001 The Problem of Ascetical Fasting in The Greek Patristic Writers

THE PROBLEM OF ASCETICAL FASTING IN THE GREEK PATRISTIC WRITERS
Author(s): HERBERT MUSURILLO

Source: Traditio, Vol. 12 (1956), pp. 1-64
Published by: Fordham University
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THE PROBLEM OF ASCETICAL FASTING

IN THE GREEK PATRISTIC WRITERS
By HERBERT
MUSURILLO,
S.j.
Studies in comparative religion have shown the important role played by

the practice of ascetical fasting in the history ofman's religious development.1
But many gaps in that history still exist. We may surmise, for example,2
that primitive man stumbled on the practice of fasting accidentally, as a way
to conserve food in time of shortage, or, again, out of revulsion for food in
times of sickness, as well as under stress of sorrow or fear. On the other hand,
find that overeating might interfere with sleep and cause a feeling
or that certain foods could cause sickness and nausea. The lacuna
he would
of heaviness,
these primitive experiences and the religious-ascetical

practice of
3
although, from the point of
fasting still remains a subject for investigation,
treated by Arbesmann.4
view of Greece and Rome, it has been adequately
The object of the present work is not to cover the practice of ecclesiastical
between
fasting, either from the canonical

* In addition
references
sigla, the following abridged
and J. G. Plumpe.
ed. J. Quasten
to the conventional
Christian
AGW
Ancient
CE
The
CPh
Classical
Philology
Catholic
Writers,
will
be used
Encyclopedia
GUPS
Catholic
DB
Dictionnaire
of America
University
de la Bible
DSp
ERE
Dictionnaire
de spiritualit?,
Hasting's
F1P
Florilegium
KIT
Kleine
Patristic
Studies
et de mystique.
d'asc?tique
and
Ethics
of Religion
Encyclopedia
Texte,
point of view (as this has been sufficiently
patristicum
Lietzmann
ed H.
Classical
LGL
The
RAG
Reallexikon
Loeb
RAM
Revue
RW
TS
Religionsgeschichtliche
Texts and Studies,
TU
Texte
Library
f?r Antike und Christentum,
et de mystique
d'asc?tique
Versuche
J. A.
ed.
und Untersuchungen
und
ed. T. Klauser
Vorarbeiten,
ed. L.
Malten
and
O. Weinreich
Robinson
zur Geschichte
der altchristlichen
ed. O. Gebhardt
Literatur,
and A. Harnack.
1 See
J. S. Black,
Britannica,
Encyclopedia
'Fasting,'
especially
ERE
and A. J. Maclean,
'Fasting,'
198, and J. A. MacCulloch
2 Gf. J. A.
loc. cit. 759f.
MacCulloch,
8
The Origins
that R. B. Onians,
It is unfortunate
of European
theMind,
could
the Soul,
not have
the World,
treated
Time
the problem
and Fate
of food
(2nd ed. Cambridge

and fasting beyond
13th
6
10 (1926)
759-771.
ed.
(1951)
Thought
about
193
the Body,
Press
University
the brief reference
1954),
to the
that the belly was

the seat
belief
frag. 235 B, Diels-Kranz)
(e.g. in Democritus,
primitive
'
for food and drink (p. 88; and see Index, s.v. Food').
of sexual desire as well as of the appetite
4 Rudolf
21.1
RVV
und
den
Glessen
bei
R?mern
Griechen
Das Fasten
(=
1929).
Arbesmann,

TRADITIO
treated by Parra Herrera5) or in its connection with prophecy and revelation

?
but merely to treat
(as this has again been fully discussed by Arbesmann6)
the problem of ascetical fasting as we find it in the Greek patristic writers
down
to the time of John Damascene.
The study of the phenomenon of fasting (or inedia) has aroused considerable
interest in recent times. In 1950, scientists of the University of Minnesota
published the most complete study on the subject from a physiological and
point of view.7 Going far beyond the preliminary work of

psychological
F. G. Benedict,8 the Minnesota
report gives a thorough survey of the effects
on
of prolonged fasting
the nervous system, the circulatory system, on glandular
as well as neuromuscular
functions;9 it then goes on to explore the psycho
fasting as revealed by testing, observation and
and
subjective report.10 Apathy
irritability, they found, were the most mani
fest characteristics of the subjects tested. Intellectual achievement remained
fairly constant. They also noted a reduction in sexual interest, due to de
logical effects of prolonged
function; an emotional instability; a tendency to intro

lack
of
version;
independence and social initiative; a preoccupation with
of
food; and, lastly, a group of manifestations which they call the
thoughts
'semi-starvation neurosis' or behavior of a neurotic type, which not infre
quently precipitated serious psychotic disorders in those subjects who were
creased
hormonal
They were careful to note a certain lack of realism which was

in the test-conditions,
insofar as starvation alone was being
a
and
the actual conditions of
tested,
fasting or starving person in real life
could hardly be experimentally duplicated.
predisposed.
unavoidable
It is precisely within the framework of such modern psychological studies

that the patristic view of fasting and its benefits (apart from ecclesiastical
obligation) becomes more interesting. And itwill be the method of this study
to express their views in their own way.

In this respect
of the existing work on the subject errs by being too selective and not
quoting enough of the actual patristic testimony (so, especially, the work of
Achelis, Behm, Bickel). The result has been that elaborate theories have been
erected with very little relationship to the facts: as in so many other fields of
to allow the Fathers
much
patristic research, scholars have here tended to find in the Fathers precisely
what they looked for. Typical of the nineteenth century attitude is F. W.
5 Antonio
S?ntesis
sobre el ayuno y la abstinencia.
eclesi?stica
Parra Herrera,
Legislaci?n
in
hist?rica y comentario
Canon
Law
Studies
Univ.
1935).
92,
Washington
(Gath.
6
1-71.
7 (1949-51)
Traditio
in Pagan
and Prophecy
and Christian Antiquity,'
'Fasting
7 The
Uni
vols.
others
and
Human
Ancel
ed.
Minneapolis,
(2
Starvation,
Keys
Biology
of
of Minnesota
versity
1950).
8A
Institute:
Carnegie
D.C., Carnegie
Fasting
(Washington,
Study of Prolonged
in vol. I of the Minnesota
report.
Laboratory
1915) ; this is also summarized
9
I.
Starvation
vol.
of Human
Biology
10 Ibid.
II 839ff.

Nutrition
ASCETICAL
Farrar's
GREEK
view11 that the two chief causes
dualistic
was
IN THE
FASTING
concept
that12
Nature
petual
violation
... the
herself:
asceticism were a false,

'will-worship'; and the result
of morbid
indolence
the per
speculation;
... the
of
dirt;
glorification
the
branded
intercourse...
God
of
the
self-introspection...;
innocent
of human
laws
the
WRITERS
ofmonastic
of matter, and an unnatural
avenged
sickness
of
PATRISTIC
ambitious attempt with sterility and

reacted on the enfeebled mind.
failure...
The
self-degraded body
subtle view, and one that has had a profound influence on

interpretations of patristic asceticism, was put forward in 1916 by
Ernst Bickel.13
In Bickel's
theory, the system of asceticism formed in the
A
far more
modern
Church
in the fourth century under the influence of Ambrose, Augustine and

the result of three separate streams: 1) the evangelical (as taught
'
and
Jesus
based on the use
by
developed by Paul);14 2) the 'monastic-gnostic,
of corporal penance for the attainment of the beatific vision;15 and 3) the
Jerome was
or ethical tendency, reflected particularly

in the great three
philosophical
Western Fathers of the Church.
There is no doubt but that Bickel's approach is an interesting one ?
if there
were any assurance that itwere true. As it is, his schematization would seem
to be based on an intuitive approach, and it can only be refuted by showing
(as indeed we shall attempt to do in the course of this study) how complex
and how diverse is the material on which our judgment must be based.
It is
this essential diversity of the patristic evidence in the matter of fasting and
I hope to show, defeats any attempt in the direction of

precise categorization or unification. This new approach, which may be called
has been appreciated by H. Strathmann and P. Keseling,16
phenomenological,
asceticism which,
and in particular by Arbesmann.17

'
For the meaning of the term ascetical
'Askese'
concept,
modified
'
we may refer to the definition of
in his W?rterbuch:
the
the editor of Hegel,
given by Hoffmeister,
from the notion of an athlete's training, and
originally developed
the
ascetical
schools
of the Cynics and Stoics, means18
by
the practice of conquering one's vices and faults, control of the impulses,
self-conquest.
11 Lives
II 160ff.
12 Ibid.
13
'Das
of the Fathers.
Sketches
of Church History
in Biography
(2 vols.
New
York
1889)
163.
asketische
Ideal
Altertum
f?r das klassische
14
loc. cit. 441ff.
Bickel,
15 Ibid. 448. Thus
it was
bei Ambrosius,
37
(1916)
Athanasius
Hieronymus
437-474.
who
raised
und Augustinus,'
'the dogmatically
force of first rank.'

to the level of an ecclesiastical
le Art.
1 (1950) 749-795.
RAC
'Askese,'
17 Art.
and Prophecy,'
sup. cit. ( . 6).
'Fasting
18 Johannes
W?rterbuch der philosophischen
Hoffmeister,
Begriffe
Jahrb?cher
Neue
indifferent
anachoritism
(2nd ed. Hamburg

1955)
80.
TRADITIO
is more clearly defined in Baldwin's

Dictionary19 as
a system of conduct inwhich the realization of the moral life is
attempted
by means of a complete subjugation of sensuous impulse and Worldly desire.
Asceticism
It is clear, of course, that the terms 'moral life,'

'subjugation,' and 'worldly
desire' can only be more clearly defined in terms of the presuppositions
of
the particular ascetical school of thought; for this reason, too, the definition
is an apt one to serve as a general point of departure in this
study.
It has not been thought necessary to review the
long history of scholarship
on the influences of Cynic,20 Stoic,21 and
Neoplatonic
thought22 on Christian
asceticism. More and more we have been made aware of the fusion of the
various
philosophic streams of thought, particularly in their ethical and reli

gious doctrines, in the period just prior to the rise of Christianity. This fusion,
or levelling, is
particularly reflected in Philo, as is clear from the work of
Br?hier23 and V?lker;24 itwas Philo, in Volker's view,25 who took the 'ancient
heritage'
of philosophy
and
uniting it for the first time with a monotheistic religion, decisively changed
its form. But this modification was absolutely essential for the continued
influence of this heritage in Christianity.
if V?lker tends to exaggerate the
intermediary role played by Philo,
it is at the same time dangerous to seek
constantly, in the patristic writers,
for a point-for-point correspondence between individual elements of Christian
asceticism and certain ethical practices of the pagan
It is this
philosophies.
Even
Hellenistic
19W.
R.
levelling that is sometimes disregarded
[Sorley],
4
Asceticism,'
Diet,
of Philosophy
by the historians of ascet
and Psychology
(ed. J. M.
Baldwin)
I 74.
20 For
268ff.
453.
see H. Musurillo,
a bibliography,
The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs
(Oxford
1954)
was
asceticism
not
loc. cit.
Cynic
really religious was
by Bickel,
recognized
See also Strathmann,
loc. cit. 769. At the same time, Cynic influence
RAC,
'Askese,'
That
as it seems to bein the work of Karl Pr?mm,

Religionsgeschicht
den
Raum
der altchristlichen
Umwelt
Institute
f?r
(Rome, Biblical
1954)
in the asceticism
147ff. For Cynic influences
of Philo,
see E. Br?hier, Les
id?es philosophi
de Philon
d'Alexandrie
Fort
ques et religieuses
(3rd ed. Paris
1950) 261ff.; and W. V?lker,
should not be underestimated,
liches Handbuch
schritt und Vollendung

21 See
Br?hier,
op.
953-7;
bei Philo
cit.
261ff.;
von Alexandrien
(TU
49.1
; Leipzig
1938)
126ff.
M.
Olphe-Galliard,
Asc?tisme,'
'Asc?se,
DSp
loc. cit. 756f. 765, 770 and passim
'Askese,'
RAC,
Pr?mm,
op. cit. 172ff. is inadequate.
Strathmann-Keseling,
here cited).
bibliography
22 See
loc.
Olphe-Galliard,
DSp.
769 and passim
(with bibliography).
cit.
9581;
Bickel,
Strathmann-Keseling,
loc. cit. 455
., had
RAC,
perhaps
loc.
not
(1937)
the
(with
cit.
too
757,
incor
as 'nicht Quelle,
sonder Parallelerscheinung,'
with regard
Neoplatonism,
rectly considered
to the alleged
borrowings
by many
patristic writers.
23
op. cit. passim.
Br?hier,
24
and passim;
for Philo
absorbed
distinction
whatever
without
op. cit. 135fl
V?lker,
'
he was no
suited his thought;
Systematiker'
(V?lker
135).
25
See
also his Der wahre Gnostiker
von Alexandrien
bei Clemens
V?lker,
op. cit. 349.
(TU 57 ; Leipzig 1952) 618ff.

asgetigal
fasting
in
the
greek
patristic
writers
icism. And yet without an appreciation of this complex factor, which ac

counts precisely for the diversity of patristic doctrine on the purely philo
It is to this doctrinal fusion,
sophical level, no sound history is possible.
of
with the consequent modification which came from the unique message
Christianity,
that A. D. Nock
referred when he wrote:26
have studied [Christianity's] requirements and found them not wholly

strange and yet cast in a strange formwhich rested on strange foundations.
We
And
... Christianity was
different. And
yet
it was
capable
of being made
intelligible.
It is this approach
I.
that I have
of
'Exempla'
attempted
Fasting
and
to adopt
the
'Laudes
in the present
study.
Monachorum'
It was a commonplace, at least from the time of Aristotle's Rhetoric,1 tha

the example ( a a e
a) could be used as effectively in rhetoric as induction
in logic; and the so-called progymnastic writers of the late Republic
and
early Principate developed a set of formal rules on its proper development
of these exempla apparently existed, drawn up in lists

of virtues and vices; at any rate, we know that the patristic writers tended
to mingle lists of pagan examples along with their Christian and Old Testa
and use.2 Collections
ment
ones.3
fasting we frequently find 'chains' of exempla mala

and, beyond the fact that they are an interesting
rhetorical technique, too great weight is hardly to be attached to them.4
We have examples of self-abnegation in general as early as Clement of Rome
In connection with
and bona in the Fathers
and Eliseus,5 of fasting in Esther6 and Moses.7 In Basil's homilies On

theFast, we have, for example, Moses, Esau, Anna (the mother of Samuel),
the mother of Samson and Samson himself, Elias, Eliseus, the Three Youths,
col
Christ.8 Even
Lazarus
the beggar, John the Baptist,
Paul,
Daniel,
as
will cite,
lections like the Ethiopie Didascalia
examples of fasting, Elias,
in Elias
Moses,
Daniel,
Anna,
Esther, Mordechai,
Judith and David.9
This
sort of
26 Conversion
(Oxford
1933) 267; 269.
1 Ehet.
1.2, 1356? Iff. (ed. Roemer).
2
Rhet. 8 (ed. Spengel-Hammer
4 (Spengel
39f.).
Progymn.
Aphthonius,
27); Anaximenes,
3 On the
7 (1940)
See
RE
1135.
cf. W. Kroll,
'Rhetorik,'
Suppl.
ezempZa-collections,
Latin
in
Christian
the
of
Fortitude
also M. L. Carlson,
Apologists,'
Examples
'Pagan
the literature
CPh 43 (1940)
cited.
93-104, with
4 For
see Arbesmann,
of the Apostles,
examples
'Fasting
5
ad Cor. 17.1 (ed. C. T. Schaefer
Ep.
[F1P 1941] 23).
6 Ibid. 55.6
(Schaefer
60).
7 Ibid. 53.2
(Schaefer
58).
8 De
ieiun. horn. 1, 6-7, 9 (PG 31.172 A ff., 177 C).
9
135f.
SPCK
? 30, ed. J. M. Harden
(London,
1920)
and
Prophecy'

32f.
TRADITIO
citation goes to excess in such works as the homilies on fasting of Pseudo

Chrysostom. In De ieiunio 1, for example, besides the long list of exempla
bona (which include the Three Youths
in the fiery furnace and the martyrs
of the early persecutions), we have a list of exempla mala, e.g., Adam, Cain,
the people destroyed by the Flood, the Sodomites, Esau, Herod.10
is of more interest in this connection is the way in which many of
What
the Greek Fathers developed this use of example into an extended eulogy of
the ascetics
of the desert in order to encourage their hearers to practice the

forms of Christian mortification as prescribed by the law of the Church.
milder
We
an early instance of this in Origen
have, for example,

on Jeremias:11
in his Homilies
Though there is the opportunity to marry and not to be troubled by

the rising of the flesh against the spirit, there are some who choose not
to exercise the faculty of marriage, but to be humble and to suffer, to
chastise the body with fasting and bring it into subjection by abstinence
from certain types of food, and completely to mortify the deeds of the
flesh by the spirit.
Gregory of Nazianzus
employs this topic frequently,12 and in one place13
a
he enumerates in bewildering congeries the various penances of the ascetics:
fasts, prayers, tears, calloused knees, beating of the breast, groans,

whole night in prayer, bare feet, cut hair, custody of the eyes,
the
standing
'the pleasure of not having any pleasure.'
Again and again, Chrysostom
with a kind of a nostalgia brings in, by way of digression, an account of the
'
life of the
fathers of the desert. '14 In these communities of
penitential
ascetics there is perfect peace :15
watches,
Monasteries are indeed houses ofmourning. There we will find sackcloth

and ashes, solitude, no frivolity or worldly occupations. There is fasting
and sleeping on the ground, without the impure odor of rich food. There
is a peaceful
harbor.
In such a place it is not difficult to arise early in the morning,16

for when the heart is not oppressed by excessive food, it soon recovers
from
sleep
and
is
immediately
awake...
Then
there
is no
snoring
or
la
bored breathing or tossing in sleep... And their dreams are just like their
sleep: not filled with wild imaginings and terrifying nightmares.
10 De
ieiun.
11 In
lerem,
1 (PG 60.711-12).
horn. 19.7 (ed. E.
25.4
7.238)
(ed. E. Baehrens,
12
Cf. e.g. Carm. ad Hellenium
contra Iulianum
Orat.
13 Orat.
6, De pace
1.71
Klostermann,
in Rufinus'
63-4
(PG
1925,
GCS,
translation.
(PG 37.1455);
3.188).
In monaca,
Gf. also
In Nam.
obtrect. 5-6 (PG
horn.
37.1349-50);
35.594
B-G).
cf. the poem,
G - 724 B);
Exhortatio
1.2
(PG 35.721
38 ff. (PG 37. 636 A) and the Comparatio
vitarum 91f. (PG 37.655-6).
14 Cf.
8 in Matth.
5 (PG 57.88).
e.g. Horn.
u Horn.
16 Ibid. 4
14 in 1 Tim. 3 (PG 62.575).
(PG 62.575?.).

and virgines
ASCETIGAL
FASTING
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
These
'monks,' with the exception of a meager breakfast, eat but one
a day and this consists
merely of bread, salt and oil, and (for those who
be infirm) vegetables and pulse.17 And when they get sick, they are
cured: for their maladies
come from fasting and watching rather than
meal
may
easily
glut
tony and drunkenness.18
Though Chrysostom is here speaking chiefly of men, he describes the life
of consecrated virgins in similar terms. In the little homily called On theZeal
of Those Who Are Present, delivered most probably

he speaks of19
in the Basilica
of St. Irene,
the female ascetics who even at a tender age go without food and sleep
and drink, mortifying their bodies, crucifying their flesh, sleeping on
the ground, wearing sackcloth, locked in narrow cells, sprinkling them
selves with ashes and wearing chains.
Some
of these maidens,
he tells us elsewhere,20 would not yet be twenty;
they used no perfume or headdress; clad in horse-hair they would stay awake
the greater part of the night. In the daytime they would spin, tend the sick,
prepare food for others. Their only meal in the evening would contain merely
some bread, beans, olives and figs. And St. John goes on to exhort his
listeners:21 if they are unable to keep at least the Church's fast, they should
not give themselves to self-indulgence or to uncharitableness
towards their
neighbor.
In the works
of Chrysostom, the laudes monachorum, from a psychological

point of view, reflect the saint's own period of enthusiasm for the anchoretic
life,which he gave up for the apostolic duties of the priesthood. We may note
that in a little work dedicated to themonk Demetrius, De compunctione, and
composed perhaps between 381 and 385 at Antioch, he recalls the auste
rity of the solitary : the stale bread, the crude oil (both for food and for
the lamp), the miserable meal of vegetables, and the heavy labor of digging,
wood-carrying, etc.22 Here he expresses the view that men should not worry
over infirmities that are caused
by penitential practices: surely people when

are
care
in
not
do
about their health, and hence why should
they
mourning
the Christian who ismourning the loss of heaven?23 The De sacerdot?o, how
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
(PG 62.577).
19 De
studio praesentium
3 (PG 63.488f J.
20Horn.
13 in Ephes.
3 (PG 62.98).
4
21 Ibid. 4. It is
lived the life of a female
had apparently
interesting to note that Olympias
4
even in the world.
her thus:
ascetic'
In Chrysostom's
Letter 8.4ff. he praises
you took
it with
all
raised
in all sorts of luxury, and so besieged
your tender and delicate
body,
kinds
of torments
a swarm
of maladies
that
it might
as
in yourself
such
roused
and you've
body;
... and you live in constant
of doctors
pain,'
=
2 PG 52.561).
13; 1947] 123
Ep.
as well
to confound
chr?tiennes
(ed. Malingrey
[Sources
22 De
6 (PG 47.403).
compunct.
28 Ibid. 10
(PG 47.409).
be a dead
the art

TRADITIO
the beginning of a reaction against the penitential excesses of

the solitary. For in this work Chrysostom is thinking more of the active clergy
of the urban dioceses, with their regular duties to perform. In 3.13 he says
to Basil : 24
ever, marks
To despise food and drink and a soft bed is, as we know, a matter of
no great difficulty to many, especially such as are of a rougher nature,
or have been so brought up from their youth.
and
Fasting
other austerities
are good
for the monk who
lives alone ?
al
though he will need sufficient physical health and a good climate to practice
them ; the priest, however, exercises himself in different ways, and as he
need not practice the austerity of the monk, so too he need not enjoy the
monk's
bodily vigor. St. John himself confesses how deficient he has been
in the practice of austerities.25
This same direction ?
towards the mitigation of austerity for the purpose
of the ministry ?
is also clear in the works of Basil.
Though in his earlier
came
Basil
the
of
Eustathius
of Sebaste,
much
under
influence
very
days
later to be condemned
by the Council of Gangra,26

and despite his constant praise of severe austerity,27 we find, in his positive
and practical recommendations, that he regularly took the line ofmoderation
and
for extreme
asceticism
temperance.
24 De
1907 p. 69 ; PG 48.649).
sacerd. 3.13 (ed. Nairn,
Cambridge
25 Ibid. 3.12
and cf. 6.5 (PG 48.682),
where the five chief types of austerity
(PG 48.648):
are given as fasting, sleeping on the ground, watching,
not washing,
hard labor. Cf. also
1 and 4 (PG 60.683,
the 'austerity
in Pseudo-Chrys.
De poen.
lists'
689).
26 See
of L. Duchesne,
Church from
the account
Early History
of the Christian
especially
its Foundation
to the End of theFifth Century (trans. Claude
London
Jenkins,
1950) 410-11.
27 It is
to recall the deeply
of
of Basil,
family background
spiritual
interesting
Gregory
of Nazianzus.
and Gregory
Of the ten children of Basil
and Emmelia,
the parents
Nyssa
of Basil
in the ascetical movement.
the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, most became
involved
Basil's
sister Macrina
s. Macrinae
PG
had
46.964
dedicated
C-D
herself
and after
8.1, Leiden
1952),
to join her; thus the two women,
on the river
in Pontus
estate at Annesi
Opera
melia
Naucratius
also
retired
to virginity at the age of twelve

inW.
Callahan
p. 374,
Jaeger,
the death of their father, persuaded
; ed. V. W.
to the wilds
at Eustathius'
suggestion,
about
community,
Vita
with the youngest

child, Peter, retired to a family
Iris (Vita, ibid.). About
the year 352, Basil's
brother
as an anchorite
of Pontus
PG
(Vita 379f. Callahan;
and Gregory Nazianzen
from their school days,
had,
968 A-D).
of Nyssa
Basil,
Gregory
forward to the life of the solitaries;
looked
fathers
(Greg. Nyss.
Gregorii Nysseni
her mother
Em
and Basil,
finally established
the year 358. See,
after travelling
the desert
among
a community
on the river Iris, op
2 (1910) 441ff.;
e.g. Paul Allard, DThC
posite his sister's

Sr. Margaret
G. Murphy,
Saint Basil's
Monasticism
(CUPS
:Essai
Dom David Amand,
de saint Basile
L'asc?se monastique
J. Gribomont,
du texte des Asc?tiques
Dom
Histoire
de saint
s?on 32 ; Louvain
1953).
25, Washington
1930)
(Maredsous
historique
Basile
(Biblioth?que

12ff ;
1949)
du Mu
FASTING
ASGETICAL
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
For example,
in his Homily on theMartyr Julitta,28 having quoted 1 Cor.
Whether
10.31,
you eat or drink or do anything else, do all for the glory of God, he
continues :
While you strengthen your body's weakness with wine, recall to mind
Him who gave you this gift for the joy of the heart and the strengthening
of your infirmities.
In a letter to a fallen monk,29
he praises, in the manner of the laudes, the

but
asceticism,
suggests that his austerity was no proof
previous
to
his
serious
temptation:
yielding
against
In weekly cycles you persisted in fasting and intercourse with God...
And with rough sackcloth irritating your body, pinching your loins with
a hard belt, you perseveringly wore down your bones. You hollowed out
monk's
your
stomach
with
privations
and
exposed
your
ribs
even
to your
back
...
and refusing to use a soft cincture you drew back your belly like a gourd
and tried to force it into the place of your kidneys.
principal line, as we shall have reason later to see, was the denial
of sinful self-will. In the Regulae
fusius tractatae, which in spirit at least
must reflect the mind of Basil himself, we read that nothing so chastises
But Basil's
the body as temperance;30 after pointing to the example of Moses, Elias,

in the fiery furnace, John the Baptist,
the Three Youths
and Our
Daniel,
on
:31
Lord, he goes
But by temperance we do not mean the complete avoidance of food (for

this would merely result in a violent dissolution of the body), but a denial
of the pleasant things, ordained, out of a motive of piety, towards the
purification of the tendencies of the flesh.
topic of exempta, linked with the laudes monachorum, seems to have
in Greek patristic literature.
produced some very interesting developments
We have, for example, certain speculations which develop in connection
with Old Testament
exempta. Isidore, a priest and abbot of a monastery at
The
(d. c. 449), was a very popular spiritual director (to judge from
the number of his letters preserved today) and he enjoys speculations
of
1.69 to a certain Maron32 he enumerates first of all the
this sort. In EpisL
Pelusium
(Esau, Saul, the Israelites in the desert, the priests

typical exempta mala
and among the exempta bona are Noe and his sons during the time of
ofBaal);
the flood. Noe and his sons, according to Isidore, fasted during the entire
trip to Mount Ararat, subsisting merely on seeds; it was this practice as well
as
their abstention
from their marital
28 3
(PG 31.244
). So too, on the praise
29
45 (Deferrari
Epist.
1.274).
30
ad interrog. 16.1 (PG 31.957 B).
Resp.
31 Ibid. 16.2
(960 A-B).
Reg.
Similarly,
1168 G-D).
32 PG
78.228
229
privileges which
of wine,
Horn.
14
brevius
tract,
Resp.
'saved
in ebriosos
ad
them from
(PG
interrog.
D.

31.448
128
(PG
A).
31.
10
TRADITIO
'
the flood of the extraordinary sea. And fasting, of course, is still the tradi
tional remedy for impure thoughts in his letter to the Abbot Nilus.33
Another motif which is often linked with lists of exempla is the 'genealogy
'
of fasting. A classic instance of this occurs in gradus 14 of John Climacus'
Scala Paradisi.3* After praising the benefits of fasting in the traditional way,
he enumerates, as exempla mala, Adam, Esau,

the Israelities, Noe ( !), the
sons
of
Lot
of
and
the
Heli.
Then
he gives the genealogy:
Gomorrha,
people
sons
the
of the heart, Sleep with
of gluttony are Fornication,
Hardening
Scu
impure thoughts; among gluttony's daughters are Laziness, Loquacity,
But a far more
rility, Boldness.
of
corpus
Pseudo-Chrysostom.35
we
Here
in a sermon in the
instance occurs
fantastic
the whole
have
household
of
'Nesteia':
Nesteia's
father:
mother:
?
?
eternal
God's
law;
Virtue;
Perseverance,
Temperance,
Askesis, Chastity and Self control;

Moses, Elias, Daniel, the Baptist,
the saints;
?
Faith,
Hope, Charity;
girl-friends:
?
Peace, Meekness, Harmony;
companions:
?
handmaids:
Doxology, Psalmody, Prayer;
?
Fear of God;
husband:
Incorruptibility, Trust
Offspring of her husband: Holiness,
daughters:
sons:
of Heaven,
Kingdom
33
2.278
Epist.
34
PG
88.869
35 In
my
scattered
throughout
as
I number
the various
very
least
close
three
De
ieiunio
In
ingressum
62.731-2
In Dominica
trait
thoughts
8
ieiun. =
ieiun.
sanct.
ieiun. =
De
ieiun.
62.757-60
ieiunio =
=
De
ieiun.
12
62.759-64
De
ieiun.
13
63.595-602
De
ieiun.
14
48.1059-62
De
ieiun.
15
De
different
and
De
De
ieiun.
ieiun.
10
11
these: A,
can be distinguished
among
(or author-groups)
ieiun.
De
in
a
rhetor
ieiun.
8
in
De
and
B,
(as
11);,
sophistic
(as
ieiun. 2, 4, 12; pos
G, an unoriginal
copier (as in De
poenitentia);
authors
10 and
13).
identical with the author of 9, has the classic por

cross is
of a ship, Christ's
life is like the piloting
60.716):
the
Himself
the
the
Christ
faith
sails, good
oars,
anchor, hope the rigging, prayer
is the Holy
breeze
are the rudder, God
is the pilot, the favorable
Spirit.
author
of De
of the Christian
the mast,
De
on fasting
There are seven homilies
62.727-8).
on fasting
1-7; there are eight other homilies
the
Montfaucon),
among
spuria by
(and placed
to Ghrysostom
15, and De
6-7,
61.787-90
62.727-8
3, 9, possibly
sibly also
36 The
volumes
follows:
62.731-8
At
the
A-B).
own numbering, De
ieiun. 9 (PG
in PG 60.711-24,
numbered
the spuria
PG
in God,
Life.36
Eternal
A-D.
among
which
78.709
(PG
the choir of
ieiun.
3, perhaps
life (PG

asgetical
fasting
in
the
greek
patristic
writers
11
genealogies are indeed, in spirit, connected with the exempla-lists and

perhaps with the lists of austerities and the lists of diseases resulting from
their connection was with the tales of the Fathers of
intemperance. What
These
the Desert we
shall discuss
in a later section.
II. Philosophic
Motifs
It is a curious
fact that the late Stoic and the Neoplatonic

streams of
are
in
their
toward
not
far
attitudes
food
and
thought
apart
fasting. The
that
or dom
cardinal principle of Epictetus'
inward
'freedom'
asceticism,
into
the
in
the
universal
Discourses,
rule-of-thumb,
inance,1 clearly develops,
'act against nature';
for example, he teaches:
Let us say that I am inordinately inclined towards pleasure. Then I shall
forcemyself, even beyond measure, towards the opposite, for the sake of
askesis.2
And, again:3
Change your inclinations towards those things which
( a
are against nature
).
In practice he urges us, when tempted towards pleasure, to think of the time
'
of remorse;4 'to keep silent most often,... and not to talk of food and drink. 5
Specifically:6
With regard to the body, take nothing beyond mere necessity, and cir
cumscribe everything that smacks of pride (
) in
a) or luxury (
food,
And
drink,
clothing,
household,
it is in his famous Commentary
servants.
on the Encheiridion
that
of Epictetus
the sixth-century Neoplatonist
Simplicius notes on this passage:7
Our need is for food, not for variety. The plain diet is best; rich foods
overload
merely
the
stomach.
It is hardly to be thought that Simplicius was original in his comments:

rather he must be expressing current unquestioned
beliefs. Still, it is in his
comment on Encheir.
33.8 (Epictetus* counsel with regard to premarital
chastity) that he expresses an idea that seems to have been at the heart of
1 Cf.
4.1.1
e.g., Diss.
[2nd ed.]). For a good discussion
(355 Schenkl
sul Neostoicismo
Studi
in Epictetus,
see V. D'Agostino,
dom'
(Turin
2 Diss.
des
cf. A. Bonh?ffer,
Ethik
Die
and
3.12.7
(268 Schenkl),
of ascetical
1950)
Epictet
1894) 69.
3 Encheir.
4 Encheir.
most
harmful
cf. Simplicius,
ad loc. (21f. Dubner).
(6*f. Schenkl);
ad loc. (122 Dubner):
Cf. Simplicius,
(29* Schenkl).
to the soul; each one, as it were, drives a nail into the
'free
89-101.
(Stuttgart
2.2
34
them of short duration.'

God has made
5 Encheir.
33.2 (25*f. Schenkl).
7 Ad
loc. (115 Dubner).
6 Encheir.
33.7
(26*
are
pleasures
'Bodily
and that is why
soul;
Schenkl).

12
TRADITIO
much
Christian
to fasting are not
are used
'Those who
practice:'
inclinations. 8
ascetical
troubled by sexual
That Simplicius could thus comment on Epictetus with approval is signi
ficant: and yet the chief direction in Neoplatonic
fasting is to be looked for
'if not a with
'What is the soul's purification,' asks Plotinus,
elsewhere.
'9
drawal (a a
Elsewhere he becomes more explicit:10
) from the body ?
We
must
from
escape
this world
and
from all accidentals,
ourselves
separate
and we must not continue to be a body-soul composite in which the

material part dominates, preserving hardly a trace of the spiritual. Now
the other Soul, outside of us, possesses the faculty to rise; it possesses
the Beautiful and the Divine, which is superior to all. Either one uses
this other Soul to become transcendant, and to live thus retired within
oneself ? or else one lives without this Soul, subject merely to Fate.
For
the ultimate reason is that Matter is, in itself, completely evil, without
form or beauty (except what it somehow derives from Soul).11 And it is only
by separating itself frommatter that the individual soul can become happy,
can enjoy the state of a a e a; and 'this
is not
separation and withdrawal
'12
only from the body, but from all things connected with it.
e It is with a view towards the 'Return to the Spirit' (
), the return to Nous and to the One, that Plotinus himself took very
little food;13 and he acted as if he wished to have as little to do with bodily
functions as possible.
life
Porphyry (on whom our knowledge of Plotinus'
an
on
our
the
and
he
is
witness
here;
point
ultimately rest)
develops
an
fit
exercise
and
for
with
athlete's
to
be
naked
analogy
perfectly
clothing;14
he must take off both his outer and his inner garments: so too, to deny one
must
it is offered is like the removal of one's outer clothing: to have

no desires at all (and note how close he comes here to
is like the
Epictetus)
self food when
removal
of the inner ones.
context, Porphyry develops his master's

teaching in a more
In the Sententiae15 he shows how the four 'cardinal' virtues
systematic way.
In another
8 Ad
loc.
9 Enn.
3.6.5
(342.14 Henry-Schwyzer).
Personal
cf. A.-J. Festugi?re,
Stars';
(p. 172.19),
26 ; Berkeley
Lectures
1954) 64ff.; P?re Festu
among the Greeks (Sather Classical
Religion
own approach
is perhaps
colored
of Plotinus,
however,
gi?re's portrait
by the author's
cf. e.g.
own
are
A.
to Christian
H.
to
indebted
views
much
Armstrong:
My
mysticism.
10 Ibid.
(117
D?bner).
2.3.9
his Plotinus
(London
11
Enn.
2.4.16
(p.
12 Enn.
1.1.12
(p.
13
Vita
Porphyry,
14 De abstin.
1.31
Proclus.
in the
39 (the intrinsic
1953)
201.24)
On
60.18), On
9
Plotini
The Elements
ieiun. horn. 1.10

15Sent. 32.1-5
the Power
On
(PG
(109.14ff.
in Plotinus*
contradiction
(14.22
of Theology
31.181
C).
of matter).
theory
op. cit. 120f.
cf. Armstrong,
Matter';
the Nature
and
of Man
Nauck).
(17ff. Mommert);
of the
the Animate.'
Henry-Schwyzer).
On
(Oxford
the body
1933)
the Plotinian
307.
a garment,
as
For
parallels
the
are
see also E.
comparison,
fully quoted
testimonia.

R. Dodds
cf. Basil,
De
by Mommert
ASCETICAL
FASTING
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
13
on four levels (and we, of course, are here particularly inter

the level of Civic
ested in the application of this doctrine to Temperance):
are the chief
to
and
nature'
moderation
Virtue
'living according
(where
can be considered
goals);
plete
the level of Contemplative Virtue (where the virtue aims at the com
extinction of bodily feeling); the level of intellect (where the virtues
the clarity of the intellect) and finally the level of the Exemplars
as
The same doctrine is developed
the virtues exist in Nous).
in
(insofar
the fragmentary treatise Porphyry composed for his wife Marcella.16
promote
frommeat, the Neoplatonists'

(or, rather, Porphyry's)
or less commonplace and derived from the Pythagoreans:
heavier, more expensive, more stimulating to the bodily
On the abstention
views were more
was
meat-eating
desires than vegetarianism.17 Eating meat disturbs the soul's purity, for by it
the living is brought into contact with the dead.18 And it is interesting to
note that Porphyry, in the same passage, discusses the 'defiling' (i.e. 'mate
love: for by it the soul is 'pulled down' towards
'defiling' effect of contact with matter
(by food,
bodily pleasure.
a
all
of
is
cardinal
asceticism
the
based on
principle
passions)19
pleasure,
effect of sexual
rializing')
This
Neoplatonism.
Our first clear example of a motif of this sort is from Clement ofAlexandria.
In the Eclogae propheticae20 we read:
Fasting empties the soul ofmatter { e
), and makes
clear
and
for
the
of
the
divine
with
truth. The
it,
light
reception
body,
food of the world is this present life and sin; God's food is faith, hope,
charity...
Food should always be plain and simple, to facilitate digestion and secure
'
'
'21 Excessive
food drags down the intellectual part
lightness of body.
'22
towards insensibility.
however, Clement, following a more
Elsewhere,
16
32-4
Esp.
from any
?
anish
the divine
insofar as he withdraws
'man approaches
(295f. Nauck).
E.g.
the body's
'Avoid
that is wom
(32, p. 295).
anything
feelings'
for it is the offspring of the virgin
had a man's
soul and
body;
The
from
that is most
blessed.
the
incorruptible
develops
incorruptible,
sympathy with
as though you
mind
the pure
is held accursed
the body produces
Cf. also
(33, p. 296).
by all the gods'
the Philosopher
translation
the English
Zimmern,
by Alice
(with introduction)
Porphyry
toHis
(London
1896).
Wife Marcella
17De abstin.
Fasten
109. The
1.46 (Nauck
Cf. Arbesmann,
121.13ff.).
subject has been
in der Antike
Der Vegetarismus
treated exhaustively
by Johannes Hausleiter,
24,
(= RVV
what
whereas
Berlin
be
1935)
sullied
18 Ibid.
? Ibid.
20 14.2
21 Paed.
22
316ff.
Hausleiter
stresses
animal
by contact with
4.20
(262.6ff. Nauck).
(262.2ff. Nauck).
St?hlin
GCS
(ed.
2.1
Porphyry's
flesh.
motive
of
'internal
purity';
3.140).
1.154).
(St?hlin
e a a
a a
a,
ibid. 2.9
(St?hlin
207).

this would
14
TRADITIO
'
generic Stoic principle, makes it clear that the use of food is an indifferent
'23
thing.
Among the patristic works which most obviously approach the Neoplatonic
way of talking about fasting is the treatise, De vera virg?nitatis integritate,
probably by Basil, the semi-Arian bishop of Ancyra in Galatia. The author
a
'make the soul most
explains thatthe things which
(
corporeal'
) are the pleasures of eating and the gratification
and, he adds, the former lead to the latter:24
appetite,
of the sexual
As the body grows fat it is inordinately stimulated by the sexual humors

seething deep down, and it is goaded and driven on to sexual intercourse.
Again,25
As the stomach swells with food, the organs beneath it are necessarily
stimulated towards their proper function by the deeply seething humors.
For the overhanging stomach supplies these organs with the things which
on
act
these
faculties
like
spur.
must
We
therefore, Basil teaches, avoid wines and food that is very rich,
add fire to fire'; and we must carefully avoid those foods whose
a
'internal power' (
as certain
) causes them to arouse the passions,
types of seeds, beans and greens.26 Basil also warns of the indiscriminate use
'lest we
of salt, despite the general practice, for this too is 'potent' and may excite
the bodily passions.27 Our whole efforts in this matter should be to try to
achieve a harmony, remembering that the weight of food can hold down
the soul in its flight towards heavenly
things.28 As the old Greek proverb
'a heavy belly cannot produce a light mind.'29
went,
23 Ibid.
see Strathmann,
On Clement,
RAC
2.1 (St?hlin
'Askese,'
159).
Sittenlehre
der fr?hchristlichen
J. Stelzenb erger, Die
Beziehungen
also
See
Stoa
(Munich
and
Stoicism,
453ff.
1933)
I am inclined
Stelzenberger,
to agree with
von Alexandrien
however,
perhaps
the more moderate
1 (1950) 762-3.
der
zur Ethik
overemphasizes
of W.
position
Clement's
V?lker,
Der
ethical
57; Leipzig
1952) 618f.: Clement's
'
<
is
a
Position.
der
with
Christian
Philonian,
theory
Vertiefung
fundamentally
philonischen
24 De vera
down in the corpus of Basil
virg. integ. 6 (PG 30.681 C). The treatise, handed
to the Bishop
of Ancyra
the Great, has been attributed
very
(a former doctor of medicine)
wahre
Gnostiker
bei Clemens
(TU
see Altaner,
For the literature,
by F. Cavallera.
(1953 ed.) 248.
Patrologie
plausibly
1
also P. Keseling,
767.
RAC
'Askese,'
(1950)
26 De vera
see Philo,
For a similar idea,
virg. integ. 7 (PG 30.684 B).
Leg.
alleg.
See
138
(143 Cohn).
26
he does not tell us specifically

ibid. 8 (PG 30.685 C).
what
Though
they were,
27 Ibid. 9
of the Egyptian
used salt; old
desert always
(PG 30.685 D f.). The Fathers
tell the visiting
and Paphnutius
Palladius
that no one eats his bread without
Chronius
it lest he
Lausiac
contract
History
serious
of Palladius
28 Ibid. 9
(PG 688 D f.).
Palladius,
( a e a):
6 ; Cambridge
1898-1904]
illness
[TS
HL
II
47
(ed.
141).
29 Ibid. 10 (PG 30.689 A).

C. Butler,
The
CAL
ASCETI
FASTING
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
15
have a group of motifs which seem to be redolent of Neoplatonism

in
a
and
the
Basil
Great.
For
in
Chrysostom
homily
example, Chrysostom,
We
on Acts,
speaks as follows:30
indulge the worm?... Why store up a source of sweat and fetid

Why
odors ?...Why bury the soul alive and make the wall about it all the thicker ?
And he goes on: 31
Let us make the soul itself more clearsighted, make her wings light and
her bonds looser. Let us feed the soul with holy discourse and with fru
gality, and feed the body only so much as will keep it healthy.
and drink, he explains in another homily,32 cause a dense cloud to rise up
and this impedes the rational functions of the soul; further, just as the thick
ness of the cornea of the eye may impede the light, so too, the thickness of
Food
the body impedes the intellectual light of the soul. And this seems ultimately
'
to be the basic reasoning behind his constant reminder, Fill your stomachs
lest you be unable to kneel and pray to God because of heavi
moderately,
ness. '33 For there seems to be more intended here than the ordinary experi
ence of the difficulty of 'thinking after eating'; again,34
the person who
the Apostles
Similarly, Basil
and prays with
fasts is light and winged
his
extinguishes
and
concupiscence
almost always
the Great
God...
propitiates
fasted.
in his famous
letter To
For
that
the Young Men
sobriety,
reason
says:35
Recall Pythagoras who, whenever he saw one of his pupils getting too fat
because of lack of proper diet and exercise, used to say: Why don't you
stop making your prison more difficult for you?
if the Commentary on Isa?as is really his ? Basil teaches:36

The smoky fumes, as itwere, of rich and plentiful food, ascending, cut off
like a thick cloud the illuminations of the Holy Spirit which are infused
into the mind.
Elsewhere ?
30 Horn.
32Horn.
27
in AcL
13
in 1 Tim.
34Horn.
(PG
62.568).
57
in Matth.
(PG
58.563).
RAG 1 (1950) 770.

36 14
Basil
(Deferrari
that
teaches
In Epist.
4.422).
the general virtue
for incorruptibility.
the body
6
that He ate and drank
degree
31 Ibid.
(PG
33 De L?zaro
60.208).
(PG
On
366
Ghrysostom,
e a
(PG 48.974).
see also P. Keseling,
not
32.1109-12,
(PG
of
210).
1.8
in the Garnier-Maran
4Askese,'
edition)
all bodily
and trains
appetites,
this virtue
in such a high
out, possessed
Christ, he points
in a manner
to Himself;
He did not even pass His
peculiar
a
controls
in Him*
2
of self-control
Gf. also Epist.
the power
(Deferrari
4.352).
food, so great was
at table.
(Deferrari
1.22) on the control of one's thoughts
86 Comm.
orat. 3
Comm.
in Isai.
So too Cyril of Alexandria,
in Isai.
32 (PG 30.184 C).
4
or
or
be
if
it
filled
cannot
as
the
with
rheum
Just
cut,
dust,
eye,
bodily
(PG 70.149f.):
of man when weighed
down with
luxurious
see clearly,
so too the mind
bodily
pleasure
are minor
or contemplate
His works with
clear vision.'
There
cannot
look toward God
textual
variants
given
in the Gamier
edition
I (1839)
574 B.

16
TRADITIO
And
this was
the reason, he alleges, why Moses and Elias fasted.

times it is difficult to disentangle the two motifs: the lightness of the
soul in rising to God, freed from the heaviness of the flesh,37and the idea that
the 'fumes' of the food darken or cloud the mind.
In Gregory ofNazianzus,
At
this is pushed to an excess that recalls the outspokenness of the Cynic dia
tribe.38 For example, in the dramatic dialogue called
Comparatio vitarum39
we have Pneuma and Kosmos
a
engaged in kind of agon:
Pneuma:
Kosmos:
Pneuma:
But my pleasure is to have no pleasure, not to have my body

swollen with things filling it inside, sick with the infirmity of
the wealthy, breathing frommy throat the sickly, sweet odor of
filth, constraining my mind with the weight of my fat.
For
me
Bread
the
is my
sweetmeats
condiment, and my
drink pure water,
surpassing
sweet.
In another dramatic poem, Gregory has a dialogue with his stomach:40

'
'
'
Give me something, says my stomach. Well, if you're moderate with
what you get,
11be glad to. But if you give in to your lower passions
it's only dung you'll get and not much of that; but if you control your
self, we'll give it to you in great abundance.'
by the time we reach the monastic
spiritual directors of the fifth
read
century, these motifs are, as it were, accepted and stereotyped. We
for example in the Abbot Nilus' Tractatus de ocio spiritibus malit?ae:41
Finally
It was the desire of food that spawned disobedience; itwas the pleasure of
taste that drove us from Paradise.
Luxury in food delights the gullet,
but it breeds the worm of licence that sleepeth not. An empty stomach
prepares one forwatching and prayer; the full one induces sleep. The mind
is sober when it has a dry diet; a liquid one plunges the mind into the
depths. The prayer of him who fasts flies up like the eaglet; but the prayer of
the dissipater, weighted down with satiety, drags along the ground. The
mind of the faster is a brilliant star among the heavens; the mind of the
dissipater is concealed in gloom. Just as a fog obscures the sun, so a heavy
quantity of food darkens the mind.
For here we have
come full circle.
The
apparently
Pythagorean
doctrine42
37 Cf.
of Nyssa,
De virg. 22 (PG. 46.401 D ff.) and Methodius
of Olympus,
e.g. Gregory
1.1
on Plato, Phaedr.
based
246 D ff. Cf. H. F. Cherniss, The
(Bonwetsch
Symp.
8.2fl),
Platonism
16ff.
of Gregory of Nyssa
(Berkeley
1930)
38 See Johannes
und Verwandtes
Geffcken, Kynika
1909), for Cynic influences
(Heidelberg
in Gregory.
3? Carm. moral.
2.8 (PG 37.655?.).
?o Tetrastichae
sententiae
73ff. (PG 37.933 A).
41 Tract.
1 (PG 79.1145
B).
42 For a
see Arbesmann,
97ff. ('Das
Fasten
ekstatische
and his
discussion,
Fasten'),
and Prophecy'
25ff. The
connection
to be the fact that eating
would
'Fasting
appear
before
one
at times, disturbed
sleeping produces,
dreams,
sources of prophetic
of the commonest
inspiration
and
and
dreams
revelation.
for the ancients

But

were
in all this dis
asgetical
in
fasting
the
greek
writers
patristic
17
on the influence of food on revelation has joined with the Neoplatonic view of
the defilement, of matter;
the heaviness,
and these in turn are joined to
the doctrine, itwould seem, that the sin of the firstman was one of gluttony.43
III. Hygienic
Fasting
has a long section treating the various doctrines of the ancient

medical schools on the advantages of fasting and special kinds of abstinence.1
lore of
Many of the Fathers of the Church were acquainted with the medical
their times; and Basil of Ancyra, for example, if he is the author of De vera
virginitatis integritate, mixes a good deal of physiological doctrine with his
Arbesmann
Clement of Alexandria
constantly
precepts on virginity and asceticism.
in food,2 to avoid such condiments
exhorts his 'true gnostic' to be moderate
as harm the body,3 and to avoid meat as far as possible.4 But it is difficult
often to distinguish the purely hygienic motive from the consideration that
De virgin?ate,
eating can be an occasion of sin. For example, in Athanasius'
we read:5
Consider the effects of fasting: it cures disease, dries up the bodily humors,
puts demons to flight, gets rid of impure thoughts, makes the mind clearer
and the heart purer, the body sanctified, and raises man to the throne of God.
in the works
hygienic motif is extremely prominent

In one of the homilies on John he says:6
The
of Chrysostom.
(Delicate living) wears away the body's strength... If you visit a physician
and ask him, you will discover that practically all the causes of disease
'
'
two different motifs,
the materializing
of the soul
I suggest, we must
separate
'
'
'
on
the
The
of
of
humors
the
influence
the
and
smoky
spirit.
meaning
smoky
by food,
'
seem to be explained
would
humors
by Aristotle's
theory that bodies pass from one state
in this case, the food would
into the bodily
to another
pass
by giving off certain vapors;
cussion,
substance
of H.
and
F.
esp.
while
the vapors
Gherniss,
for the relevant
fast';
cf. Passio
to obscure
the mind.
of Presocratic
of Heraclitus,
37
Criticism
fragment
For
Bartholomaei
(Lipsius-Bonnet
9.1 (PG 54.238);
the
(Diels-Kranz),
II
'We
1.136);
131ff.,
(Baltimore
1935)
G. S. Kirk, Heraclitus.
fast now
Scala 14 (PG 88.869 B).

1 Fasten
2 Paed.
Adam
did
Orat.
Gregory Naz.
John Glimacus,
A);
118ff.
2.7
3 Ibid.
* Ibid.
(St?hlin
(p. 154), 3.2
2.1 (p. 161);
6 Horn.
22
1.189L),
2.1
(p. 241).
Strom. 7.6
(p. 154)
(St?hlin
57
(ed. von der Goltz, TU 14 [1905]41).
De
because
de ieiun.
Ephraem,
Hymn,
In princ?pium
ieiuniorum
In Dan.
Asterius,
2.678);
Chrys.,
(Lamy
de vita S. loan. Chrys. 12 (PG 47.41);
Dial,
40.1373
Palladius,
C);
(PG
3 (PG 35.1173
45.28
C), Orat. 24 in laudem S. Cypriani
(PG 36.662
6.1
see the discussion
theory,
Philosophy
1954) 232ff.
(Cambridge
in the Fathers:
is not infrequent
The Cosmic Fragments

43 This
'Adam-motif'
not
rose
Aristotle's
and
passim.
3.26).
For the expression

in Io. 3 (PG 59.137).
1.7 (PG 31.173 C), 2.7 (PG 31.193 C).
e a
e a
ieiun. horn.

see also Basil,
18
TRADITIO
come from this. Frugality, a plain table, is the mother of health and for
that reason physicians have called it so.
Chrysostom paints a very forceful picture in a homily on Acts.7 After empha
sizing the general importance of fasting, he mentions the evils of drunkenness:
'nothing is worse than a dissipated woman; nothing worse than a drunken
'
'
'
woman.
Overstuffed with food, belching the humor of corrupting meats,
'
she is so heavy she cannot get up. Whereas
the moderate woman is stately,
'
controlled and beautiful.
And he concludes the passage:
Therefore did God make our stomachs of small dimensions to jindicate
a small amount of sustenance ? that he might teach us to take more
care
our
of
souls.
In another homily on Acts he reveals his interest in the physiological:8

I should like to say a fewwords about medicine. Of the things that enter
the stomach, not all are turned into nourishment, for not all of the food
itself is nutritious, but part of it in the process of digestion is turned into
nourishment and the rest into the stool... Now if food be taken in too
a quantity,
great
even
the nutritive
part
can
become
harmful...
For
when
gluttony, like a rain-storm, has flooded the intestines, it throws every

thing into a turmoil, and itmakes organs that up till then had been quiet
and healthy drift sluggishly on the surface... So physicians tell us that
want is the mother of health.
Again,9
the more luxuriously we live, the fouler are the odors with which our
bodies are filled; the body is like a swollen leather-bottle running out
in
direction.
every
Particularly
... lie
people who
abed
all
day,
are wealthy,
eat
lunch
and
says Chrysostom,10
dinner
together,
burst
their
stomachs,
dull their senses, sink their ship with an immoderate weight of food.
They fetter, gag and bind their bodies; they cannot get a good night's rest
and are troubled by terrible nightmares. Worse than the insane, they
bring on themselves a self-inflicted demon.
then goes on to enumerate
the evil effects of over-indulgence: the gout,

distention, ruining of the digestion,
palsy, premature senility, headaches,
loss of appetite, the constant need of doctors and medicines.11
He
7Horn.
8 Horn.
27
in Act.
16
in Act.
2 (PG 60.207).
4 (PG 60.134).
For a similar discussion
(rich food causing more waste
see
Demonst.
15.1
ed.
J.
Parisot
matter)
Aphraates,
(Pat. Syr.
732).
9
Horn.
13 in 1 Tim. 4 (PG 62.570).
10
This little work was most probably
Quod nemo laeditur nisi a seipso 7 (PG 52.468).
to Bardenhewer,
in exile.
in 405/6, while John was
written, according
11 Ibid. 8
dis
In Horn.
4 (PG 63.207)
29 in Heb.
he enumerates
'heaviness,
(PG 469).
of breathing,
35 in Act. 2
obstruction
In Horn.
tension, headaches,
insomnia,
belching.'
'
he describes
the
his body
of the obese man,
(PG 60.256)
disgusting
dragging
spectacle
a
and
like
the
a
debauchee
his
in
the
fat
'like
seal';
eyes
rheumy,
along
arising
morning,
pig,

ascetical
in
fasting
the
greek
writers
patristic
19
So too, Basil the Great points out how beneficial is fasting for the sick;12
doctors prescribe it, for it helps the sick to throw off their sickness more
easily;13 for those who are well, fasting will make their food taste sweeter.14
Asterius of Amasea15 points out that fasting takes the pressure from the veins,
the eyes see more clearly, the mind is unclouded by vapors, the step becomes
firm and the hands less shaky, the speech clear, sleep without nightmares:
thus 'fasting brings peace for body and soul alike,' for it calms the surge
that rises from overeating and dispels bodily heat. And these benefits should
be kept in mind when the Church bids us observe the annual fast.16
For pseudo-Chrysostom,17
fasting 'cures soreness of eyes'; by fasting we
do not take in the causes of disease;18 and 'a fine complexion arises on the
countenance. '19Gregory Nazianzen
praises the paleness of the ascetic.20 And
us:
bids
Chrysostom
'Simply stand near the person who is fasting and you
will perceive his fragrance. '21
With the monastic
directors of the fifth century many of these ideas are
once
for example,
Isidore of Pelusium,
again accepted as commonplace.
in a letter to Demetrius,22
bids him to choose those foods which will make
him healthy but not make him too muscular;
it will help, too, if he will
always stop eating at table when he still feels hunger; formuscular

strength
is useful for athletes but it tends to darken the activities of the spirit.
IV. The
Daemonic
Motif
of hygienic motifs we saw that it was sometimes difficult

two
to distinguish
levels of thinking which seem implicit in some of the pa
tristic passages, viz. the 'defiling' effect of food (because of its connectiou
with matter or quantity), and the actual effect of food and drink on man's
In our discussion
inclinations. Much
of wine, with
smelling
been mercilessly
his mouth
dregs
around
12 De
that
have
an
like
13 De
ieiun.
ieiun.
16 In
princ.
(PG 86.317 A)
headaches
of this was
on folk psychology.
cine and
elephant.'
horn. 2.7 (PG
horn. 1.4
(PG
apparently based on primitive ideas of medi

But now we shall attempt to trace further
his poor
poured
31.193
31.168
ieiun.
soul as
on
ff.).
So too,
21Horn.
10 ad pop.
Antioch.
dragging
49.111).
on the couch
his
under
great weight
stale
of flesh
14 Ibid.
Eusebius
steadiness
of lofty minds,'
1 (PG
thrown
8 (PG 176 C).

in his De
ieiun.
of Alexandria,
of gait, clarity of eye and lack of
see P. Keseling,
of Asterius
(1950) 767.
26.14 (PG 35.1248).
he
G).
G f.).
(PG 40.372
refers to the calm of mind,
On the asceticism
of the faster.
36 Ibid.
C f).
(PG 40.381
18 De
ieiun. 8 (PG 61.790).
20
that fair blossom
'Pallor,
it were
it, and
17 De
ieiun.
19 De
ieiun.
11
Orat.
22.
(PG
'Askese,'
60.711).
(PG 62.736).
5 (PG 35.1137 A);
22
Epist.
RAG
5.528
(PG

cf. also
Orat.
78.1265
B-G).
20
TRADITIO
the reasons which
some of the patristic writers give for the connection between
food and temptation.

It would go beyond
our purpose to repeat here all that has been said by

Arbesmann,
among others, under the heading of apotropaic fasting in anti
quity.1 Suffice it to say here that three lines of thought seem to stand out:
1) the belief that certain evil spirits, with power over men, entered through
'
the mouth with one's food; 2) the avoidance of 'infection particularly during
the period ofmourning for the dead;2 and 3) the connection between certain
daemons and specific types of food.
As a matter of fact, this type of thinking, explicitly at least, is extremely

rare among patristic writers. We find itmost prominent in the pseudo-Cle
?
and Recognitions
mentine Homilies
(or, better, 'Dramatic Disclosures')
a corpus
of Judaeo-Christian
apocryphal
speeches and stories which were
of the faithful perhaps during the latter part
composed for the edification

is
of the third century.3 The ninth homily (supposedly a sermon of Peter's)
an interesting, if completely fantastic, treatise on demonology.
In hell, the
author explains, there will be a devil attached to each condemned soul;
then the author goes on to explain
in this world:4
some of the malign
activity of the devils
though they are spirits, they have a desire for food, drink and
sexuality. And, being frustrated in this because they lack the necessary
Even
organs,
they
enter
into men's
bodies
to
obtain
what
they
want...
This
is
the reason why poverty and fasting and self-discipline are the finestmeans
of banishing evil spirits.
The ultimate reason for this daemonic obsession is further explored in
The author (or authors), incidentally, displays a good deal
the Recognitions.
of knowledge about anatomy and physiology;5 and in Recogn. 4, speaking
through the person of Peter, he explains the gruesome law which God has
established:6
Those men who, though they seem merely to be complying with the
demands of nature, have the intention of committing sin by going to
excess [in food, drink, sexuality], allow the devils to enter into them.
1 Fasten
21ff.
Fear
of demons
man's
experience
primitive
tain herbs.
2 It is difficult
to believe,
derived
3 For
from this apotropaic
in food
of nausea
(cf. Fasten
or food-poisoning
in
originated
23f.) may well have
effects of cer
and the medicinal
that all Trauerfasten

however,
25f.)
(Arbesmann
in the next section.
element.
See the discussion
can
be
Md.
see Altaner,
Patrol.
the bibliography,
77f.; Quasten,
Patrology
(Westminster,
I 59ff.
and Utrecht,
1950-53)
4 Pseudo-Clem.
horn. 9.10
ed. Rehm-lrmscher
(GGS; Berlin-Leip
(PG 2.248 G 249 A);
Fasten
24.
135.
Gf.
Arbesmann,
zig 1953)
5 See
of certain bodily
3.4 (PG 1.1284 A-B) on the interdependence
functions;
e.g. Recogn.
and function of various
8.28-32
organs.
(PG 1385 D ff.) on the position
6
accurate.
from Rufinus'
version, which should be substantially
Recogn. 4.16 (PG 1321B-C),

ASGETICAL
FASTING
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
21
WRITERS
For God gives them the permission, Once man's mind has inclined towards
'
sin. On the physiological
level, he goes on to explain, this is paralleled by
the release of 'a kind of poison' which results from the excess of food and
drink (which the normal bodily heat is unable to take care of); and this,
to become
'causes the body's movements
filling the veins and the viscera,
irrational and wicked. '7 A similar permission is given by God for the devils
to enter sacrificed food.8 At the same time the good are able to resist the
suggestions of the devils;9 and the evil spirits know those who are devoted
to God and are driven away by their presence;10 in fine, they can have no
power over a man unless he deliberately puts himself under their will.11
Such a detailed
treatment would seem to be unique in Christian literature.

have a warning in Origen's Contra Celsum12 against eating 'strangled
'
'
'
meats
lest we have evil spirits dining with us ; and another reference, later
to become commonplace, on the employment of fasting in conjunction with
We
exorcism.13
on Virginity,1* 6-7 are especially concerned with

some of
the practice of fasting by the consecrated virgins. Enumerating
the beneficial effects of fasting, he says:15
In Athanasius'
Treatise
It cures disease, dries up the body's humors, puts demons to flight, gets
rid of evil thoughts, etc.,
as we have quoted the passage above. The author then proceeds to discuss
Matth.
17.18-20 on Jesus' cure of the lunatic boy and His recommendation
on casting out devils by prayer and fasting.16 For the devils, the author
?
but he does not tell us the reason. Basil of Ancyra,
explains, fear fasting
on the contrary, uses this effect of fasting as a warning: by fasting we may
7 Ibid.
4.18 (PG 1322

), Rufinus.
to a kindred
evil spirit, while
is united
of poison.
8
Recogn.
4.19
(PG
1.1323
8 Ibid.
(PG 1322 C).
10 Ibid. 4.32
(PG 1329 C).
12
8.30
18 In
he
(Koetschau,
los. horn. 24.1
teaches
that
Cf. Horn.
9.12
(PG
from the food there
2.249
seeps
G-D):
The
through
soul'
'earthly
the body a kind
D).
11 Ibid. 4.34
(PG 1330 A).
GCS
2.245).
horn. 13.7 (Baehrens
cf. also In Num.
117), where
(Baehrens
7.448);
4
for the perfection
the demons
the freedom to annoy the good
still have
of those who are to be crowned.'

of Rufinus'
version.
But we must be cautious
14 Ed.
Gesch.
see also Bardenhewer,
14 (1905) 35ff., on whom
by E. von der Goltz, TU
d. altk. Lit.
Ill 66.
16 7
(von der Goltz
41).
?
16
verse 21 as authentic
tradition
the MSS
with
though
G, D, the Latin
Accepting
our verse
it is omitted by B, the first hand of S,
In Mark
and others.
9.29, from which
'
'
tra
The Lucianic
omit the words
and fasting.
may be a borrowing, B, S and other MSS
dition keeps the full text in both places,
and here I should prefer not to follow it. On the
text
see E.
Nestle,
N?vum
testamentum
graece
et latine
(16th
ed.
Stuttgart

1954)
ad
locc.
22
TRADITIO
keep the devil away from the body, but he can still attack the soul !17In such
cases we may well be excused for taking these remarks as rhetorical and
not strictly doctrinal.
Similarly Asterius of Amasea18 warns his listeners
that the devils will
those who
live with
those who
fast.
feast during Lent,
the angels with
the fifth century we meet with a rather advanced

theory of demons,
are
monastic
the
writers.
among
particularly
Spirits
assigned specific func
By
tions, i.e. to instigate specific vices, and are arranged in various orders equipped
with varying temptations and wiles. Against these the monastic
spiritual
director attempts to lay down a system of spiritual combat in accordance
with
the different approach of each wicked spirit. For example, the abbot
in De diversis malis cogitationibus19 explains that the demons are ar
ranged in series: the devils of gluttony and vainglory go first, passing on
those whom they have wounded
'it is impossible for
to the others. Thus
a soul to fall into the hands of the
he has first been
of
fornication
unless
spirit
wounded by gluttony. '20 Against gluttony ?
the
and therefore impurity?
monk's strongest weapon
is fasting.21
In the Scala Paradisi22 John Climacus presents a vivid hypotyposis of the
Nilus
demons
laughing while they discuss their victims. The demons' plan is to

overthrow the monk in little things, especially his appetite; one tells the other:
'Catch him ... put him in a turmoil. For when his belly is full he will
be
overcome
'
As Lucifer is the prince of devils, so gluttony is the prince of passions.23 We

must not only fast and control the appetite, but when we have to eat we should
think of death and the final judgment; when drinking, of the bitter drink
Jesus was given on Calvary.
17 De
vera virg. integ. 48 (PG 30.764

18 In
ieiun. (PG 40.373 A-B).
princ.
19 1
(PG 79.1200 D
20 Cf. also
B).
f.).
ibid. 23
(PG 79.1226
in the mind,
evil ideas persisting
food and drink before the mind:
that the 'passions'

f.), where he explains
keep certain
as the feeling of hunger and thirst keeps the idea of
of these passions
'it is because
that there persist
in the
'
mind
the thought of food and all the impure thoughts that arise from food.
On gluttony
'
as the cause of all sin, cf. also Tract, de ocio spir. malitiae
1 (PG 79.1145 A).
In a chubby
just
ibid. 3 (PG 1148 B). So too in John of Damascus'

De octo spiri
flourish/
body the passions
tibus nequitiae
1 (PG 95.80 A) gluttony
is listed first and impure desires
second.
21
53 (PG 79.1253 B);
cf. Instituta
ad monachos
Nilus,
Capita
paraenetica
(PG 1236 A).
But Nilus
the daemon
of gluttony
also taught that when
cannot weaken
his charge in any
other way
he finally tempts him to excessive

penance
cog. 25, PG 1229 B-C);
(De div. malis
the purpose
of this is to tempt him either to pride or else so to weaken
him that he will
For the same idea, cf. Chrys.
and despair
yield to discouragement
(Epist. 3.46, PG 413 D).
4 in 2 Cor., 5 (PG 61.425).
Horn.
22 Gradus 14
on the Apophthegmata
See the discussion
in section 6, below.
(PG 88.868 C).
23 Ibid.
(PG 868 D).

in
fasting
ascetical
The motivation
the
greek
and direction has

Homilies
Pseudo-Clementine
V.
has
Christian
indeed
remained
Fasting
23
writers
patristic
changed: but the spirit of the

to the last.
as a Mourning-Fast
Arbesmann has given an excellent expos? of the non-Christian sources of

the Trauerfasten and has reduced itsmotivation primarily to a desire to avoid
So too, the mourning-fast
religious defilement by the spirit of the deceased.1
is frequent in the Old Testament,
during times of public or private sorrow,
and was often accompanied by the practice ofwearing rough sackcloth, sitting
in dust and ashes, the omission of washing and anointing.2
sin
We have seen above that many of the patristic writers refer to Adam's
as one of gluttony, and Adam becomes a typical exemplum malumz in the
in some of the Fathers
sense. Now
rhetorical
there is a certain element of
in Gregory Nazianzen:
for example,
mourning
'We fast now, because we did not fast then, conquered by the tree of knowl
'4 There is an
edge.
interesting passage in a work by the so-called Macarius,
connected
this fact:
with
custodia cordisi5 the author points out that Christian asceticism is founded
realization of his sinfulness, and that it is, essentially, a type of
just as a mother would mourn for an only son taken from her
mourning;
De
on man's
so too the Christian
prematurely by death,
fall from grace.6
1 Fasten
25 ff., with
which
'The
real, original motive

fear of malicious
daemons
it would
reserves,
appear
that
"What many
single principle.
and women
who
L.
e a, RE
Ziehen,
for fasting,'
says Ziehen,
whose
influence threatened
the motives
authors
is constantly mourning
17 (1936) 101 fundamentally

agrees.
the
'was without
any doubt
regularly
'
Ziehen's
But despite
when one ate.
for fasting
seem
his own
to overlook
be
cannot
so simply
is the natural
reduced
experience
to a
that men
often are so
are in great emotional
distress
(e.g. from sorrow, fear, pain)
ex
they forget their need of food and drink or even, in some cases, find it
the idea that it would
is perhaps
motivation
possible
tremely difficult to eat. Another
be wrong
friend or kin has lost the power of such
one's departed
to enjoy one's food while
absorbed
that
enjoyment
2 See H.
(Frankfurt
58;
and
by death.
und M?nchtum
Askese
DB
O.
2 (1910)
1396fi;
Z?ckler,
'Deuil,'
der fr?hchristl. Askese
Geschichte
114; H.
1914)
(Leipzig
Strathmann,
1897)
au
for the rabbinical
Le Juda?sme
temps
writers,
esp. J. Bonsirven,
palestinien
Les?tre,
de J.-C.
II 281ff.
(2 vols. Paris
1934-5)
3
See section
I, above.
4 OraU
* iq
45, 28 (PG 36.662 g).
(PG 34.829 ? ff.).
6
on Matth.
is a melancholy
thing, not in
Chrysostom,
9.15, says 'fasting
commenting
3 (PG 57
Horn. 30 (31) inMatth.
itself, but rather for those who are still spiritually weak';
he bids
we
his
have
and
in
De
10
which
above,
quoted
336);
(PG 47.409),
compunctione
Demetrius
just
as
not
people
the
mourning
to worry'about
these
perform
loss of heaven.'
sickness
practices
that may
when
result
in mourning,
fasting and penance;

so too Christians
'who
from

for.
are
24
traditio
in his work De
solemn?tate paschali,1 composed about the year 332,

that
says
during the Easter season the body relaxes; there is no
*
because
'the
fasting
Bridegroom iswith us. And a little further on he asserts
that fasting originated with the Apostles
'when the Lord was taken away
'8
from them.
Such an explicit reference is not frequent in the Fathers and
in
would be important ifwe could attach any credence to it. Epiphanius,
in
his
in
his Expositio
the
various
enumerates
time;
vogue
fidei,
practices
and Fridays, he asserts, was of apostolic
the stational fast on Wednesdays
And
Eusebius
origin, and he quotes in his support Luke 5.35 (when the bridegroom shall be
taken away from them, then theywill fast in those days).9 Indeed it is difficult
to understand the full significance of this saying of Jesus preserved essentially
the same in the three synoptic writers.10 But in any case it would seem
were pre
clearly to mean that because of the Lord's presence, the apostles
served from many difficulties (e.g. persecution) which they would later be
'fast' and 'mourn'
In all three passages the words
no
and
there
is
cogent proof that
interchangeably;11
a
as
even
were
words
intended
prophecy (still less as
indirectly
called upon to endure.

seem to be used
would
Our Lord's
a command) with regard to the practice of fasting.

We have, of course, in the apocryphal Gospel ofPeter a definite reference
to the mourning-fast of the apostles after the death of Christ. The words
are put into the mouth
of Peter:12
And I and my companions were grieved, and sore of heart we hid ourselves.
For we were being sought out by them as malefactors, as though we
wanted to burn the Temple. And because of all this we fasted and sat
mourning and weeping day and night until the Sabbath day.
be going far beyond our evidence to maintain that all Christian
?
?
was
forAdam's sin and for Christ's death
fasting
essentially Trauerfasten
but this idea, especially in connection with the prominence of the fast before
Easter,13 must have had an important influence on early Christian thought.
It would
VI.
We
have
writings
Abnormality
had
occasion
in the Practice
to notice the
of Gregory Nazianzen
CSEL
20.275,
trace of Cynic exaggeration in the

In the passage there quoted,
on fasting.1
7 5
(PG 24.700
G).
9 De
3.522f.).
(Holl, GGS
fide 22.1ff.
10Matth.
5.35.
2.20, Luke
9.15, Mark
Wissowa,
11 So
of Fasting
8 De
solemn,
Cf. Tertullian,
De
pasch.
ieiun.
10
(PG
24.705
C).
2, 13 (ed. Reifferscheid
291).
The Parables
In
New York
1956) 42.
(tr. S. H. Hooks,
of Jesus
too, J. Jeremias,
to a Bridegroom.
to compare Himself
Jeremias* view, Jesus had not meant
12
or second
3 [Berlin 1933] 5), from the middle
KIT
Petri.
7 (ed. Klostermann,
Evang.
114f.
cf. Quasten,
half of the second century:
Patrology
18 See
and Prophecy'
42ff., for the literature.
Arbesmann,
'Fasting
1
II above.
See section

AL
ASCETIC
IN THE
FASTING
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
25
we have a dialogue, in the Cynic manner, between the author and his belly
'
in which he threatens to punish it by feeding it dung and that not in great
'
'2 In another
abundance.
poem, he speaks of the ascetic
constantly chas
'3
constantly in hunger and cold, clothed
tising himself with interior scourges,
in rags, fed on dust, standing in prayer day and night;4 'and the body that
has done no wrong he binds with iron chains'
( e
).5 Here
the self-chastisement with interior scourges seems to refer to self-examination
It is doubtful whether we should take the eating of
and acts of penitence.
dung seriously;6 it is perhaps merely rhetorical; but in the Apophthegmata

the story is told of the holy priest Isaac of Cellia who used to eat ashes of
incense with his bread.7 As for binding the body with chains, Chrysostom,
in a passage we have had occasion to quote,8 speaks of young maidens wearing

in his letter
chains while they strewed themselves with ashes. And Basil,
to a fallen monk,9 mentions the practice of wearing a hard, pinching belt.
'
'
the ancient ascetics and the fathers of the Egyptian desert
Undoubtedly
?
even if
(whom we shall later consider) went to excess in many respects
we
but a small fraction of the tales that have
are to believe
been handed
But many of the tales come from sometimes unreliable historians

he it is, for example, who tells us
like Sozomen, a lawyer of Constantinople:
10who lived on raw
and
of the famous Battheus of Edessa
of the ?
grass,
so
crawl from his teeth.'11 Earlier
to
'who fasted
long that maggots began
down.
of course, Chrysostom
sharply ridiculed the mountebanks
workers' who performed ascetical tricks for food or pay:12
and
'wonder
Some chew the soles ofworn-out sandals; others drive sharp spikes through
their heads; others jump naked into waters frozen with the cold; still
others endure things even more outlandish than this.
There
is no value
in the ascetical
'feat' for its own sake.
who kill themselves
'gymnosophists'
tices are vain and wasteful.13
Like
the Indian
by leaping into the flames, such prac
2 Tetrast
sent 33.73?.
(PG 37.934 A).
3 De
et
de
55ff. (PG 1170f.).
seipso
episcopis
?
4 Ibid. 576ff.
Ibid. 604f.
(PG 1209).
(PG 1208).
6
a
of diabolic
17 (ed.
was
HL
considered
Palladius,
symptom
possession,
Koprophagy
TS
6.2 [Cambridge
C. Butler,
1904] 47).
7 De abbate Isaaco
15 (to Basil),
of a
6 (PG 65.225 B). Cf. Greg. Naz.,
Epist.
speaking
'
I will always remember
meal with Basil,
it, my teeth crunching up and down as if dragging
themselves
out of mud':
37.29 A.
PG
9
8 De
45 (Deferrari
studio praesentium
3 (PG 63.488f.).
1.274).
Epist.
'
10HE
34.
cf. Arbesmann,
and Prophecy'
6.33
(PG 67.1393
Fasting
A);
u HE
so uncritical
in many
instances
that
6.34 (PG 1396 A).
Sozomen
is, however,
one must
12Horn.
be
cautious
77
18 In sanctum
(Oxford
1954)
in Matth.
Babylam
237ff.
of any
6
7
detail
unsupported
(PG
58.710).
(PG
52.543).
See H.
by
independent
Musurillo,
witnesses.
The Acts
of the Pagan

Martyrs
26
TRADITIO
Yet, at the same time, the accounts we read of the Egyptian and Syrian
so contrary to the stream of asceticism as we find it at least in
desert ?
?
are enough to make the modern
Basil, Chrysostom and Gregory ofNyssa
historian become either completely skeptical or else convinced that, as Riddle14
has put it, these primitive ascetics were guilty of masochism.
?
The psychological ?
environment which brought
and, indeed, ascetical
about this peculiar phenomenon
is extremely complex; and it is not our
intention here to repeat what has been said by so many scholars and Church
One of the most important documents in this matter, however,
should be mentioned:
the fragments of Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria.15
In a letter to Fabian
(Fabius), bishop of Antioch, quoted by Eusebius, he
describes the serious hardships suffered by Christians, especially of his diocese,
just before and during the edict of Decius
(October, A.D. 249). After enu
historians.
merating some of the indignities they suffered at the hands

officials, he continues:16
of government
What should I say of that multitude of Christians who wandered in the

deserts and the mountains, and were killed by hunger and thirst, cold
and sickness, robbers and wild beasts?
Those who survived this are
e ) of their victory and their predestination.
witnesses ( a
seems here to be adapting a passage fromHebrews
11.38, where
Dionysius
the inspired author is speaking of the heroic lives of the men and women of
the Old Testament, of whom theworld was not worthy?
wandering in deserts,
caves
the
and
For
holes in
earth.
mountains,
Dionysius17 along with many others
felt that it was more prudent and in accord with God's wishes to flee from
the persecutors; hence, the passage here may be partly by way of an apologia.
At any rate, it is not improbable that a good number of these Christians
'
'
formed a nucleus of the desert ascetics ?
and that sheer hardship con
tributed to the practice of abstinence that they were to embrace. This is

:
not to say, however, that this 'flight*was the only motive for the a a
the studies ofNock and Festugi?re18 have made clear the religious motivation
behind
conversion
and withdrawal.
14 C.
The Martyrs.
A Study
in Social
Control
Riddle,
1931) 68ff. (the 'martyr
(Chicago
aus griechischen PapyrusUr
of early Christianity).
K.
Aerztliches
Sudhoff,
psychosis'
the
kunden (Studien zur Geschichte
that
cannot
believe
der Medizin
5-6; Leipzig
1909) 233,
desert monks
abnormal
sexual practices.
without
persevered
15 For
see C. L. Feltoe, The Letters and Other Remains
edition,
of Alexandria
of Dionysius
II lOlff.
Quasten,
(Cambridge
1904) and for further literature,
Patrology
16
Euseb.
HE
6.42.2
GCS
and Feltoe
16.
(Schwartz
2.610)
17 See the texts
p. xvii.
by Feltoe, Dionysius
quoted
18
Personal
A. D. Nock,
Conversion
Particularly,
(Oxford 1933) 266ff. and Festugi?re,
n.
see
II
H.
53ff.
On
of
'Ceno
rise
the
(supra,
monasticism,
Religion
Leclerq,
10)
general
E. F. Morrison,
DACL
2.3047ff.;
bitisme,'
Monasticism
(Oxford
1912); W. K. Lowther
St.
Basil
Clerke,
and His
St. Basil
Rule:
the Great:
in Early
A Study
in Mo
A Study

ASCETICAL
FASTING
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
27
The beginnings of the anchorite movement are sketched for us in Athana

some time after the hermit's death
sius'(?) panegyric, Vita Antonii, composed
in his own eulogy of Athanasius,
in 356/7.19 Gregory Nazianzen,
says that
was
the
in
this
life
the learned bishop
precepts
really promulgating
writing
e
life 'in the guise of a story* (e
of the ideal monastic
aa a
).20
fact, recognized even by Gregory, together with the title Severinus

the
Vita (Oratio in mem?ri?m Antonii habita21) should lead us to accept
gives
the Life in detail only with the greatest caution, even ifwe had the advantage
This
of a scientific critical edition.
Piecing together the story as we have it from Athanasius, we must picture

the young Antony retiring alone to the deserts of the Nile valley in Upper
after about fifteen years, however, his desire for further solitude
Egypt;
leads him to an old ruined fort in the desert on the right bank of the Nile
near Pispir, on the 'Outer Mountain,'

about fiftymiles south of the city
so Athanasius
ofMemphis.22 There for the next twenty years he was to live?
on bread, salt and water (a supply of bread is brought to him about
tells us ?
' '
'
initiated into the sacred mysteries
every sixmonths),
practicing asceticism,
'
on
and filled with the divine spirit. Even
ordinary days, we are told, Antony
ate but once a day, after sunset; and on some occasions he would go two or
'And I need hardly mention wine or

three days without eating anything.23
'
'
no use for them, in the same way
had
for
he
flesh-meat, says Athanasius,
'
as all other ascetics (
a
not bathe or use oil on his body
did
). He
?
?
and his bed was a tiny rush mat laid on the
for this made a man soft
'
'
I am weak, then am I strong !
As
to
used
When
say,
Antony
ground.
Yet Athanasius
tells us that after years of such austerity he did not seem
excessively emaciated;24 in fact, the entire Life is filledwith incidents by which

the author attempts to show Antony's
robustness and strength especially
in fighting with evil spirits. Again, Antony's abstinence from food is further
nasticism
(Dublin
J. Ryan,
Irish Monasticism:
1913);
(Cambridge
M. Heimbucher,
Die
Orden und
and Cork 1931);
Kirche
1933).
(3rd ed. Paderborn
19 See Altaner
223, 235. For a bibliography
as early
advanced
(whose
scepticism was
AS,
Propylaeum
also
scepticism
and Early
Development
der katholischen
see H.
of authorship
Delehaye
in
[1906] 180f.) and others
for Jan. 15 n. 1). Delehaye's
Decembris
25 (Roman martyrology
(1940)
is another
to the Vita s. Syncleticae
extended
A ff-)> which
(PG 28.1487
panegyric-protrepticon
Corps du Christ dans
Antonii
on the question
Anal.
Boll.
as
Origins
Kongregationen
is authentic
25
et l'?glise
on the importance
L. Bouyer,
of asceticism.
L'incarnation
la th?ologie de Saint Athanase
sure
the Vita
feels
that
(Paris 1943),
not
but admits
that
it does
fit into the dogmatic^
back
easily
of Athanasius.
ground
29 Orat. 21.5
(PG 35.1088
A).
21 See Horn. 68
by H. G. Opitz,
Untersuchungen
(PO 8.385), as quoted
der Schriften des Athanasius
(Berlin
1935) 173.
22 For a
of the region, see Butler, HL
map
II, p. xcviii.
28 Vita
24 Ibid.
7 (PG 26.852
14 (PG 864 C).
C).
zur Ueberlieferung

28
TRADITIO
by the suggestion
explained
to
that at times his ecstasies
did not permit him
eat.25
thirty-five years as a solitary, Antony is forced to come forth

from his retirement to be the spiritual director of a number of ascetics who
had come out to the desert in order to imitate his way of life. This incident,
which some have dated to about the turn of the century, has been called
After about
the beginning of the 'Ant?ni?n' type of monasticism:

the monks would live
in loose communities, but each would have his separate life in a little hut
or 'laura.' But we need not suppose that there was any one person, or any
single incident, that actually occasioned the rise of the so-called semi-cenobitic
type of community.
?
on the
Soon after, however, Saint Antony again retires into solitude
'at a great age,' after leaving the sheepskin coat (which
'Inner Mountain';
he also used for a blanket) to Athanasius, he dies in the company of two ascet
?
if indeed the
ics who used to take care of him. Athanasius'
panegyric
of
author was Athanasius26 ? was soon translated into Latin by Evagrius
Antioch, and in this form served to stir up interest in Egyptian asceticism
in the West.
the pious Vita Antonii is a far cry from the love of the extraordinary
and
find it reflected in the Historia Lausiaca
of Bishop Palladius,
the
bizarre
of
the gap is extremely difficult to bridge. The minute recounting
But
as we
austerities, the number of ounces of greens a man ate per day, the abnormal
?
this strikes us
(one is almost tempted to say morbid) interest in the body
at the very least as childish and ridiculous. The author of the Vita began
by speaking of the holy rivalry which his readers had embarked upon
with the Egyptian
fathers; but in Palladius we get the impression almost
'
'
of an athletic
record to be challenged or surpassed. So, too, that mildest of
critics, de Ghellinck:27
Cette
asc?se
aust?re,
rude,
parfois
excessive,
nous
?tonnera
fois par cette ?mulation presque sportive, en mortification

?veille l'id?e d'un nouveau record ? battre chaque jour.
plus
d'une
farouche, qui
'The excesses,' he continues, 'are not always justifiable'; but we must not
overlook the considerable role played, in Egyptian
asceticism, by prayer
and what we, forwant of a better word, call humility.
?
al
at the ninth hour
to sit down to his scanty meal
G): about
?!
sud
before
never
sunset
us
ate
he
told
Antony
though in 7 (PG 852 C) the author had
of his own sinful
a vision,
and received
of himself'
'saw himself outside
apparently,
denly
to the story, he forgot to eat and spent the rest
life.
"When the ecstasy was over, according
25 Ibid.
65
(PG
933
of the day and night in prayer.

26 See
supra n. 19.
27 Lectures
les ?crits des P?res
dans
spirituelles
(Paris
1935)
31
(italics

ours).
IN THE
FASTING
ASCETICAL
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
29
the original impulse towards anachoresis28

Whatever
it is clear that by
the close of the third and the early part of the fourth century Egypt was
dotted with settlements of an eremitical or semi-eremitical kind. The tempta
tion, so often succumbed to by nineteenth-century scholars, to link monasti

'
'
cism with the Therapeutae29 or the possessed
recluses ( a
) of the Sera
peum, is far less prevalent now; and no less a scholar than Sir Harold Bell30
suggests that
on the whole probability is against any direct influence. It ismore likely
that all these movements were due to some permanent tendency in the
temperament and the geography of a country in which the
Egyptian
desert
is everywhere
at
hand.
for convenience, into three

One may divide the early monastic movement,
First there are the strict solitaries, like Antony in his earliest days,
Paul of Thebes, whose life Jerome wrote, John of Lycopolis,
Posidonius
of
the
Moor
of
Moses
the
and
others
from
Rufinus
and
Palladius.
Thebes,
pages
'
Ant?ni?n
founda
Secondly, there is the semi-cenobitic group of so-called
'
tions, in which each monk lived his private life in his own hut or laura but
levels.
The numbers in these

in close proximity to a settlement of other monks.
settlements varied, as did the degree of their communal contact.
Lastly
foundations: these were the first attempts at a
there are the Pachomian
common or cenobitic life: duties were distributed and organized for economy
and practicality, meals were in common and religious duties would be per
formed in a centrally located church or chapel. The four most famous of
settlements were at Pispir (where Antony had made his first
the Ant?ni?n
28 Cf.
Festugi?re,
vita
Philo, De
cited.
54ff., with the literature
Religion
HE
2.17.16f.
de
by Eusebius,
(Schwartz
contemplativa,
quoted
2.148),
'
their
the
scribes their austere habits:
build
foundation,
they
temperance
Making
spiritual
for the day-time,
it. No one will touch food or drink before sundown;
other virtues upon
... some of them
to bodily needs
to philosophy,
and the darkness
they feel, is to be devoted
?
?
so
are
in
third
and others are
to
eat
think
every
they
up
study
day
wrapped
only
... that they restrain themselves
so engrossed
for twice that
of wisdom
by the pleasures
Personal
29
time
and
scarcely
tells us, their

their
one
take
regular
their necessary
diet was
bread,
food once
salt and
in six days.'
hyssop;
occasional
besides
And
the
when
they did, Philo
study of the Scriptures,
on feast days.
Philo,
was
to attend
conferences
occupation
and fictionizing what he had heard
is idealizing
(or seen)
in and about Alexandria.
See H. Strathmann,
men'
or'wise
other
only
suspects,
students
Le
Juda?sme
avant
J?sus-Christ
Lagrange,
und Heidentum
oder Judentum
Zeitgeschichte
DACL
2.3063ff.;
1925) I 440ff.; H. Leclercq,
de Philon
d'Alexandrie
1950)
(3rd ed. Paris
of Jewish
op.
cit.
rabbinical
148ff.;
M.
Neutestamentliche
586; J. Feiten,
1931)
(Paris
zur Zeit Christi und der Apostel
(2 vols. Mainz
et religieuses
E. Br?hier, Les id?es philosophiques
319ff. One is all the more

of Philo's
suspicious
'
on comparing
the vessel
of all sorts of pleasures.
his view of the belly as
When
it is full, all sorts of other desires are awakened':
and
Legum
alleg. 3.138
(ed. Cohn 1.143);
in the acquisition
of fasting and abstinence
cf. ibid. 3.141
of
(p. 144) for the importance
accuracy
and contemplation.
wisdom
30 Cults and Creeds
in Graeco-Roman
Egypt
(Liverpool
1953)
99.

30
TRADITIO
and, the worst

dwelling), the desert of Scete, Nitria
(or Ouady-Natroun)
austere monks
most
of
the
and
wild
where
Cellia
the
all,
place
strongest
only
of
the Younger
dared to live, most prominent among whom was Macarius
Alexandria
because
of his feats of ascetical
emulation.
- c.
431)
(c. 363
Bishop of Helenopolis
our earliest source for the life and
is, after the Vita Antonii of Athanasius,
austerities of the Egyptian monks.31 Palladius
spent a good many years
The Historia
Lausiaca
of Palladius,
travelling in the desert, talking with the solitaries. And all that can be said
of Palladius'
incredible tales is that they are unverifiable. Cuthbert Butler,
in his edition of the Lausiac History, attempts to defend Palladius'
credibility,
citing the principle of Am?lineau:32
As often as [Palladius] describes localities or names monks or relates their

practices, fasts and crucifixions as they called them, he isworthy of credit.
although Butler himself admits that there is a special difficulty with
regard to the details of their extraordinary abstinence, his view seems to be
that, apart from occasional
changes due to later copyists and redactors,
And
are not greatly exaggerated.33 There will, nonetheless, always

remain a certain amount of inevitable scepticism in the mind of the modern
the accounts
historian.
Cellia, as we have said, was the home of those who practiced the most
austere penances. Here it wras that Macarius
the Younger passed a good
deal of his life; and Palladius has devoted to him almost thewhole of chapter 18
'
'
of the History. Macarius was, of course, an omophagist,
in the first rank of
desert ascetics; but when he heard of a monk who was surpassing even him
by living merely on a litra of bread a day, Palladius tells us that he restricted
himself to only as much as he could pull out of the narrow neck of a jar;
thus his diet was reduced to about four or five ounces of bread; and he never
consumed more than a measure of oil a year.34
Again, the life at Cellia was physically unbearable formost men. Palladius
tells us of the difficulty experienced by his own teacher, Evagrius of Pontus,
when he lived there:35
'
From the time I began my life in the desert [said Evagrius],
I did not
eat lettuce or any other fresh vegetable, nor lanything from fruit trees or
the vine; I never ate meat or took any baths.' After sixteen years of
31 See Altaner
188f.
32
De
historia
Am?lineau,
lausiaca,
II n. 27) I 188f.
88
ibid. 189. A similar line
Butler,
miers ma?tres
g?n?reuse
?gyptiens du quatri?me
n'a pas eu ses fanatiques?'
703f.
34HL
18 (Butler 48).
as
quoted
is taken
by Butler,
by P. Resch,
si?cle
The
La
Lausiac
History
(supra,
doctrine
asc?tique
des pre
(Paris 1931) 229:

'Quelle
Cf. also G. Bardy,
'Antoine
86HL
id?e noble,
(Saint),'
38 (Butler 122).

cause
quelle
1 (1937)
DSp
ASGETICAL
IN THE
FASTING
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
31
this existence without any cooked food, his body began to require it
because of the weakness of his stomach, and he began to eat vegetables or
barley, gruel or pulse for a period of two years, but he would not yet
bread.
touch
feats of fasting and abstinence

by many authors36 and it would
The various
recounted
them again here. True

ladius' readers wanted
have been
not be profitable to enumerate
the stories in any case are the sort that Pal
leave the stories of the desert Fathers without
cannot
We
or not,
to hear.
of the desert Fathers
at least a brief
of the group of anecdotes called the Apophthegmata Patrum*7

in the Historia,
Here the themes and motifs, which had turned up occasionally
as
the
now become stereotypes: rigorous fasting
beginning of asceticism,
consideration
gluttony the beginning of spiritual downfall, the constant conflict with the
the scandal
spirits of darkness, the fanatical emulation among the Fathers,
of monks who yielded to temptation.
to sum up the principle that governed much

of this asceticism:
'As the body waxes fat, the soul grows thin; and ?s the
fat. '38 On the other hand,
soul by so much waxes
the
thin,
body grows
a group of more moderate
counsels are attributed to women.
For example,
as
and
she
is
prayer as a cure
urging fasting
portrayed
Syncletica, although
The
'abbot'
Daniel
is made
for evil thoughts,39 and is counselling

fasting even in spite of sickness,40
nonetheless points out that sickness itself can be a 'great asceticism'
and
on anchoress, tells of
warn sagainst lack of moderation. Mother Theodora,
a monk's
most
conversation
with
some demons
in an attempt
to discover
effectively puts them to flight:41

An anchorite was once attempting to drive out devils,
is it that drives you out, is it fasting? And
them: What
we neither eat nor drink. And he: Is it watching?
And
we never sleep... What is it, then, said he, that drives you
conquers us, said they, but humility.
what
and he asked
they said: No;
they said: No;
out? Nothing
a complete, critical edition of the Apophthegmata with its various

it is difficult to form any unified impression of the collection;
Without
recensions
8?
of P. Resch
he cites; R.
See, e.g. the work
(n.33), with the literature
*
and Prophecy'
cited from Palladius,
HL.
34, with the passages
Fasting
37 For a
both of content
and with
of the problems,
regard
good summary
'
'
767ff.
1 (1937)
see F. Gavallera,
DSp
Apophthegmes,
38
de abbate Daniele
4 (ed. Cotelier, PG 65.156 B); and cf. the Syriac
Apoph.
Arbesmann,
to the
recension
The Wit and Wisdom

trans. E. A.W.
of theFathers
Anan-isho,
Budge,
(Oxford 1934) 28
39
abbate Macario
cf. De
and so frequently;
(PG 65.422 B-G),
Apoph.
(PG 65.264
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
one
deeds
you':
(PG 65.424 D).
observing
maire
Theodora
be
saved
by
by
? 99.
A).
6 (PG 65.204 A-B).

when
asked whether
Pambo,
Similarly
'
It is only good
(after four days):
fasting and almsgiving,
replied
from your neighbor,
If you guard your conscience
that can do this.
this will save
'
2 (PG 65.368 G f.).
one's conscience'
De abbate Pambo
here seems to mean
Guarding
could
De
text,
one's
obligations
towards
others.

32
TRADITIO
I cannot see in this hotch-potch of ascetical lore, folklore, exag

'
in the
'une spiritualit? tr?s haute, tr?s ?vang?lique,
gerated demonology,
words of F. Cavallera.42
It represents rather the last stage in an evolution
nonetheless
which
and yet
began with the Vita Antonii and culminated in Palladius:
reflected in these tales
many of the ascetical principles unself-consciously
will be utilized and deliberately systematized by the later monastic spiritual
writers, Nilus,
Isidore, Diadochus
of Photice
and John Climacus.
The Stylites
the most appalling penance that was practiced in the ancient
'
'
that of the group ofmen called the Stylites because they passed
much of their lives on the top of columns or narrow mounds
(
).^
The most famous of the early stylites, e.g., Simeon the Elder and Simeon
Perhaps
world was
the Younger, were Syrians; and, despite the objections of many modern
scholars,44 it may well be that this pillar-climbing may have originally been
suggested by a peculiar pagan practice which Lucian tells us was carried out
at Hierapolis.45 Before the temple of Dionysus there, he tells us, there were
two columns of 120 cubits which were called phalli; once each year a 'pillar
'
climber ( a
) would climb up and live on top for a period of a week.
?a
The people, says Lucian, believed that the climber was thus closer to the gods
and could pray better for the welfare of the city; but others thought that
the period of the flood, when men took to the trees

own
while Deucalion
and Pyrrha were saved. Lucian's
view is that the action was related to certain small wooden phalli, sacred
to Dionysus,
which had a tiny wooden man fastened to the top.
It would go beyond our scope to enter into the entire question of the sty
the action commemorated
and
the mountains
lites; but it will not be irrelevant to consider some details of the life of the
most famous of them all, St. Simeon Stylites the Elder. There are four chief
sources for his life: the account given by Theodoret of Cyrus in his Historia
religiosa which, despite its reliability, was
leftmerely
in an unfinished state;46
42
loc. cit. 768.
DSp,
43 The entire
of the Stylites has been fully treated by the Bollandist
H. Delehaye,
question
Soci?t?
Les saints stylites (Brussels,
des BoUandistes
Cf.
also
H.
GE 14
Thurston,
1923).
GE 13 (1912) 795, and in Butler's
Lives of the Saints
(1912) 317 f.; and on Simeon the Elder,
I 70ff.; 2nd ed. (New York
(12 vols. London
1923-38)
1956) I 34-37.
44
14
Thurston
317.
GE
(1912)
E.g.
45
De Syria dea 28-9 (ed. Jacobitz).
Lucian,
46 So Paul
'S. Sym?on
Anal.
61
Boll.
Peeters,
Stylite et ses premiers biographes,'
life is represented
three
recensions:
29ff. The Syriac
Museum
British
MS
Add.
by
(s. vi),
reliable;
mani;
midway
(1943)
14484
the best known today but not, according

to Peeters,
the most
published
by Bedjan,
God. Vatic,
syr. 160, from the year 474, the best and the oldest, published
by Asse
and a Georgian
in a MS
in the monastery
on Mt. Sinai,
recension
of St. Catherine
between
the other
two
recensions
in value.
complete
edition

is still wanting,
ASGETIGAL
?N THE
PASTING
GR?EK
t>ATR?ST?C
WRITERS
33
the extremely unreliable life by an alleged disciple, Anthony; a pious com

and, the best source of all, a Syriac life
pilation by Simeon Metaphrastes;
an
was
one
who
eye-witness.
by
apparently
chief incident we wish
is Simeon's alleged fast of forty

?
an achievement that is, ap
days without any food or drink whatsoever
of
in
the
Christendom.
entire
history
parently, unique
The
to consider
devotes the twenty-sixth of his thirty biographies of the Historia

to
the
great stylite. It is apparently after leaving the monastery
religiosa
the authorities objected to his austeri
which he had entered as a youth ?
?
that Simeon takes up his dwelling in a little hut. Just before the
ties
beginning of Lent he summons a friend named Bassus and informs him that
Theodoret
to fast for the entire forty days in imitation of Moses and

leaves with him a jug of water and five
request, Bassus
loaves of bread; walls up the door of the hut and departs. Returning then
is
at the end of Lent ('at the end of the days,' says Theodoret), Bassus
he has decided
Elias.47
At Simeon's
'the stamnos of
the loaves have been absolutely untouched,
'
still full and the saint is lying prostrate, unconscious, on the floor.48
In the Syriac life first published
from a sixth-century MS by Bedjan,
?
not
but he leaves seven loaves
Simeon's friend is likewise called Bassus;
?
and when he returns he finds everything as before, but Simeon is
five
kneeling in prayer.49 In the life attributed to Anthony, to which Peeters allows
'
is omitted.
not the slightest shred of authority, '50 the entire incident
On the other hand, Simeon Metaphrastes, writing in the tenth century, draws
astounded:
water was
heavily on Theodoret and the untrustworthy Anthony. For the famous fast,
Simeon is living in a little cottage at the foot of a mountain near Telamisus.
His friend is called Blasus; he leaves him ten loaves; and when he returns and
finds Simeon prostrate, he revives him and gives him Holy Communion.51
What then is to be said of the Bassus-story ? It is indeed difficult to accept

on its face value
in the jug remained at the same
that even the water
after forty days in the climate of Syria. Even Paul Peeters, while
level?
the Syriac life, suggests that the 'thaumaturgy with which it
accepting
but,
einer
Peeters'
besides
deutschen
cf. H.
article,
der
Uebersetzung
genfeld (TU 32.4, Leipzig 1908).

4'
Theodoret,
48Hist
49
60
and
rei.
26
(PG
82.1470
ret 6 (PG 82.1470 C).
Lietzmann,
Peeters,
Hist
op. cit.
loc. cit. 43;
is full of inaccuracies
Das
Lietzmann,
Leben
syrischen Lebensbeschreibung
... mit
des hl. Symeon
Stylites
von H. Hil
und der Briefe
).
95.
of the country,
by one who had no direct knowledge
in the sixth century
it was perhaps
composed
to Constantinople
relics of Simeon that had been translated
(47).
it is written
and
falsehoods;
in connection with the alleged

61
9 (PG 114.341
S. Simeonis
Vita
B);
Metaphrastes,
an
of 7 (the Bassus
are
of
9-10
expansion
Metaphrastes
??
cf. e.g. Lietzmann,

op.
in Theodoret.
episode)

cit. 210.
34
TRADITIO
... must
abounds
be transposed from the language of hagiography to the

'52
of
language
history.
It is a striking fact, as L. Duchesne has pointed out,53 that, except in the
case of the Encratites and of Eustathius
and his followers, the Church does
not seem officially to have stepped in to prevent what seem to us ascetical
exaggerations. Duchesne
expresses a certain naive wonder at this asceticism
where external practices, and not the grace of the sacraments, were primary;54
and he notes that even the condemnation
at the Council of
of Eustathius
at
Gangra and
Ancyra55 must have referred rather to the practices of Eusta
thius' followers; and, in any case, St. Basil owed much to Eustathius'
teaching,
It is difficult to
especially during the period before the condemnation.56
arrive at a clear understanding of what the official attitude was towards
the excesses
of the early ascetics.

To sum up: when we are dealing with the abnormal in the practice of
fasting and asceticism, it is difficult to disentangle the superstitious (especially
the daemonic motif, which we have treated earlier), the erotic and the neurotic
(particularly in the form of the hysterical repugnance for food, now known
as anorexia nervosa) from the truly ascetical.57 At the same time, itmust
be clear to anyone who reads attentively the tales of the desert fathers, and
even the arabesques
known as the Apophthegmata, that we are here in the
a
of
different
cannot be glibly
world, a realm whose motivations
presence
62
loc. cit. 54.

Peeters,
63 L.
Church
I n. 26) 409ff.
Duchesne,
of the Christian
Early History
(supra,
54 Ibid. 390. A
as told by Sophronius;
of this is the story of Mary of Egypt,
good example
that she has
lived seventeen years in the desert without
coming in con
Mary tells Zosimus
= PG
or beast;
Vita S. Mariae
tact either with man
30-1
Aegyptiacae
(ed. Bollandus
873.3717
G-D).
55 Ibid. 411.
(can.
fast-days
kirchlichen
forbade
32.
of Gangra
condemned
the Eustathians
for fasting on Sunday
of contempt
the traditional
for marriage
(can. 9) and for despising
a//
see Mansi
Die Kanones
der wichtigsten
2.1106ff.
; F. Lauchert,
Council
(can. 19):
Concillen
of Ancyra
314)
(Freiburg-Leipzig
1896) 81-3. The Council
(in A.D.
out of unworthy motives
from meat
2. 532 ; Lauchert
(can. 14), Mansi
were
A.D.
condemned
at the Council
of Saragossa,
Priscillianists
380,
similarly
abstinence
The
Mansi
56
The
for an attitude
18),
3.634
; Lauchert
Duchesne,
op.
175.
cit. 41 If.;
but he notes
that Basil
sult Dom
David
Amand,
L'asc?se
the bibliography
1949), with
57 M. T.-L.
'Une
Penido,
monastique
de saint
in giving the undisciplined

from
not have easily accepted
con
now
one
must
doctrine,
succeeded
and virgins a rule and a way of life which they would

For a discussion
ecclesiastical
of Basil's
ascetical
authorities.
monks
Basile:
essai
historique
(Maredsous
cited.
31
La
Vie spirituelle
th?orie pathologique
de l'asc?tisme,'
to
lead men
reasons which may
enumerates
(on p. [51]) twelve possible
(1932)
[35]-[54],
now say, anorexia
fast. They are 1) masochism,
nervosa),
2) 'sitophobia'
(or, as we would
of health,
sin, 7) self
3) reasons
6) a desire to expiate
4) mere whim,
5) hunger-strike,
nn.
8-12
other
constitute
motives.
conquest;
supernatural

isolated
and
the
greek
patristic
in the light of modern
judged
Bell,58
Sir Harold
in
fasting
asgetical
writers
35
In the words
psychology.
of
a modern psychologist will recognize in their battle an internal struggle

against the lusts of the flesh and the subtler temptations of the mind,
but to them and their admirers their adversaries were visible and tangible
fiends of Hell.
It is this vivid
awareness
of the demons which must
into con
be taken
sideration ifwe would fully understand their motivation.

For the Egyptian
as
had
Bell
been
desert,
shrewdly points out,
always
regarded as the home
of evil spirits. To the fathers of the desert they embodied all the evil of the
world.
But
their struggle and their penances,
Bell continues, were not under
taken
in selfish isolation, merely to save their own souls; they prayed actively
for others; they were, we might say, the shock troops of the Church
Militant...
These words
a scholar who
the most
from one so deeply rooted in Egypt

can hardly be accused of having
reasonable
of so peculiar
explanation
a phenomenon.
Fasting
Spiritual
VII.
and its history, and from

an axe to grind, are surely
In many of the patristic writers we have an important distinction made

of sin) and bodily fasting.
between
'spiritual fasting* (or the avoidance
to
wish
here.
that
I
discuss
For it would appear that
this
It is
dichotomy
some earlier authors, like Hans Achelis,1 felt that the real significance of
fasting is rarely brought out by the Fathers, so involved are they in externals.
this surely is a gross misreading of the evidence. Even from the time of
the Apostolic Fathers and the apologists there is a clear emphasis laid on
the primacy of the internal, spiritual element in fasting. For example the
58.4ff. on the nature
so-called Epistle
quotes Deutero-Isaias
of Barnabas2
But
?
Cults
Egypt
and
the Great to the Arab Conquest

(Oxford
from Alexander
100:
in Greco-Roman
1953)
Egypt
(Liverpool
Creeds
1948)
109f.
'Their
almost
did produce
austerities
striking spiritual
insight and a fine Christian
1 'Fasten
5
in der Kirche,'
Realencyk.
f?r prot. Theol. und Kirche
2 Barn.
FIP
1940 34f.).
The
Isaias
3.1ff. (ed. Klausner,
passage
The Books
Hebrew
of Isaiah
[2 vols. Dublin
by E. J. Kissane,
1943] I
And
ye
So
Is this the kind
of fast that
heard
(as
transi,
232f):
on high;
I choose?
to afflict the soul?

day for man
the head
like a reed,
And to make
one's bed of sackcloth
bow
Wilt
thou
call
that
fast
acceptable
and
his
morality.'
770ff.
A
To
also
incredible
(1898)
fast not
as
at present
to make
your voice
See
ashes
to Me?

from
the
36
TRADITIO
of fasting;and this occurs in the firstpart of theEpistle (?? 1-17) inwhich

tries to warn
the author
which were
his readers against
certain Judaizing tendencies

community. So too he says:3
seeping into the Christian
ordinance from God does not refer to abstinence from food; Moses
spoke in the spirit. He mentioned swine for another reason: you should
The
not
He
consort,
with
means,
men
who
live
like
swine...
Developing an allegorical interpretation of the Mosaic

legislation, he teaches
that not only do the Jewish food laws not bind the Christians, but that they
did not even bind the Jews in the sense they thought.4 Justin Martyr writes
in a similar vein: insisting again on the true notion of fasting as implied in
the Isaias passage,5 he insists that it is the Church of Christ and not the
synagogue that really carried out Isaias' words.6
'
'
The same fundamental doctrine of the spiritual fast is reiterated by the so
called Hermas,
author of The Shepherd. If we can believe the Muratorian
Fragment on this point, he was the brother of Pope St. Pius I (140-155);
but the peculiar nature of the work, its heterodoxy inmany points, its obvious
pose as an early apocalypse, deprive it of an authority it might otherwise
have. Hermas,
too, reflects the tradition of fasting as a preparation for the
reception of revelation;7 but in the course of the development of his doctrine

on the importance of penance for post-baptismal
sin, he clearly insists on
the
Isaian sense:8
fasting in
God does not want a useless fast... This is the way you should fast for
God: never commit sin in your life; serve the Lord with a pure heart.
Is not
This
section
will
Domini
2 (1922)
in Lent;
Friday
loose
fast
the
that
bonds
I choose:
of wickedness,
to undo
the shackles
And
of perversity...?
Is it not dealing
out thy bread to the hungry,
And
the homeless
sheltering
poor?
a kind of locus communis
from which
58.4-7) will become
(Is.
Fathers
the
this
To
draw
their motifs
68ff.
and
It is used
the
chief
on
On the passage,
cf. also
fasting.
as the Lesson
in the Latin Liturgy
idea
F. X.
many
Zorell,
for Mass
of the
Verbum
for the first
of the passage
recurs in the seventh-century
Vespers
'
: Sic corpus extra conteri
per abstinentiam,
/Dona
/
benigne conditor 13-16
in the seventeenth
ut mens
sobria
revised
century as
/A labe prorsus criminum/
conteri / Corpus per abstinentiam,
follows : 'Concede nostrum
pabu
/ Gulpae ut relinquat
' 3
criminum.
corda
10.2f.
lum / Ieiuna
4
The Treatment
Cf. R. Wilde,
of the Jews in the Christian Writers
of the First Three Cen
hymn,
Audi
Ieiunet
turies (CUPS
81, Washington
1949) 87f.
6 Dial,
cum Tryph.
15.1 (PG 6.507 D f.).
6 Ibid. 40.4
cf. also Wilde,
op. cit. 123f.
(PG 6.564 A);
7 Cf. Vis. 2.2.1
. Lake, LGL
the desire of much
On the other hand,
(ed.
1946) 3.1.2.
'
a
6.2.5*
one: Mand.
is
that
of
the
is
within
and
wickedness'
eating
symptom
drinking
angel
Cf. also Mand.
8.3: 12.2.1.
8 Sim.
A
For the four types of 'vision'
5.1.1.
in Hermas,
(inter
(non-objective),
see Ake V. Str?m,
of ordinary
C (purely literary), and D (dreams),
pretation
sense-data),

ASCETICAL
FASTING
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
37
Keep His commandments and allow no wicked desire to arise in your

heart. Abstain from evil deeds of whatever sort.
This advice, of course, is given by the mysterious,
symbolic 'Shepherd' to
Hennas while he is resting in a mountainous
place and observing the sta
or
tional fast; but the spiritual e
e
abstinence from sin, which the
a
a,
Shepherd tries to inculcate is obviously intended as a general principle of
asceticism. For, in the following passage the Shepherd develops a parable
on fasting, the first in extant Christian literature. It is at best an unhappy
composition, an ungainly fusion of several parables of the New Testament
some of Hermas'
own ideas.
In outlining the doctrine of the prudent
in the parable, he teaches that such a servant not only cares for
his master's vineyard but even shares his pay with his fellow-workers. The
application to fasting comes rather as a surprise: we share our pay as ser
with
servant
in the vineyard of the Lord by giving of the food we have

fasting to those who may need it:9
vants
saved by
When you are going to fast, observe it in this way: first, avoid every evil
word and desire, and purify your heart of all the vain things of the world.
Your fast will be perfect if you do this. And this is the way you should
act: after fulfilling all you are supposed to on your fast-day, then eat
nothing but bread and water. And of the food which you were going
to eat, measure out the same quantity and give this to a widow or orphan
or
other
needy
person.
I have
suggested elsewhere10 the extreme caution with which we should

take both the doctrine and the text, such as it is, ofHermas; but here at any
rate the false apocalypse does seem to reflect one of the pervading doctrines
of second-century Christianity: the primacy of the spiritual element in the

practice of fasting and penance. And it seems clear that this attitude, sup
served as
ported by an early allegorical approach to the Old Testament,
a point of
opposition to the Jewish opponents of Christianity as well as to
those who, it seems, would still cling to a form of Judaic Christianity.
Even
despite his different and sometimes contra

on
seems
to preserve the basic kernel of Christian
dictory utterances
fasting,
tradition on this matter. In his Stromata,11 for example, after quoting Tobias
12.8 on prayer and fasting, he notes that fasting here 'means simply abstaining
Allegorie
Seminar
that
all
Clement
of Alexandria,
und Wirklichkeit
zu Uppsala
the visions
im Hirten
herausg.
connected
des Hermas
von A.
chanalyse:
11 Strom.
approach
C. G. Jung
6.12
(St?hlin
Fridrichsen;
und Mitteilungen
1936), esp. 18ff.
Uppsala
fall under Strom's
fasting would
on the reliability
too heavily
of Hermas'
with
the A-type;
but Str?m
relies
9 Sim.
V.3.5.
10 See
'The Need
of a New Edition
on a Jungian
(Arbeiten
to Hermas
of Hermas/
have
et le "Pasteur"
been
Theol.
controverted
d'Hermas/
Studies
by R.
LfAntiquit?
aus
dem
. T.
It is interesting
of
authentic
visions
own
12 (1951)
account.
382ff.; my views
4
et psy
Philologie
422ff.
22 (1953)
classique
Joly,
3.438).

38
TRADITIO
'
Again in the Eclogae propheticae, which we have had occasion

to quote in connection with Neoplatonism,12 Clement seems actually to say
that the practice of fasting ismerely a symbol of the truth that13
it is necessary to fast from the things of this world in order that we may
die to theworld and, thereafter, by sharing in the divine food, live unto God.
from all evil.
In Origen, too, whose doctrine will be considered farther on, we find an

insistence on the allegorical meaning or symbolism of fasting. For example,
on Leviticus,1* ifwe may trust Rufinus' translation, he says:
in his Homilies
Tu
si vis
ieiunare
secundum
Christum
animam
et humillare
omne
tuam,
tibi tempus apertum est totius anni.

Again, when fasting, we should anoint our heads with
oil
the metaphorical
of gladness and mercy: leiuna ab omni peccato, nullum cibum sumas malitiae.1*
Even where the Greek text is preserved, as in his Commentary onMatthew,16
he takes a similar allegorical line in commenting on the meaning of unclean
food:
That food is unclean which is served out of avarice, is obtained by im
moral profits or consumed merely for pleasure's sake; when we make
a god of our bellies, and appetite, not reason, rules the soul.
'
'
It would appear that this concept of the spiritual fast can be found as
early as the little document called the (First) Logia of Jesus, discovered by
Grenfell and Hunt at Behnesa
(Oxyrhynchus) and published in 1897.17 The
Greek of the second logion of this collection is fully preserved:
*
e
'
ea
ea
a??a
e
e
,
e
a??a
e a
?a
a
a.
'Unless you fast from (?) the world, you shall not find the kingdom of God,
and unless you observe the Sabbath-day,
you shall not see the Father.'
But the difficulties with the first half of the logion are extremely disturbing.
'
fast from (as to ?)
There has been no parallel yet found for the expression
'
the world, and some earlier commentators have modified the translation to,
. B.
e.g., 'fast in due order' (C. Clemen), take up 'a world-long fast' (
Swete).18
Von
Gebhardt
and Zahn
suspected
the correctness
of the verb
13 Eel.
12 See section II above.
14.1 (St?hlin
3.140).
proph.
14 In Lev.
c. 246/9.
were
These
homilies
10.2 (ed. Baehrens
1.443).
perhaps
published
For the date, see R. P. G. Hanson,
1954) 27. On
of Tradition
(London
Origen's Doctrine
see Hanson,
the varying
of Rufinus'
translations,
op. cit. 40ff., and also Sr. M.
reliability
the Translator
Monica
73, Washington
1945).
Rufinus
(GUPS
Wagner,
15 In Lev. 10. 2
1.444).
(Baehrens
16Horn,
to 246 (op. cit. 27).
11.12 (Klostermann
in Matth.
1.53), dated by Hanson
17 P.
I have
at Oxford.
i (1898)
1, now in the Bodleian
Although
Library
Oxyrhynchus
the
of
to
to
been
the
I
have
unable
add
the papyrus
examined
reading
itself,
anything
editors.
18 For
the various
suggestions,
of Jesus (Oxford 1897) 19.
see W.
Lock
and W.
Sanday,
Two Lectures

on the Sayings
ASCETICAL
IN THE
FASTING
e; von Gebhardt
suggestion; Zahn
GREEK
WRITERS
PATRISTIC
39
it to
e, which is an extremely
e
e ('if you
with
ea
quoted
approval
woo the world '), which was a
one
of
of
his
colleagues. Harnack
suggestion
would change the accusative to a dative ('fast for the world1); most com
. My own
mentators, however, have approved of the emendation
attractive
emended
feeling is, however, that we should leave the text as we have it in the papyrus
until further evidence
is forthcoming ?
and translate the accusative
'
'
with regard to the world, on the world.
At any rate, ifwe can accept this
logion as evidence of second-century Christianity (although the papyrus
codex in which the first Logia were discovered must date, according to the
editors, to about the middle of the third century), it would take its place
the fast was a symbol of the 'fast from
along with the Epistle of Barnabas:
'
the world,
the spiritual fast proclaimed by the prophet Isaias.19
We
find this same doctrine very attractively developed
in a sermon of
Gregory of Nyssa's,
De pauperibus aman?is Oratio I:20

Now there is a spiritual fast, an immaterial temperance which is exercised
with regard to the soul by the avoidance of sin. And it is for this that
actual abstinence from food is prescribed. So fast from sin. Control your
desires
for
other
people's
possessions.
of the fast is by one

Fasting is prescribed
goes on to point out how ridiculous the observance

who is unjust; that even Judas fasted with the Apostles.
He
by the Church for the purification of our souls, as a foundation for the
practice of virtue.21 Gregory's teaching everywhere breathes a moderation
and a sound common sense. In his De mortuis22 for example, he explains
that it is the freewill ofman, not the body, that is the cause of sin. The body
ismerely inclined in different directions in accordance with its nature. In the
case of food, for example, the body merely
gives a sign that there is need of
it
is
man's
will
that
the
need for essential nourishment
nourishment;
perverts
into a desire for sinful pleasure ?
just as it perverts the desire formarriage
into sexual excess.23
19 It would
be a mistake
464
) in this connection;
20 PG 46.453
C.
21 Ibid.
C).
(PG 46.456
the Jews in fasting, and,
He
goes
on,
in traditional
in Askese,'
in 457
wise,
A,
33.7
Epict.
St. Maximus
Westminster
to warn
quotes
of what one
In 457 C he recommends
almsgiving
(out
is a tirade
the well-fed
rich.
against
22 PG 46.528
A-G.
28 For a similar
cf. Chrysostom,
Horn.
doctrine,
de caritate, centuria
3.4 (PG 90.1017
fessor, Capita
7
C).
London
1955)
esp.
his
Isaias
saves
(Moralia
457.
audience
imitating
against
on the acceptable
fast.
- 468
and 465 G
in fasting);
58
Con
(PG 63.68); Maximus
in Ench.
Comm.
Simplicius,
see Polycarp
of Maximus,
Sherwood,
in Heb.
For the ascetical

doctrine
(D?bner
115).
the Confessor:
The Ascetic Life. The Four
and
1 (1950)
RAG
he
stress on Plutarch's
to lay too much

see P. Keseling
Cf. also
Centuries
on
Charity
63ff.

(ACW
21,
40
TRADITIO
Such a doctrine would
seem to overlook the body's natural penchant for

this
but
becomes
clear from Gregory's De virginitate. Here
pleasure;
point
he teaches24 that the pleasure of taste is
as it were, the mother of all vice. The pleasures connected with eating
and drinking multiply the possibility of going to excess in these matters
and create in the body a tendency towards satisfaction in wicked and
irrational
things.
Overeating, he continues, only brings on the pain of surfeit; whereas hunger

needs no condiment, 'necessity sweetens all things.'25 Gregory's chief prin
the virgin must check excess in either direction, just as
ciple is moderation;
the charioteer checks his horse.26 It is fitting that Gregory should use this
image from the 'Ride of the Gods'
cism truly recalls the philosophic
for Gregory's asceti

of Plato
cultured moderation
in Plato's Phaedrus:21
calm and
himself.
So too Gregory Nazianzen,
despite his love for the bizarre, the Cynic motif,
more
does not neglect the
important element in fasting and, indeed, in all
asceticism.
In Orat. 4028 he develops the point that Christ could fast for
forty days because He was God: we, creatures as we are, must moderate
our fasts; some in excessive zeal have gone far beyond their strength. In
Orat. 1929he makes it clear that God is served inmany different ways, either
by virginity or by a chaste conjugal life, by fasting or by moderation in eating,
by devotion to canticles and prayers or by charity towards God's poor; all
can involve self-purification, a constant ascent towards perfection.
good is it, he asks in Orat 32,30 tomortify oneself in diet,
to humiliate oneself by calloused knees, fountains of tears, fasts, watches
these ways
What
and
sleeping
on
the
ground
... and
then
to
be
a veritable
tyrant
in dis
cussions on religion and never to yield a point to anyone at all?

very moderate approach to the
question of fasting and ascetical practices;31 for him such practices, though
the two
important, are secondary, and he is always careful to emphasize
We
have had occasion
to note St. Basil's
24 De
inWerner
Cf. also the text ed. by J. P. Cavarnos
Jaeger,
virg. 21 (PG 46.401 B-C).
8.1 (Leiden
1952) 329.
Opera
Gregorii Nysseni
25 Ibid. 401 G
(Cavarnos
329).
2? De
405 A)
332).
virg. 22 (PG 404 G
(Cavarnos
27 Phaedr.
the ascent of the Soul to God,
to represent
246E ff., a passage which, modified
1.1
cf. e.g. Methodius,
with the Greek Fathers:
almost a commonplace
became
Symposium
vera
8
30.684
G
De
of
Basil
ff.);
(PG
integritate
Ancyra,
virginitatis
7.17ff.);
(Bonwetsch
37.12
Orat.
(PG
Gregory Nazianzen,
The Platonism
sage, see H. Cherniss,
in his ascetical
Platonism
doctrine,
28 In s.
30 (PG 36.401
baptisma
30 De moderatione
in disputando
31 See section
I, above.
use of the pas

of Nyssa's
ff.). On Gregory
12ff. For a note on Gregory's
of Gregory of Nyssa
1 (1950) 769.
see P. Keseling,
RAG
'Askese,'
29 Ad Iulianum
7 (PG 35.1052
A).
B).
(PG 36.196
G).
36.296

ASGETIGAL
IN THE
FASTING
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
41
In De ieiunio horn. 232 he con

levels involved, the bodily and the spiritual.
cludes by reminding his hearers that the 'bodily' fast should in no sense
mean a 'fasting of the spirit from eternal truth and the chalice of wisdom'
?
to approach
the sacrament of the
implying, perhaps, an exhortation
Eucharist
during the fasting season. Again in the Commentary on Isa?as
it is Basil's)33
(if indeed
we
read:
Severity in abstinence is insufficient for perfection unless the soul enjoys

complete abstinence as well from the things which favor evil. For just
as man
is a dual
nature
composed
kinds of food.
The
author
of the faith.
to explain
then proceeds
'
of body
and
soul,
that the soul's
so too
are
there
two
food is 'the doctrines
Although not as profound as some of his contemporaries, Cyril of Jerusalem

soundly reflects the conservative tradition on fasting. In the fourth 'Cate
'
in the Basilica
called 'Mar
chesis, originally delivered to the catechumens
of
in
the
avoidance
the
of
Lent
348,
year
discussing
Cyril,
tyrion' during
sensual pleasure, warns his hearers:34
At the same time, let the body be nourished by food that itmay
to live and give unimpaired service.
He
continue
fast when he says:35
is speaking, of course, of the ecclesiastical
We abstain frommeat and wine while we fast, not out of any abhorrence
as though they were evil in themselves, but because we are looking to
our reward: that by foregoing sensual pleasure we may be able to enjoy
that spiritual and supernatural table; that, sowing in tears in this life,
we may reap in joy in the next.
from certain foods, the catechumens
in abstaining
Again,
are taught36
to avoid them even while considering their good qualities, for the sake of
those more desirable
spiritual rewards which lie before us ( a ?
e
But
e a
a).
the distinction
best expressed
(De ieiunio;
33 Comm.
34 Catech.
Pair.
in Is.
24.27
his Horn,
between
'spiritual'
Syr.
31
In Hexaem.
Cf. also
in the
soul?'
ed. J. Parisot
(PG
and
'By fasting,'
by Chrysostom.
32 8
(PG 31.197 A-B).
fasting if there is evil
Cf. also
There
I 113);
horn. 8.8
is a similar
fasting is perhaps
he says,37 almost by way of
'bodily'
(PG
idea
cf. 15. 3 (ibid.
'
C): What
in Aphraates,
29.185
good is bodily
3.8
Demonstr.
733).
30.181
B).
(ed. G. W.
= PG 33.489
.Reischl
1848] I 118
[M?nchen
= PG 33.1152
II
424
18 (ed. J. Rupp
1860]
[M?nchen
on our bellies.'
in order to put a check-rein
33.489 B).
118 = PG
(' On Food')
in Paralyticum
'we use food moderately

35 Catech.
4.27
(Reischl
38 Ibid.
118 = PG
(Reischl
37Horn.
10 ad pop. Antioch.
33.489
1 (PG
C).
49.111).

A).
C):
42
traditio
'
I mean not only abstinence from food but also avoidance of sin.
definition,
his
Perhaps
strongest statement is found in one of his homilies on Matthew:38
Christ
did
not
say,
to me
'Come
because
I fasted...,'
but
I am
'because
meek and humble of heart' ... And I say this not to depreciate fasting
? God forbid ! ? for I wish rather to
encourage it. But it makes me
even
when
think
that
unhappy
though you may neglect your
people
other duties, fasting is sufficient for salvation. Rather, fasting takes
the last place in the hierarchy of virtues. The greatest are charity and
? these hit a
equity and almsgiving
higher mark even than the virtue
of virginity.
e a
ebriosos^9 Chrysostom distinguishes between
a
ea
e a
and
, the 'fast from sin' which we must
our
a
all
and
in
bold
lives;
practice
very
passage, he continues:
in the Adversus
Again,
Enjoy your baths, your good table, your meat, your wine
?
enjoy everything in fact, but keep away from sin !
inmoderation
Many of these ideas are repeated in the corpus of Pseudo-Chrysostom,

sometimes distorted and almost always presented in an enervated way.
In the
De eleemosyna,*0 for example, the preacher pictures Christ in His parousia:
He will not say 'Because you have kept your virginity, because you
'
'
fasted for me ? not at all, but merely
I was hungry and you gave
me
to
eat...'
Virginity
of the virtues.
in the De
Similarly
meekness
and
and
But none
fasting
is equal
mansuetudine*1
are
fine
things
and
so
are
the
rest
to charity.
the author
tells us that God
esteems
virginity, fasting, contempt of wealth and

clear
It
is
what
the
almsgiving.
preacher is trying to say: but it is crudely
and awkwardly done; there is no improvement on the simplicity and beauty
of Chrysostom. And with Chrysostom the meaning
of the 'spiritual fast'
is brought
self-control above
to its doctrinal
VIII.
Fasting
and
literary apogee.42
as a Means
It is not clear that there was

attempt
to achieve
a personal,
of Self-Conquest
among the Jews of the Old Law any strict

individual asceticism, i.e., with a view to
38Horn. 46
and
4 (PG 58.480f.).
between the acceptable
For a similar distinction
inMatth.
I
the unacceptable
ed.
see
J.
3.8ff.
Demonstratio
Parisot,
113ff.).
fast,
(Pair. Syr.
Aphraates,
4
39 1
if one fasts and gives
Even
Gf. also Horn.
33 in Io. 3 (PG 59.192):
(PG 50.453).
And
be not present.'
alms to the utmost, yet these things are contemptible
if humility
in Horn.
25 in 1 Cor. 3 (PG 61.209):
'Even
though you fast, sleep on the ground, eat ashes
to your neighbor, you have done nothing.
lament, if you are not charitable
constantly
'
?
?
but to urge
And he continues:
forbid !
I say all this not to condemn
God
fasting
to
mean
of
do
all
is
I
the
avoidance
that
better
than
evil.'
which
you
fasting,
40 PG
41
62.769f.
PG 65.550.
*
42 For a
see P. Keseling,
RAG
brief note on Chrysostom's
ascetical
Askese,'
doctrine,
and
1 (1950) 770.

'
ASGETIGAL
IN THE
FASTING
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
43
in the sense understood

the domination of one's individual 'passions'
of
and
ascetical
writers
the
the
Fathers
Church.
For one thing,
by
early
as Strathmann points out,1 the ideal was what was commanded by Jahweh;
secondly, with the Jews there did not exist, within the scope allowed by the
'matter' (or pleasure, etc.) and God. Nonetheless,
Law, a dualism between
as Bonsirven
insists, even though personal asceticism was never the primary
wards
goal of fasting and other practices, the effect was still there: in practice
there was, in Bonsirven's view, what we call asceticism.2
'
'
In the matter of the passions, however, itwould appear that the standard
Jewish approach was the way ofmoderation.3
Thus in the Oracula Sibyllina,
there is no particular emphasis laid on food:4
One
should eat and drink and talk in due measure;
excess
is best;
and
things
and
refrain
from evil deeds.
is painful...
One
should
due measure
in all
self-control
practice
Anything more than this would be rather by way of exception. For instance,
Josephus tells us in his Life5 that at the age of eighteen he had considered
joining the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and even an Essenian
community, but
becoming dissatisfied with their various ways of life, he finally turned to

an old Jewish hermit named Bannus
(apparently a hermit who lived in the
deserts around Jerusalem). He tells us:
I learned that a man named Bannus lived in the desert, getting his only
clothing from trees and his food from whatever grew wild; he used to
keep washing himself day and night with cold water in order to achieve
I became an ardent disciple; and after spending three years
chastity.
with him and fulfillingmy desires, I returned to city life.
one may choose to explain Bannus'

However
seem clear that he constitutes the exception
peculiar asceticism,6 it would

rather than the regular Jewish
practice.
in his article on fasting in Kittel's W?rterbuch,1 insists

Johannes Behm,
that there was a sharp difference between Christ's own approach to fasting
and that of the Church of the second century. For Christ, he says,8
ist Gottesdienst,
Fasten
die sich im Verborgenen
Zeichen und Sinnbild der Umkehr zu Gott...,

vollzieht; mit dem aufdringlichen Gepr?nge vor
1 Gesch.
. 2) 39f.
der fr?hchristl. Askese
(supra, V,
2
II
Le
Jud?isme
281f., 286.
Bonsirven,
palestinien
8 Bonsirven
II 285.
5 Vita 2.11
4 Or. Sib. 2.141?I.
(ed. S. Naber
314f.).
(Geffcken, GGS 1902).
6 Arnold
in
his
Study of History
(10 vols. London
1934-54) VI 486ff., attempts
Toynbee,
of their lives and deaths;
to draw a parallel
Socrates
and Jesus in the accounts
between
?
it is, indeed, Toynbee
at his poorest ?
he draws
by way of a footnote to this discussion
an analogy
and Christ's
to
retreat to the desert with Bannus
attitude
between
Josephus*
ward
7
the Baptist.
e a, Kittel's
W?rterbuch
zum
. TA,
esp.
928ff.
8 Ibid.

932f.
44
TRADITIO
den Menschen wird das Ziel rechten Fastens verfehlt. Fasten vor Gott,
dem Vater derer, die zu ihm umkehren, ist Freude ? darum fortmit den
tr?bseligen Geb?rden der Trauer !... Trauer und Fasten geh?rt in die
Zeit des Wartens auf das Heil, auch f?r die J?nger, wenn sie dur chseinen
Tod j?h in den Stand der Wartenden
zur?ckgeworfen werden.
In the Church of the second century, however, there was, Behm suggests,
'
a resurgence of the Old Testament
imme
'j?dische Fr?mmigkeits?bung,
'No one any longer
diately causing a conflict between Ritus and Ethos:
knew what Jesus' attitude on fasting was. '9
Behm's point of view is provocative, but rests, when all is said, on several
His analysis begins with a picture of Jewish
unsupported generalizations.
piety which is, ifwe can believe Bonsirven and others,10 entirely over-simpli
fied : for it is precisely in the realm of personal asceticism that Jewish practice,
For
is so different from the Christian.
especially in the Old Testament,
or
women
various
the
the
individual
of
like
Esther,
pro
despite
practices
phets and patriarchs, one cannot resist the impression that, whatever the
specific motive in any particular case, the practice is part of the rite, directly
or indirectly connected with the social worship of the Jewish race. It would
be beyond our scope to enter into a discussion of Old Testament texts dealing
with fasting. But it will perhaps suffice to quote one example of public
After the
fasting revealed to us in the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine.
destruction of the Jewish colony's
'temple of Jahweh' the Jews constantly
their
in
the
rulers
to
restore
it;
begged
petition which the papyrus preserves
the
410
the governor to support them,
(from
year
B.C.),
they beg Bagoas
our
for 'we, with
wives and children wear mourning clothes and fast and
pray to Jahu the Lord of heaven'; and again:11

From the month of Tammuz of the fourteenth year of the reign of king
our
Darius up till now, we have been fasting and wearing mourning;
wives
are
like widows;
and
we
neither
anoint
ourselves
nor
take
any
wine.
This peculiar fast implies the mourning-motif of the Old Testament as well as
the more modern concept of the 'hunger strike': the fast is being used as
a means
to sway civil rulers.
But
after the multitude of references to food-prescriptions in the Old Testa

it
is perhaps surprising to find so little emphasis laid on food and fasting
ment,
in the books of the New Testament.
This is perhaps partially to be explained
books was different:
by the fact that the function of the New Testament
9 Ibid.
935.
10 Cf. also L.
dans Saint Paul
L'asc?se
34ff.; A. Les?tre,
Bouvet,
(Lyons 1936)
4
DB
5.347ff.
and Fast-Days,'
Jewish Encyc.
3.1528ff.; H. Hirschfeld,
Fasting
11 See A.
aus
Aram?ische
3f. This
Ungnad,
1911)
(Leipzig
Papyri
Elephantine
been made
soldiers of the Persian
colony must have
king,
up largely of Jewish
destruction
of their pagan
4
Je?ne,'
peculiar
and the
on the part
of their temple in 410 may well have occurred as an act of hostility
in
York
Ancient
See
S.
Race-Relations
1952) 90.
(New
Davis,
Egypt
neighbors.

IN THE
FASTING
ASCETICAL
PATRISTIC
GREEK
WRITERS
45
or guide for the

none of them, for example, was intended to be a manual
?
the sort of liturgical calendar we find in Leviticus.
celebration of feasts
of
the
Jewish
practices were to be continued throughout the
Again, many
stages of transition after the Ascension of Christ; only gradually was there
to be a change in the interpretation of the ritual prescriptions of the Old
'
'
'
'
I came, said Jesus, not to destroy but to fulfil.
Law as the need required.
account
of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, we are

and her custom of prayer and daily fasts.12 There is,
of course, the rigorous existence of John the Baptist, who took no wine and
'locusts and wild honey.'13
whose food was
Then we hear of Christ's own
In St. Luke's
told of the widow Anna
fast of forty days, wherein the vagueness of Mark and Matthew

is clarified by Luke's
explicit statement that He ate nothing.1*
It is characteristic of Christ's entire Messianic message
that He
should
remarkable
speak of fasts of the Pharisees with contempt;15 and there is no evidence

12 Luke
14
of herbs
consumption
(4.2).
by
not,
of course,
or the like after
did he drink/
'Nor
supported
13 Matth.
2.37.
would
water
Drinking
other MSS.
a reading
Note
the
be
sundown
of the Ferrar
to be
of minuscules,
group
Mark
in the desert
40 days
? 4.2
40 days
Fasted
4.2
Ate
(and drank)
nothing
Temptation
?
?
is not
Matthew
1.12-13
? ?
sufficiently
1.12
?
i (food)
ii (adoration)
Luke
4.1-2
4.1-2
4.3-10
4.3-13
4.5-7
4.9-12
4.2
Satan
by
this fast; but the

breaking
excluded
statement
by Luke's
scheme:
Christ
Tempted
1.15.
as
considered
seems
Luke
11.19;
that
4.3-4
?
?
iii (suicide)
? 4.11
4.13
4.3-4
4.8-10
4.5-8
Satan
departs
1.13 4.11 ?
'minister'
Angels
The entire episode has given considerable
but for our purpose
difficulty to commentators;
'
we may quote
the moderate
of M.-J. Lagrange:
On dirait que tout cet ?pisode
summary
les lignes.
La r?alit? n'en
baigne dans une nu?e qui ne permet pas de dessiner nettement
est pas moins
vivante.
La
v?rit?
une analyse
qui supporte le mieux
To sum it up, therefore:
la plus
utile
minutieuse'
? l'esprit
(L'?vangile
et au
ur n'est
pas
de J?sus-Christ
toujours
[Paris
1939]
celle
76f.).
?
is omitted
the incident
are substan
i) the texts of all three evangelists
by John
both by MSS
from the Fathers
and citations
of the Church;
tially well enough established
the exact way
it is difficult to establish
the three diabolic
in which
ii) although
tempta
seems to have been derived
tions took place,
the incident
from Matthew,
or by
by Luke
each
of them
from a common
iii) from Luke

Jewish fast until
source;
by the sources was not the ordinary

'
'
in those days.
eaten
The exact
nothing was
have been numerically
length of the fast need not perhaps
forty days, for this might well
'
'
be an accepted
cf. J. Sauer,
Jewish
LThK
10 (1938)
1025ff.
symbol:
Zahlensymbolik,
?
no
reason
is
some
there
short
of accepting
the reading of
of the minuscules
men
Lastly,
tioned above ?
for concluding
that Christ drank no water
during the forty days.
15 Matth.
18.12.
Luke
6.16-18;
it
is clear
sundown,
that
but
one
the
fast portrayed
in which

46
TRADITIO
He Himself practiced any regular fasts; in any case He seems to have departed
from rabbinical custom in not imposing any special fasts on His disciples.16
Apart from the inconvenience of eating while the crowds pressed on Him,
Christ seems to have attracted no attention in the matter of food or drink;
use of wine,
to inconvenience
in fact, arouses the scandal of the Pharisees.17 He refuses

the crowds who had come without food to hear Him;18 and
He even allows His disciples to break rabbinical custom by plucking raw
wheat in a stranger's field on the Sabbath.19
Nonetheless He implies that He had expected the lake-cities to do penance
?
at His
and the traditional Jewish manner would, of course,
coming20
have been fasting in sackcloth and ashes. Again, ifwe accept the reading of
the Vulgate and the MSS
it follows at Matth. 17.21, He tells His disciples
'
'
that there are certain kinds of spirits which cannot be cast out except by
prayer and fasting. And finally, He implies that His disciples will again fast
when He is taken away from them.21
It is admittedly difficult to summarize Christ's attitude towards fasting
His
and external penance, but there is no reason to suspect that He intended

to destroy the traditional and fundamental Jewish practice of fasting and
is clear from our sources is that He insisted on a new
self-affliction. What
approach,
readiness
e a
a or change of heart towards God

to do violence to oneself if it were demanded.
the Father, and a

Though there was
a necessary shift from the Messianic

view of Christ to that of the kerygma
of the Church awaiting the Parousia, surely there is nothing to suggest Behm's
view that Christianity later forgot the mind of Jesus.
In the Acts of the Apostles, for example, we find that fasting and prayer
Acts 27.9
regularly preceded the conferring of Orders.22 The fastmentioned in
must have been the Jewish fast of Yom Kippur occurring inmid-September.
But the fact that fasting played a minor role in the ascetical practices of
these first Christians seems to be suggested by the fact that we read of prac
16Matth.
17 Matth.
9.14.
19 Matth.
12.1.
11.19;
20 It is omitted
but
included
cf. Jo.
2.7ff.
18 Matth.
14.13ff.;
first hand) and

, S* (Sinaiticus,
e.g. by
and Bo ver (who in this case does not
by Merk
15.29ff.
; the verse
follow
is omitted
as he
by Nestle,
sometimes
does).
omit the addition

Mark
and Sinaitic MSS
So too in the parallel
9.29, the Vatican
passage,
'
'
Luke has the incident
not by Merk and Bover.
and this is followed by Nestle,
and fasting,
verse
'this type of spirit, etc.' Although
(9.37ff.) but does not conclude with the Marcan
verse (perhaps
seem extremely
it would
it is difficult to be certain,
likely that the Marcan
of Matthew.
was
in the narrative
the
'and fasting')
without
interpolated
21 Mark 2.20
it is not clear,
textual variants);
5.35. Here, however,
Luke
(with negligible
or
has
the
future
will
fast'
force,
whether
in Our Lord's
descriptive
prescriptive
'they
reply,
'mourn.'
and whether
'fast' here does not, in the reply, simply mean
22
14.22.
Gf. Acts
13.2-3;

FASTING
ASCETICA!,
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
47
tically nothing on this matter in any of the Johannine books (Gospel, Apo
calypse or Letters), nor in the Epistles of Peter, Jude, James, or in that to the
Hebrews.
St. Paul
however,
conversion
not himself speak of his own practice of fasting. We

of his three days without food or drink subsequent to
on the road to Damascus;23 we may presume he fasted before
and commission in Acts 13.2-3, as well as during the storm
does
know
ordination
the Mediterranean
in Acts
27.21.
do,
his
his
on
labors, sleepless nights and 'fasts'

he refers to in 2 Cor. 6.5 and 11.27 were undoubtedly the privations enforced24
The
reasons.
by the exigencies of his travels and not assumed out of ascetical
On the question of food, St. Paul in his epistles is primarily interested in
the settlement of the difficulties which divided Gentile and Jewish Christians
in regard to the observance of the old Jewish food-laws. But at the same
time we find in the Pauline corpus certain general principles which Christians
were later to apply to the problem of fasting and external austerities. We may
summarize
these principles under five heads:
i) the principle of individual adaptation of means to ends: those who

eat must not despise those who do not (Rom. 14.2-3); whether we
eat meat or not, we ought not to scandalize others (Rom. 14.16, 21;
1 Cor. 18.13);
ii) the principle of moderation

Tit. 2.3; 1 Tim. 3.3.);
in food
(Rom.
14.17,21;
Phil.
3.19;
are good (1 Tim.

iii) the principle that all of God's creatures
4.3-4),
as well
who
would
abstinence
from marriage
enjoin
against those
as from certain foods;
the
principle that all suffering in the apostolate has a value insofar
iv)
as it is united to the Body of Christ (Rom. 8.35ff.; Gal. 6.17; Col. 1.24);
that self-control is necessary (1 Cor. 9.27:
chastise
v) the principle
my
body,'
etc.).
It is the spirit of these principles that fills the writings of the Fathers and
even, despite their excesses, the lives of the desert solitaries; for despite
erroneous views on the nature and constitution of the body and on the organi
zation of the body's processes, the main stream of the Greek patristic tradition
seems to have substantially preserved the spirit at least of the five Pauline
principles.
The spirit of self-denial is reflected as early as Clement of Rome's
to the Corinthians, written perhaps about the years 96/8:25
Epistle
Let us imitate those who went about in goat's hair and sheepskin preaching
the coming of Christ, I mean Elias and Eliseus.
23 Acts
26
Ep.
9.9.
ad Cor.
17.1
24 Cf. L.
L'asc?se
Bouvet,
(ed. Funk, Patres Apostolici
dans
Saint
Paul,
(above,
I 122).

10)
139-40.
48
TRADITIO
he calls
And
to mind
the
fast and self-humiliation,26

efficacy of Esther's
be the best means to the peace of the Corinthian
reflects nonetheless the same
simplicity of the Didache
the Gospel text (Matth. 5.44, 46) it enjoins:27
since this would
particularly
The
community.
idea; paraphrasing
Bless those who curse you and pray for your enemies. Fast
persecute
Abstain
you...
from
and
carnal
bodily
for those who
desires.
?
to the Corinthians
Similarly the author of the so-called second Epistle
really a homily delivered at Corinth perhaps in the middle of the second
?
12.8 on the importance of fasting as part of
century
develops Tobias
from
'conversion
sin':28
Alms then are good as a means of conversion from sin; fasting is better
than prayer; but alms-giving is better than both.
same primitive, biblical
I ad Virgines,
Syriac Epistle
This
the various
charitable
works
the author says:29

Let
exorcisms
be
worked
spirit is reflected in the pseudo-Clementine

a homily of the third century; in describing
that could be performed for one's neighbor
with
prayer
and
... as men
fasting
received the gift of healing from God, confidently, forHis
who
have
glory.
And a little further on:30

Ever persevere with faith in prayer, fasting, watching and other good
works. By the power of the Holy Spirit, mortify the deeds of the flesh.
Although in the genuine epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch we find nothing
of interest on our topic, in the Martyrium
sancii Ignatii we are told that
'
like a good pilot with the
the good Bishop ruled over his see at Antioch
tiller of prayer and fasting. '31 As for St. Polycarp, in his letter to the com
munity at Philippi he urges them to return 'to the traditional doctrine,
watching and persevering in prayer and fasting,*32 seeing that the flesh is
himself, there is no indication that he practiced any
he supplies
In the Vita et conversatio s. Polycarpi
extraordinary fasts.
the needs of the people of Teos by multiplying bread and wine.33 And
weak.
As
for Polycarp
soldiers (if we may trust

finally he is to be arrested by the Roman
our source in this detail), he has a good meal served to his captors while he
himself goes and prays.34
when
2? Ibid.
of the ages
27 Doctrina
28
29
Epist.
'
For with
I 168):
(Funk
sees all things.'
who
55.6
fasting
and
xii Apostolorum
1. -4 (ed. T. Klauser,
ii ad Cor. 16.4 (Funk
I 204).
i ad Virg. 12.5 (Funk-Diekamp,
3rd ed.
Epist.
31
s. Ignatii
1.1 (Funk-Diekamp
Martyrium
82 Ad
7.2 (ed. Funk,
1.304).
Philip.
33 Vita 25-6
(Funk-Diekamp
438).
84Mart.
s. Polycarpi
7.2 (Funk
320).
self-humiliation
FIP
she entreated
14).
II 24).
30
324).

Ibid.
the Lord
ASCETICAL
FASTING
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
49
The Epistle
the Shepherd ofHermas and the works of Justin
of Barnabas,
have
been
mentioned
above in connection with the emphasis
already
Martyr
'
on spiritual fasting '; throughout there would seem to be a connection between
the practice of fasting and the 'abstention from sin' of which it is a symbol.
At this point it will be significant perhaps to quote the teaching of Philo,
who reveals his attitude in this matter especially where he is commenting
on the ancient Hebrew
food-laws.
He
teaches:35
Now the belly is a receptacle for all sorts of pleasures;for when it is filled,
desires for other pleasures become acute, but when it is empty, these
become
desires
calm
and
tranquil.
the man interested in the spiritual interpretation of the

'wise man,'
rids himself of the pleasures
Pentateuch
(somewhat like the Therapeutae),
'
of the belly as well as of all the others, and nourished by his study of theo
'36 We
seem to
logy he does not even take the necessary food and drink.
The
have here as, for example, V?lker would suggest,37 a subtle combination of
Stoicism (in the attitude towards pleasure) and Platonism
(in the ultimate
reason for the attitude). But Philo, it seems, would even go further: for in
his suggestion that the union between body and soul inman is a violent one,
and that pleasure
both schools.
is ultimately wrong, he has exaggerated
the tendencies
of
Continuing somewhat the ascetical influence of Philo, we have Clement of

and Origen.
Alexandria
Clement, for example, develops his idea of the
'gnostic' Christian:38 one who leads the perfect Christian life because he fully
For
the deeper levels of meaning
of the Christian revelation.
such a gnostic, self-control, detachment (even apatheia) with regard to the
pleasures of food, is essential.39 Complete abstinence frommeat is good, says
Clement, for that 'training of the flesh' which all true gnostics require.40
understands
has well brought out, Clement's gnosis is a confused and ultimately

contradictory concept; nor does he have anything concrete to offer when
there is a question of explaining in what this gnosis consists.41 Ultimately
As Hanson
36
36
alleg?ri??
3.141
Legum
Philo
For V?lker,
tonic
Stoic
and
would,
See
in Judaism,
be
channelled
in general,
and
Christianity,
also,
and Actions').
Virtues
88 For a
discussion,
Doctrine
89 Paed.
40 Strom.
(Cohn
143).
bei Philo
von Alexandreia
the pagan
link between
is the great intermediary
the
and ascetics;
schools and the Christian martyrs
of course,
see 349.
3.138
(Cohn 144).
Fortschritt
und Vollendung
Leg. alleg.
37W.
V?lker,
see R.
and
of Alexandria
by Clement
H. A. Wolf son, Philo.
Foundation
Islam
P.
(2 vols.
C. Hanson,
Harvard
Origenfs
Univ.
Doctrine
Press
(Leipzig
asceticism
intermediary
the Alexandrian
2.2.1ff.
7.6
(St?hlin
26).
Strom.
influence
school:
Philosophy
of Religious
II 218ff. ('Moral
1948)
of Tradition
... of Secret
Tradition').
154ff.);
(ed. St?hlin
1938) 237.
of the Pla
7.12 (St?hlin
54).
41
Hanson,
op. cit. 71f.

53ff. (' Clement's
50
TRADITIO
with
and abstinence, it would

regard to his concept of fasting, moderation
a
seem
to
of
be
merely
development
ordinary Christian, Alexandrian asceticism.
The concept of training and self-discipline ismore fully developed in Origen,
and in this connection, as we have noted earlier, he often brings his allegorical
technique to bear on the doctrine. Origen distinguished three types of diet:42
1) healthy, heavy fare, suitable for strong athletes, but burdensome
(for example) to the sick;
2) a vegetarian diet suitable for those who are sick or those of delicate
constitution;
3) the infant's diet, based especially on milk.
human being, he teaches, has a particular diet which is suited to him
as
and this is the important part of the pas
animals have), and ?
(just
?
same
true
holds
of
the
sage
spiritual doctrine as revealed particularly
In a similar way, Origen43 distinguishes various levels of
in the Scriptures.
Every
fast; but,
fasting. There is the Jewish fast and the Christian ecclesiastical
in a sense, the Christian cannot fast, for Christ, the Bridegroom, though in
heaven, is still with us. When the Christian fasts, it iswith a higher meaning:
ultimately a fast from sin, an avoidance of the wine of luxury, it is
(and here he quotes fromHermas, Sim. 5. 3.7-8 as from 'an apostolic saying')
a fasting to feed the poor. But, he further suggests, we misunderstand
the
itmeans
fasting unless we link it up closely with (a) the Christian

a
of
eunuch
for the kingdom of God, a self-control which is
principle
being
in the virtue of chastity; and (b) the particular help that
also manifested
for
the deeper knowledge of the Scriptures ?
for that gnosis
fasting brings
which was, ultimately, at the heart of Origen's theology.44
practice
of Christian
It is with this in mind
Origen's austerity and see

in Proverbia*6 preserved in Greek, he
of penance:
that we can understand
In his Expositio
the
various practices
together
means
the fear of God; itmeans fasting, continence, staying
Self-discipline
awake at night, the singing of hymns, the endurance of those infirmities
which God sends us for our salutary training.
it in perspective.
groups
It is for their total adherence
on Jeremias*6 the ascetics, who
to this ideal that Origen praises in his Homilies

renounce the pleasures of the table as well as
42 In Num.
Selections
doctrine
ker, Das
migkeit
horn. 27.1, in Rufinus'

Latin
See also R. B. Tollinton,
version
255).
(Baehrens
the
and
Commentaries
Homilies
from
Origen's
(London
1929) 265f.
of Origen
on fasting must be seen against his entire view of asceticism:
see especially W. V?l
zur Geschichte
der Fr?m
des Or?genes:
Vollkommenheitsideal
eine Untersuchung
und
zu den Anf?ngen
1931) esp. 46ff.

48 In
Lev. hom.
10.2
to Origen's
unsuited
44 Ibid.
(Baehrens
46 In
lerem, hom.
christlicher Mystik
in Rufinus'
style,
Latin
definitely
445).
27.9 (Klostermann
(Beitr.
zur histor.
Theologie
although
(Baehrens
444); the passage,
seems to express his substantial
views.
45
16.17
(PG 17.196 B).
Expos.
188).

7; T?bingen
rhetorically
FASTING
ASGETIGAL
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
51
in order to chastise their bodies and bring them into subjection.

Self-discipline through fasting together with the practice of the virtues con
stitutes the military arms with which the Church fights its battles.47 And in
ofmarriage
reply to Celsus' criticism of the Church's

it clear that48
Origen makes
practice
of fasting and abstinence,
since man is not defiled by what enters his mouth and since the eating
ofmeat does not commend us to God, we are not on the one hand proud of
our abstinence nor do we, on the other, approach our food out of a motive
of gluttony. So far as we are concerned, the Pythagoreans who abstain
from all meat may do as they please. Only note the difference between
their motives and those of the ascetic. The Pythagoreans abstain from
meat
because
of
their
myth
about
the
of
transmigration
souls...
"We,
however, ifwe do abstain, do so out of a desire to chastise the body and

keep it in subjection.
Here, whatever one's view of the efficacy or practicality of such asceticism,
the issue is at last clear. The Christian life is a combat against oneself, and
are those which give pain to the body and force it to exhibit
the weapons
'the forerunner of Christian monasticism,'

the practices of virtue. Origen,
as Strathmann calls him,49was one of the first, so far as our literary sources go,
even allowing for some
to practice this external austerity. For Eusebius ?
?
to
of
time
due
the
halo-effect
exaggeration
paints a vivid picture, in his
with which Origen chastised himself;
Ecclesiastical
History, of the
of the passions, he filled his days with austere

removing all the material
much
of
the
toil, devoting
night to the study of the Scriptures, often going
without food and finally taking a short sleep upon the bare floor.50 Here the
Philonic leaven is at work, even ifwe may well discount Rufinus' exaggerated
in abstinentia plurima, in ieiuniis indesinentibus, in vigiliis paene
paraphrase
text.51 From here on,
iugibus, for which there is no foundation in Eusebius'
of
combats
the
is
clear
for
ascetical
the
however,
way
Antony and the fathers
of the Egyptian desert, and for the ascetical discussions of the Greek patristic
or Origenist ?
writers who take the Philonic ?
principle for granted.
The doctrine of self-conquest through fasting is most strikingly developed

in Gregory ofNazianzus.
We have already mentioned his use of Cynic motifs.
He constantly insists on the importance, in a Christian life, of renouncing
'
'
'
the belly, that fierce and despicable mistress, mother of all evil. 52 Fasting
'53
is the anointing for our wrestling-match with the enemy.
Again in Orat. 15
he declares that he needs athletes of every age and sex in the war against
47 In Num.
horn. 25.4 (Baehrens
238), in the Latin
48 Contra Celsum
5.49 (Koetschau
53).
49 Art.
1 (1950) 763.
RAG
'Askese,'
51 Ibid.
60HE
6.3.9
(Schwartz
2.526).
52 Orat. 5.123
(PG 35.664 A).
w
202
exactae
1.2.34,
(PG 37.960).
Def. minus
of Rufinus.
(Schwartz
529).

52
TRADITIO
the passions.54 It is this life of austerity forwhich good health is intended;55

austerity will keep the soul in continence.56
is seen in Chrysostom; but he will often use it in
The same motivation
connection with the idea of reparation for one's own sins and the sins of
for Chrysostom, is no virtue in itself; and in self-denial

Hunger,
we should concentrate on the good effects of our actions.57 In his Homilies
onMatthew he teaches:58
others.
Have you lived in dissipation or been drunk in the past? Then fast and
drink nothing but water ? in order to destroy the evil that has grown up
within you.
self-indulgence and sin is thus proposed:59
A further connection between
The man who lives sumptuously, the spendthrift, always doing the loath
some services of his belly, is often tempted to steal and rob another,
to use violence and extortion. If you avoid such luxurious living, you will
remove
the
foundation
for cheating,
drunkenness
stealing,
and
a thousand
sins.
other
on Thessalonians,
he directs his meditations
connection between self-control and virtue:60
to the
in the Homilies
Later,
psychological
The source of sin is pride; it is the initial impulse towards evil, its founda
tion
as
it were.
For
source
of sin
reveals
either
the
first
towards
impulse
evil or else its basic structure. Thus, for example, one might say that
the source of the virtue of modesty
is the avoidance of any improper
? in other
words, that would be its first impulse. So too we
spectacle
might say that the source of self-control is fasting, that is to say, its
foundation
But
and
basis.
even when
he treats this motive for fasting, Chrysostom emphasizes,

the positive element:61
Fasting is not so much a dreary thing in itself as it is for those who are
still spiritually feeble. For to those who are willing to practice self-control
it is a practice that is extremely pleasant and desirable.
as always,
And
again,
in his Homily
on theHoly Martyrs62 he urges his hearers:
When you are fasting don't think of the self-denial you are achieving by
the fast, but rather of the relaxation you will have when it is all over.
54 In Macchabaeorum
laudem
12
(PG
35.934
A).
in seipsum
11 (PG 35.1444 A).
06
ad
1.2.2, 38ff. (PG 37.636A).
virgines
Praecepta
57Horn.
3
cf. also Horn, de sanct. mart.
1 (PG 49.180-1);
18 ad pop. Ant.
58Horn.
8 (PG 57.202);
11 in Matth.
cf. Horn.
6 (PG 57.191);
10 in Matth.
Or.
Io.
26
4 (PG
59Horn.
61Horn.
59.227).
15 ad pop.
30
Ant.
in Matth.
4 (PG 49.519).
3 (PG 57.366).
eo Horn.
Gf. Adv.
(31)
body not that we might
given a mortal
its passions
utilize
but that we might
its passions,
62Horn,
3 (PG 50. 711).
de sanct. mart.
have
been
in 2 Thess.
Iudaeos
embrace
towards
(PG 50.711).
39 in
Horn.
2 (PG 62.470).
'
We
or. 8, 7 (PG 48.938),
of
sinful practices
by means
our personal

holiness.'
ASCETICAL
IN THE
FASTING
PATRISTIC
GREEK
53
WRITERS
So too, when you are on the point of spending the night in prayer, don't
think of the annoyance of staying awake but rather of the consolation
you will derive from your prayer.
And, lastly, in the pain and deprivation of fasting and austerity, Chrysostom
stresses as one of the highest motives
the offering of these hardships for
the sins of others: this 'redemptive motive'
is indeed one of the most striking
features of Chrysostom's sound and intensely spiritual approach.63
In the matter of fasting as self-discipline, Basil
is as usual traditional.
In his Sermo asceticus de renuntiatione saeculi6* he remarks that he never
knew of a gluttonous person who was ever converted to a life of virtue.
Fasting, on the other hand, is the 'medicinal destroyer of sin.'65 When we

yield to ourselves and to our passions we are apt to fall into sin;66 but echoing
'
the words of St. Paul, When
I am weak, then am I strong, '67 Basil lays
The entire motive of
great stress on the ascetical value of bodily weakness.
'
and
abstinence for Basil would seem, primarily at least, to be the
penance
' 68
purification of the tendencies of the flesh.
The most illuminating of the works of Cyril of Alexandria which have a
?
bearing on our problem are his twenty-nine Pascha IHomilies
really pastoral
letters sent to all the churches of his diocese each Lenten season from the
year 414 (two years after his consecration as bishop) until 442 (two years
before his death). These are an excellent source for our understanding
of
the spirituality which Cyril held constantly before his people.
In the first
homily, written for the Lent of 414, the bishop points out that fasting con
sists in a particular choice of food as well as abstinence from all food, and
further, that true fasting embraces in its concept the abstinence from sin.
For,69
luxurious food, when

within us... Thus the
and unyielding to the
weak and does not have
taken to excess, awakens the sin that is asleep

fattened and pampered flesh becomes refractory
desires of the spirit. Whereas, when the flesh is
the support of superfluity, itmust necessarily yield.
It is clear then, in Cyril as in Basil,

that the physical weakening
that the Greek Fathers
believed
in the
ponding weakening
?3 Horn.
?4 6
85 De
??
31
in Rom.
(PG 31.640
ieiun.
Cf. De
(PG
1.1
(PG
disciplina
22 (Deferrari
Epist.
1.133).
67 2 Cor.
12.10 quoted
in De
68
fusius
Especially
Regulae
60.669).
31.165
A).
31.652
(PG
ieiun. hom.
tractatae
128 (PG 31.1168 C-D).

68Horn,
pasch.
of the body brought

i.e., in one's inclination towards sinful,
'passions/
).
horn.
ascet.
of this period
about a corres
1.3
(PG
77.412
A); Horn.
1.9
16.2
(PG
(PG
13
31.180
31.860
in sanct.
bapt.
(PG
31.436
A);
A).
A-B);
cf.
also
Reg.
A-C).

brev.
tract
54
TRADITIO
It is only natural, then, that fasting should be con

behavior.
'the enemy of sin.'70 Further on, Cyril asks:71
Is it not true that fasting produces all kinds of virtue ? Is it not an imi
tation of the life of the angels ? Is it not the source of the virtue of tem
perance, the beginning of continence, the evacuation of all concupiscence ?
'
'
and hence of the fuel of the passions ?
This deprivation of the body ?
is called a 'war on the flesh and the passions';72 for this we put on God's
undesirable
sidered as
armor;73 and God despises

in the fight.74
those who
show themselves
feeble and effeminate
'
'
the concept of the weakening of the flesh was established, we find
it occurring as a frequent commonplace
in the later patristic writers. The
of
the
De
author
sophistic
poenitentia (who also composed perhaps the tracts
even
for penance and for
De ieiunio 3, 9, and
15) enumerates the motives
Once
fasting in particular: to atone for our personal faults and to break the habit
of sin. When we commit sin we inscribe, as itwere, marks upon a wax-tablet
and these marks become deeper by repetition; the only way to erase such
is to practice penance.75 The soul's 'weapon' against sin is fasting;76

for it is food that feeds the fire of concupiscence, brings fuel for the passions.77
Hence fasting is the 'bridle of themonk';78 it is one of the fundamental pillars
on which the ascetical life is to be built.79 Still later, when some, likeMarcus
marks
cause the precise

pointed out wisely that excess in fasting could
was
fill
the monk's
intended, and
prayer 'with carnal
opposite of what
'80 Maximus
the Confessor stressed the use of healthy foods,81
thoughts,
of St. Sabas
Isaac of Ninive plain but wholesome
fare;82 and Antiochus
Eremita,
71Ibid.
70Ibid. 4
(PG 412 D).
(PG 412 D 413 A).
D).
(PG 77.453
save us
18.2:
will
28.3
'Fasting
pasch.
(PG 77.948 D).
pasch.
Horn,
77.809
it will open to us the path of every virtue'
from every calamity;
pasch.
B);
(PG
our bodies by fasting we necessarily
bring on the habits of uprightness'
20, 3: 'By wasting
from a doc
to be scrutinized
as these are hardly meant
Such statements
(PG 77.848 A).
72Horn,
74Horn,
pasch.
11.2
(PG
77.637
ff.)-
78Horn,
pasch.
4.2
Gf. also Horn,
trinal point of view:

they are emotive
75 De
9
poen.
(PG 60.698).
76Nilus
of Sinai, Capita
paraenetica
ieiun. 6.4 (Lamy
and 8.2 (ibid.
2.680),
and
not
descriptive.
53
(PG
79.1253
694):
'fasting
Cf. St. Ephraem,

B).
arrows
is the bow whose
Hgmni
de
pierce
the
evil one.'
77
1 (PG 79.1145 A).
Tract, de octo spir. malitiae
Nilus,
78
ad mon.
80 (PG 79.1481
Exhort,
B).
Hyperechius,
79 John
1 (PG 88.636 D).
Scala Paradisi,
Climacus,
gradus
80 De
of always
he suggests the practice
as an alternative,
ieiun. 2 (PG 65.1113 A-B);
2
cf. the pseudo-Athanasian
Ep.
hungry
(ibid. 1, PG 1112 A):
leaving the table somewhat
1 (PG 28.873 A-C).
ad Castorem
81
de
charitate 86 (PG 90.1044 B).
Capita
82 De
53 (PG 86.883f.);
contemptu mundi
De
compositione
monachi
(PG
88.1835
and
compare
the
similar
advice
G).

in Dorotheus,
ascetical
in
fasting
the
greek
patristic
writers
55
'
'
taught his monks to chastise the heated members of the body by a type of
diet that, though wholesome, would be monotonous
and at times disliked.83
the
has
been
basic
modified, the
Though
application
principle remains the
same.
Indeed, it is only logical that such a doctrine should, along one line
at least of its development, culminate in the

'neptic' writers as, for example,
of
the
fifth
We
he
must,
Hesychius
teaches, use Christ's own methods
century.
of fighting the devil, the humiliation of the self
by fasting, prayer and self
control.84 He lays down a general description, or definition, of nepsis which
includes all types of mortification and spiritual exercise:85
Self-discipline is that system in the spiritual life whereby a man can be

freed with God's help from all inordinate thoughts and words and all
evil
deeds.
further on he illustrates this with a traditional comparison:86
And
Just as the beginning of all blossoming is the bud, so too the beginning
of custody of the heart (
) is temperance in food and drink,
the avoidance of all sorts of (distracting) thoughts and peace of soul.
To discuss how far this doctrine was, in some quarters, misunderstood
and taken to be either rigorous Stoicism on the one hand or Quietism on
the other, would go far beyond our present scope. Suffice it to say that this
state of self-discipline, ofwhich the practice of fasting constituted an essential
directors as a necessary condition
element, was considered by all monastic
for the gift of contemplation
in this life.87
of Asceticism
IX. The Martyrdom
of the difficulties in the history of Christian asceticism is to discover

any principle of growth and unity, a particular fact or text which might
explain why it developed as it did. Granted that the supernatural unity
with Christ, in this world as in the next, was the ultimate goal of this asceti
One
cism, how, when all is said, can the practice of self-inflicted pain, particularly
by fasting and abstinence, have any connection with it ?
The
connection between
element in the problem;

88 PG89.1453
and E.
A-B.
des Places,
fasting and revelation is indeed a most important

but here we can hardly add to what has been so well
Cf. Diadochus
Cent
chapitres
of Photice, Centum capita

la perfection spirituelle
sur
1943) 105 ;more

still, the
important
vres spirituelles
chr?t. 5 bis
(Sources
84 De
et virtute 1.12
temperantia
86 Ibid. 1.1
(PG 1480 D).
86 Ibid.
2.63 (PG 1532 G).
87 Cf. for
example K. E. Kirk, The
cism
and
nasticism
the Vision
of God');
(Cambridge
1950)
same
(PG
and O.
new
scholars
; Paris
Vision
edition,
chr?tiennes
Diadoque
50-51),
5 ; Paris
de Photice,
D-85A).
of God
Chadwick,
79ff. and 139ff.
Weis-Liebersdorf
(Sources
110.
1955)
93.1484
43(ed.
1946)
(2nd ed. London
a Study
Cassian:
John

192?.
(' Monasti
in Primitive Mo
56
TRADITIO
said by Arbesmann
in his two monographs which we have frequently cited.
use of fasting in exorcism, particularly when one considers the Fathers
of the Desert, is interesting, but does not offer a completely convincing
The
solution. One final hypothesis, I suggest, remains to be explored: it is the

theory put forth in the little Christian novel, once attributed to John Dam
In the twelfth chapter, the monk
and Joasaph.1
ascene, entitled Barlaam
Barlaam is explaining to his young disciple the growth of Christian asceticism:2
(After the apostles)
up
to
the whole band of holy martyrs delivered themselves
rulers
idolatrous
and
dictators
for
the
name
of
Christ,
and
per
severed in every kind of torture... And not only what they said and did,
but even their blood and their remains are full of holiness, a powerful
means of exorcism, granting to those who touch them with faith the grace
of being
healed
of
incurable
diseases...
But when the persecutions came to an end and Christian emperors

ruled throughout the world, then others came, and imitating their zeal
and
their
desire
divine
I mean
the martyrs
and
at
wounded
heart
with the same love as they, they reflected on how they might offer their
bodies and souls, without blemish, to God, by denying themselves all
the objects of their sinful passions and by purifying themselves of all
of mind
uncleanness
and
body.
of the difficulty of living this way among men, they took to the
and desert places. He explains:3
And this they did for two reasons. First that ... they might uproot all
evil desires from their souls... And second, that by thus crushing their
e
bodies by austerity and by becoming martyrs in intention ( a
\
a
e ), they too might share in the reward of those who became per
fect by the shedding of their blood, and so too become imitators of Christ's
passion and participate in the eternal kingdom.
Because
mountains
1 This
for which we are still in need of a scientific edition, was attribu

peculiar work,
and H. Mattingly
to John (or his circle) even by the latest editors, G. R. Woodward
'La premi?re
The late Paul Peeters,
article,
S.J., in his revolutionary
(Loeb Library
1914).
ted
49 (1931)
Boll.
et son original
et Joasaph"
"Barlaam
grec,' Anal.
as
was
that
Greek
written
the
version
it
by St. Eu
276ff.,
proven
practically
in turn,
of
the
St.
of
Laura
Athanasius
abbot
the
Euthymius,
1028);
(d.
thymius
Hagiorite,
This hypothesis
from an ancient Hindu
tale.
had derived
it through a Georgian
version
traduction
latine
de
considered
Altaner.
Franz
recent
scholars,
including
Dolger
by most
: ein
Barlaama
Der
entitled
Roman
griechische
monograph
published
von Damaskos
he felt that Peeters'
Werk des H. Johannes
theory
(Ettal
1953), in which
and the works
list of parallels
Barlaam
must
between
be definitively
rejected.
D?lger's
'
for
the martyr
adduce
of John deserve
does
however,
any
not,
parallels
study; D?lger
of this motif
and
of asceticism,
this is extremely
id?al'
odd, in view of the dominance
was
unequivocally
of Munich
in 1953
in Barlaam
2
Barlaam
more
Cod.
accepted
and Joasaph.
et Ioasaph
12.101-2
than Migne
carefully
(PG
Paris,
gr. 904 (s. xii).
(ed. Woodward-Mattingly
the text of Boissonade,
96)
170).
which
The
was
editors
based
3 Ibid. 102
(p. 172).

reproduce,
on
primarily
FASTING
ASGETICAL
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
57
to Joasaph how men first instituted monastic

life, after
all
and
to
holes
and
deserted
their
caverns,
property
moving
selling
living on4
then describes
He
only
as much
as was
barely
to
necessary
sustain
human
life.
Some
per
sisted in their fasting for a whole week, eating only on Sundays; others
ate only twice a week; others every other day; and still others once a day,
just a morsel in the evening. Further, in their practice of prayer and
watching at night they rivalled even the life of the angels...
Barlaam
goes on to describe the three types of life then current in theWest:5
Some finish their contest completely alone... Others build huts separated
from one another, meeting together on Sundays at a central church to
communicate in the celestial mysteries, I mean the unbloody sacrifice of
the undefiled Body and precious Blood of Christ... Others again pass
their lives in common dwellings ... under one superior (who is the holiest
among them) slaying all their inclinations with the sword of obedience...
These men live the lives of angels on earth, singing their psalms and
their hymns in unison to the Lord.
'
'6
They live like soldiers in the field, with death constantly before them,
'crucified to the world, that they may
stand at the right hand of the
'7
Crucified.
As a matter
curious romance
of fact, it has escaped the scholars who have worked on this

'
'
that the idea of metaphorical martyrdom
in the ascetical
life is, when all is said, the main point of the story. For in the Prologue,
'
the author suggests that the aim of the book is to teach a a
, blessed
'
ness, by which we may be worthy of the Holy
Spirit and be true sons of
'
'
God.8 Now this blessedness,
he continues,
was won by the saints by the exercise of virtuous actions. Some fought
in the contest as martyrs ( a
), resisting sin unto blood. Others
struggled in the ascetical life (a
), walking along the straight
and narrow path, becoming martyrs in intention ( a
e
\ a
a).
It is the Church's mandate that we should hand down to posterity the
courage and the virtues of these saints, both of those who were made
perfect by martyrdom and of those who imitated the life of the angels
by
their
self-denial.
And
before the author closes with the pious concluding prayer, he sums up
the life of Joasaph after his conversion and retirement to the desert:9
Like a man without a body, he had endured rigors far beyond human
He
capacity...
had
become
* Ibid. 103
(p. 174).
8 Ibid.
* Ibid.
? Ibid.
105-6
108
(pp.
176,
in intention
6 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
107 (p.
Proem,
and
had
with
outspoken
180).
(pp. 2, 4).
in 11.18
Cf. also
exiles his
604).
(p. 28), when King Abenner
'
a Christian
chief satrap
for becoming
instead of killing him, the satrap
because
grieved
he could not become
a martyr,
a martyr
into the desert, to become
in his
[he] withdrew
'
conscience
a
a
e
??
e ), a phrase which
recalls
every day'
( a
[
40.362
(p.
182).
178).
a martyr
(pp.
602,

58
TRADITIO
ness confessed Christ in front of

emperors and tyrants... Generously
was he endowed with
heavenly grace and he kept the eye of his soul
pure of every low-lying fog... Christ was in all things his reward. Christ
was his desire (
e ). Christ was ever present before him, and
Christ's
beauty
was
always
before
his
eyes...
For
Joasaph's
soul was
firmly united to Christ, united with Him in an indissoluble union.

The image of the athlete-soldier from St. Paul,
fighting against the powers
of darkness,
to
be
dissolved
and
united
with Christ, is suddenly
waiting
transformed into the picture of the
martyr fighting against his own passions
and living a
'living death' in this world by a denial of the ordinary com
forts of life. The
the daemonic, the mystical,
the self-conquest
Neoplatonic,
motifs have dwindled in the
under
this
background
all-embracing one.
M. Viller,10 and after him, P. Resch,11 have both documented
very fully
the thesis that, in the
and virginity were
beginning at least, monasticism
embraced as a substitute for
In Clement of Alexandria,
for
martyrdom.
the true 'gnostic' emulates the
his
blameless
example,
life,
martyrs by
'
'12
pouring forth his faith like blood, his whole life long even unto death.
'
'For St. Athanasius,
was
a
substitute formartyr
says Viller,13 'monasticism
'
dom, as it was for Antony.
And the pseudo-Athanasian
Doctrina
ad mo
nachos is more explicit:14
The life of the monk, a daily combat for Christ, is a
martyrdom, a struggle
against the principalities and powers of this world.
Methodius
the life of virginity to martyrdom;15 as does Basil of

Ancyra.16 Origen completes the imagery by pointing out that persecutions
come not only from the
tyrants of this world but from sensual pleasures.17
For the monk, the
Constitutiones monasticae urge 'the con
pseudo-Basilian
of
the
firm
in obedience unto death. '18
stancy
martyrs, standing
Athanasius'
compares
'
47 (PG 26.912:
e e
a
a
e
a
ae )
} a
'
clear
a
whether
is
is giving testimony
exactly
Antony
martyr or simply
'
life by a good conscience.
The parallel
instructive and should
is, however,
omitted by D?lger,
op. cit.
Vita
Antonii
it is not
although
of the Christian
not have been

10
et perfection,'
RAM
6 (1925)
ibid.
et l'asc?se,'
RAM
'Le martyre
'Martyre
3-25;
La doctrine asc?tique
105-42; P. Resch,
des premiers ma?tres
?gyptiens du IVe si?cle (Paris
in der V?terzeit (Freiburg
1931) 248-57; M. Viller and K. Rahner, Aszese und Mystik
1931) 38ff.
11
Op. cit. (note 10).
12
Strom. 4.15.3
And cf. the other passages
cited by Viller,
(St?hlin 2.255).
op. cit.; cf.
also W. V?lker,
. 37) 349.
Fortschritt
und Vollendung
bei Philo
(above, VIII
13
'Le Martyre
et l'asc?se,'
6 (1925)
RAM
'La substitution
118; cf. Resch,
op. cit. 253:
de la ferveur
au martyre
est donc tr?s claire chez Antoine.'
Both Viller
and
asc?tique
can only point to the passage
Resch,
from the Vita
however,
earlier,
(47) quoted
not entirely clear that the context was
to imply martyrdom
intended
at all.
14
*
PG 28.1424 C; cf. also PG 136.1113
D.
7.3 (Bonwetsch
Symp.
16De
virg. 25 (PG 30.721 B).
17
7 in Gen. 3 (PG 12.200 C-D),
Horn.
in Rufinus'
translation.
18
Cons. mon.
19 (PG 31.1388 B).

and
74).
it is
FASTING
ASCETICAL
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
59
The writings of Basil are especially full of quotations

of this sort.
sermon In sanctos quadraginta martyres he draws the application:19
In his
e
a e e ) and attain without
Be martyrs in intention ( a
secution ... the reward of which the martyrs were judged worthy.
per
In his sixth Letter
future bishop of Constantinople)

(to the wife ofNectarius,
on
is
the
he
premature death of her son, and
attempting to console this lady
urging her to accept the will of God, he writes:20
you will have the opportunity of attaining
).
tyrs through your perseverance (
Now
And
, forMethodius
at least,21was
the reward of the mar
the very essence, the
of
all true virtue.

So too John Chrysostom, in a homily on Hebrews:
after sympathizing with
those of his audience who would like to have been martyrs like the saints
in the early Church, he says:22
Mortify your body; crucify it, and you will receive the martyr's crown.
What the sword did for the martyrs, let your own will do for you.
And
again:23
Endure
generously whatever
may
happen
to you.
Let
that be your
martyrdom.
lingers on in the later Greek monastic writers. Pseudo

seems to suggest something of the sort to help us
for example,
same motif
The
Macarius,
in time of temptation:24
If we should want to endure all temptations and every hardship with
ease, then death for Christ's sake should be desirable and constantly
our
before
eyes.
up the idea suggested by Origen, the abbot Nilus shows how

of the past are now substituted for by our passions:25
Taking
the
persecutions
Persecution
is present your whole life long. It is present in anger, in
a ), unreasonable
wicked desires, grief, the tyranny of sluggishness (a
fear, envy, in the ruler vainglory and gluttony and drunkenness; and all
the other passions which disturb the soul.
19
PG
31.508
375,
(A.D.
B.
to the
Cf. Ephraem,
Hymn.
of Neo-Caesarea),
clergy
4 de confess, et mart.
(Lamy
Basil writes:
'We have
we have ascetics
to us, ... men who
subject
of Christ, taking up their cross to follow their God'
20
6 (Deferrari
Epist.
1.41).
21
11, epilogue
Symp.
(Bonwetsch
140).
22Horn.
-1 m Heb.
3 (PG 63.93 A).
because
carry
about
(Deferrari
In Letter 207
3.671).
been accused
by you
in their bodies
3.184).
23 In Ps.
127, 3 (PG 55.369 A).
24De libertatementis 17
(PG 34.949 B).
25
Epist.
3.71
(PG
79.421
B-C).

the death
60
And
when
TRADITIO
it may
that Diadochus
be
he declares
no mortal
save
those
of Photice
reflects a
common
that26
persuasion
can attain perfection of spiritual love while he is in this flesh,

saints
who
have
arrived
at
martyrdom
and
the
perfect
testi
mony.
For
explain what seems to be an abnormal drive towards the

of the body and all sensual enjoyment, even apart from sin.
If indeed only martyrs ultimately were the perfect Christians, then those
this would
annihilation
who
had not had the external opportunity would have to make up for this
in some way. The imagery of the warfare of life, and God's athlete, had
been current since St. Paul.
In the martyr-ascetic
this struggle, now that
a
had
at
in
world
the
gained
Christianity
triumph
large, would be directed
against the power and tyranny of the passions,

and the devil.
Some
concerns
more
the persecution
of the flesh
support might be given to this hypothesis, particularly insofar as it

the practice of ascetical fasting, ifwe found such practices rather
emphasized towards the close of the period of persecutions than before.

here the evidence can be extremely ambiguous, due to the fact that
most of what we know about the period before the end of the persecutions
is derived from later writers or martyr-acts.
But
The
so-called Epistle
to Diognetus
(part i) which surely belongs to the
of
the
even
we
if
period
persecutions,
may not date it so exactly as H.-I.
Marrou does, clearly proclaims that27
Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest ofmen by their country,
language or clothing... They conform to local custom in the matter of
food
and
daily
life...
granting a certain degree of exaggeration, it is difficult to see how the

author could legitimately have omitted a reference to fasting and external
austerity if such had been a conspicuous practice among the Christians of
Even
c. 200. Again, a curious story is told in the

Epistle of the Churches of Lyons
and Vienne, a text included in Eusebius28 but undoubtedly going back, sub
stantially at least, to the period of the persecution under Marcus Aurelius
(177/8);we read:
One of the martyrs named Alcibiades had lived a very austere life up
till then, living merely on bread and water, and he tried to live the same
26 Centum
90 (ed. Weis-Liebersdorf);
cf. E. des Places,
Cent chapitres (supra, VIII
capita
151.
83) 28 ff. ; Oeuvres
spirituelles
27 Ad
Sources
I should be in
chr?tiennes
5.1, 4 (ed. Marrou,
Diogn.
62).
[Paris 1951]
clined to accept Marrou's
date
to Pantaenus;
he is surely
(c. 200), but not his attribution
not to divide
the work
into two separate
wrong
parts.
28
Euseb.
HE
5.3 (Schwartz
2.432.).
n.

FASTING
ASCETIGAL
IN THE
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
61
way in prison. But itwas revealed to Attalus after the first contest which
he had accomplished in the amphitheatre that Alcibiades had been doing
in not
wrong
God's
using
and
creatures,
had
been
others
setting
that might do them harm. At any rate Alcibiades

partook freely of all food, giving thanks to God.
an
example
gave in and thereafter
reason for his austere diet was, is not clear from the con
Alcibiades'
one
cannot be sure that Eusebius has not slightly tampered
in
fact
and
text;
it conform with his own ideas.
with the account in order to make
is no explicit question of fasting, al
there
In the Martyrium Polycarpi29
What
has his captors served an excellent meal, while he goes

though Polycarp
In the Passion
to pray before he is hauled to prison.
of Saints Perpetua and
the martyrs are given the usual cena ultima Ubera the evening
Felicitas
before their execution; they accept it, and turn it into an agape.30 Here again
there is no mention of fasting. Other references, however, are late. Euse
notes that the martyrs awaited

their
martyribus Palaestinae*1
'with prayer and fasting, and other exercises,' but the authenticity
account of Origen's austerities,
of this detail may well be doubted. Eusebius'
severe
fasts
and
his constant study and
watchings,32 may again be exag
bius
in De
death
gerated, but we cannot be sure; if it is substantially sound, then Origen is

the first of the great ascetics, of those recorded in Christian literature, who
lived in the time of the persecutions and was all but a martyr for Christ.
persecution, in 253/4;
Origen died shortly after his torture in the Decian
of
his
the
first edition
Church History before the
and Eusebius
published
in
the account of Origen's
303.33
of
Diocletian's
Surely
persecution
beginning
austerities, especially by one who was so devoted to him as Eusebius, might
In any case, it is noteworthy that Methodius'
well have been exaggerated.
and
ascetical
manual
of dogmatic
theology, the Symposium, which must
have been published in the quiet years before Diocletian's
persecution, pic
tures its good women as enjoying a delightful (although symbolic) banquet;
there is no mention of fasting or of physical austerities beyond the 'Olympic
contest of chastity' which
20Mart.
Poly
various
our
die
century.
30 Passio
31 13.9
they
1.320).
Other
are
quotations
relatively
25f.
daily
to the
according
although
(Funk
of martyrdom.34
FIP
1914, 95f.), where Apollonius
(ed. Rauschen,
'
for men:
decreed
For example,
the disciples
by God
to pleasure.
their passions
They mortify
by temperance
Apollonii
types of death
ranks
to live
7.2
carpi
cf. e.g. Acta
is, as he points out, a kind
reflect
ss. Perp.
divine
a certain
et Fel.
The
commandments.'
amount
17 (ed. Van
of later
Beek
Acts
are
reworking,
[Nijmegen
1936]
quoted
probably
40),
And
unimportant:
the
explains
of Christ
and
in
desire
and,
by Eusebius
to the third
belong
in the year
(ed. Schwartz
949).
82 HE
6.3.9-10
(Schwartz
538).
33
196f.
Cf. Altaner,
34
7.3 (Bonwetsch
Symp.
74).

203.
62
traditio
of
yet, by the time of Antony's death (356), or at least of the publication
the Vita Antonii attributed to Athanasius,
are
estab
and
fasting
austerity
lished concomitants to the ascetical life. Once again the home of the doctrine
would seem to have been Egypt, even Alexandria
; and the only figures
we
can ultimately focus our attention on are Origen and Antony, at least
insofar as we know them through Eusebius
Alexandria
and Athanasius.
and Egypt were here, as so often, the soil of future development.
Conclusion
The approach to the Fathers which we have used, together with a docu
mentation which is reasonably complete and non-selective, would seem to
suggest that no unified theory can hope to explain the patristic doctrine
on ascetical fasting. We have shown kn the course of our study how each of
Indeed,
many motifs arose, evolved and changed in the course of time.
the literature of the Church must inevitably reflect the life of the Church:
like a living organism constituted in a concrete milieu it grows by assimi
lating sustenance from its environment while remaining substantially the

same. And although there are certain obvious high points in the develop
ment of the patristic tradition on fasting, for the most part the evolution
is as imperceptible as the changes of life itself.
'
'
(or spiri
Throughout there is a striking polarity between the pneumatic
'
'
as
tual) and the somatic
(or bodily) fast, and this is further developed,
we have seen, by the use of the allegorical method of exegesis. Again, there
the rigorism of the Vita Antonii and the lives of

on the one hand, and the prudent spirit of the apostolate
as reflected in Basil, Chrysostom and Gregory of Nyssa.
There is, finally,
is the conflict between
the Desert
Fathers
a third type of tension on an even deeper level: between the purely ascetical
and the latermonastic
approach to fasting (as we find it in Gregory Nazianzen
element so prominent in Chrysostom, Origen, and

sin
the concept of the 'mourning-fast' (for Adam's
Fa
so
as for the absence of the Bridegroom),
frequent in the Greek
writers) and the mystical

But
Cyril of Alexandria.
as well
and in the Desert

thers, the daemonic motif (in the Pseudo-Clementines
as a Parallel
in
Bickel's
and
motif
the
sense,
least,
(at
Fathers),
philosophic
are
from our
all
cannot
which
be
elements
excluded
important
erscheinung)
of the complete picture.

evaluation
From an historical point of view, Origen plays an important role in the
tradition, both by his writing and his personal austerity; and it is a curious
fact that our references begin to be most extensive after the Dec?an per
in fact, after the Symposium of Methodius, which was written
secution ?

IN THE
FASTING
ASGETICAL
GREEK
PATRISTIC
WRITERS
63
'little peace' of the Church.35 It is at this point that the Dama

were a substitute for martyrdom,
scene-theory, that fasting and asceticism
But ultimately, as we have seen, this hypo
attractive.
to
become
begins
and Joasaph, does little more
thesis, so fundamental to the story of Barlaam
of Basil, Methodius, pseudo
than expand certain ideas of the Alexandrians,
and others, and we cannot be certain that it is the complete
Athanasius
during the
rise of fasting and austerity in the latter

for the phenomenal
explanation
and
the
early part of the fourth.
part of the third century
But however tempting it may be to establish a single static explanation
for all the elements, the attempt would appear foredoomed to failure. For,
all is said, austerity of all kinds (and especially fasting) would appear
to be nothing more than the vital reaction of the Christian, in the concrete
of his milieu, to the call
circumstances and psychological
presuppositions
'
'
of Jesus in the Gospels. And the words, Take up your cross and follow me
have been transposed from the messianic message of Christ to the precarious
when
between the Resurrection

and
position of the Christian community placed
more
of
became
the
Once
remote,
the Parousia.
martyrdom
opportunity
a new pattern began to take its place in the martyrdom of the flesh, a new
and response to Jesus.
testimony to the inward metanoia
like Origen, Antony
The influence and prestige of individuals
(at least
would
and
was
as he
Chrysostom
naturally accel
pictured by Athanasius),
a
it
and
lend
erate the ascetical development
peculiar stamp and direction.
And
the behavior patterns crystallized along with their literary

the tendency within the Christian community was towards un
conformity. From the viewpoint of modern thought, perhaps,
of fasting and austerity may reflect a primitive conception of
thus as
expression,
questioning
this practice
of the role of the body and its impulses in

matter, and a misunderstanding
the redemption of man while we cooperate in the preparation of the world
But such imperfections are perhaps inevitable in the pro
for the Parousia.
35Within
and
a criterion
for determining
authorship
in
interest
reveal
for
which
in the Gospels,
fasting
Certain phrases
example,
authenticity.
in Luke
4.2 that
or later.
Such are: the phrase
may well have arisen at the time of Origen
of M SS); the entire verse Matthew
Christ drank nothing
(reported largely by the Ferrar group
and
save
out
fasting), omitted by the Vatican
by prayer
17.21 (that such spirits are not cast
Mark
the
of
9.29, omitted
by
'and
the
words
passage,
and others;
MS
parallel
fasting'
and others.
the Sinaiticus
the Vaticanus,
ser
to sort out the various
of ascetical
the treatment
fasting can help much
Similarly,
those
who
of
the
to
confirm
and
of
the
in
suspicions
mons De
ieiunio
Chrysostom,
corpus
So
the Great.
on Isa?as
to Basil
or the Commentary
the De
not assign
would
virginitate
deal with daemonic
which
fasting can
too, at least those strata of the Pseudo-Clementines
hardly
due
limits,
be assigned
this
a date
fact may
earlier
than
serve
the
as
latter half
of the third
century.

64
TRADITIO
cess of growth, and they result from our fragmentary knowledge, while we
live in the Image and not in the Reality.
faltering steps
They are man's
towards the truth that is Christ.
Bellarmine
College,
iV.Y.
Pittsburgh,
Addenda
pp.
paratio
6 n. 13 ; 16 n. 39
vitarum,
: For
see now
the passages
the edition
(Wiesbaden 1953) 25, 50-51.
by H.
cited
from Gregory
M. Werhahn,
of Nazianzus'
Gregorius
dialogue,
Com
Nazianzenus,
of the ship, see especially Hugo Rahner,

'Antenna
p. 10 n. 36 : On the symbolism
Crucis,
'
'
am Mastbaum,
I : Odysseus
:
65 (1941)
123-52 ;
Zeitschrift
f?r katholische
Theologie
: Das
Das Meer
ibid. 66 (1942) 89-118
der Welt,'
Schiff aus Holz,'
ibid. 196-227 and
; 'III
67
(1943) 2ff. ; also his Griechische Mythen

T. Meyer,
27 n. 19 : add Robert
St
p.
Westminster,
Md.
in christlicher
Athanasius,
Deutung
The Life
(Zurich 1945)
of St. Antony
1950).

414
(ACW
ff.
10 ;

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THE PROBLEM OF ASCETICAL FASTING IN THE GREEK PATRISTIC WRITERS

Author(s): HERBERT MUSURILLO

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THE PROBLEM OF ASCETICAL FASTING

Studies in comparative religion have shown the important role played by

these primitive experiences and the religious-ascetical

fasting, either from the canonical

point of view (as this has been sufficiently

(2nd ed. Cambridge

that the belly was

This content downloaded from 147.91.246.195 on Tue, 14 May 2013 13:09:48 PM

treated by Parra Herrera5) or in its connection with prophecy and revelation

to the time of John Damascene.

point of view.7 Going far beyond the preliminary work of

function; an emotional instability; a tendency to intro

They were careful to note a certain lack of realism which was

It is precisely within the framework of such modern psychological studies

to express their views in their own way.

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view11 that the two chief causes

asceticism were a false,

of matter, and an unnatural

ambitious attempt with sterility and

subtle view, and one that has had a profound influence on

in the fourth century under the influence of Ambrose, Augustine and

or ethical tendency, reflected particularly

I hope to show, defeats any attempt in the direction of

and in particular by Arbesmann.17

force of first rank.'

(2nd ed. Hamburg

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is more clearly defined in Baldwin's

It is clear, of course, that the terms 'moral life,'

philosophic streams of thought, particularly in their ethical and reli

levelling that is sometimes disregarded

by the historians of ascet

as it seems to bein the work of Karl Pr?mm,

schritt und Vollendung

(TU 57 ; Leipzig 1952) 618ff.

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icism. And yet without an appreciation of this complex factor, which ac

referred when he wrote:26

have studied [Christianity's] requirements and found them not wholly

... Christianity was

It was a commonplace, at least from the time of Aristotle's Rhetoric,1 tha

of these exempla apparently existed, drawn up in lists

fasting we frequently find 'chains' of exempla mala

and bona in the Fathers

and Eliseus,5 of fasting in Esther6 and Moses.7 In Basil's homilies On

Judith and David.9

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citation goes to excess in such works as the homilies on fasting of Pseudo

of the desert in order to encourage their hearers to practice the

an early instance of this in Origen

have, for example,

Though there is the opportunity to marry and not to be troubled by

fasts, prayers, tears, calloused knees, beating of the breast, groans,

Monasteries are indeed houses ofmourning. There we will find sackcloth

In such a place it is not difficult to arise early in the morning,16

obtrect. 5-6 (PG

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of Those Who Are Present, delivered most probably

of Chrysostom, the laudes monachorum, from a psychological