proportion of a tithe, was considered by many medieval writers as “the spiritual tithing of the year”, and so at first found a wide acceptance, but the inconsistency of this period with the name Quadragesima, and with the forty days’ fast of Christ, came to be noted, and early in the 7th century four days were added, Lent in the West beginning henceforth on Ash Wednesday. Catholics believe Ash Wednesday was established as the first day of Lent by Pope Gregory the Great (590-604 AD).
About the same time the cycle of paschal solemnities was extended to the ninth week before Easter by the institution of stational masses for Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima Sundays. At Constantinople, too, three Sundays were added and associated with the Easter festival in the same way as the Sundays in Lent proper. These three Sundays were added in the Greek Church also, and the present custom of keeping an eight weeks’ fast (8 x 5 days), now universal in the Eastern Church, originated in the 7th century. The Greek Lent begins on the Monday of Sexagesima, with a week of preparatory fasting, known as the “butter-week”. The actual fast, however, starts on the Monday of Quinquagesima, this week being known as “the first week of the fast”. The period of Lent is still described as “the six weeks of the fast”, Holy Week not being reckoned in.
Nature of the Fast
The nature of the fast was also subject to diverse views. Socrates writes that in the fifth century:
Some abstain from every sort of creature that has life, while others of all the living creatures eat of fish only. Others eat birds as well as fish, because, according to the Mosaic account of the Creation, they too sprang from the water. Others abstain from fruit covered by a hard shell and from eggs. Some eat dry bread only, others not even that. Others again when they have fasted to the ninth hour [three o’clock] partake of various kinds of food.
Amid this diversity some inclined to the extreme limits of rigor, believing ordinary Christians should pass twenty four hours or more without food of any kind, especially during Holy Week, while the more austere actually subsisted during part or the whole of Lent upon one or two meals a week. The general rule on fasting days was to take one meal a day and that only in the evening, while meat and, in the early centuries, wine were entirely forbidden. During Holy Week, or at least on Good Friday it was the xerophagiæ, a diet of dry food, bread, salt, and vegetables.
Bede tells us of Bishop Cedda, that during Lent he took only one meal a day consisting of “a little bread, a hen’s egg, and a little milk mixed with water”, while Theodulphus of Orleans in the eighth century regarded abstinence from eggs, cheese, and fish as a mark of exceptional virtue. None the less, S Gregory writing to S Augustine of England laid down the rule:
We abstain from flesh meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, and eggs.
Dispensations to eat lacticinia, dairy products, were often granted upon condition of making a contribution to some pious work. Several churches are said to have been partly built by the proceeds of such exceptions, and one of the steeples of Rouen cathedral was, for this reason, known as the Butter Tower. This general prohibition of eggs and milk during Lent is now used as the Christian explanation of the custom of making gifts of eggs at Easter, and in the English usage of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.
Early on—Socrates mentions it—the practice began to be tolerated of breaking the fast at the hour of none, three o’clock in the afternoon. Charlemagne, about 800 AD, took his lenten repast at 2 pm. This slide was aided by the canonical hours of none, vespers, etc, being periods rather than fixed points of time. The ninth hour, or none, was strictly three o’clock in the afternoon, but could begin as soon as sexte, corresponding to the sixth hour, or midday, ended. Eventually none was conventionally considered as beginning at midday. Our word, “noon” for midday is none! Similarly vespers—the evening service—eventually slipped in Lent to midday. The Franciscan, Richard Middleton, who based his decision in part upon contemporary usage, declared that anyone who took his dinner at midday did not break the Lenten fast.
In England, a Lenten fast was first ordered to be observed by Earconberht, king of Kent (640-664 AD). In the middle ages, meat, eggs and milk were forbidden in Lent not only by ecclesiastical but by statute law, and this rule was enforced until the reign of William III. The chief Lenten food from the earliest days was fish, and entries in the royal household accounts of Edward III show the amount of fish supplied to the king. Herring pies were a great delicacy. Charters granted to seaports often stipulated that the town should send so many herrings or other fish to the king annually during Lent. How severely strict medieval abstinence was may be gauged from the fact that armies and garrisons were sometimes, in default of dispensations, as in the case of the siege of Orleans in 1429, reduced to starvation for want of Lenten food, though in full possession of meat and other supplies. The battle of the Herrings (February 1429) was fought in order to cover the march of a convoy of Lenten food to the English army besieging Orleans. Dispensations from fasting were, however, given in case of illness.
Post Reformation
The Lenten fast was retained at the Reformation in some of the reformed Churches, and is still observed in the Anglican and Lutheran communions. During the religious confusion of the Reformation, the practice of fasting was generally relaxed and it was found necessary to reassert the obligation of keeping Lent and the other periods and days of abstinence by a series of proclamations and statutes. In these the religious was avowedly subordinate to a political motive, viz to prevent the ruin of the fisheries, which were the great nursery of English seamen. Thus the statute of Edward VI, while inculcating that “due and godly abstinence from flesh is a means to virtue”, adds that “by the eating of fish much flesh is saved to the country”, and that thereby, too, the fishing trade is encouraged.
The statute did not seem to have had much effect, for in spite of a proclamation of Queen Elizabeth, in 1560, imposing a fine of £20 for each offence on butchers slaughtering animals during Lent, in 1563, Sir William Cecil, in Notes upon an Act for the Increase of the Navy, says that “in old times no flesh at all was eaten on fish days—even the king himself could not have license—which was occasion of eating so much fish as now is eaten in flesh upon fish days”. The revolt against fish had ruined the fisheries and driven the fishermen to turn pirates, to the great scandal and detriment of the realm. Accordingly, in the session of 1562-1563, Cecil forced upon an unwilling parliament “a politic ordinance on fish eating”, by which the eating of flesh on fast days was made punishable by a fine of three pounds or three months’ imprisonment, one meat dish being allowed on Wednesdays on condition that three fish dishes were present on the table.
The kind of argument by which Cecil overcame the Protestant temper of the parliament is illustrated by a clause which he had meditated adding to the statute, a draft of which in his own handwriting is preserved:
Because no person should misjudge the intent of the statute, which is politicly meant only for the increase of fishermen and mariners, and not for any superstition for choice of meats, whoever shall preach or teach that eating of fish or forbearing of flesh is for the saving of the soul of man, or for the service of God, shall be punished as the spreader of false news
But in spite of statutes and proclamations, of occasional severities and of the patriotic example of Queen Elizabeth, the practice of fasting fell more and more into disuse. Ostentatious avoidance of a fish diet became, indeed, one of the outward symbols of militant Protestantism among the Puritans. John Taylor, the water poet, writes in his Jack a Lent (1620):
I have often noted that if any superfluous feasting or gormandizing, paunch cramming assembly do meet, it is so ordered that it must be either in Lent, upon a Friday, or a fasting, for the meat does not relish well except it be sauced with disobedience and comtempt of authority.
The government continued to struggle against this spirit of defiance. Proclamations of James I, in 1619 and 1625, and of Charles I, in 1627 and 1631, again commanded abstinence from all flesh during Lent, and the High Church movement of the 17th century lent a fresh religious sanction to the official attitude. So late as 1687, James II issued a proclamation ordering abstention from meat, but, after the Revolution, the Lenten laws fell obsolete, though they remained on the statute book till repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1863.
But during the 18th century, though the strict observance of the Lenten fast was generally abandoned, it was still observed and inculcated by the more earnest of the clergy, such as William Law and John Wesley, and the custom of women wearing mourning in Lent, which had been followed by Queen Elizabeth and her court, survived until well into the 19th century. With the growth of the Oxford Movement in the English Church, the practice of observing Lent was revived, and, though no rules for fasting are authoritatively laid down, the duty of abstinence is now generally inculcated by bishops and clergy, either as a discipline or as an exercise in self denial. For the more “advanced” Churches, Lenten practice tends to conform to that of the pre-Reformation Church.
Mid-Lent, or the fourth Sunday in Lent, was long known as Mothering Sunday, in allusion to the custom for girls in service to be allowed a holiday on that day to visit their parents. They usually took as a present for their mother a small cake known as a simnel. In shape it resembled a porkpie but in materials it was a rich plum pudding. The word is derived through Medieval Latin simenellus, simella, from Latin simila, wheat flour. Now, it has become commercialized as Mother’s Day.
