Fasting in the early church · Sophia Scriptura

Didache 1.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Bless and pray for enemies, and love those who hate you.
Didache 7.4Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Fast before baptism.
Didache 8.1Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, not on the days the hypocrites fast.
1 Clement 53.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God told Moses the people had made an idol.
1 Clement 55.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Esther risked her life and saved her people by fasting and prayer.
Epistle of Barnabas 3.1Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Isaiah on the fast God does not want.
Epistle of Barnabas 3.2Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Outward signs of fasting are not enough.
Epistle of Barnabas 3.3Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The true fast: justice, freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.1 (54.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Hermas is keeping a “station,” a fast.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.2 (54.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Hermas fasts as he is used to.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.3 (54.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The Shepherd says this is not a true fast.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.4 (54.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · God does not want an empty fast.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.5 (54.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The true fast is to avoid evil and keep God's commands.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.3.5 (56.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · How to keep the fast.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.3.6 (56.6)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · First avoid evil words and desires.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.3.7 (56.7)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · On a fast day eat only bread and water, and give the money saved to widows, orphans, or the needy.
Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.3.8 (56.8)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Such a fast is an acceptable sacrifice.
Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 2.2.1 (6.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · After fasting, Hermas understands the writing.
Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.1.2 (9.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The woman tells Hermas to meet her in his field.
Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.10.6 (18.6)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · She tells him to fast and ask humbly.
Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.10.7 (18.7)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · A young man warns him not to harm his body by excessive fasting.
2 Clement 16.4Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Almsgiving, fasting, prayer, and love: almsgiving lightens sin.
Gospel of Peter (Akhmim fragment) 27Anonymous · ca. 100–200 · The disciples fast and mourn until the sabbath.
Gospel of Thomas, Logion 6 (P.Oxy. 654)Anonymous · ca. 100–200 · The disciples ask Jesus about fasting, prayer and observances; his answer survives only in fragments.
Gospel of Thomas, Logion 27 (P.Oxy. 1)Anonymous · ca. 100–200 · Fasting from the world and keeping a true sabbath are conditions for finding the kingdom and seeing the Father.
To the Philippians 7.2Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Believers should hold to the teaching handed down from the beginning, watching in prayer and fasting as the Lord taught.
First Apology 61Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Justin describes baptism: instruction, prayer and fasting, then washing in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, called “illumination.”
Acts of John 6Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · On the journey to Rome John refuses food until the Lord's day, when he eats a single date.
Acts of Paul and Thecla 23Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · Paul and Onesiphorus's family fast in a tomb outside Iconium, and Onesiphorus's son meets Thecla in the market.
Sentences of Sextus 108Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Much food hinders chastity, and lack of self-control in food makes a man unclean.
Sentences of Sextus 109Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · The use of all living things for food is indifferent, but abstaining is more reasonable.
Sentences of Sextus 267Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · To fast for the sake of refreshing a poor man is also good.
Sentence 108 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Much food hinders purity. Intemperance in food makes one unclean.
Sentence 109 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · The use of all living creatures for food is indifferent, but abstaining is more rational.
Sentence 265 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Leave off food while you still want it.
Sentence 267 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · It is good even to fast so that a poor man may be fed.
Dialogue with Trypho 15.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin turns to the true fast.
Dialogue with Trypho 15.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:1–2.
Dialogue with Trypho 15.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:2–4.
Dialogue with Trypho 15.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:5–6.
Dialogue with Trypho 15.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:7–9.
Dialogue with Trypho 15.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:9–11.
Dialogue with Trypho 40.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The two goats of the Day of Atonement signify Christ's two comings.
Dialogue with Trypho 107.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Nineveh repented at Jonah's preaching.
Diatessaron, section 24Tatian · ca. 160-180
Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 1Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Paul, directed by a vision to go to Spain, prepares to leave Rome amid the brothers' grief.
Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 18Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Peter urges the brothers to fast and pray for Simon's defeat, since Christ is present within them.
Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 22Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · On the eve of the contest Marcellus dreams that Peter, through one like him with Christ's sword, destroys a demon in the form of a dancing woman.
The Instructor 2.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Book 2 begins the practical instruction with the body: others live to eat, but the Christian eats to live, cleansing the soul's eye and purifying the flesh.
The Instructor 2.1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Food is for life, not pleasure; simple food gives health and strength, while elaborate cookery breeds disease.
The Instructor 2.1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Gluttons search the world for delicacies, spending their lives around the kitchen.
The Instructor 2.1.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The church's common meal should serve love and be plain and moderate; gluttony makes human beings like beasts, crawling on their bellies like the serpent.
The Instructor 2.1.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paul and the Pythagoreans say abstaining from meat and wine is good; eating meat is not sin, but gluttonous table manners make people like pigs and dogs.
The Instructor 2.1.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Simple foods such as bulbs, olives, vegetables, milk, cheese, and fruit are healthy; the risen Lord ate broiled fish; the glutton is ruled by a “belly-demon.”
The Instructor 2.1.16Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Matthew ate no meat and John the Baptist ate locusts and honey; but Peter's vision shows that food is indifferent, and the middle way is best.
The Instructor 2.1.17Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The mean is having what is necessary; the law's food restrictions trained the Jews in frugality by breaking the habit of luxury.
The Instructor 2.1.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Plato condemned the luxurious life, as David's simple distribution of bread shows; those whose god is the belly face destruction.
The Instructor 2.2.21Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The impulses of youth must be cooled by water; grown men should take their midday meal dry, since excess drink shows incontinence.
The Instructor 2.10.112Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · John the Baptist wore camel's hair and ate locusts and honey, and Elijah wore a sheepskin: examples of frugal, simple life.
The Instructor 3.12.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · God hears the one who acts justly; the fast God chooses is freeing the oppressed and feeding the hungry, and the sacrifice he wants is a broken spirit and a heart that glorifies him.
Against Heresies 4.17.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah, and David show that God wanted obedience, mercy, and justice rather than sacrifices.
Against Heresies 5.21.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · In the temptation in the desert Christ conquered the devil three times with the words of the law, undoing Adam’s transgression by his obedience.
Prophetic Extracts 14.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Food does not make us righteous; fasting symbolizes dying to the world so as to live to God on divine food.
Prophetic Extracts 14.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Fasting empties the soul of matter and makes body and soul ready for God's word.
Prophetic Extracts 14.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Worldly food is the old life of sin; divine food is faith, hope, patience, knowledge, peace,
Prophetic Extracts 14.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · and self-control; blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, a hunger of the soul.
Excerpts from Theodotus 84.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Hence the fasts, prayers, raised hands, and kneeling before baptism: a soul is rescued from the lions' mouth, and temptations follow from the angry powers.
Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · John assured him of Christ's forgiveness, kissed his right hand, and restored him to the church through prayer, fasting, and teaching: an example of true repentance.
Miscellanies 2.20.105Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law trains us in self-control, the foundation of the virtues, by forbidding the fattest foods, pork and fish without fins or scales, which serve luxury.
Miscellanies 2.20.126Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · We must avoid exciting foods and luxury; self-restraint is God's great gift, and he will not forsake those who choose it; Christ's kind yoke drives us from faith to faith to salvation.
Miscellanies 3.4.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who live like the worst of the worldly cannot claim a higher nature; Christ demands righteousness greater than the Pharisees', and Scripture teaches obedience and self-control.
Miscellanies 3.6.48Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If the ascetics have already received the resurrection, they should stop eating too; abstinence alone proves nothing, since pagans and the Magi practice it; the kingdom is not food and drink, and self-control is a hidden virtue of the soul.
Miscellanies 3.6.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The righteous of old ate with thanksgiving and married with self-control; Paul forbids judging over food; Christ himself ate and drank; the ascetics cannot claim to surpass them.
Miscellanies 3.7.57Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Greek self-control fights desire; Christian self-control, a gift of God's grace, aims not to desire at all, as Moses fasted forty days; desire that lingers inside still sins in memory.
Miscellanies 3.7.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who reject marriage and food out of hatred for the flesh are like pagan ascetics, such as the Brahmans and the Indian “Holy Men,” who abstain from meat, wine, and women.
Miscellanies 3.12.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul foretold that some would forbid marriage and foods, which God created good to be received with thanksgiving; no one may be compelled to abstain from marriage, meat, or wine, though abstaining with thanksgiving is also good.
Miscellanies 3.15.99Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The true eunuch is the one who begets no truth; by obedience he bears fruit; the apostles begot spiritual children; the eunuch barred from God's assembly is the barren in word and deed, but those who make themselves eunuchs from sin are blessed.
Miscellanies 4.19.119Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Esther, by fasting and prayer, saved Israel from Haman; Miriam shared leadership with Moses; Susanna, condemned by the lustful elders, remained an unwavering witness to chastity even to death.
Miscellanies 4.22.138Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The perfect man has passed beyond self-control to freedom from passion; he gives and fasts in secret, doing good by settled habit; he must walk the narrow way, drawn by the Father through grace, and pities those who hate him.
Miscellanies 6.12.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The knower prays at all times, first for forgiveness, then for power to do good and to understand creation, aiming at the face-to-face vision; fasting means abstaining from all evil, and righteousness must be complete on every side.
Miscellanies 7.12.75Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows uses this life only as need requires; he understands the Wednesday and Friday fasts, named after Hermes (gain) and Aphrodite (pleasure), as a lifelong fast from greed and lust.
Miscellanies 7.12.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows fasts from evil deeds and evil thoughts; he keeps the Lord's day whenever he casts off a bad thought, and he disciplines his eyes, seeing the beauty of others with the soul rather than with desire.
Octavius 8.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Caecilius describes Christians as a secret, low-class conspiracy that despises the gods.
Apology 40Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians are blamed for every disaster, yet worse disasters struck before Christ; the human race has always offended God, and Christians' fasting and prayer now soften his anger.
On the Dress of Women 2.9Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Rich clothing serves vanity; like those who renounce marriage or wine for God, Christian women should use wealth as if not using it, since the time is short.
On Baptism 20Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Candidates should prepare for baptism with prayer, fasting, vigils, and confession of sins; after baptism they should pray for spiritual gifts and remember Tertullian in their prayers.
On Prayer 18Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Those fasting should not refuse the kiss of peace after common prayer, since that reveals their fast, which Christ commanded be kept hidden; only on the public fast of Passover is the kiss rightly omitted.
On Prayer 19Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · On fast days (“stations”) Christians should still attend the Eucharist and may receive the Lord's body and keep it to take later, without breaking their fast.
On Prayer 23Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Christians do not kneel on Sunday or during the Easter season, as signs of joy, but kneel at other times, especially on fast days; Scripture sets no fixed times, only to pray always.
On Repentance 9Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · The second repentance must be shown outwardly in exomologesis, public confession with sackcloth, ashes, fasting, weeping, and kneeling before the presbyters and the faithful, through which God pardons.
On Repentance 11Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Tertullian mocks those who shrink from the discomforts of penance, comparing them to candidates for office who endure worse for a single year's honor.
On Patience 13Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Patience is also exercised in the body: in fasting and penance, as Nebuchadnezzar showed, in continence and celibacy, and above all in enduring persecution and martyrdom.
To His Wife 2.4Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · A pagan husband will obstruct his Christian wife's fasts, night services, Easter vigil, Eucharist, prison visits, and hospitality.
To His Wife 2.8Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Rich Christian women marry pagans out of worldliness, but marriage between two believers, sealed by the church's blessing and shared in prayer, fasting, and worship, is supremely happy.
Acts of Thomas 20Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The king learns that Thomas has built nothing but has given everything to the poor, healed the sick, and lived ascetically.
Acts of Thomas 86Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas praises gentleness, which conquered death and the enemy, and names holiness, freedom from care, and gentleness as the three marks that portray Christ.
Acts of Thomas 104Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Siphor tells the king of Thomas's miracles, ascetic life, and teaching about one God and Jesus Christ; the king's soldiers fear the crowd, and Charisius goes himself to seize Thomas.
Acts of Thomas 138Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Misdaeus blames Charisius, strikes Thomas with a chair, and has him dragged to judgment; the king's son Vazan questions Thomas, who contrasts the temporary kingdom with the eternal King he serves.
Acts of Thomas 145Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas thanks Christ for showing him that earthly wealth is loss and for making him poor, a slave, and a prisoner for his sake, and prays that his labor may not be in vain.
Acts of Thomas 146Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas's prayer draws on the Lord's parables: the sower and the tares, the vine, the talents and the pounds, the great supper, the wedding garment, the lamps, and the watchful servant.
Didascalia 5.13Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 5.14Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 5.17Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 5.18Anonymous · first half of the third century
Didascalia 5.19Anonymous · first half of the third century
Arabic Pentateuch fragment IIIHippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · The catena explains the forty days of the flood as a cleansing of the earth, comparing the forty days of human formation and of Nineveh's repentance.
Arabic Pentateuch fragment XVI (on Num 5:5–7; 11–28. 6)Hippolytus of Rome · unknown (transmitted in a medieval Arabic catena) · Hippolytus is cited on Num 5–6: the law of restitution teaches confession and repentance, the ordeal of the suspected wife figures the testing of the pure and impure soul, and the Nazirite vow teaches the guarding of soul and faith.
Apostolic Tradition 23Hippolytus of Rome · early third century
Apostolic Tradition 33Hippolytus of Rome · early third century · The paschal fast lasts until the offering; the pregnant and sick fast on Saturday only, and those who missed the day make up the fast after Pentecost.
Letters to Virgins 1.12.3Anonymous · 3rd century · Exorcism requires prayer, faith, and fasting, not empty words.
Letters to Virgins 1.12.5Anonymous · 3rd century · Labour for the sick with vigils, fasts, and prayer, freely.
Commentary on Daniel 4.20Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · Such errors come from preferring dreams, fables and human traditions to Scripture; some even impose fasts on the Sabbath and the Lord's day, which Christ did not appoint.
Commentary on Daniel 4.27-28Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · Gabriel's interpretation of the vision (Dan 8:15–27) confirms the reading of the beasts; Hippolytus then turns to the seventy weeks, beginning with Daniel's prayer of confession (Dan 9:1–7).
Commentary on Daniel 4.29Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · On Daniel 9:20–23: Daniel confesses the sins of the people, and Gabriel is sent to give him understanding.
Against Marcion 2.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The law of “eye for eye” was meant to restrain violence by the fear of immediate requital; the food laws taught self-control and prepared for fasting; and the sacrifices kept an idolatry-prone people bound to the true God.
Against Marcion 4.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The call of Levi, the question of fasting, Christ as bridegroom, and the sayings on new wine and patches all show Christ fulfilling the Creator's law and prophets, not separating from a foreign god.
Against Marcion 4.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In the sabbath controversies Christ did not destroy the Creator's sabbath but fulfilled it, allowing the relief of hunger as David did and doing God's work of saving life, as Elisha had done.
On the Soul 48Tertullian · ca. 210 · Theories linking dreams to time, season, posture, or diet are unproven; but fasting, like Daniel's, commends the soul's ecstasy to God.
On Flight in Persecution 1Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Answering Fabius, who asked whether Christians may flee in persecution, Tertullian first argues that persecution comes by God's will, as the winnowing and testing of his servants, since it makes them better.
On Fasting 1Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Tertullian attacks the “psychics,” who reject the New Prophecy because it teaches frequent fasting, and sets out their charges against its fasts, station-days, and dry diet.
On Fasting 2Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Tertullian lays out his opponents' case: that only the days when the bridegroom was taken away bind Christians, that other fasting is voluntary, and that Scripture condemns scruples about food.
On Fasting 3Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Fasting's rationale goes back to Adam, who lost salvation by eating; hunger is the antidote by which the first sin of the appetite is expiated.
On Fasting 4Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · God at first gave man plants and after the flood allowed flesh, not to reject fasting but to strengthen man by freedom before later requiring greater abstinence.
On Fasting 5Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · The food laws of Israel trained the people in abstinence, and Israel's craving for Egypt's meat and onions repeated Adam's sin of the belly.
On Fasting 6Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Experience shows that a full stomach dulls the mind and breeds lust and forgetfulness of God, while Moses and Elijah, fasting forty days, met God face to face.
On Fasting 7Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Examples from Israel, Hezekiah, Nineveh, Ahab, Hannah, and Daniel show fasting reconciling God, averting danger, and winning knowledge of mysteries.
On Fasting 8Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · In the New Testament Anna, Christ's forty-day fast, his teaching on fasting and on casting out demons, Cornelius, and Paul all commend fasting.
On Fasting 9Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Dry diet and abstinence from wine have biblical precedent in Daniel, Elijah, David, Samuel, Aaron, and Timothy, so xerophagy is neither new nor vain.
On Fasting 10Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Against the claim that stations must end at the ninth hour, Tertullian argues from the hours of prayer in Acts, the Lord's death and burial, and Moses, Joshua, Saul, and Daniel for later stations.
On Fasting 11Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Fasting, dry diet, and stations are old and useful, not new or empty; neither the devil nor an antichrist would enjoin duties to the true God, so the charge of heresy or false prophecy fails.
On Fasting 12Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Fasting prepares Christians for prison and martyrdom, whereas the psychics feast their imprisoned confessors, as with Pristinus, who died drunk and denying Christ.
On Fasting 13Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · The psychics themselves fast beyond what tradition fixes and bishops order fasts; the Paraclete's appointed fasts, like the Greek councils, rightly bind those who receive him.
On Fasting 14Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Keeping Christian fast days is not the Galatians' error, since the church also keeps Easter, Pentecost, and weekly fasts; Paul rejected Jewish ceremonies, not new Christian solemnities.
On Fasting 15Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Paul condemned heretics who reject the Creator's foods, not the church's limited fasts; Scripture, Christ's own fasting, and Isaiah's words confirm fasting rightly done.
On Fasting 16Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Scripture punishes gluttony in Israel, Eli's house, and the prophet from Judah; even the heathen humble themselves by fasting, while the psychics make their belly their god.
On Fasting 17Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Tertullian ends by comparing the psychics to Esau selling his birthright for stew, mocking their love-feasts and double portions, and urging fasting as training for the spiritual contest and martyrdom.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 8Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · In the Christian life the flesh is washed, anointed, signed, receives the laying on of hands and the body and blood of Christ, fasts, keeps chastity, and suffers martyrdom, so it shares in salvation.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 61Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The bodily organs have higher uses than eating and procreation, and fasting, continence, and virginity already show that they can be idle without the person ceasing to be whole.
On the Crown 3Tertullian · 211 · Many church practices rest on tradition and custom rather than written Scripture: the baptismal renunciation, triple immersion, milk and honey, the dawn Eucharist, offerings for the dead, not kneeling on Sundays and at Eastertide, and the sign of the cross.
To Scapula 4Tertullian · 212 · Tertullian urges Scapula not to fight against God, citing lenient governors, Christian healings of pagans, the favor of Severus, the rain miracle under Marcus Aurelius, and the blameless life of Christians.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 157Origen · ca. 220-254 · The father's instruction is Scripture and the mother's precepts are the church's unwritten traditions; the harlot of Proverbs is false teaching, and the seeds of virtue can never be wholly destroyed.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 187Origen · ca. 220-254 · The one blown about by false teaching shepherds the wind; the virtues are the soul's secret bread; true friendship with God replaces the enmity of sin, and the fear of the Lord adds days of wisdom.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 195Origen · ca. 220-254 · Wisdom's nests are the churches and the virtues; life is the holy Trinity; the devil, the crooked and lawless man, tries to separate the saints from God through the demons.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 225Origen · ca. 220-254 · Life is a sea battle against the demons, won with God as pilot through prayer and fasting; the wise must not neglect to teach and to rescue those being led to death.
Fragments on Proverbs, column 231Origen · ca. 220-254 · God reveals mysteries to the obedient; rulers of their passions must not drink the heretics' sour wine; the penitent are to drink the Lord's vineyard; the humble take the last place.
PG 12:1263 (Ps 22 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 22 LXX (23):5–6: the table of mystical teaching in the age to come, the oil and the cup of wisdom, and Mercy (Christ) who pursues.
PG 12:1311 (Ps 34 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 34 LXX (35):3–13: the drawn sword, Christ who has conquered the world, the devil caught in the snare of the cross, and fasting that humbles the soul.
PG 12:1509 (Ps 68 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 69:5–14 (LXX 68:6–15): the folly and offences Christ took up for us, zeal for God's house, and fasting as a covering of the soul.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.19.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Montanists exalt their prophetesses above the apostles; orthodox on God and Christ, they add new fasts and dietary rules.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.20.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Encratites, orthodox about God and Christ, abstain from meat and wine and forbid marriage, more like Cynics than Christians.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.25.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Montanists: orthodox on creation and Christ, but they prefer their prophets to the Gospels and impose new fasts.
Commentary on John 10.73Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Law never says “your Passover”; Isaiah shows that God rejects “your” feasts when kept by sinners.
Commentary on John 10.100Origen · ca. 230–248 · “Bread” can mean any food, as with Moses' forty-day fast.
Homily on Luke 29Origen · ca. 233–250 · Jesus was full of the Spirit beyond all others; the devil’s stone offered as bread stands for heretical doctrine; and Christ, tempted as man, now no longer subject to death, is God, and believers who become like him will become divine.
Homilies on Joshua 15.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The enemy horses that are hamstrung, unlike the donkeys that are spared, figure the proud fallen powers and the passions of the body, which must be curbed by fasting and slain while still small, so that no stirring of vice remains in the soul.
Homilies on Leviticus 10.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Christians should not keep the Jewish fast of the Day of Atonement; Barabbas and Jesus are the two goats, and Christian fasting means abstaining from sin, with set fasts and fasting to feed the poor.
Homilies on Numbers 25.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Spiritually, the few soldiers are those in the church who fight sin and false doctrine with prayer, fasting, and the word, sharing their spoils with the quieter faithful; the numbers fifty and five hundred are holy, the latter more perfect.
Homilies on Numbers 27.9Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The first stations show the soul’s first advances: leaving the turbulence of Rameses for the tents of Succoth, fighting in the valley of Etham, beginning with moderate abstinence at Hiroth, and looking toward the watchtower and magnificence to come.
Homilies on Jeremiah 12.12Origen · ca. 240 · The bright mountains are the angels and saints, the dark ones the devil and his powers; to “listen secretly” is to grasp the hidden spiritual sense of Scripture, which is why Christians who keep Jewish feasts and fasts literally are rebuked, and the church must fear being crushed as Israel was.
Homilies on Jeremiah 20.7Origen · ca. 240 · To “call on faithlessness” is to break our bad agreements with the world and the devil, as Judith broke her pact with Holofernes; to “call on misery” is to choose the narrow way of ascetic discipline, as those who renounce marriage do, and as Jeremiah lived unmarried.
On the Singleness of Clerics 21Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Clerics who cite the apostles to justify keeping women do not imitate their poverty, fasting, and sufferings, and presume to be their equals, against Christ's humility.
Against Celsus 5.49Origen · ca. 248 · The Jewish food laws were symbols until Christ declared all foods clean; Christians, unlike Pythagoreans who fear eating reincarnated kin, abstain from meat only as a discipline to master the body.
Against Celsus 8.22Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do keep the Lord's day, Preparation days, Easter, and Pentecost, but for the perfect every day is the Lord's day, a preparation, a passing-over to God, and a Pentecost of prayer and the Spirit.
Against Celsus 8.23Origen · ca. 248 · Set feast days are reminders for ordinary believers, a “part” of the festival that the perfect keep always; Christian feasts are far more dignified than pagan festivals of drunkenness, and the feasts of God's law involve humbling the flesh.
Against Celsus 8.28Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says Christians should either abstain from all meat like Pythagoras, or admit that all food, drink, and air come from demons; Origen notes that Scripture itself commends abstaining from meat for a brother's sake.
Against Celsus 8.30Origen · ca. 248 · The apostles forbade idol offerings and blood because they feed demons; Christians may abstain from meat for self-control, not because of Pythagorean transmigration, and they honour the bodies of the dead with burial because of the resurrection.
Commentary on Matthew 13.7Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen explains “faithless and perverse generation,” takes the mountains moved by faith as hostile powers lodged in souls, and advises prayer and fasting rather than addressing the spirit.
Commentary on Matthew 17.27Origen · ca. 246–248 · Figuratively, Caesar’s due is what the body reasonably needs, and God’s due is the virtue that suits the soul made in God’s image; excessive bodily austerity is like refusing Caesar his tax.
Commentary on Romans 1.2Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · 'Called' is common to all believers, but not all the called are chosen: Judas, the disobedient prophet, and unworthy martyrs, virgins, shepherds and fasters.
Commentary on Romans 9.37Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Literally, the verse allows each to choose lifelong or temporary abstinence by vow, both being acceptable to the Lord.
Commentary on Romans 10.3Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · All things are clean by nature and become unclean only through a brother's offense or one's own judgment; the food laws once set Israel apart, but with the opening of faith to the Gentiles all foods are purified; yet abstaining from meat and wine is truly good when a brother would otherwise stumble, and abstainers must not be forced to eat.
Ep. Bas. 1Dionysius of Alexandria · ca. 247-265 · Dionysius explains that the Gospels do not fix the hour of the resurrection, harmonizes their accounts, and advises that the Easter fast should not be broken before midnight, though those who end it between midnight and dawn are not to be troubled.
To Quirinus 3.1Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Scripture passages on almsgiving and works of mercy, from Isaiah's true fast to Christ's judgment of the nations by what was done for the least of his brothers.
Letter 11.1Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian tells his clergy that the persecution came because of the church's sins, even the pride of some confessors, and calls for prayer, fasting, and tears.
Letter 11.6Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian himself, the least of God's servants, received a promise that peace would come after a short delay, and warnings to live soberly.
Letter 60.5Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian urges fasting, vigils, and prayer for the coming struggle, and asks that whichever of them dies first continue to pray for the other before the Lord.
On the Lord's Prayer 32Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Prayer must be joined with good works, fasting, and almsgiving, like that of Cornelius.
On the Lord's Prayer 36Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Christians, living in Christ's light, should pray at night too, anticipating the endless day of the kingdom.
On Jewish Foods 6Novatian · ca. 250–258 · Freedom from food laws is not license for gluttony; Novatian points to Christ's beatitudes, Lazarus, and Paul, and denounces Christians who drink wine on an empty stomach in the morning.
On the Lapsed 29Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Cyprian urges the lapsed to confess their sin while still alive and to return to God with fasting, weeping, and mourning.
On the Lapsed 30Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Cyprian rebukes lapsed men and women who live in luxury, bathing, feasting, and adorning themselves, instead of mourning their spiritual death with true penance.
On the Lapsed 31Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Even the innocent three youths in the furnace and Daniel confessed their sins to God with fasting and humility.
On the Lapsed 35Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The lapsed must do long and earnest penance with prayer, fasting, mourning, and generous almsgiving, spending on the poor the property that caused their fall.
On Works and Almsgiving 4Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Scripture constantly calls God's people to works of mercy; Isaiah says that fasting and sackcloth do not appease God, but feeding the hungry and clothing the naked do.
On Works and Almsgiving 5Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Scripture teaches that sins are redeemed by mercy to the poor, as Daniel counseled Nebuchadnezzar and Raphael told Tobit; prayers and fasts without almsgiving avail little.
Acts of Fructuosus, Augurius and Eulogius 3Anonymous · 259 (21 January) · On the way to the amphitheater Fructuosus declines a drink because he is keeping the Friday station fast, refuses help with his shoes, and says he must keep the whole catholic church in mind.
Passion of Marian and James 8Anonymous · 259 · Aemilian's vision: his pagan brother questions him about the martyrs' rewards.
Passion of Montanus and Lucius 21Anonymous · 259 · Flavian's visions of Cyprian, of a heavenly messenger, and of Bishop Successus foretelling his martyrdom.
On the Making of the World 3Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · Victorinus explains the Wednesday fast by the sacred number four and by Christ's arrest on the fourth day of the week.
On the Making of the World 4Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · On the sixth day, the Preparation, God made man; Christians keep a station or fast on Friday because of Christ's passion.
On the Making of the World 5Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · Christians fast on Saturday, not keeping the Jewish Sabbath, which Christ dissolved; Moses' raised hands prefigured the cross.
Book 3, chapter 43Macarius Magnes · ca. 400 (disputed) · Macarius answers that Paul gave no command about virginity so that it would be a free and more glorious choice, while his warning about those who forbid marriage and foods targets heretics such as the Manichaeans, Encratites, and Dositheus.
Canon 23Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · Extended fasts are to be kept monthly, except in July and August.
Canon 26Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · The council orders an extended fast on every Saturday.
Against the Nations 5.16Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The rites of the Great Mother, with the sacred pine, wool, violets, mourning Galli, and fasting, reenact the Attis myth and show that it is believed.
Canons of Hippolytus, canon 9Anonymous · 4th century · A presbyter moving to another church must bring testimony from his bishop or be examined, and is not reordained; widows are to be honored for their prayer, care of the sick, and fasting.
Canons of Hippolytus, canon 19Anonymous · 4th century · The order of baptism: martyrdom as baptism in blood, examination of candidates, fasting, exorcism, vigil, renunciation of Satan, threefold confession and immersion, anointing, the bishop's prayer and kiss, and first communion with milk and honey.
Canons of Hippolytus, canon 20Anonymous · 4th century · All are to fast on Wednesdays, Fridays, and the forty days before Easter; blessed bread is sent to the catechumens.
Canons of Hippolytus, canon 22Anonymous · 4th century · The week of the Jewish Passover is kept by all as a strict fast of bread, salt, and water in mourning for the Lord's passion; those who missed it through ignorance or sickness keep it after Pentecost.
Canons of Hippolytus, canon 28Anonymous · 4th century · The faithful are to receive the eucharist before eating, especially on fast days, and only the faithful are invited to communion.
Canons of Hippolytus, canon 30Anonymous · 4th century · Catechumens must be ready to forsake family and suffer death; the three temptations of Christ are read as desire, pride, and avarice; a long description of Christian conduct follows, with counsel for those seeking perfection and rules for Sunday communion.
Canons of Hippolytus, canon 32Anonymous · 4th century · Virgins and widows fast and pray often; clergy fast freely; a deacon may act for an absent presbyter except at the great offering; alms are distributed promptly; agapes for the poor are held with the bishop's prayer and end before dark.
Church History 2.17.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Philo (quoted): founded on self-control, they eat and drink only after sunset.
Church History 2.17.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Philo (quoted): some fast three or even six days, feasting on wisdom; Eusebius takes this to describe Christians.
Church History 2.17.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Their assemblies, separate quarters for men and women, and Easter fasts and vigils match Christian practice.
Church History 2.17.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Philo describes night vigils, responsive hymns, sleeping on straw, and a diet of bread, water, salt, and hyssop, which Eusebius equates with the Christian Easter vigil.
Church History 2.23.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Hegesippus (quoted): James lived as a lifelong Nazirite, abstaining from wine, meat, oil, and baths.
Church History 3.23.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Clement (quoted): John assured him of forgiveness, brought him back to the church with prayer and fasting, and restored him, an example of true repentance.
Church History 5.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Attalus received a revelation that Alcibiades's strict diet of bread and water was wrong and a stumbling block.
Church History 5.3.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Alcibiades obeyed, ate freely, and gave thanks; the Holy Spirit guided the martyrs.
Church History 5.7.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus: the heretics cannot raise the dead, but in the church the dead have been restored through fasting and prayer.
Church History 5.18.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Apollonius: Montanus dissolved marriages, imposed fasts, called Pepuza “Jerusalem,” and raised money to pay his preachers.
Church History 5.23.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The Easter controversy: the Asian churches ended the paschal fast on the fourteenth of the month whatever the weekday; the rest of the church ended it only on the Sunday of the resurrection.
Church History 5.23.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Synods decreed that Easter be celebrated and the fast ended only on a Sunday.
Church History 5.24.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The Asian bishops, led by Polycrates of Ephesus, defended their older custom in a letter to Victor.
Church History 5.24.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Polycrates: Asia's great dead, including the apostle Philip and his daughters, await the resurrection.
Church History 5.24.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Polycrates: all these, and his seven bishop relatives, kept the fourteenth day, as he does.
Church History 5.24.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Victor of Rome tried to excommunicate all the churches of Asia.
Church History 5.24.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus: practice varies also in the length of the paschal fast.
Church History 5.24.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus: such differences are old and did not break the peace; diversity in fasting confirms unity in faith.
Church History 5.24.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus: earlier Roman bishops did not keep the fourteenth day, yet remained at peace with those who did.
Church History 5.24.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Polycarp and Anicetus of Rome each kept his own custom, having failed to persuade one another.
Church History 5.25.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The Palestinian bishops asked that their letter be circulated and noted that Alexandria kept the same day as they did.
Church History 6.3.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Origen sold his books for a small daily income and lived an austere life of study, fasting, and little sleep.
Church History 6.3.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · He went barefoot for years and abstained from wine and all but necessary food, endangering his health.
Church History 6.13.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Eusebius lists Clement's other works, including the Exhortation, the Instructor, and Who Is the Rich Man.
Homilies 3.73Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter prepares candidates for baptism by fasting and daily laying on of hands, and sends Clement, Aquila, and Nicetes ahead to Tyre.
Homilies 9.10Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Demons enter bodies to enjoy food and sex, so fasting and hardship drive them out, and stubborn demons require prayer to God.
Homilies 11.35Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement is baptized, and Peter warns the presbyters to receive no apostle or teacher whose preaching has not been checked with James of Jerusalem.
Homilies 13.9Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Mattidia asks to be baptized at once with her hostess; Peter requires at least one day's fast, shortened because of a word that showed her faith.
Homilies 13.11Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Mattidia has already fasted two days for joy; Peter says that is not a baptismal fast, and Faustinus argues that God arranged it in advance.
Homilies 13.12Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter refuses to count the accidental fast, fasts with the brothers that day, and sets the baptism for the next day.
Recognitions 3.67Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter invites the people to enroll for baptism after three months of instruction and fasting, describing baptism in running water with anointing.
Recognitions 6.15Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · After three months at Tripolis Peter baptizes Clement and many others, celebrates the Eucharist, ordains Maro bishop with presbyters, deacons, and widows, and leaves for Antioch.
Recognitions 7.34Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Mattidia begs to be baptized at once with her hostess, and Peter agrees to baptize her after a single day's fast because she has shown her faith.
Recognitions 7.36Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Mattidia has already fasted for joy, but Peter says it was not a baptismal fast, while Niceta suggests God arranged it.
Recognitions 7.37Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter insists that all fast one day before Mattidia's baptism, and explains Christ's saying about plucking out the eye as cutting off the purpose and causes of sin, not limbs.
Recognitions 10.72Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Faustinianus declares his faith and asks for baptism; after a public fast Peter baptizes him on the Lord's day, and the city honors him.
Letter to Zenas and Serenus 13Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel against gluttony and its excuses.
Testament of Our Lord 1.22Anonymous · ca. 350–500
Martyrs of Palestine (shorter recension) 13.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 311–314 · The confessors lived in fasting and prayer, and the devil, unable to bear them, sought their death.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.35Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Reason masters sexual desire and hunger, as in long fasts freely chosen.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.70Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The self-controlled abstain from meat; lawgivers restrain others' appetites.
Preparation for the Gospel 9.2.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Theophrastus calls the Jews philosophers who fast, pray, and study the stars.
On the Deaths of the Persecutors 11.1Lactantius · ca. 314–315 · Galerius's mother, a zealous pagan, gave sacrificial feasts which the Christians refused to share.
Canon 14Anonymous · 314 · Clergy who abstain from meat must at least taste it; if they refuse even vegetables cooked with meat, they are deposed.
Demonstration of the Gospel 1.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The three pilgrimages were fixed to one place and to Passover, Pentecost, and the Day of Atonement.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses fasted forty days.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ also fasted forty days; Moses fed the people with bread from heaven.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.5.74Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The disciples, though unlearned, embraced an ascetic life of fasting, prayer, and purity.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.5.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · John worked no miracles; the crowds were struck by his strange, solitary way of life.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.5.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · John lived in the wilderness from childhood, dressed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.5.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · John’s ascetic appearance made people think him an angel, the messenger of Malachi quoted by Mark.
Demonstration of the Gospel 9.5.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ said John came neither eating nor drinking, and was said to have a demon.
Demonstration of the Gospel 10.3.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ again calls himself poor and needy, weak from fasting and a reproach.
Letter 1.2Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony says the Spirit leads those who fight with their whole heart, setting measures of repentance so that body and soul are both sanctified.
Homilies on the Psalms 18.7Asterius the Sophist · ca. 320-341 · text not on this site
On the Paschal Feast 4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337 · Eusebius describes the forty-day fast before Easter, after the example of Moses and Elijah, as preparation for the spiritual crossing to heaven, and Pentecost as the image of the kingdom, its first-fruit loaves foreshadowing the nations offered to God.
On the Paschal Feast 5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337 · Eusebius explains that during the fifty days of Pentecost Christians neither kneel nor fast, as an image of the rest of the resurrection ending with the Ascension, and that Christ suffered at Passover because the Jewish lamb was a type of him.
On the Paschal Feast 11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337 · Eusebius urges Christians to keep the Pascha with Christ every week in a spiritual way, with Friday as a fast in memory of the passion.
On the Paschal Feast 12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337 · Eusebius argues that the Gospels show the Jews ate their Passover a day after Jesus ate his, and that Christians keep the mysteries all year, fasting on Fridays and receiving Christ's body and blood every Sunday.
Book 1, lines 348–372Juvencus · ca. 330 · Jesus is baptized; the Spirit descends and the Father speaks; Jesus fasts forty days in the wilderness.
Book 1, lines 594–618Juvencus · ca. 330 · The end of the Lord's Prayer; forgiveness; fasting in secret; treasure in heaven.
Book 2, lines 350–374Juvencus · ca. 330 · Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners; the question about fasting; patches and wineskins.
Book 3, lines 371–394Juvencus · ca. 330 · Faith like a mustard seed; prayer and fasting; the temple tax and the coin in the fish.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 17.6Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Even amid persecution Christ raised up ascetics and lifelong virgins everywhere, persuaded multitudes to feed on Scripture, and taught even slaves and barbarians to despise death and expect judgment.
Demonstration 3.1Aphrahat · 337-345 · Fasting is a precious armour and takes many forms beyond abstaining from food; one who vows such abstinences and breaks one sins gravely.
Demonstration 3.2Aphrahat · 337-345 · The righteous from Abel to Joseph fasted purely; fasting without purity of heart is not accepted, and the mouth that receives Christ's Body and Blood must not speak filth.
Demonstration 3.3Aphrahat · 337-345 · Moses' two forty-day fasts and Elijah's forty-day fast brought them the revelation of God.
Demonstration 3.4Aphrahat · 337-345 · Jezebel's fast, proclaimed to murder Naboth under cover of the law, was impious; she and Ahab paid with their blood where Naboth's was shed.
Demonstration 3.6Aphrahat · 337-345 · The men of Jezreel shared Jezebel's guilt and were punished; by contrast the Ninevites' fast pleased God because they turned from their evil ways.
Demonstration 3.8Aphrahat · 337-345 · As Isaiah says, abstaining from wickedness is a better fast than bodily affliction; it makes one shine and flourish, unlike the hypocrites' display.
Demonstration 3.9Aphrahat · 337-345 · The fasting of Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichaeans earns no reward, since they deny the true Maker.
Demonstration 3.10Aphrahat · 337-345 · The fast of Mordecai and Esther turned Haman's plot back on him; Haman, an Amalekite of Agag's line, sought revenge on Saul's descendant Mordecai.
Demonstration 3.14Aphrahat · 337-345 · Daniel's three-week fast was heard; Gabriel, who presents prayers, and Michael, Israel's prince who fought for Israel throughout its history, came to his aid.
Demonstration 3.15Aphrahat · 337-345 · Daniel fasted so that the captivity foretold by Jeremiah would end at seventy years; his fast prevailed and brought the people back.
Demonstration 3.16Aphrahat · 337-345 · Christ, greater than every angel, fasted for us and defeated the adversary, and commands us to fast and watch so as to reach his rest.
Demonstration 12.13Aphrahat · 337-345 · The yearly feast requires fasting, prayer, praise, psalms, baptism, and blessings, but more important is a clean heart and right living every day.
Demonstration 14.17Aphrahat · 337-345 · The clergy are called to humble themselves and not to despise God's ministry, lest they be rejected from the priesthood.
Demonstration 19.8Aphrahat · 337-345 · Daniel, knowing Jeremiah's prophecy of seventy years against the false prophets' promise of two, prayed his great confession for the return from Babylon.
Demonstration 19.13Aphrahat · 337-345 · Aphrahat dates Daniel's visions to the reigns of Darius the Mede and Cyrus, fulfilling Daniel's reading of the writing on the wall, and concludes that Jerusalem's later desolation is permanent.
Demonstration 20.1Aphrahat · 337-345 · Giving to the needy from one's own labour is the rest and the fast that God loves.
Life of Constantine 2.14.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Before the battle Constantine withdrew to his tent to pray and fast, praying even for the enemy.
Life of Constantine 3.5.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Some fasted while others feasted; seeing his letter had failed, Constantine resolved to end the discord.
Life of Constantine 3.18.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · It is unseemly for some to fast while others feast; providence wills one observance.
Encyclical Letter 4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339 · Athanasius describes the plunder of the church, the scourging and imprisonment of clergy, virgins and laity during Lent, and Gregory's role in it.
Letter 1Ammonas · ca. 340-360 · Ammonas rejoices that his disciples’ “body” is alive, contrasts the dead fasting rebuked in Isaiah 58, and prays that they may grow in every fruit of holiness.
Canon 18Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Anyone who fasts on Sunday on ascetic grounds is anathematized.
Canon 19Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Ascetics who, without bodily need, disregard the church's common fasts out of pride are anathematized.
Sermon text 12.1Eusebius of Emesa · ca. 340-359 · text not on this site
Epistle to the Monks 2Serapion of Thmuis · ca. 340-362 · Nothing has turned the monks from their purpose; living righteously, they need not fear earthly rulers.
Epistle to the Monks 3Serapion of Thmuis · ca. 340-362 · The monks' prayers are the world's light and bring rain and the Nile's flood, as Elijah's prayer did.
Epistle to the Monks 10Serapion of Thmuis · ca. 340-362 · The monks have disciplined every sense, eyes, hands, feet, smell, taste, toward God.
Canon 49Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · In Lent the eucharist is celebrated only on Saturdays and Sundays.
Canon 50Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · The fast is not to be broken on Thursday of Holy Week; all Lent is to be kept with dry food.
Canon 51Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · Martyrs' feasts falling in Lent are to be kept on Saturdays and Sundays.
Canon 52Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · No weddings or birthday celebrations in Lent.
Catechetical Lecture 2.12Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Though forgiven, David continued his repentance with sackcloth, ashes, tears, and fasting, and forgave Shimei who cursed him.
Catechetical Lecture 3.7Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · John the Baptist, greatest of those born of women, stands at the turn of the covenants; his baptism with confession points to repentance and the putting off of the old life.
Catechetical Lecture 3.17Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Close of the lecture: God will cleanse Jerusalem’s children; the soul, made the Bridegroom’s own, receives the twofold grace of water and Spirit.
Catechetical Lecture 4.24Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Cyril turns to food, over which many stumble; some eat idol offerings indifferently.
Catechetical Lecture 4.25Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Others fast but condemn those who eat.
Catechetical Lecture 4.26Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Christians fast from wine and meat for a spiritual reward, not because these are evil; those who eat from bodily weakness must not be condemned.
Catechetical Lecture 4.27Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Fasting should be abstinence from good things for the sake of better ones.
Catechetical Lecture 4.37Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Closing warnings: flee the devil’s works, divination, magic, licentiousness, greed, pagan shows, amulets, Samaritan and Jewish observances, and heretics; guard the soul by fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and Scripture.
Catechetical Lecture 6.24Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Archelaus refuted Manes in public debate; Manes fled, was caught and flayed by the Persian king. Cyril warns against the Manichaeans’ Gospel of Thomas, their teaching on food, their curses on the Creator, and their rites.
Catechetical Lecture 15.23Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Judge shows no partiality to rich or poor; every good deed, including faithful marriage and chastity, and every sin committed after baptism is recorded.
Catechetical Lecture 17.28Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · At Antioch the disciples were first called Christians, and the Holy Spirit set apart Barnabas and Paul, showing that the Spirit is living and personal.
Catechetical Lecture 18.18Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The apostles raised the dead, and Paul teaches that this very body will rise, transformed and incorruptible; glow-worms show that God can make the righteous shine.
Long recension, Hero 1Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius urges Hero to persevere, bear with the weak, and fast with moderation, since wine and meat are not abominable.
On Humility and Obedience 5Anonymous · uncertain (4th-6th century?) · Fasting and austerities are useful to tame the flesh but become pride if boasted of, like the Pharisee's works; the only way to God is humility, obedience and love.
Commentary on Matthew 5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary treats secret prayer, fasting, treasure in heaven, the eye as lamp, the two masters, freedom from anxiety (applied to the resurrection body), the lilies as angels, the grass as the nations destined for fire, and judging and the beam in the eye.
Commentary on Matthew 9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Matthew’s call and banquet, the question about fasting, the patches and wineskins, the ruler’s daughter and the woman with the flow of blood, the two blind men, and the mute demoniac are read as figures of grace to sinners, the law, and the nations.
Commentary on Matthew 15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · After rebuking the Pharisees’ traditions, Jesus heals the Canaanite woman’s daughter, a figure of the proselytes and the nations; the feeding of the four thousand with seven loaves signifies the nations nourished by the sevenfold Spirit.
Letter to Dracontius 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 355 · Athanasius answers the claim that the episcopate leads to sin: bishops can be as ascetic as monks, and the crown depends on deeds, not on place.
Life of Antony 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · After his first victory Antony intensified his discipline with vigils, fasting, and hard bedding, treating each day as a new beginning, after the example of Paul and Elijah.
Life of Antony 40Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony tells how a demon claiming to be God’s power, a demon disguised as a monk offering bread, and visions of gold all vanished at the name of Christ, prayer, and psalms.
Life of Antony 47Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · After the persecution and the martyrdom of Bishop Peter, Antony returned to his monastery and lived a life of daily “martyrdom of conscience” with severe fasting and austerity.
On Saint Athanasius 1.42Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From Isaiah 56–58 Lucifer argues that the emperor's fasting and almsgiving cannot please God while he exiles, starves, imprisons and dispossesses the faithful to force them into the Arian faith.
On Saint Athanasius 1.43Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer says the emperor keeps only the command not to despise his own kin, by favouring his fellow Arians, and that Isaiah's promises of light and answered prayer belong only to those who repent and return to the church.
On Saint Athanasius 2.33Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer urges the emperor to repent as the Ninevites and their king did at Jonah's preaching, and so obtain God's mercy.
History of the Arians 65Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · Athanasius tells how the Arian bishop Secundus of Pentapolis and Stephen kicked to death the presbyter Secundus of Barca during Lent.
To Justinus the Manichaean 16Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author traces sin to the soul's misuse of free will, exposes the contradictions of Manichaean docetism about Christ's death and burial, criticizes Manichaean fasting, and urges Justin to confess God as creator of soul and body.
Moral Rules (Moralia) 14Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fourteenth rule: each word and deed has its proper time, as Jesus taught about fasting.
Tractate 8, section 1Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · Against Jewish sabbath observance, Gregory argues that the sabbath law was given with cattle, and that Moses, Elijah, Daniel, Zechariah and Joshua broke the sabbath rest without fault.
Letter 207Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory explains to friends the Lenten silence he has undertaken: it teaches measure in speech, tames anger, and teaches silence by example.
Letter 209Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory, keeping his Lenten silence, invites Eulalius to share their disciplines; then he writes to the judge Celeusius, rebuking him for not fasting and for putting on shameful shows.
Tractates on the Psalms 0.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Fifty is seven sevens completed by the eighth day; during the fifty days after Easter, and on Sundays, the apostles forbade kneeling and fasting.
Tractates on the Psalms 14.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Dwelling in the church is the first step and involves labour; rest on the mountain follows and is undisturbed.
Tractates on the Psalms 14.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Pagans and heretics too practise fasting, renunciation, and virginity; these avail only when joined to the true faith in Christ.
Tractates on the Psalms 64.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Asceticism outside the church, of philosophers, magi, or heretics, is useless; vows of chastity and fasting are worthy only within the church, where the Spirit intercedes.
Tractates on the Psalms 68.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ’s fasting, temptations, and tears became occasions of reproach; he wept at Lazarus’s tomb over unbelief, and all kinds of people spoke of him.
Tractates on the Psalms 91.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The true Sabbath is eternal rest, prepared for now by prayer, reading, fasting, humility, good works, chastity, and patience, as the Jews prepare on the eve of the Sabbath.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.3.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Pride wipes out good works, as the Pharisee's fasting and tithes were undone by his boast over the tax collector.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.12.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Only one free of the vices that enslave can say "I am yours" to God; the psalmist, seeking God's justifications, belongs to him alone.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.12.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's commandment is exceedingly broad, since believers please him in many ways (fasting, faith, almsgiving, love) as the gifts of grace differ.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.13.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist keeps the law out of love, not fear, unlike those who fast, give alms, or attend church only to avoid reproach.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.15.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Though mocked for fasting, continence, and giving up wealth, the psalmist prays not to be shamed in his hope of the life hidden in Christ.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.16.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Everyone calls himself God's servant, but only one who serves God in every part of life, as the psalmist does, says it truly.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.17.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's mercy, though from his goodness, is earned by innocence; the psalmist asks to be looked on as the patriarchs were.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.18.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Rather than complain against God in trials, the psalmist wastes away with zeal for God against those who forget his words, such as Christians who feast on fast days or live in debauchery.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.19.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Though perfect in good works, the psalmist relies wholly on God's mercy, unlike those who think one fast or a small alms earns them a hearing.
Tractates on the Psalms 122.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The faithful are hated, persecuted, and killed by the wicked, by Jews and pagans, and by heretics; they grieve for their persecutors and look to God, who alone can reverse their contempt.
Tractates on the Psalms 124.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Those who turn aside into the bonds of sin, which Isaiah calls on us to loose, will share the punishment of the wicked.
Tractates on the Psalms 125.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God turned back our captivity through the forgiveness of sins, freeing the soul from vices and making us the new Zion in the body of Christ, to the wonder of the nations.
Tractates on the Psalms 125.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Our mouths are filled with joy because God has changed our sins into virtues: adultery into chastity, drunkenness into fasting, idolatry into authority over demons.
Tractates on the Psalms 135.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The Red Sea divided into 'divisions' signifies the many ways (fasting, chastity, almsgiving, faith, hope, love) by which believers cross the world to the promised land.
Tractates on the Psalms 140.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The 'oil' on the head is the teaching and works that nourish spiritual light; it must not come from sinners, and pity for sin must not become indulgence of sinners.
Tractates on the Psalms 143.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The arrows that confound the demonic powers are the words of the faithful, whose renunciation of the world, chastity, fasting, generosity, and martyrdom defeat them.
Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 9Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian rebukes those who confess but will not perform the works of penance, and holds up David and Nebuchadnezzar as examples of severe penance that God accepted.
Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 10Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian rebukes penitents who live in luxury and describes the works of public penance: weeping before the church, squalid clothing, fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and abstaining from baths and banquets.
Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 12Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian closes with an appeal to do penance now, while there is time, promising God’s forgiveness to those who return like the prodigal son.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.58Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Natural appetites are good in measured, lawful use; sin lies in excess, and fasting is a voluntary training, not a rejection of nature.
Commentary on Galatians 4.10Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Paul lists sabbaths, new moons, years, and seasons such as the fast and Passover, which the Judaizing Galatians had begun to observe.
Oration 6.1Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory breaks his silence for the sake of peace, and describes the ascetic life of the monks whose separation had grieved him.
Oration 8.10Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gorgonia rejected cosmetics and finery; she was wise, silent about doctrine, generous to the church and the poor, and outstanding in fasting, vigils, prayer, and tears.
Oration 8.14Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory apostrophizes Gorgonia's asceticism, her purity after baptism, and her victory over the legacy of Eve, and turns to the rewards God gave her in this life.
Oration 16.13Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges the people and clergy to repent with tears, fasting, and common mourning as Joel commanded, trusting that God’s nature is mercy, and warns them not to look back like Lot’s wife.
Oration 18.9Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory lists his mother’s devotion in prayer, fasting, psalmody, and care for orphans, widows, and mourners.
Oration 37.14Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Christ's answer to the mother of Zebedee's sons, that the places at his side are “for those to whom it has been given”, raises the question whether effort counts for nothing and all depends on a kind of lot.
Oration 40.32Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Our observances of fasting, the Passover and baptism follow Christ's but at different times; the baptized should show gratitude by prayer, tears and generosity to the poor, strangers, the sick, the naked and debtors.
Tractates 1.4.7Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno ends with a hymn to chastity, the treasure of souls and temple of God, which brings fruit thirty-, sixty- and a hundredfold.
Tractates 2.38.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno invites the newly baptized after the Easter fast and vigil to a spiritual banquet in which the figures of Scripture serve the dishes.
Hexaemeron 8.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Basil closes the homily on birds, points to the silkworm's metamorphosis as an image of the resurrection, and urges his hearers to spend their fast on spiritual food rather than dice.
Homilies 1.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil opens the Lenten fast: it is to be welcomed cheerfully, practised without display, and it is older than the law.
Homilies 1.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · No one may plead weakness to avoid fasting, since a light diet keeps the body healthier than luxury.
Homilies 1.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Fasting is older than wine and meat-eating; Moses received the law through fasting, while the people's feasting led to idolatry.
Homilies 1.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Examples from Esau to Daniel show the power of fasting, which also brings peace to households and rest to servants.
Homilies 1.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Fasting frees from debt and makes food more enjoyable by interrupting continual luxury.
Homilies 1.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The rich man's luxury and the fasting of the saints, of John the Baptist, of Paul and of Christ himself show the value of fasting.
Homilies 1.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · True fasting is abstaining from evils, and no one should prepare for the fast by getting drunk, since every passion is a kind of drunkenness.
Homilies 1.11Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Drunkenness drives away the Lord and the Spirit, while fasting brings calm to the city; Basil closes with a prayer for the coming Pascha.
Homilies 2.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · As generals and trainers exhort their men, Basil exhorts Christ's soldiers to train for spiritual warfare by fasting.
Homilies 2.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Fasting is fitting for every rank, age and condition, and Christ's soldiers, armed differently from the world's, are strengthened not by food but by doctrine.
Homilies 2.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · No one should prepare for the fast by getting drunk; fasting brings order to households and to the whole city.
Homilies 2.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil closes by urging his hearers to feast instead on the Spirit's teaching, lest they suffer the famine of the word threatened in Amos.
Homilies 14.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Men and women danced together drunk, so that girls lost their virginity and men committed adultery by looking; Basil prescribes fasting, psalms, tears and almsgiving, and tells the sober to separate from the unrepentant.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 9:26Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul disciplines his body by fasting so that his life matches his preaching and he is not disqualified.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Without the future life, Christian fasting, purity and martyrdom would be pitiable.
Commentary on 1 Timothy 4:7–8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Fasting and bodily discipline profit little without godliness and mercy, which carry promise for this life and the next; the spiritual discipline the body for the resurrection.
Commentary on 1 Timothy 5:23Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul’s advice to take a little wine teaches moderation in asceticism, so that excess does not weaken the body and distract the soul from God.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 6:5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul's beatings, imprisonments, labours, vigils, and fasts show his devotion to his ministry.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 11:27Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul's labours, vigils, hunger, fasts, and cold after shipwreck show his endurance.
Commentary on Ephesians 6:13–17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Against spiritual enemies believers must arm themselves with sobriety, prayer, and the virtues of the armour of God.
Commentary on Romans 14:5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Some abstain from meat on certain days, others always; each should follow his own conscience.
Commentary on Romans 14:6Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Both the one who eats and the one who abstains act for the Lord and give thanks, the abstainer not condemning God’s good creature.
Commentary on Romans 14:21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Abstaining from meat and wine is good, as eating them is lawful; no necessity is laid on either, and nothing should be done that makes a brother stumble.
Question 61, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ritual laws such as the sabbath and fasts yield to necessity, while what is criminal is never lawful; Jesus refuted his accusers from the law’s own past rather than from its fulfillment.
Question 64, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · As Moses’ forty days and nights are counted by parts, so Christ’s “three days and three nights” count part of a day or night as a whole.
Question 115, section 36Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · A body inclined to passion is to be tamed by restraint in food and drink, as a fire dies without fuel.
Question 120, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · In a homily before Easter, Ambrosiaster exhorts his people to keep the Lenten fasts, reminding them that regular reading of Scripture keeps the soul from sin.
Question 120, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Fasting is a medicine for the soul, effective when joined with prayer and works of mercy.
Question 120, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Fasting curbs the passions that food and drink inflame and lets the soul see itself clearly and serve its Redeemer.
Question 120, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Esther’s people, the Ninevites, David, and Christ himself show the power and necessity of fasting.
Question 120, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Fasting makes prayer acceptable when joined with almsgiving and righteousness, as with Cornelius, whose fasting was commended by his feeding of the poor.
Question 127, section 35Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ordained clergy abstain from marital relations because some lawful things are forbidden to certain persons or at certain times, as lay Christians also abstain for prayer on holy days.
On Virginity 6Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Elijah and John the Baptist, living apart from human life, food, comfort, and marriage, reached the greatness of their gifts; their example shows that one who seeks God must not divide his mind among many things.
On Virginity 21Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Since only the pure can approach God, one must wall oneself off from all sensual pleasure, especially the pleasures of food and drink, taking need, not pleasure, as the measure of eating.
On Virginity 22Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Self-control must avoid both excess and excessive severity; like a physician balancing the body’s elements or a charioteer managing his horses, the mind should keep the body fit for the soul’s service.
On Virginity 23Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · The virgin life must be learned from a living, experienced teacher, as languages and medicine are; the young who go alone fall into pride, idleness, false visions, deadly fasting, or sham celibacy that brings scandal.
Letter 22.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome recounts how, even in the harshest desert life, he was tormented by memories of Rome and sexual temptation, and found relief only in prayer and fasting.
Letter 22.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome cites Elijah, Elisha, and Daniel as examples of the simple fare God gives his servants.
Letter 22.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome summarizes Scripture's condemnation of gluttony and commends fasting as the way back to paradise.
Letter 22.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains that the devil's chief power over people lies in sexual desire, citing Job and many scriptural references to the loins.
Letter 22.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome counsels Eustochium to keep ascetic companions, stay at home, fast, pray, and read Scripture, overcoming bodily desire with love for Christ.
Letter 22.27Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns Eustochium against vainglory, especially the subtle pride of ostentatious humility and showy asceticism.
Letter 22.34Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes the three kinds of Egyptian monks and condemns the third, the undisciplined remnuoth.
Letter 22.35Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes the ordered common life of Egyptian cenobitic monks: obedience, work, silence, prayer, Scripture, and care for the sick.
Letter 22.37Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome sets out the hours of prayer, the sign of the cross, and warnings against judging others and against fasting with an angry heart.
Letter 24.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes Asella's life of fasting in a single cell and how, as a girl, she sold her necklace and put on dark clothing to dedicate herself to God.
Letter 24.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes Asella's secluded life of work, prayer, and fasting, which she kept in health to the age of fifty.
Letter 31.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome thanks Eustochium for cherries, draws a lesson from the figs of Jeremiah, and urges her to keep the feast with spiritual joy rather than feasting.
Letter 39.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome argues that death is universal and that Blesilla has gone to Christ, and imagines Christ rebuking Paula for her excessive grief and self-starvation.
Letter 39.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome reminds Paula of her ascetic vows and holds up Naomi, Job, and Melania as examples of patience in bereavement.
Letter 41.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome lists the Montanists' errors: Sabellian views of the Trinity, condemnation of second marriage as adultery, extra Lents, a hierarchy that ranks bishops third, and refusal of penance.
Letter 44.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets Marcella's gifts of sackcloth, chairs, candles, cups, and fans as symbols of the ascetic life.
Letter 45.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome recalls his former high reputation in Rome and says it was lost only because he revered the ascetic Paula.
Letter 45.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome says that only ascetic women like Paula and Melania are gossiped about in Rome, and chiefly by nominal Christians.
Letter 46.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · They describe the international community of monks and virgins at Jerusalem, united in humility and free of judgment of one another.
Letter 52.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome recommends simple fasting on bread and water and mocks elaborate fasts that seek out delicacies.
Letter 54.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains, from Scripture and medicine, that rich food and wine inflame lust, which alone of the vices is rooted in nature.
Letter 54.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome prescribes water, light and cool food, and steady moderation rather than occasional long fasts.
Letter 54.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome offers Anna the prophetess, the widow of Zarephath, and Judith as models for widows.
Letter 58.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome gives Paulinus and his wife practical rules of diet, reading, prayer, almsgiving, and caution with money.
Letter 71.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome advises Lucinius that on fasting on the Sabbath and daily Communion each church should keep its own received tradition.
Letter 79.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Salvina to devote herself to raising her children and to keep her widowhood in chastity and austerity, avoiding rich food and luxury.
Letter 79.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Salvina to avoid dangerous company, to keep to Scripture and prayer, and explains that first stirrings of passion are unavoidable but must be mastered.
Letter 96.20Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus closes by urging repentance, prayer, almsgiving, and care for the sick and imprisoned, confesses the Trinity, and announces the dates of Lent and Easter for 401.
Letter 98.25Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus closes with an exhortation to repentance and virtue and announces the dates of Lent and Easter for 402.
Letter 100.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus's paschal letter opens by calling the faithful to prepare for Easter by fasting, confession, and repentance, which cut off vices before they grow.
Letter 100.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus urges those keeping the Pascha to prepare by fasting and knowledge of the Scriptures for the heavenly feast with the angels, where only the fully mature and properly clothed enter.
Letter 100.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus calls the church, the true 'house of Judah', to keep the feast with the cross, sobriety, and watchfulness, like Daniel, anticipating victory over pleasure.
Letter 100.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus insists that Lent be kept without wine or meat, rebuking those who feast secretly while fasting in public, and cites Christ's warning against gluttony and drunkenness.
Letter 100.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus holds up Daniel and the three youths, who refused the Babylonian king's food and wine and lived on vegetables and water, as models of fasting.
Letter 100.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The example of Daniel and his companions shows that during fasts Christians should abstain from wine and meat and live on vegetables and water.
Letter 100.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus cites the Maccabean martyrs, who endured torture rather than eat unlawful food, as proof that a mind fortified by faith overcomes the body's weakness.
Letter 100.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Fasting is the angelic life with an eternal reward; Theophilus then describes the ordered alternation of day and night, the moon's phases, and the sun's yearly course, which he finds in Ecclesiastes.
Letter 100.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus urges faith in the one Godhead of Father, Son, and Spirit and in the incorruptible resurrection, prayer for the emperors, and fasting through which virtue governs the body and lifts the soul to heaven.
Letter 100.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus announces the dates of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter for the year and urges charity, prayer for enemies, and firm church discipline through Pentecost.
Letter 107.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome counsels a simple diet without wine for the girl, allowing moderate food, baths, and even meat until she is grown, and forbids her all musical entertainment.
Letter 107.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome wants the girl to learn spinning, dress simply, eat sparingly but steadily, and avoid long immoderate fasts, keeping Lent more strictly without exhausting herself.
Letter 108.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Almsgiving alone is common, Jerome says; Paula also gave her body, fasting so strictly that she took no oil except on feast days.
Letter 108.20Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes the rule of Paula's convent at Bethlehem: three companies of women united in prayer at the set hours, common dress and property, strict separation from men, graded correction, and tender care of the sick.
Letter 108.21Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome admits Paula's excessive austerity: even Epiphanius could not persuade her to take wine in sickness, and her grief for her dead children nearly killed her; he insists he writes history, not panegyric.
Letter 116.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine argues that the old rites were neither good nor evil, citing Ezek 20:25 and the varied custom of fasting on Saturday as an example of an observance that is neither commanded nor sinful.
Letter 125.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome gives Rusticus rules of monastic life—plain dress, moderate fasting, caution even in visiting his mother’s house—with John the Baptist and the sons of the prophets as models.
Letter 127.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Marcella loves Scripture and puts it into practice, lives with moderate asceticism, avoids society, and obeys her mother even in giving her property to rich relatives.
Letter 130.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Demetrias, raised in luxury, longed for a life of fasting and virginity after biblical models, and prayed in secret that her family would allow it.
Letter 130.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Fasting, modelled by Moses, Elijah, and Christ, quenches the heat of youth and makes a virgin's life like that of the angels.
Letter 130.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns against excessive fasting: virtue lies in measure, and fasting is the foundation of the virtues, not their completion.
Letter 133.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome argues that the Pelagian view of grace as merely the gift of free will makes prayer and fasting pointless, quoting one of Pelagius's disciples.
Letter 148.22Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer teaches that fasting is a help to holiness, not holiness itself, and is worthless if the soul is proud.
Ancoratus 68.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Spirit and the Lord both direct the apostles.
Ancoratus 87.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Raising another body would make God's judgment unjust.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 12.1.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Gorothenes and Dositheans keep the feasts with the Jews.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 13.1.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Dositheans keep circumcision, sabbath, fasts, and avoid touching others.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 16.1.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Pharisees fasted twice weekly and tithed scrupulously.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.5.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They pamper their bodies and condemn fasting.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 29.5.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Philo described their fasting at the Pascha.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.5.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The symbolic law covers offerings, circumcision, sabbath, fasting and Passover.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.5.13Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · True fasting is abstaining from evil, though outward fasting done thoughtfully can help the soul.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.5.14Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Outward fasting reminds people of the true fast.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 40.2.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Some are licentious, others feign asceticism.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.3.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Marcion preaches virginity and sabbath fasting and celebrates his mysteries before catechumens, using water.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.3.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Marcion fasts on the sabbath to avoid honouring the creator's day of rest.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 45.1.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Severians abstain from wine as the dragon's venom.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 47.1.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Encratites call marriage devilish and abstain from meat out of fear.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 50.1.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Some Quartodecimans date the passion from the Acts of Pilate to 25 March.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 50.2.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Law requires the lamb from the tenth day, so their one-day fast fails.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 50.2.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their reckoning of a one-day fast is inconsistent.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.1.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Castrated disciples may eat anything; others abstain from animal food.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Those who abstain do not judge those who eat.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.5.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Origen’s asceticism damaged his health.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.71.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · If only the soul is rewarded, bodily asceticism is pointless.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.71.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God will reward the body that toiled with the soul.
On Cain and Abel 1.18Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Worldly goods punish those who cannot use them; gluttony and drunkenness ruin many, and Christ shuts out those who only ate and drank in his presence, but blesses the hungry.
Apostolic Canon 51Anonymous · ca. 380 · Abstaining from marriage, meat or wine out of abhorrence of creation is condemned.
Apostolic Canon 53Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy who refuse meat and wine on feast days are deposed.
Apostolic Canon 64Anonymous · ca. 380 · Fasting on Sunday or Saturday, except one Saturday, is forbidden.
Apostolic Canon 69Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy and laity must keep the Lenten fast and the Wednesday and Friday fasts.
Apostolic Canon 70Anonymous · ca. 380 · Sharing Jewish fasts and festivals is forbidden.
Apostolic Constitutions 2.16.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The penitent is examined, given weeks of fasting in proportion to his sin, and sent away to pray in humility.
Apostolic Constitutions 2.17.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Sinners must be rebuked and disciplined so that others learn reverence.
Apostolic Constitutions 2.18.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · The bishop must restore penitents with the laying on of hands and rouse the negligent.
Apostolic Constitutions 2.41.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Different spiritual wounds call for different remedies: comfort, rebuke, threat of judgment and fasting.
Apostolic Constitutions 2.43.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · The false accuser is excluded, and may be restored after fasting if he repents, under watch.
Apostolic Constitutions 2.48.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Penalties must fit the offence: threats, almsgiving, fasting or exclusion.
Apostolic Constitutions 3.7.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · The widow should pray, fast and work like the widow with two coins; widows must obey the clergy and not accept gifts from robbers, prostitutes or the excommunicated.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.1.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · All the faithful, through the bishop, should give to imprisoned confessors, even fasting to do so, and the rich should ransom them.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.13.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · The forty-day fast is kept before the paschal fast, from a Monday to a Friday.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.13.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Holy Week follows, kept by all with fasting and prayer for the perishing.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.14.14Anonymous · ca. 380 · The passion, burial, and resurrection are told, with the command to fast during Holy Week and on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.18.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · During Holy Week the faithful fast on bread, salt, vegetables and water.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.18.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Those who can should fast completely on Friday and Saturday, or at least on Saturday.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.19.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The days before Friday are kept with fasting until the ninth hour or evening, and the full fast runs from Thursday evening.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.19.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Easter vigil is kept with readings, baptism, and prayer for the conversion of Israel.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.19.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · At the resurrection the faithful offer the Eucharist and end their fast with rejoicing.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.20.14Anonymous · ca. 380 · A week of feasting after Pentecost is followed by a week of fasting, after the examples of Moses, Elijah, Daniel and Hannah.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.20.16Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Ninevites, Esther, Mordecai and Judith escaped danger by fasting.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.20.17Anonymous · ca. 380 · The faithful fast every Wednesday and Friday and give what they save to the poor.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.20.19Anonymous · ca. 380 · No one may fast on Sundays, at Pentecost or on the Lord's feasts.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.22.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The candidate fasts before baptism, as Christ fasted after his.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.22.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ fasted after baptism by his own authority, but believers must fast before it.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.23.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians must not fast on the days the hypocrites fast.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.23.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians fast on Wednesday and Friday for the betrayal and the passion.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.23.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Only Holy Saturday is a fast, since the Creator lay in the tomb.
On Virgins 2.2Ambrose · ca. 377 · Mary’s life is the pattern of virginity: humble, modest, sparing, studious, seldom abroad, devoted to her kin; she will lead virgins to Christ, who will commend them to the Father, and their minds are altars on which Christ is offered.
On Virgins 3.2Ambrose · ca. 377 · Youth must be restrained by moderate wine, fasting, and sparing food; Ambrose mocks the pagan fable of Hippolytus, Diana, Neptune, and Aesculapius, and warns virgins against heating foods, banquets, and social calls.
On Virgins 3.4Ambrose · ca. 377 · Marcellina has surpassed Liberius’s precepts in fasting; Ambrose urges her, now older, to moderate her austerities like a good farmer varying his crops, to pray at set times and in bed, and to recite the Creed daily before dawn.
On the Christian Faith 3.1Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Opening the third book, Ambrose explains why he writes more, defends his use of poetic images by Scripture’s own use of poets and myth, and turns from the Sirens to Christ’s fasting.
On Noah 44Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · The forty days of the flood correspond to Moses' forty days on Sinai and now to the forty days of fasting and prayer for life rather than punishment.
13.5Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius contrasts the sick man's change of life with the careless penitent, prescribes the opposite virtue as the remedy for each sin, and urges sinners to confess their hidden sins to the priest as to a father and physician before death overtakes them.
14.1Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · At the beginning of Lent Asterius praises fasting as the chief part of the soul's philosophy, describing its benefits to the soul and even to the body's health, and says angels guard the faster's house while demons attend those who revel.
14.2Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius argues that the need for fasting arose from Adam's sin of eating, and that gluttony and drunkenness led to the shame of Noah, the ruin of Eli's sons, Esau's loss of his birthright, and the golden calf.
14.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius shows from Scripture that the saints worked wonders through fasting, urges the people to welcome Lent cheerfully, argues the soul's claim to a share of the year against the body, and mocks the excuses of gluttons.
14.4Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius rebukes those who evade the fast with contrived luxuries, points to the hardy water-drinking barbarians to show that self-control is a matter of habit, and teaches the faster to answer the belly with words of hope and of Christ.
14.5Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius cites Daniel's companions and Samson to show that fasting does not weaken, then attacks Jewish fasts and feasts as empty of meaning without Christ, reading the Day of Atonement, Tabernacles and Trumpets as types of Christ's death, the Church and the resurrection.
Canon 2Anonymous · 380 · No one is to fast on Sunday, or during Lent to stay away from church in secret retreats or private meetings.
Practical Chapters to Anatolius, chapter 6Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · Remedies for the mind, desire and anger must be used in due time and measure.
Practical Chapters to Anatolius, chapter 7Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · Bread and water cure the craving for varied foods.
Practical Chapters to Anatolius, chapter 8Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · Drinking little water aids temperance.
Practical Chapters to Anatolius, chapter 63Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · Fasting, prayer and almsgiving heal desire, mind and anger, if not done for show; lingering passionate thoughts keep the mind from God.
Practical Chapters to Anatolius, chapter 67Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · When a passion flares suddenly, a worse demon has taken over; flee to Christ with prayer, fasting and vigils.
On the Eight Thoughts, chapter 1Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · The eight general thoughts; the attacks of gluttony, sexual immorality and avarice.
Practical Discourse, chapter 49Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · Unceasing prayer is commanded because it depends on the mind, not the weak body.
Causes of Monastic Matters, chapter 10Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · Fast as one is able, relaxing for guests and illness; abstinence is a free choice; pray with fear and watchfulness against distracting demons.
Sayings of Holy Monks, chapter 1Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · A dry diet with love leads to dispassion; mercy quenches nightly apparitions.
Sayings of Holy Monks, chapter 3Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · Sayings of Macarius and other monks on anger, abstinence, detachment and virtue.
Theological Oration 1 (Or. 27), Against the Eunomians 7Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Instead of cultivating prayer, fasting, and self-control, the disputers neglect the virtues and reward impiety with licence.
Homily 36.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Before Lent the preacher explains Christ's rule for fasting: not with a show of gloom like the hypocrites, but with alms and sincere joy, though true sorrow for sin is not rejected.
Homily 37.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Christ's temptation in the wilderness is retold with the devil's imagined bewilderment at the virgin-born, sinless man; the preacher then lists the virtues by which Christians sanctify their Lenten fast.
Homily 38.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Lent's forty days are divinely set and fall in spring, when creation revives; as the thorn brings forth the rose, fasting turns sins into virtues, after the pattern of Christ, who hungered for our salvation.
Homily 39.2Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Lent's forty-two days match the stations of Israel's journey to the promised land; baptism is the Jordan turned back and the Red Sea crossed, and the cross sweetens the bitter law as the wood sweetened the waters of Marah.
Homily 40.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Lenten fasts are stations and a camp that guard Christians against the devil; breaking the enjoined fast is grave, as Jonathan's tasting honey during Saul's fast shows.
Homily 41.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Israel's journey from bitter Marah to Elim, with its twelve springs and seventy palms, figures the passage from the law to the Gospel: the springs are the twelve apostles, the palms the seventy disciples and the martyrs' victory.
Homily 42.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · In the temptation Christ answered the devil with Scripture so that the devil could neither prevail nor discover that he was God; Christians conquer the devil by clinging to Christ and fasting from vices.
Homily 43.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The preacher retells the three temptations, showing how Christ's answers concealed his divinity from the devil, and teaches that a good fast includes almsgiving, self-control, forgiveness, and hunger for righteousness.
Homily 44.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Comparing the forty-day fasts of Moses and of Christ, the preacher explains why only Christ hungered, and insists that Christians fast from vices, quarrels, usury, and lies as well as from food.
Homily 61.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The fifty days from Easter to Pentecost are kept as one long Sunday without fasting or kneeling, because Christ was present; after the ascension, when the cloud of the Father's embrace received him, Christians fast with longing.
Homily 62.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Pentecost is kept with a vigil and joy like Easter; Christ sits at the Father's right hand as King and Judge, and stands, as Stephen saw him, as the advocate of Christians.
Homily 87.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are the true defences of a city threatened by barbarians; heretics are like foxes that lie in wait for the Church's chicks.
Homily 88.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Life is a 'pirates' den' of trials; barbarian raiders can take property but not Christ, so Christians should trust God rather than magic, and should fast, give alms and give thanks.
Homily 90.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Nineveh, led by its fasting king, was saved by humility and abstinence; so Christians threatened by enemies should send an 'embassy' to God by fasting, prayer and almsgiving.
Sermon 6.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Maximus rebukes Christians who after Christmas joined in the pagan New Year festivities of the kalends of January, calls for fasting while pagans feast, and warns against association with Jews.
Sermon 14.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Since Adam fell through eating the forbidden fruit, Christians, set in the paradise of the Church watered by the four Gospels, must keep the Lenten fast and abstain from the forbidden tree of worldly indulgence.
Sermon 15.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Expounding the first temptation, Maximus shows Christ outwitting the devil by feigned hunger and answering that man lives by God's word, contrasts the deadly food of Adam, Esau and Judas with the bread that is Christ, and urges Lent be spent reading Scripture.
Sermon 16.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Lenten afflictions mirror Christ's temptation on the temple pinnacle; the devil tries to throw believers down from their observance, but God, who numbers our hairs and seeks the lost sheep, forgets no one unless sin intervenes.
Sermon 17.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Because God's sentence of death on Adam could not be revoked, God provided a second birth in baptism, by which the old man dies and a new one is born; catechumens should hasten to it, and all should keep the Lenten fast unbroken.
Sermon 18.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Lent's forty days, hallowed by Moses, Elijah and Christ, train the soul; abstaining from permitted food should teach us to abstain from forbidden sins, and the food saved should be given to the poor.
Sermon 19.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Christ fasted forty days in the desert as the second Adam to undo Adam's fall by eating; the desert, where there is no feasting and no woman, is a pattern for Lenten abstinence from food and marital relations, making the body a desert where Christ dwells.
Sermon 20.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The forty days of Lent recall the forty days of the flood, which was a merciful baptism of the world; the Church, like the threefold ark, saves those within it, and its preachers, like Noah, warn of coming judgment.
Sermon 21.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Examples of Moses, Adam, Elijah, Daniel, John the Baptist and Christ's saying on prayer and fasting show the power of fasting, which must be joined to almsgiving so that the poor are fed.
Sermon 22.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · A fragmentary Lenten sermon recalls the forty-day fasts of Moses, Elijah and Christ before breaking off.
Sermon 22.2Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Fragment: fasting of the body is useless without fasting of the mind from injustice, adultery and greed, and must be joined to restitution, forgiveness and almsgiving.
Sermon 23.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · A fragmentary sermon at the start of Lent argues that if the holy Moses fasted forty days, sinners have far more reason to fast.
Sermon 24.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Fragment: the Lenten fast must be above all a fast of the mind from vice, joined to love, almsgiving, clothing the naked and hospitality.
Sermon 25.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Maximus condemns Lenten fasting that is spent in hunting, cruelty to slaves who are brothers in Christ, and miserly saving, and teaches that true fasting includes church-going, prayer, reading, humility, and giving one's meals to the poor.
Sermon 26.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Maximus rejects a self-invented fifty-day fast and the practice of fasting alternate weeks, insists that the full forty days of Lent be kept, and finds the number forty in the flood, a figure of baptism, and in the manna of the wilderness.
Sermon 28.2Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Lent is the time of healing by Christ the physician, who kills sins in baptism to make the new man alive, as he struck Paul to heal him; fasting, prayer and vigils prepare candidates for the rain of baptism, as Elijah's and Moses' fasts brought rain and closeness to God.
Chapter 9Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas warns that vigils must be kept with the heart, without overeating or drinking, and without evil thoughts, unlike the wicked who stay awake to do evil.
Liber Orsiesii 46Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · The monks must not squander their Father's labours by returning to comfort and possessions, but wait on the Lord, who renews strength.
Book of Heresies 84.4Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Abstinence is praiseworthy when voluntary.
Book of Heresies 149.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some take Zechariah's four fasts to forbid further fasting.
Book of Heresies 149.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The four fasts point to Christian mysteries.
Book of Heresies 149.3Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The church keeps four fasts: Nativity, Pascha, Ascension and Pentecost.
Book of Heresies 149.4Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The apostles fasted and prayed before Pentecost.
Book of Heresies 149.5Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Others link the four fasts to the four seasons.
Book of Heresies 149.6Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Others refer the four fasts to Noah or to Israel's exodus.
Book of Heresies 149.7Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Others link the four fasts to four books of Moses.
Book of Heresies 149.8Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The four fasts are also taken as four gospels and four orders of saints.
Book of Heresies 154.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some think the ravens brought Elijah meat, though he never ate it.
Canons on the Letters of Paul 35Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Those who abstain from meat and wine should neither be judged nor judge others.
Canons on the Letters of Paul 36Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Wine leads to excess; Paul allows only a little for illness.
Eleven Tractates 4.75Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · A homily for the start of Lent: because people neglect daily devotion, God appointed the yearly Pasch to recall them.
Eleven Tractates 4.76Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Lent is a time when the faithful should strive for better things and the careless be recalled at least by keeping the solemn days.
Eleven Tractates 4.77Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · At Easter the faithful, penitents, and catechumens all have hope; the Lenten fast must be accompanied by justice and love, not quarrels and greed.
Eleven Tractates 4.78Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Fasting means works of mercy; Christ, our Passover, took on the full shame of human birth.
Eleven Tractates 4.79Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Christ endured every human indignity and the cross; the baptized and catechumens alike should keep the Lord's forty-day fast before Easter.
Eleven Tractates 4.80Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · The forty days recall Moses' fast before receiving the law, Joshua's crossing of the Jordan, and Christ's fast and temptation after his baptism.
Eleven Tractates 4.81Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Christ's answers to the tempter show what Christians must reject during Lent.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 27.1Egeria · ca. 381-395 · Jerusalem keeps eight weeks of Lent, forty-one fast days.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 27.5Egeria · ca. 381-395 · On Wednesdays and Fridays there is a station at Sion at the ninth hour.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 27.9Egeria · ca. 381-395 · The early Saturday Eucharist lets those who fast all week break their fast.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 28.1Egeria · ca. 381-395 · Some eat only on Sunday and Saturday through Lent.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 28.2Egeria · ca. 381-395 · Their meals in Lent are on Saturday morning and Sunday.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 28.3Egeria · ca. 381-395 · The renunciants fast according to their strength.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 28.4Egeria · ca. 381-395 · No one is pressed to fast beyond his strength; their Lenten food is water and gruel.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 29.1Egeria · ca. 381-395 · Each of the six weeks follows the pattern of the first.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 36.2Egeria · ca. 381-395 · By candlelight the whole people go down to Gethsemane.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 41.1Egeria · ca. 381-395 · No one fasts from Pascha to Pentecost.
Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 44.1Egeria · ca. 381-395 · After Pentecost the usual fasts and daily vigils resume.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.10Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Pride and iniquity are an evil garment; fasting clothed David and Joseph, while Adam, breaking the fast, became naked.
Petition to the Emperors (Libellus precum) 25Faustinus · ca. 383–384 · The petitioners recount the persecution of their adherents at Trier and Rome, above all of the ascetic presbyter Macarius, who, arrested at a night vigil by Damasus's clergy and dragged over the stones, died of his wound in exile at Ostia.
Second Apology of David 55Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Ambrose retells Nathan’s parable, his rebuke, David’s confession, and the death of the child.
Apology of the Prophet David 15Ambrose · ca. 384-390 · Taken literally, David sinned as kings do but repented as kings do not, confessing publicly; falling is human, but such confession is rare virtue.
Apology of the Prophet David 42Ambrose · ca. 384-390 · Psalm 50 (Vulgate) bears the number of remission, as shown by the parable of the debtors, the jubilee, Pentecost, and the law of fifty shekels.
Letter 1 to Himerius of Tarragona, chapter 2Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Solemn baptism is to be given only at Easter and Pentecost to prepared candidates, but infants and those in danger are to be baptized at once.
Letter 7 to various bishops, against Jovinian, chapter 1Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Siricius opens his letter to the church of Milan: the devil, enemy of chastity and fasting, is at work through new preachers.
Letter 10, canons of the Roman synod to the bishops of Gaul, chapter 4Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · A girl who had resolved on virginity but was not yet veiled, and who marries without the blessing of the veil and the witness of family and clergy, is to do penance, as is the man; the Old Testament's stoning is now a spiritual exclusion.
On Naboth 16Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The poor fast from need; the rich fast from avarice, neither using their wealth nor letting others use it.
On Naboth 19Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · True fasting gives the cost of feasting to the poor; the rich man's table is made from the blood of the poor.
On Naboth 44Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich fast and attend church to further their crimes, but God rejects such fasting and demands justice and care for the poor.
On Naboth 45Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ambrose confronts the rich man who uses contracts and false witness against the poor, setting God's law and the judgment of conscience against him.
On the Duties of the Clergy 2.1Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Book 2 opens: the blessed life, which Scripture calls eternal life, lies in the honourable and in seeking reward from God alone, not from human glory.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.35.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector shows that pride offends more than the lack of virtues.
Exposition of Psalm 118 5.26.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ went first in fasting, suffering, and death, and Peter followed him to the end.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.49.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · On fast days one should wait for the sacrament rather than eat; at the midday service one receives the body of the Lord Jesus.
Exposition of Psalm 118 11.13.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The cooling snow of God’s word, continence, and fasting quench the heat of lust.
Exposition of Psalm 118 14.7.5Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Keep the lamp anointed; conscience is the eye and lamp of the body.
Exposition of Psalm 118 15.28.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Keep hoping in adversity; Christ cares for the weak lest they faint.
Exposition of Psalm 118 17.38.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · David fasted and wept for his sin when his son was sick and after the census.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.4.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The Pharisee lost his virtues through pride; the humble tax collector was justified.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.8.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The verse fits a bishop, a father or a wife praying and fasting in distress for a loved one.
Exposition of Psalm 118 22.23.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Doctors forbid fasting and vigils; whoever seeks God’s salvation follows Christ and meditates on the law day and night.
Letter 29.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · At the beginning of Lent Augustine preached on Christ's cleansing of the temple, arguing that he would far more drive out drunken feasts.
Letter 36.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers that fasting on Saturday is not unlawful in itself, but that where Scripture is silent the custom of the church is to be followed without contention.
Letter 36.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says that the Roman writer's tract, by equating not fasting with drunkenness, insults the whole church and even the Romans on the days they do not fast.
Letter 36.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine objects that the tract calls all Eastern and most Western Christians, who eat on Saturday, carnal, Judaizing and enslaved to the belly.
Letter 36.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the Sabbath signified rest and joy, that the law said nothing about eating or fasting on it, and that Christ's words on fasting do not concern the Sabbath.
Letter 36.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine points out that on the same Sabbath the disciples both ate and plucked grain, suggesting that both Sabbath rest and Sabbath fasting are not binding.
Letter 36.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine replies that the Pharisee in the parable was faulted for his pride, not for fasting twice a week.
Letter 36.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine notes that one can surpass the Pharisee's fasting without fasting on Saturday or Sunday, as many monks do, yet the tract still condemns them.
Letter 36.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine shows that the tract's demand for fasting six days a week condemns even the Roman church, where few fast so often.
Letter 36.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the tract's reasoning would make Saturday holier than the Lord's day.
Letter 36.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine mocks the tract's author, who condemns Saturday meals yet calls for a Sunday 'alogia', a feast beyond reason.
Letter 36.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine concludes that the Lord's day is above the Sabbath because of the resurrection, and that eating or fasting is good or bad according to the faith of the one who does it.
Letter 36.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the argument from Moses's forty-day fast by noting that it included Sundays as well as Saturdays, as did Christ's.
Letter 36.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says the tract confuses moderate Saturday meals with luxury and implies that eating on the Lord's day is sinful.
Letter 36.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine shows that the scriptural texts the tract cites against feasting concern sexual sin, idolatry and drunkenness, not eating on Saturday.
Letter 36.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine dismisses the tract's examples of Elijah, Daniel and the three young men as irrelevant to fasting on Saturday.
Letter 36.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that Paul's saying that the kingdom of God is not food and drink concerns scruples about foods, not fasting on Saturday.
Letter 36.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the tract's appeal to Tobit and to the 'sacrifice of praise' by noting that praise is offered every day, especially in the fifty days after Easter when no one fasts.
Letter 36.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine notes that the tract allows a sober Sunday meal, and that the Roman church itself eats on three consecutive days each week.
Letter 36.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says the tract's 'woe to those who call good evil' condemns the whole church, and that Paul forbids those who fast and those who eat to judge one another.
Letter 36.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the claim that Peter taught Saturday fasting at Rome after defeating Simon Magus, citing the story as an uncertain opinion and urging harmony between the customs.
Letter 36.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says that disputes over which apostolic custom is original are endless, and that the one faith of the church may be clothed in varied observances like the queen's embroidered robe.
Letter 36.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rejects the claim that eating on Saturday is serving two masters, since Christ is Lord of both the Sabbath and the Lord's day.
Letter 36.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine corrects the tract's contrast between old and new worship, arguing that each old sign gave way to its spiritual counterpart, and so the carnal Sabbath to the spiritual.
Letter 36.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine gives his own view: fasting is commanded in the New Testament, but no days are fixed, and relaxing the fast on Saturday better signifies eternal rest.
Letter 36.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine counsels that those who fast and those who eat on Saturday should not despise or judge one another, avoiding offence either way.
Letter 36.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says fasting on Sunday is a scandal, especially because the Manichaeans made it their fast day, except within a long continuous fast.
Letter 36.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that Paul's all-night discourse at Troas on the first day of the week was a special necessity, not evidence that the apostles fasted on Sundays, as the Priscillianists claim.
Letter 36.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine concludes that, since heretics made Sunday a fast day, even Paul's example should not now be followed, and the Lord's day should not be a fast day except within a vowed continuous fast.
Letter 36.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that Wednesday and Friday are fast days because the plot against Christ was made on the fourth day and he suffered on the sixth.
Letter 36.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that Saturday, the day Christ rested in the tomb, is kept by some with fasting and by others with relaxation, but all fast on Holy Saturday.
Letter 36.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recalls Ambrose's advice to follow the custom of the church where one is, and tells Casulanus to follow his own bishop's practice on Saturday fasting.
Letter 48.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges the monks to do all their works, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and mutual forbearance, for the glory of God.
Letter 54.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says that practices which vary locally, such as Saturday fasting and the frequency of communion, are free, and one should follow the local church.
Letter 54.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine recalls Ambrose's advice to Monica to follow the fasting custom of whatever church one is in, and deplores quarrels over such matters.
Letter 54.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine illustrates the folly of insisting on one's home custom with examples about the Lenten fast and the Maundy Thursday Eucharist.
Letter 54.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine classifies the question of the Maundy Thursday Eucharist as a local custom, in which each should follow the church he is in.
Letter 54.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine defends the universal custom of receiving the Eucharist fasting, which he attributes to the apostles' ordering of the church.
Letter 54.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine accepts an evening Eucharist after a meal on Maundy Thursday and explains the double celebration by the custom of bathing that day.
Letter 54.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine suggests that bathing on Maundy Thursday began with the candidates for Easter baptism, and promises to answer Januarius's other questions later.
Letter 55.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains the scriptural basis and number symbolism of the forty days of Lent and the fifty days of Easter, when fasting is relaxed and prayer is made standing.
Letter 55.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine distinguishes what rests on Scripture (Easter, Pentecost) from what rests on church agreement (Lent, the octave of the newly baptized) and from local variation (Alleluia, standing at prayer).
Letter 55.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine condemns the view that meat is unclean as contrary to the faith, while upholding abstinence for self-control.
Letter 65.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reports to the primate Xanthippus his removal of the presbyter Abundantius for embezzlement and for dining and staying with a woman of bad reputation on a fast day.
Letter 82.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the old rites were neither good (since they do not justify) nor evil (since God commanded them), comparing the varying custom of fasting on Saturday.
Letter 111.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine quotes Daniel's prayer of confession in captivity to show that even the holiest acknowledge that God justly chastises them for their sins.
Letter 111.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine comforts Victorianus about captive consecrated women, telling how a captive nun's prayers healed her captors and won her release.
Letter 121.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paulinus asks Augustine to explain Colossians 2:21–23, which seems to attribute wisdom and humility to superstition and to join “not sparing the body” with “satisfaction of the flesh.”
Letter 130.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The happy life is God himself; faith, hope, and love lead the one who prays to him, and fasting, self-restraint, and almsgiving help prayer.
Letter 130.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks for their prayers and urges them to fast and keep vigil according to each one's strength, without hindering or pressing one another.
Letter 149.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The 'wisdom' Paul concedes to such observances is the wisdom of this world, philosophical reasoning about the elements, which humbles the heart superstitiously and afflicts the body to no purpose.
Letter 211.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine prescribes fasting as health permits, no eating outside mealtimes except for the sick, and reading aloud during meals.
Letter 220.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine contrasts earthly goods given to good and bad alike with eternal goods given only to the good, and urges alms, prayer and fasting.
Letter 265.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine describes the daily penance of the faithful for small sins through the Lord's Prayer, fasting and almsgiving, comparing small sins to water seeping into a ship.
Homilies on Matthew 10.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · John's ascetic life in the wilderness from childhood recalled Elijah and anticipated freedom from the curse; his hair garment taught detachment, unlike the vain Cynic philosophers; his belt was the dress of active saints; Christ praised his rejection of soft clothing.
Homilies on Matthew 10.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The end comes when the Gospel has been preached to all, as testimony against unbelievers; we must wake from present dreams and repent by doing the opposite of our sins; peace with God must be pursued by cutting off anger and excess.
Homilies on Matthew 11.8John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 11: learn virtue like children learning letters, one at a time, beginning at home with not swearing and not insulting, practicing with one's wife and household and imposing penances on oneself, until virtue becomes second nature.
Homilies on Matthew 13.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ is led by the Spirit into the wilderness after his baptism to teach the baptized that temptation follows grace, that it should not be sought, and that fasting is the weapon against the devil.
Homilies on Matthew 13.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ fasts forty days, no more, to avoid making the incarnation incredible, and answers the devil’s first temptation, which played on his hunger and flattered him as Son of God, with Scripture.
Homilies on Matthew 19.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ forbids almsgiving done to be seen, judging the intention rather than the outward act, and mocks the hypocrites who trumpet their alms while seeking their own glory.
Homilies on Matthew 20.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ forbids fasting for show, which some Christians outdo the hypocrites in by feigning fasts; anointing the head means hiding the fast, as Christ himself fasted unseen, and the actor’s glory lasts only while the theater sits.
Homilies on Matthew 30.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ dines with Matthew and the tax collectors to heal them, as a physician bears with the sick; he answers the Pharisees from common reason and from Scripture, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”
Homilies on Matthew 30.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ answers the Pharisees and John’s disciples on fasting with gentleness, calling himself the bridegroom and sparing the weak disciples heavy commands; so too a husband should correct a wife fond of cosmetics little by little and gently.
Homilies on Matthew 37.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ is not a mere man as John is; John is the Elijah who was to come, and the parable of the children in the marketplace shows that John’s austerity and Christ’s eating with sinners were two ways toward the same end.
Homilies on Matthew 37.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Jews found fault both with John’s fasting and with Christ’s eating and drinking, so wisdom is justified; Christ then reproaches Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum as worse than Tyre, Sidon and Sodom.
Homilies on Matthew 46.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Signs exist for the sake of a good life, which is the greater thing; fasting is good but last in the choir of virtues, while love and almsgiving surpass even virginity and make one equal to the apostles.
Homilies on Matthew 55.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom praises the desert monks, who end their one frugal meal with a thanksgiving hymn that recalls the judgment, quotes the hymn, and explains each phrase as teaching trust in God, love for all, spiritual joy and abundance in good works.
Homilies on Matthew 55.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The monks’ hymn ends and begins again in doxology like Paul’s letters, thanks God even for food against the Manichaeans, asks for the Spirit and to escape shame at the judgment; Christians in cities and households, like the apostles’ converts and the married prophets, can share their wisdom.
Homilies on Matthew 57.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Fasting joined to prayer drives out demons, gives wings to the soul, and frees from avarice; luxury and drunkenness, the devil’s favorite tools, turn men into worse than swine, yet the fault is in the drunkard, not in God’s gift of wine.
Homilies on Matthew 70.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ answers the tax question from the coin itself, rendering to Caesar what does not harm godliness and to God what is God’s; he then refutes the Sadducees’ story of the seven brothers from Scripture and God’s power, and Chrysostom turns to the monks who already live like the angels, having slain the desires of the belly.
Homilies on Matthew 70.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom contrasts the monks’ simple table, where the desires of the belly and of lust lie dead, with the luxurious, unjust and degrading banquets of the rich, and urges his hearers to visit the monks and learn their peace.
On Fleeing the World 34Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · Repentance, grace, and the desert are good flights; Elijah fled not Jezebel but the world, to Horeb and the brook Cherith.
On Elijah and Fasting 1Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · As Lent approaches, Ambrose calls the faithful to the contest of fasting, in which Christ, tempted with bread, first won the victory.
On Elijah and Fasting 2Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Elijah, fasting, shut heaven against Ahab's idolatrous people, while the widow of Zarephath, who preferred devotion to food, was fed.
On Elijah and Fasting 3Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Elijah's miracles and his ascension were the fruit of fasting, by which he lived a heavenly life on earth.
On Elijah and Fasting 4Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting is the life of angels and the step to God, by which Elijah ascended and John the Baptist lived like an angel.
On Elijah and Fasting 5Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Let us imitate Elijah by seeking the food of the mind, doing God's will, which is the food of angels.
On Elijah and Fasting 6Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting is as old as creation: the first five days were a fast, and eating began only on the sixth, when the work of creation ceased.
On Elijah and Fasting 7Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The first law in paradise was a law of fasting, and the first sin came through eating; gluttony expelled man from paradise, abstinence recalls him.
On Elijah and Fasting 9Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting covers the soul that sin has stripped, as grace and repentance cover sin and the Lord clothes those who fast with light.
On Elijah and Fasting 14Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · John the Baptist abstained from wine; drunkenness overcame Noah and Lot, who had survived flood and fire while they fasted.
On Elijah and Fasting 15Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Moses gave the people water, not wine, and legislated about fasting, not about wine.
On Elijah and Fasting 16Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Moses received the law while fasting forty days, while below the people feasted and sinned, so that he broke the tablets.
On Elijah and Fasting 17Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Samson's mother and Hannah were made fruitful through abstinence; Samson, born of sobriety, was avenged on the drunken Philistines.
On Elijah and Fasting 18Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Elisha healed the poisoned stew of the sons of the prophets with flour, by the power of prophetic abstinence.
On Elijah and Fasting 19Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The three young men in the furnace, made like asbestos by fasting, were untouched by the flames.
On Elijah and Fasting 20Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Daniel, strengthened by fasting, taught the lions to fast and was not harmed.
On Elijah and Fasting 21Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting quenched fire, shut the lions' mouths, made the sea solid, and opened springs from the rock.
On Elijah and Fasting 22Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting harms no household and brings every benefit to soul and body, a provision for the whole of life.
On Elijah and Fasting 23Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting never killed anyone, while food is the bait of every snare; fasting brings sobriety and quiet, luxury poverty and restlessness.
On Elijah and Fasting 24Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ambrose satirizes the rich man's caterer, who runs about at dawn bidding up the prices of rare foods until his master squanders his estate.
On Elijah and Fasting 25Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The rich man's kitchen is a scene of uproar and beatings, more a slaughterhouse than a place of dinner.
On Elijah and Fasting 26Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Gluttony is an insatiable mistress, praising virtue when full and abandoning it when hungry, and bringing sickness.
On Elijah and Fasting 29Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Judith, fasting, overcame the drunken Holofernes and his army.
On Elijah and Fasting 30Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Esther, made more beautiful by fasting, saved her people, while Haman perished at the banquet.
On Elijah and Fasting 31Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting reconciles with God and, by frugality, keeps households free from debt and usury.
On Elijah and Fasting 32Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting makes food and drink more pleasant, as alternations of light and dark, sickness and health enhance their enjoyment.
On Elijah and Fasting 33Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting prepares us for the mystical table of the sacraments, to which hunger and thirst lead.
On Elijah and Fasting 34Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Lent ends in Easter baptism and the eucharist; but true fasting, as Isaiah says, means justice, release of debts, and care for the poor, not mere hunger.
On Elijah and Fasting 35Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The one who fasts shows gravity and modesty, not the affected sadness of hypocrites who fast to be seen.
On Elijah and Fasting 36Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Anointing the head in fasting means the oil of gladness and the anointing of the sacraments, not feigned sadness or luxurious perfume.
On Elijah and Fasting 37Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Mystically, we anoint Christ's head and feet by confessing his divinity and passion, and wash our face by cleansing our conscience, so that the inner and outer self agree.
On Elijah and Fasting 38Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · As bitter medicine kills worms in the body, the bitterness of fasting kills hidden sin in the soul.
On Elijah and Fasting 39Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Esau lost his birthright for sweet food, while Jacob's abstinence won him lordship; Samson's riddle shows sweetness coming from bitterness.
On Elijah and Fasting 40Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fasting should be done without boasting, in secret, as by Elijah, Elisha, and John in the desert, to whom God sent food.
On Elijah and Fasting 41Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ambrose, hearing feasting, recalls Israel eating and playing while Moses fasted; drunkenness is the mother of faithlessness.
On Elijah and Fasting 68Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Israel was strong while drinking water and eating manna, but when it craved the meat of Egypt it perished in the desert.
On Elijah and Fasting 79Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Christians, enrolled for Christ's contest, must train like athletes in sobriety and chastity, watched by angels, to win the crown.
On Elijah and Fasting 81Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Like athletes watched by angels, we should fast and avoid revelry, separating ourselves, as the Levites did at Moses' call, from those who sin by feasting.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.6Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Like Elisha's barley loaves, Ambrose's plain words will suffice; Scripture's plain words should be understood plainly.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.28Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Garlic, which leopards flee, should be medicine, not food; fasting is a greater remedy, deadly even to serpents.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.25.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The way of virtue offers fasting and tears, the other feasting and songs; few choose the first.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.49.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Monks who abandon their monasteries repent of their virtues, not their sins.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.59.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Penance with prayer and tears is light compared with the glory to come.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.8.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · When troubled, David put on sackcloth and fasted.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.12.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · How can David both humble and exalt his soul?
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.12.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Fasting humbles the flesh; grace exalts the soul; one who knows how to be humble knows how to be lifted up.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.1.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Psalm 40 (Protestant 41) follows the coming of Psalm 39 with the passion; its number recalls Christ’s forty-day fast, which repaired Adam’s fall.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.37.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · “So be it” closes the first of the five books of the Psalter; the fortieth psalm ends with the passion, as the passion ends Lent.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.9.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The mountain moved by faith is the demon; perfect faith, like mustard seed, must be joined to love.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 47.12.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The breaking of the ships of Tarshish signifies the servants of God disciplining their bodies.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 47.12.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · By the Spirit’s strength they dissolve their bodies through abstinence, and are told to be strong.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 47.12.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Whoever practises dissolving himself by abstinence will not fear death, which is to be with Christ.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 47.14.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Our bodies become ships of Tarshish when we choose the bitterness of fasting; Tarshish is the watch-tower of grace.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Against Manichaean boasts of abstinence, Augustine describes catholic hermits and especially the communities of monks and nuns in the East and Egypt, with their common property, manual work, deans and fathers, fasting, and generous almsgiving.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine describes communities of Christian men and women at Milan and Rome who live by manual work and practice severe fasts, yet, following Paul, never treat food or wine as unclean and make love their rule.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · The worth of abstinence depends on its end; Augustine contrasts a frugal man who takes a little lard and wine with a Manichaean Elect who feasts on costly vegetarian delicacies, showing the absurdity of judging holiness by meat and wine alone.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine sets out the whole of Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 to show that Paul's counsel to abstain from meat and wine was for self-restraint, to avoid idol food, and out of love for the weak, not because meat is unclean.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine sets out the Manichaean reason for abstaining from meat: particles of the divine substance, trapped in plants, are freed by the Elect's eating, while meat is the filthy residue left when the divine has escaped.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine ridicules the Manichaean claim that the divine part in plants is detected by color, smell, and taste, shows that time, cooking, and handling often improve food, and exposes the cruelty and absurdity of their food rules, their refusal of bread to beggars, and their forcing of children to eat leftovers.
Sermon 3.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · text not on this site
Sermon 3.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · text not on this site
Sermon 25.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · text not on this site
Sermon 35.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · text not on this site
Tractates on Matthew 15.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius teaches that fasting, like prayer, must be done for God alone and not for human praise, or its reward is lost.
Tractates on Matthew 15.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius gives Judith, Esther, Daniel and the three young men as examples of fasting concealed by a cheerful face.
Tractates on Matthew 15.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius interprets anointing the head as mercy to the poor, done to Christ the head, and washing the face as purity of conscience.
Tractate 46.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · text not on this site
Tractate 46.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · text not on this site
Homily 7.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Son is begotten radiance of the Father, co-eternal yet with his own hypostasis against Sabellius and Marcellus; rather than pry into God, Christians should repent through confession, forgiving others, almsgiving, prayer and fasting.
Homily 22.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s miracles surpass nature; as he changed water into wine, he can change cold and unstable people, and Chrysostom describes the harm of luxury and gluttony to body and soul, urging delight in the Lord instead.
Homily 81.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Like children dazzled by clay toys, many admire earthly wealth; Chrysostom urges daily almsgiving from honest means as the soul's food and medicine.
Life of Hilarion 4Jerome · ca. 390–392 · The frail young Hilarion lived on fifteen figs a day in the wilderness, defeating the devil.
Life of Hilarion 5Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Tempted by lust, Hilarion tamed his body, his 'little donkey', by fasting and manual labour.
Life of Hilarion 11Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Jerome summarizes Hilarion's diet at each stage of life, always fasting until sunset.
Excellence of Monks, chapter 27Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Even a blameless city ascetic suffers from witnessing injustice and may even blame God, as Habakkuk did; the desert monk's virtues are seen by God alone, who rewards them with eternal life.
Monastic Exercise, chapter 14Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · God can sustain life without food, as with Elijah and Moses; monks who trust in their own hands are like the unclean animals of the law.
Monastic Exercise, chapter 55Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Extravagance gives form to formless things; gluttony is the root from which love of money, anger and sadness grow.
Monastic Exercise, chapter 57Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The belly cannot be cut out as anger can; beginners remove its fat, the advanced its contents, and the perfect cast off all beyond need.
Monastic Exercise, chapter 58Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Gluttony feeds sexual passion and, like Nebuchadnezzar's 'chief cook' who razed Jerusalem's walls, pulls down every virtue.
Monastic Exercise, chapter 59Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · As the barley cake overturned Midian's tents, a frugal diet overthrows sexual passion; virtue is a wall, vice a flimsy tent.
Monastic Exercise, chapter 60Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The saints fled the cities and lived simply, like Elijah, Elisha and John the Baptist; the manna teaches living one day at a time.
Monastic Exercise, chapter 71Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Animals keep to the diet God gave and mate only in season; human extravagance in food breeds unceasing sexual desire.
Voluntary Poverty, chapter 10Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Christ and Paul teach both having nothing and indifference to glory; one who has done all he was commanded must call himself an unprofitable servant who has only paid a debt.
Voluntary Poverty, chapter 65Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The newer members of the community fight gluttony, vainglory and pride: gluttony fuels lust, vainglory forfeits God's reward, and pride is groundless since each receives his own wage.
Sermon 9.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Avoid magic and the shows; small daily sins, deadly by their number, are cleansed by almsgiving, fasting and prayer, and perfect almsgiving includes forgiving those who hurt us.
Sermon 9.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Avarice and lavish gifts to performers are both condemned; Christ in the poor asks for what we have, and by good works, prayer, fasting and alms, forgiving as we are forgiven, we walk safely on Christ the way to the eternal sabbath.
Sermon 28.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · On a fast day Augustine takes the verse “Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice”: as each bodily sense rejoices in its object, so the heart should rejoice in seeking God.
Sermon 51.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Matthew’s genealogy centers on forty, the number of our pilgrim life of fasting and continence; the one extra generation either does not matter or marks Christ, who alone is both man and God.
Sermon 80.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · If we pray to cast out another’s demon, much more should we pray to be freed from our own vices, as the sick beg a doctor for healing.
Sermon 125.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The number forty signifies the fulfillment of righteousness, which is fasting from love of the world; love is like the soul’s hand, which cannot grasp God while it clings to the world, so those who possess must hold their goods without being held by them.
Sermon 125.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Forty signifies the fulfillment of the law, the ten commandments spread to the four corners of the world, which is restraint from love of the world, taught alike by Moses, Elijah, and Christ in their forty-day fasts; Lent figures this life of labor, and the fifty days after Easter, forty plus the denarius of reward, figure the eternal praise of the resurrection.
Sermon 150.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since life or punishment follows death, as the rich man in purple learned, Christians should say not “Let us eat and drink” but “Let us fast, pray, and give alms, for tomorrow we die”; giving matters more than fasting.
Sermon 205.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lent's forty days signify the whole of this life, during which the Christian must hang on the cross of self-restraint, as Moses, Elijah, and Christ fasted forty days.
Sermon 205.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · During Lent Christians should fast, abstain even from marital relations, give alms, pray more, and not replace ordinary luxuries with refined ones under the name of abstinence.
Sermon 205.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The true fast is from quarrels; forgiveness and giving are the two wings of prayer.
Sermon 206.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lent signifies the present life as the time of humility, to be followed by the joy of Easter; Christians should be more fervent in prayer, fasting, and alms.
Sermon 206.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Alms and fasting are the wings of prayer; the two kinds of alms are giving to the poor and forgiving offenses, and no one is too poor for the second.
Sermon 206.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · True fasting is free of quarrels and oppression; restraint in lawful things guards against unlawful ones, and humility and love give prayer its wings.
Sermon 207.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Almsgiving, which means mercy, imitates the supreme mercy of the incarnation and passion, and should increase as Easter approaches.
Sermon 207.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lenten abstinence, including from marital relations, should reduce pleasures, not exchange ordinary luxuries for unusual ones; Esau and David show that the fault lies in craving, not in the food.
Sermon 207.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Prayer supported by alms and fasting must be free of greed and hatred; it gives alms by praying for enemies and fasts perpetually from anger.
Sermon 208.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lenten fasting should be without harshness or new luxuries, married people should abstain for prayer, alms should increase, and above all anger should be forgiven before Easter.
Sermon 209.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · What is saved by fasting should go to the poor, and those who cannot fast should give more, so that their alms may pray for them.
Sermon 209.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Abstaining from meat is to curb desire, not to avoid uncleanness or to indulge in costlier food; married people should abstain for a time, and all should keep humility and love.
Sermon 210.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine introduces two questions: why Lent comes before the feast of the passion, and why it lasts forty days.
Sermon 210.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ fasted after his baptism, while the Church fasts with candidates before Easter baptism; but baptism may be given on any day, and Easter is only its most festive occasion.
Sermon 210.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ's baptism by John is inferior to Christian baptism, as circumcision and the old Passover are to their fulfilments; his fast after baptism teaches us to fast in times of temptation.
Sermon 210.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We fast because the bridegroom has been taken from us; the two kinds of fasting, humbling the soul and feasting the mind, are both found in Christ's answer about his disciples.
Sermon 210.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In this present night, exiled from Christ and beset by the devil, the roaring lion, believers must mourn, fast, and pray.
Sermon 210.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The approach of the Passion is the fitting time to fast and watch, as Christ warned Peter and as Peter in turn warned the Church.
Sermon 210.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · This life is the “little while” of sorrow and labor before the joy no one can take away; meanwhile we fast and pray in hope, with the Spirit as pledge.
Sermon 210.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Forty signifies the Law of ten commandments fulfilled throughout the four parts of the world in this life of toil; adding the denarius gives fifty, the Easter season that signifies eternal joy.
Sermon 210.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine urges daily fasting, generous alms, fervent prayer, and marital continence throughout Lent, following the forty-day fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Christ.
Sermon 210.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine rebukes those who keep Lent as gourmets, avoiding meat-pots as unclean while feasting on costlier foods.
Sermon 210.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Abstaining from wine only to enjoy finer fruit drinks defeats Lent; it is better to drink a little ordinary wine if necessary.
Sermon 210.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · What is saved by fasting belongs to the poor, and forgiveness, which anyone can give since it needs only the will, must be granted especially in Lent.
Sermon 216.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The candidates must guard against pride, persist in repentance, and humble themselves in fasting, as was signified when they stood on sackcloth during their examination.
Sermon 217.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ has prepared the good place; Lent signifies the toil of this passing world and the Easter season the one eternal day to come.
Sermon 252.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Forty, the days of the risen Lord on earth and of the great fasts, signifies wisdom dispensed in time; ten, the fullness of wisdom (seven for creature, three for the Trinity), times four, the number of temporal things, makes forty.
Sermon 252.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Forty years in the desert signify this life; the denarius of the parable of the vineyard (ten) added to forty makes fifty, the Church to come; fifty times three, plus the three of the Trinity, makes 153.
Sermon 252.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The forty days of Lent are kept in labor and fasting, the fifty of Easter in gladness that signifies eternal rest; but Easter must not be kept with drunkenness, for living well is better than understanding much.
Sermon 254.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lent signifies the present time of mourning, the Easter season the praise to come; the passion’s foulness, like dung in a field, gave birth to the beauty of the resurrection.
Sermon 263.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ fasted forty days before his death and ate forty days after his resurrection, signifying the present contest of abstinence and the hope of peace; forty is the ten commandments times the four quarters of the world.
Sermon 264.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The forty days signify this age, in which faith in the Incarnation is necessary while the Church, like the ark in the flood, holds clean and unclean; in the end believers will enjoy Christ’s divinity.
Sermon 270.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Spirit came ten days after the fortieth day because forty (ten times four) signifies the law preached through this age, while the single ten signifies the law fulfilled by grace; the letter alone kills, the Spirit gives life.
Sermon 351.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Everyone, bishops included, beats his breast and prays “Forgive us our debts” for daily sins; the Christian life is a struggle in which the old and new man coexist, and humility and confession defeat the enemy.
Sermon 352.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Unprepared, Augustine takes his theme from the psalm just sung, Psalm 51, and speaks on repentance as the yearly holy season approaches.
Sermon 357.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The faithful should support the cause of unity with the solemn fasts after Pentecost, almsgiving, and hospitality to the bishops arriving for the conference, storing their treasure in heaven.
Sermon 358.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Before the Conference of Carthage, Augustine says the Catholics welcome debate on the Church, whose cause does not depend on Caecilian, asks the people to stay away from the conference site and obey the tribune's edict, and to support the bishops by prayer, fasting, and alms.
Sermon 361.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine sums up his arguments for the resurrection from nature, from God's omnipotence, and from Christ's resurrection in the form of a servant, and turns the mockers' slogan into “Let us fast and pray, for tomorrow we shall die.”
Sermon 361.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Jonah's prophecy that Nineveh would be overthrown came true spiritually: the sinful city was overturned when its people repented in sackcloth and fasting.
Sermon 361.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The building of Noah's ark figures the present building of the Church by Christ; those who ignore it now are more culpable, and Christians should fast and pray so as to die secure, awaiting the Lord.
Sermon 390.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Alms, the companions of fasting, transfer goods to heaven, where Christ keeps them safe from thieves; the Lord, who made the building, gives the best advice on where to store one's treasure.
Commentary on Galatians 1.5John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains 'the present evil age' and the doxology of Gal 1:5, then treats the Galatians' swift desertion, the oneness of the four Gospels against the Marcionites, and the danger of small innovations in doctrine.
Commentary on Galatians 1.7John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom rebukes Christians who keep Jewish fasts and pagan omens, explains Paul's anathema on any other gospel even from an angel, and Paul's appeal to his sudden conversion from persecutor.
Commentary on Galatians 2.6John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Faith in Christ, not works of the law, justifies; Chrysostom warns Christians who fast and keep the sabbath with the Jews that partial observance commits them to the whole law and makes Christ a minister of sin.
Homily 12.1 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom applies Paul’s prophecy of apostasy to the Manichaeans, Encratites, and Marcionites who forbid marriage and foods, and teaches that every creature of God is good and is sanctified by the sign of the cross and thanksgiving, though food knowingly eaten as an idol offering defiles.
Homily 12.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains “being nourished on the words of the faith,” distinguishes urging virginity from forbidding marriage, explains the purpose of the Jewish food laws, and argues that wealth is not truly a good, since great riches are seldom gathered without injustice.
Homily 14.4 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom describes the monks' day of night prayer, psalms, Scripture reading, work, fasting, and simple meals, free of the cares of the world.
Homily 4.1 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom reconciles Paul’s ‘sparing’ them with the Spirit’s guidance, explains how Paul grieved and was gladdened by their grief, expounds his plea to forgive and restore the repentant offender lest Satan outwit them through excessive sorrow, and lists the true remedies of repentance beyond mere outward austerity.
Homily 12.2 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · This day of grace makes virtue easy; Paul commends his ministry by blameless endurance in every kind of hardship, by his own labors and purity, by the Holy Spirit and unfeigned love, using both honor and dishonor as weapons of righteousness.
Homily 12.4 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The apostles, seemingly dying, sorrowful, and poor, were in fact preserved, joyful, and rich in all things, as only the faithful can see; Christians should likewise rejoice in suffering, fasting, and almsgiving, and lament not their poverty but their smallness of soul.
Homily 6.1 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · On Titus 3:8–15, Chrysostom explains that Paul turns the doctrine of God's love into an exhortation to good works, warns against futile quarrels with incorrigible heretics, comments on the closing instructions, and argues that almsgiving benefits the giver more than the receiver and quenches sin more than virginity or fasting.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the precept on fasting: ostentation can lurk even in squalor, and anointing the head and washing the face mean inward joy and a pure heart.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine warns against false prophets and heretics, refutes the reading of the good and bad trees as two natures, identifies the fruits by which a tree is known with Paul’s works of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit, and notes that fasting, prayer, and alms can be counterfeited.
Letter 1.5Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · John the Baptist's hair garment and plant-tip food are the model of ascetic life; the weaker should follow their superior's direction.
Letter 1.52Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Abstaining from foods for training in virtue is blameless, but abstaining as the Manichees and Marcionites do, regarding God's creatures as evil, excludes one from the community.
Letter 1.69Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Against a drunkard: Scripture shows gluttony ruining Adam, Esau, Saul, Israel, Hophni and Phinehas, while fasting and abstinence saved Noah in the ark, the Ninevites, Daniel, John, and Paul.
Letter 1.129Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The monastic life is God's kingdom, from which a fall is hard to recover; two further letters say that gluttony and pride ruin discipline, and that Zacharias's dumbness signifies the silence of the law, from which the prophecies of Christ were born.
Letter 1.130Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · John's "locusts" were plant tips and his wild honey the bitter honey of wild bees, signs of his severe austerity.
Letter 1.244Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Montanist fasting is worthless without sound doctrine, which matters more than ascetic practice.
Letter 1.282Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The eagles gathering where the "fall" (carcass) is signifies the restoration to paradise, where humanity fell by eating, of those who rise by fasting and self-control.
Letter 1.403Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Perfection needs all the virtues, as a picture needs many colors; fasting from food is useless without fasting of the senses.
Letter 1.424Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · A monk should keep a balance between excessive fasting and overeating.
Letter 1.446Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Fasting from food while indulging in abuse is hypocrisy; a second letter shows that the Philip who baptized the eunuch was the deacon, not the apostle.
Letter 1.474Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Fasting with pride is worse than eating meat.
Letter 2.40Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The belly's tyranny is curbed by giving it what it needs and no more.
Letter 2.44Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Zosimus should give his money as alms since he cannot take it with him; ascetics should fast in measure lest they swing to excess.
Letter 2.278Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · A sudden glance that wounds can be healed by fasting and custody of the eyes; deliberate gazing is adultery in the heart.
Letter 3.157Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Repentance is no licence to sin: death may come first, healing is long and laborious, and scars remain.
Letter 3.400Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Knowing shame frees from shame; and (Letter 3.401) if even ascetics who fall once are not pardoned, how much less those who feed their lust with luxury.
Letter 4.136Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Two letters: the violent who seize the kingdom are those who master their bodies by asceticism; Christians should copy the dove's innocence but not its folly, like Ephraim's in seeking help from his enemies.
Against Jovinianus 1.18Jerome · 393 · Jerome argues that meat-eating, divorce, and circumcision were later concessions, and that Christ restores the order of the beginning, in which there was no divorce.
Against Jovinianus 2.5Jerome · 393 · Jerome sets out Jovinian's third proposition on food: everything was created for human use, and Christ and the apostles ate and drank.
Against Jovinianus 2.6Jerome · 393 · Jerome answers the argument from the uses of animals: many creatures serve medicine or the needs of laborers, but the Christian seeking perfection may abstain from meat and wine.
Against Jovinianus 2.7Jerome · 393 · Jerome argues that diets vary by nation and custom, not by a law of nature, and that Christians, reborn to God, should subdue the flesh.
Against Jovinianus 2.10Jerome · 393 · Jerome argues that reason must govern the senses and especially eating, and that simple food is healthier than rich food.
Against Jovinianus 2.11Jerome · 393 · Jerome cites physicians and philosophers (Hippocrates, Galen, Diogenes, Epicurus) for the health and freedom of a simple diet.
Against Jovinianus 2.12Jerome · 393 · Jerome notes that some recovered their health when forced into poverty, and introduces Horace on gluttony.
Against Jovinianus 2.13Jerome · 393 · Jerome cites Dicaearchus, Xenophon, and Chaeremon for the simple diet of the golden age, the Persians, the Spartans, and the Egyptian priests.
Against Jovinianus 2.14Jerome · 393 · Jerome cites Jewish, Persian, Indian, Greek, and Cynic examples of abstinence, especially Antisthenes and Diogenes.
Against Jovinianus 2.15Jerome · 393 · Jerome traces fasting through Scripture from Adam's fast in paradise to Moses, Elijah, Daniel, John the Baptist, Christ, and Paul.
Against Jovinianus 2.16Jerome · 393 · Jerome explains that Paul's condemnation of those who forbid foods is aimed at heretics who despise creation, and that Romans 14 concerns Jewish food laws, not fasting.
Against Jovinianus 2.17Jerome · 393 · Jerome answers the appeal to Christ's eating and drinking: Christ sanctified fasting, ate after the resurrection only to prove his body, and Scripture condemns gluttony and commands fasts.
Against Jovinianus 2.35Jerome · 393 · Jerome summarizes his answers to Jovinian's four propositions.
Against Jovinianus 2.37Jerome · 393 · Jerome traces Jovinian's teaching to old heresies, laments that it took root at Rome, and satirizes its message and followers.
Poem 6, lines 224–254Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · John goes into the wilderness, wearing camel's hair and living on honey and wild plants; his life recalls that of the first humans before pleasure and greed brought every evil.
Poem 24, lines 600–632Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · The boy should humble pride as David overcame Saul, and, like Samson breaking his bonds and slaying a thousand with a jawbone, should subdue the body by continence and fasting.
Letters 15.4Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus jokingly describes how Cardamas, once a drinker, kept the Lenten fasts and drank sparingly at Nola, and asks that a slave be provided for his sickly wife.
Letters 22.2Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus describes the monks he welcomes, rough-clothed and tonsured, and contrasts their fasting with the drunkenness and luxury of worldly men who despise them.
Letters 23.6Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus describes Victor’s cooking of plain monastic porridge of millet, beans and coarse meal, and compares it to the bread of Ezekiel.
Letters 26.1Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus greets a hermit living by a stream, of whom he has heard through Victor, and his brother, a deacon who supplies him with food like Elijah’s ravens.
Letters 26.2Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The two brothers serve each other, the hermit with prayer and fasting and the deacon with bodily food, which even Christ’s words show the flesh needs.
Letters 29.1Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus thanks Sulpicius for cloaks of camel’s hair, which recall Elijah, John, and David’s sackcloth, and teach that the soul’s garment is fasting from sin.
Letters 29.13Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus’s small guesthouse held Melania’s party; he describes her ascetic life and prays that she may remain unchanged amid Rome, like the exiles by the rivers of Babylon.
Letters 38.5Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The right response to detractors is the humility of sackcloth and fasting, and refutation by life rather than words.
Letters 44.7Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus asks prayer that God make his barren soul fruitful, through the dung of humility, like the fig tree spared by the farmer’s intercession.
Letters 50.13Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus asks Augustine to explain Col 2:21–23, puzzled that Paul ascribes a show of wisdom and humility to false teachers and that ‘not sparing the body’ sits beside ‘satisfying the flesh.’
Historia monachorum, chapter 1Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · John of Lycopolis: his prophecies to Theodosius and others, healings, and a long discourse to Rufinus’s party on boasting, purity of heart, and solitude, with stories of monks who fell or repented.
Historia monachorum, chapter 3Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Ammon and the Tabennesiot monks, who veil their faces at meals so that their abstinence stays hidden.
Historia monachorum, chapter 7Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Apollonius of Hermopolis: his call and victory over the demon of pride, his miracles among pagans and in famine, the Easter feast sent from God, and his teaching on joy, hospitality, daily communion and hidden fasting.
Historia monachorum, chapter 11Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Copres tells of Helenus, who carried fire unharmed, resisted craving, rode a wild ass and a crocodile, read hearts, and protected a disciple from demons; Copres then shows his garden planted in the desert.
Historia monachorum, chapter 12Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · The aged hermit Elijah near Antinoë, who had lived seventy years in a terrible desert cave and still healed the sick.
Historia monachorum, chapter 13Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Pithyrion, disciple of Antony and of Ammon, who taught that to cast out a vice’s demon one must first conquer that vice in oneself.
Historia monachorum, chapter 20Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Dioscorus, a presbyter who examined his monks before communion and taught when nocturnal emissions do or do not involve sin.
Historia monachorum, chapter 27Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Evagrius of Pontus, disciple of Macarius, master of the discernment of thoughts, who warned against drinking much water.
On Christian Doctrine 2.16Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Figurative signs require knowledge of languages (such as the meaning of Hebrew names) and of things, including the natures of animals, stones, and plants, and of numbers and music.
Life of Saint Martin 26Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Sulpicius says Martin's inner life of unceasing prayer, fasting, and patience is beyond words.
Confessions 10.43Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Eating and drinking are necessary, but their pleasure must be fought daily by fasting.
Confessions 10.46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · No food is unclean; what defiles is desire, as the examples of Scripture show.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defends the sabbath as a figure of eternal rest and ridicules the Manichaean elect, who refuse to pick fruit yet cut, cook, and chew it, and whose fasting halts the supposed freeing of divine light.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 8.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that catholics read the Old Testament in freedom as testimony, and turns the parable of the new patch against Manichaean fasting and myth.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus replies to the charge from 1 Timothy 4 that Manichaean abstinence is a doctrine of demons by pointing to the food laws of Moses.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus cites the abstinence of the three young men and Daniel’s fast as further cases the Catholic reading of 1 Timothy would condemn.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus points to Catholic ascetics who abstain from meat and to the Lenten fast as practices that 1 Timothy 4, read as Catholics read it, would also condemn.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that the charge of 1 Timothy 4 falls on the Manichaeans because they abstain from meat as evil by nature and blaspheme its Creator, unlike the patriarchs and Catholic ascetics.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Catholics praise virginity as better than good marriage, while the Manichaeans truly forbid marriage by condemning procreation, which also explains why they deny Christ’s birth.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 31.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that if “to the clean all things are clean” is Paul’s, then Moses, the prophets, Daniel, and the three young men were defiled in mind for observing food laws.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 31.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that no religion, including Catholic Christianity, holds that nothing is unclean, and so Titus 1:15 cannot be Paul’s.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 31.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus says that if Peter’s vision means all foods are clean, Catholics must eat serpents too, and Moses and the prophets stand condemned.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 31.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that “to the clean all things are clean” concerns the goodness of created natures, while the food laws concerned signification, and that nothing at all is clean to the Manichaeans.
Canon 29Anonymous · 397 · The eucharist is celebrated only fasting (except on Maundy Thursday); funeral commendations after a meal are made with prayers alone.
Canon 21.17Anonymous · ca. 397–400 · Anathema on those who condemn meat as accursed rather than abstaining from it for discipline.
Tractates 7Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · Against Marcion and Mani, who called the God of the Law evil, Gaudentius defends the law of unleavened bread as a memorial of the Exodus and reads the leaven as corrupting teaching and the bitter herbs as the self-denial of the Christian life.
Tractates 15Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · For the feast of the Maccabean martyrs: why Christians honour Jews who died rather than eat pork; the food laws taught continence and obedience, as the tree of paradise did, and the apostolic decree kept only abstinence from idol meats, blood, and sexual immorality.
Letters 2.12Sulpicius Severus · ca. 397–406 · Martin fulfilled a bloodless martyrdom through hardship, fasting, persecution, and care for others.
Letters 3.14Sulpicius Severus · ca. 397–406 · In his last fever Martin keeps praying, lying on ashes and sackcloth.
Homily 29.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom argues that luxury and overeating ruin health, beauty and pleasure itself, that only moderate food truly nourishes, and that a pampered body becomes a breeding ground for lust, citing Paul's command to make no provision for the flesh.
Homily 1.7 on the CreationSeverian of Gabala · ca. 400 · A closing exhortation on keeping the fast holy: fasting from food must go with fasting from injustice, anger, and sin, since God values righteousness above abstinence.
Homily 2.1 on the CreationSeverian of Gabala · ca. 400 · Opening the second homily, Severian praises the word of God as the soul's whetstone and fasting as the mother of a godly mind, and explains that God's wonders in Egypt proved him Creator before Moses taught the creation.
Homily 4.9 on the CreationSeverian of Gabala · ca. 400 · Closing the fourth homily, Severian explains the evening psalm's “incense” as prayer compounded of several virtues, calls self-control the sister of priesthood, gives fasting the wings of prayer and almsgiving, and warns that abstaining from food without abstaining from injustice is vain.
The Harmony of the Gospels 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The forty-day fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Christ, and Christ's forty days after the resurrection, show that forty signifies this life of labor and temptation.
The Harmony of the Gospels 2.62Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The question about fasting was raised by several people at once, including John's disciples, which explains the different speakers in the three Gospels.
The Harmony of the Gospels 2.63Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The sayings about the bridegroom's sons, mourning and fasting, and the new cloth and wine agree in sense, distinguishing a fast of sorrow from a fast of spiritual joy.
The Harmony of the Gospels 2.116Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The healing of the boy with an evil spirit is told by all three in the same order without conflict.
On the Work of Monks 29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Recluses who shut themselves in for days of prayer must store food, which birds do not do; the monks' literal reading would condemn even these admirable ascetics.
Homily 8, section 8Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · The silkworm's transformation is a natural pledge of the resurrection; in Lent the hearers should feast their souls on God's word rather than dice and idle talk.
Opusculum 2.181Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Ignorance of God's judgments makes one unstable in every circumstance.
Opusculum 2.191Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Self-control in sleep, food, and comfort breaks the heart and frees from evil.
Opusculum 5.5Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Good works must be pure; going one's own way without guidance makes ascetic labour fruitless.
Opusculum 5.7Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Nicolas should live for Christ, subdue youthful flesh by fasting and vigil, and be renewed in the image of God.
Opusculum 5.11Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Inner lust is adultery before God; the young should avoid women and live under experienced spiritual fathers.
Opusculum 6.28Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Ascetic practices are good but not the core; evil feigns retreat to breed conceit, so the Christian stays poor in spirit.
Opusculum 8.4Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · The spiritual law judges hidden things; forgiving those who wrong us is the greatest virtue and reveals baptismal grace.
Opusculum 9.1Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · The safer fast is bread by weight and water by measure, always rising hungry, since fullness breeds new desires.
Opusculum 9.2Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Food is not sin, but excess and excessive abstinence both harm; fasting must be sown with prayer.
Opusculum 9.3Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Fasting prepares the soil for prayer; practise it with discernment, dividing one's bread over the fast days.
Commentary on Daniel 1, scholion 17Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Polychronius argues that Daniel's abstention was not merely to avoid idol food but a deliberate fast and prayer, to show God's power to the Babylonians.
Commentary on Daniel 10, scholion 5Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Daniel's three weeks of mourning were an unbroken fast of twenty-one days.
Commentary on Daniel 10, scholion 6Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Daniel, though still a high official, gave up even the customary anointing.
Commentary on Daniel 10, scholion 7Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Polychronius argues that Daniel's fast ran through Passover and the days of unleavened bread, rebuking contemporary Jews.
Hymn 3, lines 161–203Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Christ, the dove and the Lamb, tames the beasts; the poet prays for temperance at table, affirms that the God-breathed soul does not die, and confesses the resurrection of the body after the pattern of Christ’s own return from the dead.
Hymn 4, lines 1–32Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · After the meal the tongue praises the Father, eternal Lord of the Cherubim and Seraphim, and the Spirit sent by Christ and the Father, who dwells in chaste hearts as a temple but flees from vice and gluttony.
Hymn 7, lines 1–32Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Fasting is a pure mystery that tames gluttony, lust and sloth and frees the mind to pray; Elijah grew strong by it in the desert before he was carried up in the fiery chariot.
Hymn 7, lines 33–64Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Moses fasted forty days before he saw God; John the Baptist, born of an aged mother and greeting the Virgin from the womb, prepared the way of the Lord and withdrew into the desert.
Hymn 7, lines 65–96Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey, preached the new salvation and baptized, the Spirit descending on the baptized; the poet then turns to Nineveh, which God was about to destroy for its pride and luxury.
Hymn 7, lines 129–160Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Cast up on shore, Jonah preached Nineveh’s destruction and waited on a hill under a sudden shade; the whole city, king and people, young and old, turned to fasting, sackcloth and ashes to appease Christ.
Hymn 7, lines 161–192Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Nineveh’s fast, even of infants and cattle, turned God’s anger to mercy; Jesus, Emmanuel, fasted forty days in the desert, freeing the flesh from pleasure, and repulsed the tempter who tested whether God was in him.
Hymn 7, lines 193–218Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Christians should follow Christ’s fasting so the spirit rules the appetite; fasting joined with almsgiving destroys sin, and he who gives in secret is repaid a hundredfold.
Hymn 8, lines 1–32Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · At the ninth hour the short fast ends; Christ, who himself bore hard labors, gives a gentle law and teaches that those who fast should not look gloomy, for God sees and rewards what is done in secret.
Hymn 8, lines 33–78Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Christ the Good Shepherd brings back the lost sheep to green pastures; no fasting can repay his gift, and since excessive abstinence breaks the body, the measure of fasting is left free to each, provided all is begun with God’s blessing.
Hymn 6, lines 33–64Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The judge Aemilian orders Fructuosus to worship the emperor’s gods; the bishop confesses the eternal God and Christ, and is sentenced to the fire; on the way he refuses a drink because he is keeping the fast until the ninth hour, as Christ refused the cup on the cross.
Letter 25, chapter 4Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Saturday must be a fast day each week, like Friday, because the apostles mourned on both days before the joy of the resurrection.
Dialogues 1.4Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · The old man in the hut welcomes the travelers, prays with them, and feeds five men on half a barley loaf and herbs; Gallus jokes about Gallic appetites.
Dialogues 1.11Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · The hermit refuses food after the boys’ punishment, and after eight days the abbot finds warm heavenly bread hanging at his door.
Dialogues 1.16Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · An anchorite near Syene, poisoned by desert roots, learns from an ibex which plants are safe; Postumianus spent about nineteen months in the desert.
Dialogues 2.5Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Valentinian I, influenced by his Arian wife, refused to see Martin; after fasting and prayer Martin entered the palace, and fire under the throne forced the emperor to rise and grant his requests.
Dialogues 3.14Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Martin’s power returns: a possessed man is healed at the gate; a pagan merchant saved at sea by calling on Martin’s God; a household plague ended after seven days of prayer; a monk’s indecency perceived from afar.
1 Corinthians 6:12Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Gluttony, though lawful in itself, leads to sexual immorality.
1 Corinthians 9:25Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Athletes abstain from foods that would slow them.
1 Corinthians 9:27Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Paul disciplines his body by fasting and hardship, lest he fail to practise what he preaches.
1 Timothy 4:5Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · All God's creation is good; Timothy is to be a moderate, studious, and exemplary bishop; true widows are like Anna.
1 Timothy 5:23Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Timothy should take a little wine, putting teaching before abstinence; created remedies may heal.
2 Corinthians 6:5Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Fasts are numbered among the virtues.
2 Corinthians 11:27Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Hunger is forced, fasting chosen.
Ephesians 4:7Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Each receives grace according to Christ's gift and the capacity he prepares in himself.
Philippians 3:18Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The enemies of the cross are those who trust in the law's ceremonies, or the Jovinianists who rejected fasting.
Romans 14:2Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The weak are abstainers who eat only vegetables, not Jews keeping food laws.
Romans 14:3Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Eaters and abstainers must neither despise nor judge each other.
Romans 14:4Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · One must not judge where the law does not; God can sustain the abstainer as he did Daniel's companions.
Romans 14:5Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Fasting has no fixed legal measure; each does as he can and judges best.
Romans 14:6Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Both eating and fasting are to be done for God and the salvation of others.
Romans 14:10Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Neither judge nor despise a brother, and do not grieve him by eating.
Romans 14:17Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · God's kingdom is righteousness, peace, and joy, more easily kept by abstinence.
Romans 14:19Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Pursue peace; abstinence builds up others.
Romans 14:21Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Abstaining from meat and wine protects the weak, especially in chastity.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 12.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine urges watchfulness and daily confession even of small sins, which if neglected sink the soul like water seeping into a ship.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The number forty, hallowed by the fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Christ, signifies the perfection of good works in abstaining from worldly desires; with the reward of the denarius (ten) it becomes fifty, the joy of Eastertide.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Forty signifies the fulfillment of the law, which love fulfills in its two commandments; so the man sick for thirty-eight years, two short of forty, lacked the twofold love.
Against Vigilantius 12Jerome · 406 · Jerome confesses his own fear of entering the martyrs' shrines with a troubled conscience and defends the faith of devout women.
Dialogue 11Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 408 · John's last exile and death at Comana, and, in what the printed editions number chapter 12, the bishop's defence of John's habit of eating alone, arguing from Scripture that teaching, not entertaining, is a bishop's work.
Commentary on Isaiah 2, Tome 5, part 5Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · When God called Jerusalem to mourning and repentance, the people instead feasted in despair, saying “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”; the faithful should instead fast and weep, as Joel teaches (Isa 22:12–14).
Commentary on Isaiah 5, Tome 3, part 19Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Under threat of war the Jews fasted and prayed, thinking abstinence alone would justify them while they lived in sin; God rejects such fasting, for though fasting, prayer, and humility are precious, he does not accept a fast in which people pursue their own wills.
Commentary on Isaiah 5, Tome 3, part 20Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Israel's fasts were spoiled by quarrels, oppression, and injustice; a fast acceptable to God comes from a pure conscience and is joined to good works, whereas fasting without them is beating the air.
Commentary on Isaiah 5, Tome 3, part 21Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · The true fast is to release the oppressed, cancel unjust debts and contracts, and do works of love by feeding the hungry, sheltering the poor, clothing the naked, and caring for one's kin; avoiding evil is not enough, and the law forbade evil while Christ's commands perfect the good.
Commentary on Isaiah 5, Tome 4, part 1Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · God answers at once those who fast purely and give to the poor: their light breaks forth early, healing and righteousness go before them, and God says “Here I am” while they are still praying (Isa 58:8–9).
Commentary on Isaiah 5, Tome 4, part 8Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Israel fasted for show while practising injustice, and its sins, above all the shedding of blood and the condemnation of Christ, stood between it and God, not any weakness in God's hand (Isa 58:2–5; 59:1–6).
Commentary on Luke 4:2Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Christ fasted not from need but to give a pattern to those who live in the desert, showing that self-control and fasting defeat Satan; his hunger after forty days shows him one and the same, God and man.
Commentary on Luke 4:3Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Satan used Christ’s hunger to test whether he was the Christ; Christ neither performed nor denied the miracle, and in him human nature, conquered through eating in Adam, conquered through self-control; the soul lives by God’s word.
Commentary on Luke 5:30Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The Pharisees, who reject repentance, grumbled at Christ eating with sinners, but he came as physician, not judge; they also attacked the disciples for not fasting, though they themselves did not know God’s fast, and Christ, free of passion, fasted only to give us a pattern.
Commentary on Luke 5:34Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Christ’s coming is a wedding feast uniting human nature to him as bride; his disciples are sons of the bridechamber who fast after the Bridegroom is taken up.
Commentary on Luke 22:1 (part 2)Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The law gave the truth in shadows; now Christ, the truth, shows the reality; the Jews keep unleavened bread literally, but Christians keep the feast spiritually by putting away wickedness as leaven and fasting from evil, so as to recline with Christ in the heavenly Jerusalem.
On the Good of Widowhood 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 414 · Widows should replace carnal pleasures with reading, prayer, psalms, almsgiving, fasting, and vigils, and beware lest suppressed desire turn into avarice.
Commentary on Jeremiah 3.33Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Fasting, prayers and sacrifices avail only with repentance; for those set on persisting in sin, intercession is useless.
On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Our righteousness on pilgrimage is the course of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer toward perfect righteousness; because we still fall short, we rightly pray “forgive us our debts.”
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.36.5Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Mascezel takes monks with him and prays.
The Institutes 2.17John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The monk who wakes the community must watch the stars for the right hour; on Sundays and in Eastertide the Egyptians neither kneel nor fast.
The Institutes 3.9John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The Saturday vigil commemorates the disciples' watch after the crucifixion; in the East the fast is relaxed on Saturday as well as Sunday.
The Institutes 3.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The Roman custom of fasting on Saturday, based on Peter's fast before his contest with Simon Magus, arose from a single necessity, not a rule.
The Institutes 3.12John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The extra supper allowed on Saturdays, Sundays, and feasts is optional and is begun and ended with a simple prayer instead of psalms.
The Institutes 4.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian passes over the Egyptians' extreme diet, unsuited to Gaul, and keeps to practices possible anywhere.
The Institutes 4.18John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Monks eat nothing outside the common meal and will not even touch fallen fruit in the orchards.
The Institutes 4.22John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · In Egypt, to save working time, one experienced brother runs the kitchen permanently; the food is mostly dry or raw.
The Institutes 5.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The first struggle is against gluttony; Cassian turns to Egyptian practice on fasting and food.
The Institutes 5.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Fasting cannot follow one rule for all bodies, but all share one aim: never to eat to fullness.
The Institutes 5.6John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Overeating even plain food breeds lust, as the sin of Sodom shows; how much more meat and wine taken freely.
The Institutes 5.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The sick may eat richer food and still keep purity, if they take only what need, not pleasure, requires.
The Institutes 5.8John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · True fasting is to stop eating while still hungry; Paul forbids indulging the flesh, not caring for it.
The Institutes 5.9John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Moderate daily eating is better than long fasts followed by excess, which weaken the mind and prayer.
The Institutes 5.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Fasting alone is insufficient; humility, poverty, and victory over anger, dejection, vainglory, pride, and wandering thoughts must accompany it.
The Institutes 5.14John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Gluttony is overcome by fasting, vigils, reading, and compunction, until food is taken only as a burdensome necessity and the mind is fixed on heavenly things.
The Institutes 5.18John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul's boxing against his own body means fasting; having won it, he turned to fight the spiritual powers in the air.
The Institutes 5.20John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The monk must never eat outside mealtimes, for one who cannot master small visible desires cannot master hidden ones.
The Institutes 5.21John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Bodily fasting profits only if the soul also fasts from detraction, anger, envy, vainglory, and wandering desires.
The Institutes 5.22John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Fasting aims at purity of heart; it is worse to devour one's brothers by detraction, anger, and envy than to eat permitted food.
The Institutes 5.23John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Gluttony has three forms; monks should eat plain common food such as bread, hide their fasting, and set it aside for the sake of guests.
The Institutes 5.24John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Egyptian elders broke their fasts to welcome Cassian and his companion, saying that love for Christ in the guest outweighs voluntary fasting.
The Institutes 5.25John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · An elder who had eaten six times with arriving guests out of hospitality urged Cassian to eat more.
The Institutes 5.26John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · A hermit never ate alone but waited up to five days for a guest; the monks make up by stricter fasting for meals shared with visitors.
The Institutes 5.27John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paesius said the sun had never seen him eat; John replied that it had never seen him angry.
The Institutes 5.35John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Theodore rebuked the young Cassian for sleeping after the evening office; Cassian turns to Archebius's charity, since fasting pleases God only with love.
The Institutes 5.41John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Macarius taught that a monk should fast as if he would live a hundred years and bear injuries as if he would die today.
The Institutes 6.23John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Moderate and even fasting, humility, freedom from anger, and night vigils protect against nocturnal illusions.
Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 2.1.9Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Joel calls priests and people to a sanctified fast and lament; Julian distinguishes voluntary fasting from the hunger of famine, explains the ‘day of the Lord’ and the burning of the wilderness as the locust plague, and notes that even the beasts look to God for food.
Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 2.2.4Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · God calls the people to return with fasting and a torn heart rather than torn garments, since he is merciful and may relent and leave enough for the offerings to continue.
Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 2.2.5Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Joel orders a solemn fast of the whole people and the priests’ prayer ‘Spare your people,’ and promises that their prayers will be heard.
Lausiac History, Prologue and letter to LaususPalladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Palladius dedicates the book to Lausus, explains its purpose and plain style, and urges moderation, reasoned use of food and wine, and the company of holy men and women.
Lausiac History 18Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Macarius of Alexandria, presbyter of the Cells, outdoes every ascetic feat he hears of, visits the tomb of Jannes and Jambres, astonishes Pachomius's monks, heals the sick and possessed, and resists vainglory.
Lausiac History 19Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Moses the Ethiopian, a former slave and robber chief, repents, overcomes long sexual temptation through severe asceticism and Isidore's help, and becomes a presbyter of Scetis.
Lausiac History 20Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Paul of Pherme counts three hundred prayers a day with pebbles; distressed that a virgin says seven hundred, he is told by Macarius that purity, not number, matters.
Lausiac History 32Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Palladius describes Pachomius's monasteries at Tabennesi: the angel's bronze tablet of rules, the twenty-four lettered classes, prayers, meals, crafts, and numbers.
Lausiac History 43Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Adolius of Tarsus stands all night on the Mount of Olives in all weathers, then wakes the brothers for prayer.
Lausiac History 45Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Philoromus of Galatia, son of a slave woman, defies Julian, conquers his passions by enclosure and abstinence, earns his own bread by copying, and makes pilgrimages to Rome, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.
Lausiac History 48Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Elpidius the Cappadocian lives twenty-five years in a cave near Jericho, eating only at weekends, unmoved by a scorpion's sting, gathering a city of monks around him.
Lausiac History 57Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Candida, daughter of a general, dedicates her daughter to virginity and subdues her body by night grinding; Gelasia never lets the sun set on her grievance.
Lausiac History 69Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · A fallen virgin repents so deeply that after her child's death she serves sick and crippled women for thirty years, and God declares her repentance more pleasing than her virginity.
Life of Porphyry 10Marcus the Deacon · ca. 420-430 · Bishop Praylius of Jerusalem ordains Porphyry presbyter and makes him keeper of the relic of the cross; Porphyry keeps his ascetic rule.
Life of Porphyry 24Marcus the Deacon · ca. 420-430 · Porphyry's night vigil and procession bring rain after the pagans' prayers to Marnas failed; many pagans believe; Barochas is beaten nearly to death by a pagan farmer and recovers.
Life of Porphyry 63Marcus the Deacon · ca. 420-430 · Cynegius arrives with troops; the eight public temples of Gaza except the barricaded Marneion are destroyed, and a child's oracle in Syriac directs how the Marneion is to be burned and a church built.
Life of Porphyry 76Marcus the Deacon · ca. 420-430 · The sacred marble of the Marneion is laid as street paving; Porphyry calls the people to dig the foundations.
Life of Porphyry 90Marcus the Deacon · ca. 420-430 · Julia is struck dumb and dies, and her followers return to the church; the cross-shaped Eudoxiana is dedicated at Easter, and Porphyry provides daily alms for the poor.
Life of Porphyry 102Marcus the Deacon · ca. 420-430 · Salaphtha becomes a consecrated virgin under the deaconess Manaris and lives a life of extreme fasting.
Discourse 7.28Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Isaiah shows the sacrificial law was a concession.
Discourse 9.62Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Paul allows abstinence for prayer only for a time, lest Satan tempt.
Sermon 2Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus treats the prodigal's coming to himself, his resolve to return and confess, and applies it to his hearers: fasting frees the mind, and the devil makes sinners feed the pigs of vice.
Sermon 7Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus warns against hypocrisy, which turns fasting into vanity, urges hidden fasting joined to almsgiving, and calls his hearers to store treasure in heaven by giving to the poor.
Sermon 8Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · At the start of Lent Chrysologus compares the fast to a sea voyage and insists that fasting without almsgiving and mercy is barren, since mercy pleads for sinners at God's judgment.
Sermon 11Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus teaches that evil comes from the devil, not from nature or creation, and expounds Christ's Lenten fast and first temptation as a victory that disarms the tempter for Christians.
Sermon 12Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus calls Christians at the start of Lent to the spiritual warfare of fasting, lists biblical examples of fasting against gluttony and drunkenness, and shows how Christ's fast unmasked the devil.
Sermon 13Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus presents Lent as the Christian soldier's combat, explains each temptation of Christ as the devil's attempt to test whether he was God, and warns that the devil turns from gluttony to strife and greed in Lent.
Sermon 31Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On the question about fasting (Matt 9:14–17), Chrysologus describes the hostility of Christ's opponents, explains that the disciples could not fast while the bridegroom was betrothing the Church, and reads the patch and wineskins as the incompatibility of the old observance with the Gospel.
Sermon 41Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus describes human frailty as a fever that drives to excess, prescribes fasting as the first medicine, and insists that fasting needs the ointment of mercy and almsgiving, by which God sells his kingdom for a crust of bread.
Sermon 42Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus compares fasting without mercy to a field without seed and a palace without a king, surveys how God's mercy alone has sustained a sinful world, and urges hospitality and almsgiving so that Christ the judge becomes a debtor.
Sermon 43Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · In a famous plain-spoken sermon, Chrysologus teaches that prayer, fasting, and mercy are three in one, each giving life to the others, illustrates their power from Moses, Elijah, and John, rebukes neglect of morning prayer in church, and insists that fasting bears fruit only when watered by mercy.
Sermon 107Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · A short sermon in praise of Bishop Peter of Ravenna, whose name, asceticism and teaching are compared to those of the apostle Peter.
Sermon 108Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Rom 12:1, Chrysologus explains why Paul appeals “by the mercy of God,” imagines Christ pleading from the cross, and describes the Christian as both priest and living victim who offers the virtues to God.
Sermon 119Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On 1 Cor 9:24–25, the preacher compares the Christian life to a race in which Jews, philosophers and heretics run in vain and only the catholic people win the crown, and urges the self-discipline of athletes in the struggle against the vices.
Sermon 166Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On the eve of Lent, Chrysologus explains the mystery of the number forty, from the flood, the manna, the spies, Moses, Elijah and Ezekiel to Christ's fast, and urges an even, moderate fast without novel excesses, with almsgiving for those who cannot fast.
Sermon 167Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · In Lent Chrysologus presents John the Baptist as the teacher of repentance (Matt 3:1–4): the nearness of the kingdom in an aging world calls for swift repentance as medicine for sin, and John's camel's hair, locusts and honey are read as figures of penitence and mercy.
10.12Philostorgius · ca. 425-433 · Philostorgius on the Wednesday and Friday fast, kept without food until evening, illustrated by the presbyter Eudoxius.
Book 2, section 14Sedulius · ca. 425-450 · Sedulius expounds Christ's three temptations: the devil, unsure whether Jesus was the Son of God, tempts him to make bread, to worship him for the world's kingdoms, and to throw himself from the temple, and Christ, answering as man from Scripture, defeats him.
The Conferences 1.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Fasting, vigils, reading, and poverty are only instruments of perfection; they serve purity of heart, which is love, and must never be kept at the cost of anger or contempt for a brother.
The Conferences 1.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Moses answers that the reward of good works remains, but the works themselves, which exist because of bodily need and human inequality, will cease, while love and contemplation continue for ever.
The Conferences 1.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The devil deceived Abba John of Lycus into an excessive fast; every proposed action must be weighed against the acts and testimonies of the prophets and apostles.
The Conferences 2.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · At a night-long gathering of elders, Antony concludes that discernment, the eye of the soul that keeps the royal road between extremes, is the virtue that most surely leads to God.
The Conferences 2.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The old monk Hero, after fifty years of rigorous solitude, trusted his own judgment, took a demon for an angel, and died after throwing himself into a well.
The Conferences 2.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Two brothers vowed to eat only what God himself gave; when savage tribesmen offered bread, one accepted it as God's gift and lived, while the other refused and starved.
The Conferences 2.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Humility gives discernment, which keeps the monk between the equal dangers of excessive fasting and gluttony, or excessive vigils and sleep.
The Conferences 2.17John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Moses recalls being endangered more by aversion to food and sleep than by desire for them; both must be taken at the proper time, since excessive self-denial is the more ruinous error.
The Conferences 2.18John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus asks what the right measure of abstinence is.
The Conferences 2.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The elders judged the best measure of food to be bread alone, two small biscuits weighing about a pound a day.
The Conferences 2.20John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Cassian and Germanus think the measure too generous, since they could not eat it all.
The Conferences 2.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Kept strictly, without extra cooked food even on weekends or for guests, the two-biscuit rule proves hard, as the elders found.
The Conferences 2.22John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The general rule is to eat what the body needs, not what appetite wants; alternating between fasting and overeating harms prayer and chastity.
The Conferences 2.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Moderate daily eating keeps the body from nocturnal emissions except rarely, and keeps soul and body balanced between fasting and satiety.
The Conferences 2.24John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Benjamin, who fasted two days at a time so as to eat his fill, trusted his own judgment and ended by leaving the desert for worldly philosophy.
The Conferences 2.25John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus asks how the fixed measure can be kept when guests arrive after the meal.
The Conferences 2.26John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Moses advises keeping one biscuit for the evening to share with any visitor, so that both abstinence and hospitality are kept; Cassian closes the first two conferences.
The Conferences 4.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Our lukewarm will wants virtue without pain; the opposing pulls of flesh and spirit check each other, forcing us into the laborious middle way of real virtue, as the confusion of tongues at Babel checked a harmful unity.
The Conferences 5.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Gluttony and lust, rooted in the body, need bodily discipline and withdrawal as well as care of the soul; the spiritual vices are cured by the heart alone and are even exposed and healed by living among others.
The Conferences 5.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Serapion lists the kinds of each vice: three of gluttony, three of sexual immorality (intercourse, self-abuse, lustful thought), three of love of money, three of anger, two of sadness, two of acedia, and two of vainglory.
The Conferences 5.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Vainglory can usefully restrain beginners from lust, and it can sustain great fasts, as Macarius observed, but it holds its captive more firmly; pride is fleshly or spiritual, the latter attacking the advanced.
The Conferences 5.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Each monk should find his dominant vice and fight it first with fasting, prayer, and tears, relying on God, then move to the next, like a beast-fighter who kills the strongest first.
The Conferences 5.18John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The eighth vice, gluttony, is Egypt, already left behind by the monk; the seven nations are the remaining vices, and fasting must be moderate so as not to drive the monk back to Egypt.
The Conferences 5.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Unlike the other vices, the appetite for food cannot be destroyed, only restrained, as Israel was told not to abhor the Egyptian; the other seven vices must be wholly rooted out.
The Conferences 5.20John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Like an eagle that must descend from the heights to feed on carrion, even the most spiritual monk must eat; gluttony can only be restrained, not destroyed.
The Conferences 5.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · An elder puzzled philosophers with a riddle about a creditor who can never be paid off, meaning the belly, and they recognized him as a true moral philosopher.
The Conferences 5.25John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The unclean spirit that returns with seven worse spirits, and Proverbs' enemy with seven wickednesses, signify gluttony and the seven vices that follow if the monk relaxes after overcoming it.
The Conferences 5.26John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · After overcoming gluttony, the monk must fill his soul with virtues, since fasting alone does not bring purity but only prepares for the struggle against the graver vices.
The Conferences 7.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · After long prayer, Serenus received from an angel in a vision the removal of all bodily sexual stirring; Cassian and Germanus visit him in Lent and complain about their wandering thoughts.
The Conferences 8.1John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · After the Sunday liturgy, Serenus serves a festive monastic meal, with a drop of oil taken to humble pride in abstinence, and invites their question.
The Conferences 12.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Ascetic labors are necessary but cannot by their own merit produce lasting chastity, which is God’s gift; the monk must desire it passionately, credit it to God’s protection, and guard it by humble prayer.
The Conferences 12.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon prescribes withdrawal from idle talk and anger, two small loaves a day, limited water, and three or four hours’ sleep, with trust in God’s mercy rather than one’s own effort, and says that within six months one will know chastity is possible.
The Conferences 13.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon argues that nothing concerning salvation, least of all chastity and its ascetic means, can be accomplished without God’s help, which gives both the desire and the power and opportunity to carry it out.
The Conferences 16.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Some monks fast for days out of anger, which is sacrilege, like sacrificing to demons rather than to God.
The Conferences 17.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph raises everyday cases: whether a monk should conceal his fast from a visiting brother, and whether he should refuse a drink offered in love.
The Conferences 17.22John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus agrees that a fast may be concealed but says a monk need not lie in refusing hospitality.
The Conferences 17.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph replies that the Egyptian elders held it better to yield to others and to conceal abstinence by a humble lie than to parade it by the truth.
The Conferences 17.24John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph cites Abba Piamun, who broke his abstinence rather than reveal it, and elders who told their own deeds as others', like Paul in 2 Corinthians 12.
The Conferences 17.28John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph distinguishes the principal commandments, to be kept at the cost of death, from ascetic practices, which may be relaxed for a better reason.
The Conferences 19.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · John tells how in the desert he was often so rapt in contemplation that he forgot whether he had eaten, so that monks counted out a week’s loaves to keep track of the days.
The Conferences 19.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · John lists the cares and luxuries that have crept into the desert and says the coenobium gives him freedom from care, quiet of heart, and the obedience of Christ.
The Conferences 19.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · John prescribes that the solitary rehearse imagined insults to train patience, rebuke himself sharply when any disturbance is revealed, and hold that anger is never lawful.
The Conferences 20.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Pinufius lists the many means of forgiveness after baptism and martyrdom, among them love, almsgiving, tears, confession, affliction, amendment, the prayers of the saints, converting others, forgiving others, and above all God’s mercy, and urges mortification.
The Conferences 21.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Cassian and Germanus ask Theonas why Egyptian monks do not kneel or fast until the ninth hour during the fifty days after Easter.
The Conferences 21.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas begins by saying that the fathers’ customs deserve obedience even unexplained, and that, as Ecclesiastes teaches, things neither good nor bad in themselves are good or bad according to their time and use.
The Conferences 21.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas argues that fasting cannot be a good in itself like the virtues, since then eating would be evil, which Scripture denies.
The Conferences 21.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Fasting is intermediate, like marriage or vigils: good in its right time and manner, but wrong when it shuts out hospitality, harms health, ignores festivals, or seeks praise, as Isaiah 58 shows.
The Conferences 21.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Fasting serves the virtues, especially love, as tools serve an art, and is worthless when kept for its own sake.
The Conferences 21.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas gives the marks of a principal good and shows that fasting has none of them, since it serves purity of heart, can be harmful out of season, and its opposite, eating, is not evil.
The Conferences 21.17John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Because fasting has set times, manner, and measure, it is intermediate, whereas commanded virtues and forbidden vices admit no exceptions of time.
The Conferences 21.18John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Christ’s answer that the bridegroom’s friends cannot fast while he is with them shows that fasting is not always fitting, and applies especially to the forty days after the resurrection.
The Conferences 21.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus asks why the fast is relaxed for fifty days when Christ remained only forty days after the resurrection.
The Conferences 21.20John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas explains that the ten days between Ascension and Pentecost complete the fifty days foreshadowed by the Feast of Weeks, and that like Sundays they exclude fasting and kneeling as signs of mourning.
The Conferences 21.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus fears that fifty days of relaxed fasting will rekindle the passions, especially in the young.
The Conferences 21.22John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas answers that conscience, weighing body and soul fairly, will prevent the festive relaxation from harming chastity, and warns against unjust weights: excessive rigor, stinting God, and demanding more of others or showing more to them than one practices.
The Conferences 21.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · During the fifty days the only relaxation should be taking the meal at the sixth hour instead of the ninth, with no change in the amount or kind of food, so that chastity won in Lent is not lost.
The Conferences 21.24John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus asks why Lent lasts six weeks when, without Saturdays and Sundays, that makes thirty-six fast days, not forty.
The Conferences 21.25John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas explains that Lent is a tithe of the year: thirty-six and a half fast days, reckoned from seven weeks without Saturdays and Sundays, plus the Easter vigil and its night.
The Conferences 21.27John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Six-week and seven-week Lents give the same thirty-six fast days, since those who keep six weeks also fast on Saturdays.
The Conferences 21.28John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas suggests Lent is called Quadragesima from the forty-day fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Christ, or from the name of a tax, and notes that demons attack monks especially then, like Pharaoh oppressing Israel.
The Conferences 21.29John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The Lenten fast was set by church leaders for those absorbed in worldly life; the perfect, who give God all their time, are not bound by it and may relax it for a holy reason.
The Conferences 21.30John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Lent did not exist in the first church, which fasted all year; it was imposed later on lax believers as a kind of tithe, while the perfect live beyond it under grace.
The Conferences 21.35John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus asks why bodily struggles and nocturnal emissions sometimes grow worse during strict fasting, leaving monks ashamed to pray.
The Conferences 22.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas gives three causes of nocturnal emissions: past overeating, a slothful mind still harboring passions, and the devil’s attempt to keep monks from communion, and warns that gluttony breeds the other vices.
The Conferences 22.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas tells of a chaste brother whose emissions came only before communion; the elders judged it the devil’s work and bade him communicate, and the trouble ceased; he then urges moderation in food and the inner purity of the true virgin and eunuch for Christ.
The Conferences 24.18John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus adds that visits from brothers break their silence and fasting, which would not happen at home where there are few monks.
The Conferences 24.20John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The relaxation that visitors bring is useful, preventing both lukewarmness and bodily illness and renewing the desire for solitude.
In Praise of the Desert 32Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · Monks practise the true philosophy in the desert, where Moses, Elijah and Christ fasted forty days.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 8Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus is converted to the ascetic life, changing his dress and appearance; his father's opposition fails, for he loves God first.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 18Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus watched over each monk's needs, health, and quarrels with fatherly care, lightening the yoke of Christ for all.
Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 37Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus's life itself was a continual sign, though he avoided miracles; a martyr in peace, worn by a daily cross, he bore the fruits of the Spirit and ascribed all his good to God.
To the Church 1.49Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · A man at death’s door has no time for the fasts and penances that would make satisfaction.
To the Church 2.20Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The gospel demands more than the law: abstinence, fasting, patience, love, purity of the eyes, and continence.
To the Church 4.29Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Chastity, sobriety, and fasting do not save the greedy, who are condemned for lack of mercy.
To the Church 4.30Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Fasting to enrich an heir is worthless.
To the Church 4.31Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Ironically, the faster’s only proof at judgment is his heirs’ wealth.
On 1 Cor 7:7.4Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Theodoret explains that husband and wife, being one flesh, have authority over each other's bodies, and that abstinence must be by agreement, for a time, for fasting and prayer.
Psalm 34:13Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 35:13: David met his troubles with sackcloth, fasting, and prayer, and received what he asked.
Psalm 68:11–12Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 69:10-11: the exiles' fasting and sackcloth became a cause of mockery.
Psalm 108:24Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 109:24: Christ lived austerely, as the barley loaves and the plucked grain show.
Psalm 118:83Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:83: as a wineskin stiffens in frost, the body is subdued by ascetic hardship, as Paul says; David, harmed by the ease of peace, humbled his body and renewed his obedience.
On the Governance of God 1.9Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Hardships are light to those who choose them, and the religious have what they want.
On the Governance of God 1.14Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The holy are weak because they fast and discipline the body, following Paul.
On the Governance of God 2.19Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Despite David’s deep penance, he did not escape punishment.
On the Governance of God 4.88Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Despite David’s penance and prayers, his child died.
Church History 1.37Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Arius, summoned to Constantinople, is to be received into communion; bishop Alexander of Constantinople prays in the church of Irene that God decide between his faith and Arius’s.
Church History 2.28Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Socrates quotes Athanasius on the violence of George’s party at Alexandria; Constantius deposes Vetranio peacefully, makes Gallus Caesar, and a cross appears in the sky at Antioch.
Church History 2.43Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Eustathius of Sebastia, previously deposed, is later condemned at Gangra for forbidding marriage and separating married couples; Eudoxius becomes bishop of Constantinople and jests at the dedication of the Great Church.
Church History 4.23Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Socrates digresses on the Egyptian monks: Amoun's chaste marriage, sayings of Pambo and others, the two Macarii, Evagrius's writings with excerpts from his Practical Life and Gnostic, and Ammonius who cut off his ear to avoid becoming a bishop.
Church History 5.19Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Nectarius abolishes the office of penitentiary presbyter at Constantinople after a woman's confession exposes a deacon's sin; Socrates doubts the wisdom of the change.
Church History 5.22Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Socrates digresses on the diversity of church customs: the date of Easter, the Lenten fast, Saturday and Sunday assemblies, clerical continence, baptism, and other local usages, arguing that such things rest on custom, not apostolic law.
Church History 7.8Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Maruthas of Mesopotamia, as Roman envoy, wins the favour of the Persian king Yazdegerd I by exposing the magi's tricks and healing his son, and Christianity spreads in Persia.
Church History 7.17Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · The ascetic Novatian bishop Paul tries to baptize a Jewish impostor who had been baptized many times for money, and the water of the font twice vanishes.
Church History 7.22Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Socrates praises Theodosius II's piety, fasting, learning, forbearance and refusal to execute, and his turning a stormy day at the hippodrome into common prayer.
Church History 7.30Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · The Burgundians, harassed by the Huns, are baptized after a week's fast and defeat a much larger Hunnic force; Barbas, the Arian bishop, dies in 430.
Church History 1.11Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Stories of Spyridon of Trimythus: the bound sheep-thieves, the deposit recovered from his dead daughter, the dishonest borrower, his rebuke of Triphyllius for altering a Gospel word, and his eating with a guest in Lent.
Church History 1.12Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Sozomen describes the monastic philosophy, its virtues and its origins, which some trace to Elijah and John the Baptist, others to the community Philo describes by Lake Mareotis, and others to flight in persecution.
Church History 1.13Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Antony, the great monk, his disciplines, teaching and fame, and his disciple Paul the Simple, who left his adulterous wife and became stronger than his master against demons.
Church History 2.7Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · A Christian captive woman heals a child and the queen of the Iberians; the king, rescued from darkness while hunting, accepts Christ; a column of their first church is miraculously raised, and they ask Constantine for priests.
Church History 3.14Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · A survey of the monks of Constantius's reign: the two Macarii and other Egyptian ascetics, Pachomius and his rule, Hilarion in Palestine, Julian near Edessa, Eustathius of Sebaste and the excesses condemned at Gangra, Martin in the West, and the learned bishops of the time.
Church History 3.16Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Ephrem the Syrian, whose writings keep their power in Greek translation, counters the heretical hymns of Harmonius with orthodox hymns to the same melodies; anecdotes of his chastity, meekness and humility, and of his famine relief at Edessa.
Church History 6.29Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Sozomen continues with the monks of Egypt: Apollo, Dorotheus, Piammon and John, Benjamin, Mark, Macarius the younger, Apollonius, Moses the Ethiopian, Paul of Pherme, Pachon, Stephen, Moses the Libyan and Pior.
Church History 6.33Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · The monks of Mesopotamia and Syria: the “Grazers” of Mount Sigoron near Nisibis, Eusebius the recluse and the bishops Vitus and Protogenes at Carrhae, and Aones at Phadana, pioneer of Syrian anchoritism.
Church History 6.34Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Monks of Edessa (Julian, Ephraem, Barses, Eulogius) and of Syria, their austerities and long lives spreading the faith among Syrians, Persians and Saracens; and the communal monks of Galatia and Cappadocia, including Prapidius, head of Basil’s Basileias.
Church History 7.19Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Sozomen lists differences of church custom: the Paschal dispute settled by Victor and Polycarp, bishops in villages, seven deacons at Rome, the Alleluia, preaching, Gospel reading, the length of Lent, Saturday assemblies, and the reading of the Apocalypses of Peter and Paul.
Part 1, chapter 7Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The ark prefigures the Church and the cross: its measures, built from the numbers five and six, stand for hope, love, and patience, its three decks for faith, hope, and love, and its one cubit for unity and perfection.
Part 2, chapter 2Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The tabernacle and its materials, measures, curtains, columns, ark, table, lamp, and courts figure the Church, its martyrs, teachers, sacraments, and Christ the priest and victim.
Agathon 20Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Agathon tells a disciple who fasts two days and still eats little that he carries a double battle.
Achilas 3Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Achilas mocks Isaiah for moistening his salt, calling it eating broth.
Abraham 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Abraham rebukes a brother who eats often.
Ares 1Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Ares lays heavy disciplines on a brother because he is a true worker who seeks a word for God’s sake.
Dioscorus 1Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Dioscorus took up a new discipline every year.
Doulas 1Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Stillness and fasting together sharpen the inner eyes against the enemy.
Eladius 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · For Easter Eladius made the extra effort of eating his bread and salt standing.
Evagrius 6Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · A spare, regular diet joined to love leads to freedom from passion.
Zeno 8Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Zeno shows a famous faster that his fasting was fed by praise and teaches him to fast in secret.
Isaiah 6Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Isaiah serves barely boiled lentils, saying that seeing the fire at all is comfort enough.
Theodore of Pherme 7Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Theodore points out the futility of a fast that replaces bread with chickpea flour.
Theodore of Eleutheropolis 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Theodotus and another elder compare fasting and vigil as disciplines of the body.
Theophilus the archbishop 3Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Desert Fathers at Theophilus’s table stop eating when told the dish is meat.
John the Dwarf (Colobos) 3Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Fasting starves the passions as a besieging king starves a city.
John the Dwarf (Colobos) 28Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Even the strong lion is trapped through its belly.
John the Dwarf (Colobos) 29Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · The Fathers of Scetis ate simply without forcing themselves, and stayed strong for God’s work.
Joseph of Panephysis 5Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Joseph explains that elders test new monks with crooked commands before telling them the truth.
Isidore the priest 4Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Better to eat meat than to be proud of fasting.
Cassian 1Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · An Egyptian elder sets aside fasting to welcome visitors, receiving Christ in them.
Cassian 3Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · An old man who ate six times with visitors to encourage them is still hungry, while his guest is full after one meal.
Cassian 4Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Paësius never ate by daylight; John, superior of a community, was never angry.
Lot 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Lot takes on half the sin of a brother who had sacrificed to idols to obtain a woman, and the brother’s repentance is accepted.
Longinus 1Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Lucius tells Longinus that exile, fasting, and solitude are worthless without control of tongue, thoughts, and life among others.
Longinus 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Longinus tells his sick body it may die rather than receive food out of season.
Macarius the Egyptian 3Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Macarius learns from Satan which monk yields to temptation, and by confessing his own struggles he helps the monk resist.
Macarius the Egyptian 10Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Macarius paid for each cup of wine taken in company by a day without water.
Macarius the Egyptian 21Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Macarius the Great rebukes Macarius the citizen for wrongly excommunicating two brothers, and gives him a penance.
Moses 5Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Moses breaks a fast to feed visitors and is praised for keeping God’s command rather than men’s.
Moses 18Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Moses’ instructions: God helps, fasting humbles, weep in temptation, blame yourself, and above all do not judge your neighbor.
Matoes 5Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Matoes confesses he does not yet love even his friends as himself; then (saying 6) he permits breaking a fast for a visitor.
Megethius 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Megethius finds rest by eating half a loaf daily instead of a whole one every two days.
Macarius the Citizen 1Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Macarius eats with the brothers once but then declines, saying they still need food as flesh.
Xoius 1Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Xoius warns that wine is unfit for monks, especially when a demon is at work.
Poemen 16Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Gluttony, like Nebuzaradan the “chief cook,” lets the enemy burn the temple of the soul.
Poemen 31Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Poemen recommends eating a little less every day, the royal road the Fathers found best.
Poemen 58Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Poemen opens his door in Lent, saying the door to keep shut is the tongue.
Poemen 60Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Poemen reads Noah, Job, and Daniel as poverty, toil, and discernment, the tools of the monk.
Poemen 150Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Pambo fasted daily till evening, kept silence, and worked hard.
Poemen 170Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Poemen refuses meat at a meal lest the many brothers who follow him be scandalized.
Poemen 178Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Controlling throat and belly overcomes the devil as David seized the lion’s throat.
Poemen 185Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Food, clothing, and sleep cannot be cut off, only reduced.
Poemen 186Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Eat bread and few vegetables, and do not seek supplies from family.
Pambo 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Pambo tells two brothers that fasting and almsgiving do not make a monk; a clear conscience toward one’s neighbor saves.
Pior 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Pior ate walking so as to treat food as incidental and feel no pleasure in it.
Paul the Great 3Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Paul spent Lent shut in with a little lentils and water, weaving and unweaving one basket.
Sisoes 4Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Sisoes was so absorbed that he could not remember whether he had eaten.
Sisoes 15Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Sisoes breaks his fast for guests despite a bishop’s concern for his reputation.
Sisoes 23Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Sisoes answers with Daniel’s fast from desirable food.
Sisoes 32Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Sisoes visits a sick elder on a fast day without breaking his fast.
Sisoes 52Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · At Easter Sisoes agrees to eat bread, but nothing more, with the brothers.
Silvanus 1Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Silvanus explains that eating out of courtesy does not end their own fast.
Sarmatas 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Sarmatas’ long fasts have given him only mastery over sleep.
Sarmatas 3Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Another elder explains that Sarmatas meant to eat and sleep only at the limit of need.
Serenus 1Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Serenus says the real test is keeping one’s rule outside the cell.
Amma Syncletica 3Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Prayer with fasting drives out evil thoughts like strong drugs repel venomous beasts.
Amma Syncletica 4Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Syncletica warns against the luxury of the rich, whose surfeit makes even honey tasteless.
Amma Syncletica 8Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Illness does the work of fasting; enduring it with thanksgiving is the great asceticism.
Amma Syncletica 9Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Persevere through opposition like sailors who hold course, spreading the cross for a sail.
Amma Syncletica 15Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Syncletica distinguishes true from demonic asceticism by its balance and steadiness.
Hyperechius 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Fasting bridles the monk; without it he is like a lustful horse.
Phocas 2Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · James fasts forty days in a cave against lust and is revived by holy communion brought by Phocas.
Life of Syncletica 10Anonymous · 5th–6th century · She loved fasting as the foundation of the virtues, so that eating out of season made her pale; her body wasted while her soul flourished.
Life of Syncletica 17Anonymous · 5th–6th century · She pruned her thoughts by fasting and prayer, and punished every stirring of desire by hard bodily discipline.
Life of Syncletica 18Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Against the devil’s attacks she prayed, fasted on bran bread and little water and slept on the ground, armed with prayer, faith, hope and love.
Life of Syncletica 19Anonymous · 5th–6th century · When the attacks ceased she moderated her fasting, acting with discretion, like sailors who rest in a calm but stay watchful; she steered her soul safely to harbor by faith.
Life of Syncletica 29Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Against impure thoughts she advises prayer and asceticism, and also picturing the desired body as decaying flesh and bone, and above all controlling the belly.
Life of Syncletica 31Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Poverty should be undertaken only after training in other ascetic labors; those who rush into it often regret it.
Life of Syncletica 49Anonymous · 5th–6th century · After gluttony, lust and greed are overcome, the devil attacks with pride, making the ascetic forget her sins and dream of honors, as he himself fell by pride.
Life of Syncletica 50Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Against pride one should meditate on texts of human lowliness; a proud solitary should be put in a community, made to eat more, rebuked, set to serve, and shown the lives of greater saints.
Life of Syncletica 53Anonymous · 5th–6th century · To humble the proud ascetic, point to others whose fasting and hardship exceed hers, and to the demons, who neither eat, drink, marry nor sleep.
Life of Syncletica 80Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Having cut off their hair, ascetics must also remove the lice of slander, perjury and greed; in a clean life even small sins show, so the soul must be cleaned constantly by prayer and fasting.
Life of Syncletica 93Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Like two buckets on a windlass, as the body is lightened by asceticism the soul rises filled with good.
Life of Syncletica 95Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Do not envy the rich their fine food; fasting on plain fare surpasses their abundance.
Life of Syncletica 99Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Sickness that prevents prayer and fasting does their work for them; enduring it with thanksgiving is the great asceticism, for loss of the senses frees the inner man.
Life of Syncletica 100Anonymous · 5th–6th century · In community, obedience is better than extreme asceticism; true fasting is distinguished from the demonic and heretical kind by measure and right faith, as true coins by their stamp.
Life of Syncletica 102Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Sickness is no excuse for not fasting, since non-fasters fall ill too.
Leviticus Question 22Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Theodoret explains the Day of Atonement: he rejects the idea that the scapegoat was sent to a demon, reads the two goats as Christ's passible humanity and impassible divinity, and sees the high priest's yearly entry as a type of Christ's once-for-all sacrifice and ascension.
Leviticus Question 32Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Theodoret explains the firstfruits sheaf, Pentecost, Trumpets, the Day of Atonement fast, and Tabernacles as memorials of Israel's history, and the chaste-tree branches as a reminder of chastity.
2 Kingdoms Question 3Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · David mourned for Jonathan, for the people, for the Philistines' victory, and for Saul himself.
3 Kingdoms Question 61Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Jezebel staged a fast and a false charge that Naboth had “blessed” (that is, cursed) God and the king, to give his murder a show of justice.
2 Chronicles, question 1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Theodoret's running commentary on 2 Chronicles 10–36 supplements Kings: God divides the kingdom and spares Judah for David's sake; pious kings (Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah) are rewarded and their lapses punished; impious ones (Joram, Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, Ahaz) are disciplined; Manasseh repents; the book was compiled from prophetic sources after the exile.