There are indications that, in the earliest times, Christians fasted on all Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year. This pious custom seems to have been so generally observed that, without having been enjoined by any formal enactment, it had, so to speak, the force of law. It is mentioned in the Didaché, in Hermas, and by Tertullian.[185] The latter calls these fasts “station-fasts,” and mentions that the fast lasted until 3 P.M. The custom had possibly been adopted from the Jews, for the Pharisees and Jewish ascetics in the time of Christ were wont to fast twice a week, on Monday and Thursday.[186]
With regard to the East, Clement of Alexandria mentions[187] Wednesday and Friday as fast days, and, which is especially remarkable, these days were also so observed in the period after Constantine, at least for a great part of the year. The Didascalia enjoins that these days be kept as fasts in the time after Whitsunday. The preceding season, the fifty days between Easter and Whitsunday, was a season of unmixed gladness, and so, according to the Didascalia, in Whitsun Week, these days were not fasts. We are led to the conjecture that this custom fell out of use in proportion as fasting became otherwise regulated, and the fast of forty days before Easter became a general law.
That fasting should form an essential feature in the commemoration of Passion-tide had already been indicated in our Lord’s words (St Matt. ix. 15): “Can the children of the bridegroom mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them?” To which question He Himself replied, “The days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast.” The days when the Bridegroom was taken away were held from the first to be those in which He lay in the grave, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. In the earliest times, these days were everywhere kept as fasts, and were observed by all, with exception of the quartodecimans, as obligatory fasts of the strictest kind.[188]
This fact is supported by a remark of St Irenæus, in an official letter addressed to Pope Victor (189-99), on the occasion of the second dispute about Easter. It is given, for the most part, by Eusebius in his history of the Church.[189] This is the earliest evidence for the fast before Easter. It shows that the practice had not yet received a fixed and special form. Some, for instance, thought only one day ought to be kept as a fast, Good Friday; others fasted for two days, Good Friday and Holy Saturday—the two days, as Tertullian says, on which the Bridegroom was taken away. Others again fasted for more than two days (unfortunately, it is not said for how many), and others reckoned as their fast day, forty consecutive hours. That is to say, they kept a continuous fast for forty hours night and day, and regarded this as their fast day.[190] Which these forty hours were is easy to say, for our Lord lay in the grave for about forty hours, from the afternoon of Good Friday until Easter morning, or from Good Friday morning to the evening of Saturday.
Irenæus and Tertullian know nothing as yet of the fast of forty days, although in their days it was the universal custom to fast, and that very strictly, on the two last days of Holy Week. About the middle of the third century, a week’s fast was customary in many places—the entire Holy Week being fasted on water and bread and salt, while on the last two days nothing whatever was eaten. The Didascalia describes the fast in the same way, and also the Apostolic Constitutions (5, 15). After this manner, accordingly, the fast was observed in Syria, and Dionysius witnesses to the same practice in Alexandria.[191]
However the words, “The fast shall be broken when a Sunday intervenes,”[192] found on the well-known statue of Hippolytus in Rome, show that already, by the middle of the third century, the fast extended over several weeks. The fast here alluded to must have extended over fourteen days at least. The disputed canons of Hippolytus (the twentieth and twenty-second) receive some confirmation from this passage.
In the fourth century, many witnesses to the fast of forty days are forthcoming, both writers, such as Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, etc., as well as ecclesiastical enactments, e.g., the sixty-ninth of the Apostolic Canons. The Fifth canon of the First Council of Nicæa, in particular, mentions Lent as an observance already established. Nevertheless it clearly was not as yet uniformly observed in all parts of the Church, as the Festal Letters of St Athanasius bear witness.
These letters are in any case the most important evidence for the fast of forty days before Easter. The first of them, for the year 329, is satisfied with appointing “a holy fast of six days” from the Monday to the Saturday in Holy Week;[193] the second, however, for 330, and all the following require a fast of forty days, beginning on the Monday of the sixth complete week before Easter.[194] The Festal Letters give no direct explanation of how, and for what reason, the six days’ fast was changed into a fast of forty days.
However, the covering letter which Athanasius sent along with his eleventh Festal Letter, written from Rome in 339, throws some light upon the process. He writes, namely, to Serapion, first Abbot and then Bishop of Thmuis, that he may announce the fast of forty days to his brethren and impress upon them the necessity of the fast, “lest, when all the world fasts, we only who live in Egypt be derided for not fasting.” This warning is repeated with still greater emphasis: Serapion is to instruct those under him that they must fast forty days,[195] which seems to show that the custom of fasting for forty days was not yet in force in Egypt, though elsewhere it was universally observed, and especially in Rome. At the conclusion of the nineteenth Festal Letter is found a sharp reproof of those who disregarded the fast.[196] This is the forty days’ discipline (ἄσκησις) observed during the six weeks before Easter according to Eusebius.[197]
The Gallic pilgrim, already so often quoted, gives the following minute information concerning the manner in which the fasts were observed in Jerusalem in the fourth century. The preparatory period before Easter lasted eight weeks, not forty days, as in Gaul, and all the days of the week, Saturday and Sunday excepted, were fasted. Holy Saturday was an exception to this rule, being kept as a fast. Thus there were in all forty-one fast days, which were called in Greek ἑορταί; in Latin, feriæ. On Wednesday in Lent, the Psalmody was performed as on Sunday, and the bishop read the appointed Gospel, but the Mass (oblatio) was offered only on Saturday and Sunday. On certain days processions were also made to different churches which lasted until eleven o’clock.