Other Special Times of Fasting
I. Western Church—The three fasts called ‘Quadragesima’; Rogation Days; the Four Seasons.
In addition to Advent, which, as we have seen, is sometimes spoken of as the quadragesima of St Martin, and Lent (quadragesima ante Pascha)[123], we find in the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries in writers of Germany, France, Britain, and Ireland references to a third quadragesima which is styled sometimes the quadragesima after Pentecost, and sometimes the quadragesima before St John the Baptist. In the Paenitentiale of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury († A.D. 690), it is declared that ‘there are three fasts established by law (jejunia legitima) for the people generally (per populum)[124], forty days and nights before Pascha, when we pay the tithes of the year, and forty before the Nativity of the Lord, and forty after Pentecost[125].’ The remarkable collection of canons of the ancient Irish Church, which is known as the Hibernensis, is of uncertain date, but is attributed by such eminent authorities as Wasserschleben, Henry Bradshaw, Whitley Stokes, and J. B. Bury, to the end of the seventh or early part of the eighth century. The three penitential seasons called quadragesima are distinctly referred to[126]. In the Capitula of Charlemagne, priests are directed to announce to the people that these three seasons are legitima jejunia. In the canons collected by Burchard, Bishop of Worms (A.D. 1006), the three seasons called quadragesima are referred to, and the third is defined as the forty days before the festival of St John the Baptist. Many interesting questions are suggested by these passages with which we are unable to deal here. It must suffice to say that the quadragesima after Pentecost did not long survive. It disappeared, and has left no mark upon the Church’s year.
Rogation Days. There is a general agreement that the observance of the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before the Ascension as days of special prayer and fasting, owes its origin to Mamertus, bishop of Vienne (about A.D. 470), who appointed litanies or rogations to be said, at a time when the people of his city were in great terror by reason of a severe earthquake and a conflagration consequent thereupon. The shaken walls and the destruction of public buildings, as vividly described by Sidonius Apollinaris, may have suggested practical reasons for the litanies being chanted out of doors. The practice of Rogations soon spread through the whole of Gaul, and in the Council of Orleans (A.D. 511), where thirty-two bishops were present, the three days’ fast, with Rogations, was enjoined upon all their churches. In England, the practice of observing the Rogations had evidently been long established when the Council of Cloveshoe (A.D. 747) enjoined it ‘according to the custom of our predecessors.’ At Rome, in the opinion of Baillet, and recently of Duchesne, the Rogation days were not introduced till about A.D. 800[127].
In the East there is nothing corresponding to the Rogation Days; and the ordinary fast of Wednesday is on the Wednesday before Ascension Day relaxed by a dispensation for oil, wine, and fish; for in the East the dies profestus commonly possesses something of a festal character, anticipatory of the morrow.
In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the term ‘gang-days’ is used more than once for the Rogation days; and in the Laws of Athelstan we find ‘gang-days’ and ‘gang-week.’ The name originated in the walking in procession on these days.
The Fasts of the Four Seasons (jejunia quatuor temporum). The earliest distinct reference to these fasts is to be found in the Sermons of Pope Leo I (A.D. 440-461), who speaks of the spring fast being in Lent, the summer fast ‘in Pentecost,’ the autumn fast in the seventh, and the winter fast in the tenth month. From St Leo we also learn that the fast was on Wednesday and Friday, and that on the Saturday a vigil was observed at St Peter’s[128]. The observance is characteristically Roman, and is found at first only at Rome, and in Churches in immediate dependence on Rome. Duchesne holds that the weeks in which these fasts occurred differed from other weeks mainly in the rigour of the fast, i.e. ‘the substitution of a real fast for the half-fast of the ordinary stations.’ And he adds the suggestion that on the Wednesday of the Four Seasons, if not on the Friday, the Eucharist was from the outset celebrated[129].
In England the Council of Cloveshoe (A.D. 747) enjoins that no one should neglect ‘the fasts of the fourth, seventh, and tenth month.’ The omission of any notice of the Ember days in Lent will be noticed later on.
In the Churches of Gaul we do not find the Ember days established long before the time of Charlemagne.
At first we find no trace of a connexion between the Ember seasons and the holding of ordinations; and, as is observed by Dr Sinker, ‘everything points to the conclusion that the solemnity attaching to the seasons led to their being chosen as fitting times for the rite[130].’