Simeon Stylites was even more abstemious, for he ate nothing from the beginning to the end of Lent, passing his time in praying and bowing from his columnar elevation. An admiring monk has placed it upon record that, possibly by way of assuaging the pangs of hunger, Simeon made on one day twelve hundred and forty-four separate and distinct bows.
It is doubtless an excellent thing to have the strength of mind and body to be able to act up to one’s convictions. We should find it difficult to realize the idea of a Bishop of London never breaking his fast till the evening, and then being satisfied with a solitary egg, an inch of bread, and a cup of milk and water; such, however, was the daily Lenten fare of St. Cedd, a predecessor of Dr. Winnington Ingram in the Metropolitan diocese.
It is told of St. Francis of Assisi that he ate nothing dressed by fire, unless he were very ill, and even then he caused it to be covered with ashes, or dipped into cold water. His common daily food was dry bread strewn with ashes, but—the historian adds—he did not condemn his followers to the rigorous diet which he himself observed. “Brother Ass,” as he familiarly called that self, was, in his own opinion, worthy of no better fare.
But there is another and lighter side to the picture. The Roman Catholic Church, especially the upper classes thereof, in long bygone times, did not always submit patiently to the stricter ethics of fasting. Kings and princes used to send medical and theological certificates to the Pope, begging humbly to be allowed to eat meat. The Holy Father was even begged to adjudicate on individual dishes. Pope Zacharias forbade roast hare. Under Pope John XXII the Franciscans were much vexed as to whether they really owned the soup that they ate, or whether they only had the bare usufruct thereof. As only three or four of them were burned as martyrs, and no thrones were overset nor provinces ravaged, Voltaire termed these debates about niceties of diet des sottises paisibles.
In the reign of Henry VIII the minutes of the Lenten dinner included such fish as: a whole ling, great jowls of salt salmon, great salt eels, great jowls of salt sturgeon, fresh ling, fresh turbot, great pike, great jowls of fresh salmon, great rudds, baked turbots, salmon chines, roasted lampreys and roasted lamprons, great burbutts, and—when the fishing season was favourable—porpoise, sea-wolf, grampus, and whale.
A fairly compendious epitome of fish-food, but information is lacking as to the modes of preparation.
The most sensible remark on the fasting question was probably made by Erasmus, who said, when he was asked why he did not fast: “My mind is Catholic, but my stomach is Lutheran.” But then Erasmus was a very broad-minded sort of person. It is only necessary to read the finest novel in the English language, Charles Reade’s “Cloister and the Hearth,” to realize that fact.
For the dozenth time I was rereading “Eothen” the other day, and came upon a curious passage. Speaking of Smyrna, Kinglake says: “The number of murders committed during Lent is greater, I am told, than at any other time of the year. A man under the influence of a bean dietary (for this is the principal food of the Greeks during their fasts) will be in an apt humour for enriching the shrine of his saint, and passing a knife through his next-door neighbour.” Que Messieurs les végéteriens commencent! What do they say to this? Do they feel especially bloodthirsty during Lent, or—being all-the-year-round vegetarians—do they lust after gore with any peculiar avidity?
It is curious to note that our favourite Lenten fare, salted cod and egg-sauce, to wit, is, strictly speaking, quite wrong. Eggs are not permissible food, and the orthodox eschew them altogether during their jejunium.
In Spain, during the crusades and the war with the Moors, a practice arose of permitting, in certain cases, the substitution of a contribution to the holy war for the observance of the Lenten abstinence, and although the object has long since ceased, the composition is still permitted under the same title of Cruzada.