THE LADY FAST
It was pointed out as one of the distinctions between vowesses and
members of the third orders of the Dominican and Franciscan brotherhoods
that the latter were pledged to the observance of fasts from which the
former were exempt. Tyndale complains of the "open idolatry" of
abstinences undertaken in honour of St. Patrick, St. Brandan, and other
holy men of old; and he lays special stress on "Our Lady Fast," which,
he explains, was kept "either seven years the same day that her day
falleth in March, and then begin, or one year with bread and water."
Whatever fasts a vowess might neglect as non-obligatory, it seems
probable that she would not willingly forgo any opportunity of showing
reverence to the Blessed Virgin, who, in the belief of St. Augustine,
had taken vows of chastity before the salutation of the Angel.
It is not a little curious that the Lady Fast, in the forms mentioned by
Tyndale, was so far from being enjoined by the Church as to be actually
opposed to the decree of the Roman Council of 1078, which indicated
Saturday as the day of the week appropriated to the honour of the
Blessed Virgin. This usage was as well understood in the British Isles
as elsewhere. Thus, in "Piers Plowman":
Lechery said "Alas!" and on Our Lady he cried
To make mercy for his misdeeds between God and his soul,
With that he should the Saturday seven year thereafter
Drink but with the duck, and dine but once.
Bower, the continuator of Fordun's "Scotichronicon," makes it a reproach
to lax prelates that they suffer the common people to vary after their
own pleasure the days kept as fast days in honour of Mary. In doing so
he recalls that on Saturday, the first Easter Eve, she abode unshakenly
in the faith, when the apostles doubted. Good reason, therefore, why
Saturday should be dedicated to her as a fast. "But now," he continues,
"you will see both men and women on a Saturday morning make good
dinners, who, on a Tuesday or a Thursday, would not touch a crust of
bread, lest they should break the Lady Fast kept after their own fancy."
Tyndale seems to have erred in intimating that the Lady Fast, if of an
annual character, was regulated of necessity by the feast of the
Annunciation, or, in the happier, more affectionate phrase of our
forefathers, "the Gretynge of Our Ladye." The Blessed Virgin had no
fewer than six festivals--those of the Conception, Nativity,
Annunciation, Visitation, Purification, and Assumption--any one of which
might be made the starting-point of the fast either by the choice of the
votary or by the cast of the die. A third method is instanced in the
"Popish Kingdom" of Barnabe Googe (1570), actually an English metrical
version of a truculent German satire by one Thomas Kirchmeyer, who was
scholar enough to Latinize, or Græcize, his homely patronymic into the
more imposing correlative "Naogeorgus." The passage is as follows:
Besides they keep Our Lady's fast at sundry solemn times,
Instructed by a turning wheel, or as the lot assigns.
For every sexton has a wheel that hangeth for the view,
Mark'd round about with certain days, unto the Virgin due,
Which holy through the year are kept, from whence hangs down a thread
Of length sufficient to be touched and to be handled.
Now when that any servant of Our Lady cometh here
And seeks to have some certain day by lot for to appear,
The sexton turns the wheel about, and bids the stander-by
To hold the thread whereby he doth the time and season try,
Wherein he ought to keep his fast and every other thing
That decent is and longing to Our Lady's worshipping.
Although, as has been said, the "Popish Kingdom" had a German original,
it is an extraordinary fact that no Continental example of the Lady Fast
wheel is known to exist. Two English wheels have been preserved--both of
them in East Anglian churches: viz., those of Long Stratton, Norfolk,
and Yaxley, Suffolk. Of the two the former is the more perfect. That at
Yaxley consists of a pair of wheels, cut out of sheet iron, which
measure a little over two feet in diameter, and are similar and
concentric, but separate. The Long Stratton wheels, on the other hand,
have a pin passing through the centre which holds them together, and
around which they revolve, each of them independently. To the same pin
is attached the forked end of a long pendent handle, which was held by
the sexton. Each wheel is pierced with three holes through which strings
were passed, the total number coinciding with that of the six feasts
sacred to Mary, or possibly to the six days of the week excluding
Sunday, which did not rank as a fast day.
The instrument was worked in the following manner. Should a devout
person desire to keep a Lady Fast, he or she repaired to the church to
determine by the aid of the wheel which of the days or anniversaries
should be observed. Thereupon the sexton took the wheel, which he either
hung up or held at arm's length by means of a ring at the termination of
the handle. He then set the wheel in motion, and the votary, standing
by, caught at the strings as they spun round. Whichever string was
caught decided the question on what day the fast was to be begun,
whether on the feast of the Annunciation or that of the Assumption, or
any other of the six feasts, or days of the week, of which the several
strings were emblematical. The feast of the Assumption was known as Lady
Day in Harvest, being observed on the fifteenth of August.
The compromise, which we style the Reformation, at first inclined to the
retention of the Saturday fast; and, indeed, the legislature interfered
to enforce its more regular observance. In 1548 a remarkable measure
was enacted with this object, not so much, it is to be feared, out of
any genuine concern for religion as for the benefit of the fishing
community, whose interests had been injuriously affected by recent
ecclesiastical changes.
"Albeit," it recites, "the King's subjects now having a more perfect and
clear light of the Gospel and true word of God, through the infinite
cleansing and mercy of Almighty God, by the hand of the King's Majesty
and his most noble father of famous memory, promulgate, shewed, declared
and opened, and thereby perceiving that one day or one kind of meat of
itself is not more holy, more pure, or more clean than another, for that
all days and all meats be of their nature of one equal purity,
cleanness, and holiness, and that all men should by them live to the
glory of God, and at all times and for all meats give thanks unto Him,
of which meats none can defile Christian men or make them unclean at any
time, to whom all meats be lawful and pure, so that they be not used in
disobedience or vice; yet forasmuch as divers of the King's subjects
turning their knowledge therein to satisfy their sensuality, when they
should thereby increase in virtue, have in late time more than in times
past, broken and contemned such abstinence which hath been used in the
Realm upon the Fridays _and Saturdays_, the Embering days, and other
days commonly called Vigils, and in the time commonly called Lent and
other accustomed times: the King's Majesty, considering that due and
godly abstinence is a means to virtue, and to subdue men's bodies to
their soul and spirit, and considering also especially that Fishers, and
men using the trade of living by fishing in the sea, may thereby the
rather be set on work, and that by eating of fish much flesh shall be
saved and increased, and also for divers other considerations and
commodities of this realm, doth ordain 'that all statutes and
constitutions regarding fasting be repealed, but that all persons
neglecting to observe the ordinary fast days--Fridays, _Saturdays_,
Ember days, and Lent--be subject to a fine of ten shillings and ten
days' imprisonment for the first offence.'"
This measure, so inconsistent with the spirit of the age and so
contradictory in its terms, was re-enacted at various dates during the
reigns of Elizabeth and James I. It is perhaps the last "word" as
regards the Lady Fast, but the legislature by no means suspended its
vigilance in enforcing abstinence at the proper season. Discussion of
post-Reformation fasting, however, or fasting in general, forms no part
of our present undertaking.
ECCLESIASTICAL