Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/179

 LENT

152

LENT

Bellaise at Rouen, and later Jacques du Frische at Paris, where he spjent the last forty years of his life. His greatest work is the " Apparatus ad bibliothecam maximam veterum patrum et antiquorum scrip- torum", published at Paris in two volumes (1703 and 1715) as an aid to the study of the Lyons collection of the Fathers. In extensive dissertations he gives the biography of each writer; the occasion, design, scope, and genuineness of every writing; a history of the time in which the author lived; its dogmatical and moral tendency, and its struggles against heathenism or heresies. The work was well received. In 1710 he edited the " Liber ad Donatum confessorem de morti- bus persecutorum ", and in a special dissertation tries hard to prove that the book was written by Lucius Csecilius and not by Lactantius. Besides these he edited the " Epitome institutionum divinarum " of Lactantius, the " Expositum de die paschse et mensis " of Hilarianus, and a fragment " De origine generis humani".

Tabsin, Histoire litt. de la cong. de SairU-Afaur (Paris, 1770). 436; HuRTKR, NomendatorAl (Innsbruck, 1893), 1117; Tubinger Quartal»chrift (1834), 15; DOx in Kirchenler., s. v.; NicI^bon, liimoires, I (Paris. 1727-38), 275-8.

Francis Mershman.

Lent. — ^The Teutonic word L/entf which we employ to denote the forty days' fast preceding Easter, origi- nally meant no more than the spring season. Still it has been used from the Anglo-Saxon period to trans- late the more significant Latin term qiiadragesima (Fr. carhnef It. miaresimat Span, cuaresma), meaning the " forty days, or more literally the " fortieth day". This in turn unitated the Greek name for Lent,,T€(r- ffopaKocrij (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (TerrriKOffr'^), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New-Testament times. This etymolo^, as we shall see, is of some little importance in explaining the early developments of the Easter fast.

Origin, — Some of the Fathers as early as the fifth century supported the view that this forty days' fast was of Apostolic institution. For example, St. Leo (d. 461) exhorts his hearers to abstain that they may "fulfil with their fasts the Apostolic institution of the forty days" — ut apostolica institutio quadraginta dierum jejuniis impleatur (P. L., LIV, 633), and the hifltorian Socrates (d. 433) and St. Jerome (d. 420) use similar language (P. G., LXVII, 633; P. L., XXII, 475). But the best modern scholars are almost unani- mous in rejecting this view, for in the existing remains of the first three centuries we find both considerable diversity of practice regarding the fast before Easter and also a gradual process of development in the mat- ter of its duration. The passage of primary impor- tance is one quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., V, xxiv) from a letter of St. Irenfieus to Pope Victor in con- nexion with the Easter controversy (q. v.). There Irenteus says that there is not only a controversy about the time of keeping Elaster but also regarding the preliminary fast. **For", he continues, "some think they ought to fast for one day, others for two days, and others even for several, while others reckon forty hours both of day and night to their fast." He also urges that this variety of usage is of ancient date, which implies that there could have been no Apostolic tradition on the subject. Rufinus, who translated Eusebius into Latin towards the close of the fourth century, seems so to have punctuated this passage as to mi^e Ire- nseus say that some people fasted for forty days. Formerly some difference of opinion existed as to the proper reading, but modern criticism (e. g., in the edition of Schwartz commissioned by the Berlin Academy) pronounces strongly in favour of the text tnuislated above. We may then fairly conclude that IrenflBus about the year 190 knew nothing of any Easter fast of forty days. The same inference must be

drawn from the langua^ of Tertullian only a few years later. When writing as a Montanist, he con- trasts the very slender term of fasting observed by the Catholics (i. e., "the days on which the bridegroom was taken away", probably meaning the Friday and Saturday of Holy Week) with the longer but still re- stricted period of a fortnight which was kept by the Montanists. No doubt he was referring to fasting of a very strict kind {ocerophagicB — dry fasts), but there is no indication in his works, though he wrote an entire treatise, *'De Jejunio", and often touches upon the subject elsewhere,* that he was acquainted with any period of forty days consecrated to more or less con- tinuous fasting (see Tertullian, "De Jejun.", ii and xiv; cf. "DeOrat.",xviii; etc.). And there is the same silence observable in all the pre-Nicene Fathers, though many had occasion to mention such an Apos- tolic institution if it had existed. We may note for example that there is no mention of Lent in St. Diony- sius of Alexandria (ed. Feltoe, 94 sqq.) or in the "Didascalia", which Funk attributes to about the year 250; yet both speak diffusely of the paschal fast. Further, there seems much to suggest that the Church in the Apostolic Age designed to commemorate the Resurrection of Christ, not by an annual, but by a weekly celebration (see "The Month", April, 1910, 337 sqq.). If this be so, the Sunday liturgy constituted the weekly memorial of the Resurrection, and the Friday fast that of the Death of Christ. Such a theory offers a natural explanation of the wide diver- gence which we find existing in the latter part of the second century regarding both the proper ume for keeping Easter and also the manner of the paschal fast. Christians were at one regardinjg the weekly ob- servance of the Sunday and the Friday, which was primitive, but the annual Easter festival was some- thing superimposed by a process of natural develop- ment, and it was largely influenced by the conditions locally existing in the different Churches of the East and West. Aloreover, with the £aster festival there seems also to have established itself a preliminary fast, not as yet anywhere exceeding a week in dura- tion, but very severe in character, which commem- orated the Passion, or, more generally, "the days on which the bridegroom was taken away ".

Be this as it may, we find in the early years of the fourth century the first mention of the term rtcffapa- KooT^, It occurs in the fifth canon of the Council of Nic£ea (a. d. 325), v;here there is only question of the proper time for celebrating a synod, and it is conceiv- able that it may refer not to a period but to a definite festival, e. g., the feast of the Ascension, or the Purifi- cation, whicn ^theria calls miadragesimce de Epipha- nia. But we have to remember that the older word TcrrriKoar'^, Pentecost, from meaning the fiftieth day, had come to denote the whole of the period (which we should call Paschal Time) between Easter Sundav and Whit-Sunday (cf. Tertullian, "De Idololatria", xiv— "pentecosten implere non poterunt"). In any case it IB certain from the "Festal Letters" of St. Atha- nasius that in 331 the saint enjoined upon his flock a period of forty days of fasting preliminary to, but not mclusive of, the stricter fast of Holy Week, and sec- ondly that in 339 the same Father, after having trav- elled to Rome and over the greater part of Europe, wrote in the strongest terms to urge this observance upon the people of Alexandria as one that was uni- versally practised, '' to the end that 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 our pleasure in those days". Although Funk formerly maintained that a Lent of forty days was not known in the West before the time of St. Ambrose, this is evidence which cannot be set aside.

Duration and Nature of the Fast. — Jn determining this period of forty days the example of Moses, Elias, and Christ must have exercised a predominant in flu-