Introduction
If anything, Tertullian is too good a source on fasting, as enthusiastic theorist of an ascetic tendency within the Carthaginian Church. In the treatise devoted specifically to this subject he over-argues and over-explains fasting, describing not so much a world of asceticism as one of its poles. The passing comments are often as revealing, or more so, than the detailed invective. It is possible nonetheless to use both the polemical and the incidental references in his writings as sources for partial reconstruction of the ascetic dietary practices of the Christian community in Carthage, bearing in mind that they, like the Church itself, involved considerable diversity.
Taken as a whole, these writings yield information on a variety of issues regarding fasting practice: communal fasts in time of drought, pre-baptismal and penitential fasting, the relationship between fasting and eucharist, and specific customs or bodily practices associated with undertaking individual fasts (kissing, kneeling). Although the development of Tertullian’s Montanist tendencies led to increased focus on the contrasts between ascetic practices common to the rest of the Church community (the "psychics") and those associated with the New Prophecy, there is no radical disjuncture between the picture given in earlier and later treatises, other than the uniquely fulsome rhetoric of On Fasting. The Ad Scapulam (4.6), among Tertullian’s latest works, gives information similar to that of the Apologeticum about fasting for rain, for instance, and the questions of food avoidance so prominent in On Fasting already come up in earlier works (see further below).
The treatise On Fasting (De Ieiunio contra psychicos) is of course the fullest source and the most difficult. Most of the issues raised in this work fall into two groups: first, the conduct of fasts called stationes, their proper days, general or individual observance, and their duration; and second, temporary avoidances related to food and drink, especially "xeropaghies" - periods where only dry food was eaten - and the avoidance of meat and wine. Tertullian also refers more obliquely to a few other matters in this treatise, notably episcopal mandates for communal fasts (13), and the association of fasting with almsgiving. At one point (11.1) Tertullian himself provides a neat schema for considering the different issues, referring three kinds of practices, those involving food refused (recusati pabuli), of food delayed (retardati pabuli), and of food altogether removed (recisi pabuli) (cf. 1.2: "…per nullas interdum uel seras uel aridas escas…"). This will provide a structure for the remainder of this discussion.
Officia recusati pabuli – (I) Individuals and fasting
Fasting was undertaken by individual Carthaginian Christians in a variety of settings. First, there is no surprise involved in seeing fasting prior to baptism (De Baptismo 20; cf Didache 7.4). In a curious passage in the treatise On Baptism (20), Tertullian does seem at first glance to be defending pre-baptismal fasting against someone who thinks it makes more sense to fast after the rite, given the sequence of events in the Gospels (where Jesus goes to the wilderness after his baptism by John; Matt 3.13-4.11). There is, however no further evidence to make us think this interlocutor represents more than the difficulty suggested to Tertullian by the text itself.
Fasts were also required as part of the process of penance, which to some extent could be understood as a recapitulation of baptism, although the descriptions of ascetic discipline in this regard are more dramatic (De Poenitentia 9). Here Tertullian speaks both of fasting per se, and of a diet probably comparable to that undertaken during a "xerophagy," i.e., bread and water.
The one other instance of fasting as an individual discipline is in relation to dreams and ecstatic experiences. Despite the prominence of prophecy in Montanist Christianity, Tertullian is for the most part at best guarded about the connection, and might even be termed uninterested. In the treatise On the Soul he starts with such circumspection ("Jejuniis autem, nescio an ego solus plurimum ita somniem, ut me somniasse non sentiam.") and treats the use of fasting as a means to induce dreams with a certain suspicion, linking it most clearly to the pagan practice of incubation (De Anim. 48). He contrasts with this the moderate (and meat-free) eating of the three companions of Daniel, who are given the gift of interpreting dreams along with other forms of wisdom. Fasting and sobriety have a moral rather than an instrumental connection with ecstatic experience ("Ita non ad ecstasin submovendam sobrietas proficiet, sed ad ipsam ecstasin commendandam, ut in Deo fiat.")
Tertullian does link Daniel's own interpretation of the dreams with fasting (De Ieiun. 7; or with xerophagy - cf. 9), but specifically as a gift of wisdom given because of effective prayer, rather than as a form of ecstasy. Tertullian does refer later to Daniel's own dreams (De Ieiun. 10), but only to proof-text the length of stations using a reference to the time of day. While the fasts of Anna and Cornelius are linked to prophecy (De Ieiun. 8), in both cases this seems to be a gift given in response to effective prayer, and fasting is relevant to the initial exercise of the prayer rather than to the ongoing or repeating practice of prophetic utterance. At one other point in On Fasting (12.1) he does seem to imply an instrumental ascetic connection, but with xerophagy rather than with fasting as such, and the gift is that of "revelations," which given the rest of his discourse might well be understood as interpretive rather than ecstatic wisdom. Passing reference elsewhere to seeking visions as a positive feature of Christian life (De Spectaculis 29) makes only the vaguest of links with ascetic practice.
The lack of more substantial discussion of this question suggests not only that Tertullian himself was at least circumspect about the "instrumental" aspect of ecstatic practice but, more to the point here, that there was no great interest or controversy on the matter in the Carthaginian Church – this despite the obvious prominence of dreams and visions as evidenced in the contemporary Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, which does not deal with fasting as such. While the importance of ecstatic experience in the Montanizing part of the Church may continue to be assumed, and the emphasis on fasting and xerophagy is clear, there was not necessarily an immediate link between the two.
Officia recusati pabuli – (II) Community and Fasting
The only regular fast that seems to have been universally observed by Christians after their own baptism was that connected with the Pascha, at this time and place not yet drawn out into a more complex historicization of the events of the Passion, but a single event or feast, preceded by a fast (De Ieiun. 13). Tertullian’s preference for the communal or universal is reflected even in the times when one should not fast (De Corona 3), namely during the subsequent Paschal season, or on a Sunday.
Communal fasts might also be held on occasion at the calling of the bishop. The most prominent cases are those in times of drought (De Ieiun. 7 etc.). At such times members of the local community undertook rituals appropriate to their own custom and tradition, and fasting was the obvious recourse for the Christians. While there were similar practices in the Jewish community, and communal fasts for rain are reported in the Mishnah (tractate Ta'anit, passim) the similarity need not be a sign of recent emergence of African Christianity from Judaism. Fasting seems to have been regarded by both groups, Jews and Christians, as an effective adjunct to prayer in a variety of circumstances, and thus an acceptable alternative to the sacrifices being undertaken by their pagan neighbors. For that matter, Tertullian regards some pagan practices as quite similar; there are colonies, he says, where an annual pagan rite involves not only sackcloth and ashes but the suspension of activity in baths and taverns, and no cooking fires or even drinking water (De Ieiun. 16.5). The resemblance is such that Tertullian invokes the apologetic trope of demonic imitation to make sense of the custom (16.7).
Episcopally-enjoined fasts may have taken place on other occasions of perceived need, and certainly for the purpose of collecting alms (industria stipium conferendarum - 13.3). This reason for fasting, and Tertullian's implied criticism of it, may imply a conflict somewhat similar to that depicted in the Shepherd of Hermas (Herm. Sim. 5), but from a different perspective. There the narrator is dissuaded from a statio geared only to prayer or hope of visionary experience, in favor of a charitable exercise in which the cost of food and drink not consumed is made available for the poor. If we can infer not merely a personal disagreement but one within the community, Tertullian apparently represents a rigorist resistance to a merely utilitarian or outward fast that implies the devaluing of the spiritual benefit, or indeed necessity, of the practice.
Officia retardati pabuli - Stational fasts
The proper conduct of stational fasts is in fact one of two key issues in On Fasting and seems to have been more than a pet peeve of Tertullian’s. The fast known as a statio was clearly a well-established custom in the Carthaginian Christian community as a whole; the controversies around "stations" in the treatise On Fasting concern specifics rather than the practice as such. The most fundamental conflict is implicit rather than explicit; is the statio a communal event to whose observance all are enjoined, or an individual spiritual discipline undertaken according to need or opportunity?
The common view assigned the keeping of stational fasts to the fourth and sixth days of the week – Wednesday and Friday (De Ieiun. 2.3; cf. Didache 8.1). For most, the observance even of these fasts was not uniform or mandated, but involved considerable personal discretion, depending on particular need, or perhaps the ability to carry them out. The strong sense in Tertullian’s writings of fasting as an act intensifying the efficacy of prayer (eg. De Poen. 9) suggests that stational fasts provided a system of personal intercession vaguely comparable to votive practices in paganism.
For most the statio was ended at the ninth hour, with prayer (De Ieiun. 2.3). Montanist practice contested both the individual or discretionary character of the fast, and its duration; the "pneumatic" members of the Christian community regarded the Wednesday and Friday fasts as being for all – or at least for all of them – and as at least capable of being protracted into the evening. Interestingly, even as Tertullian defends the extension of the statio he cannot resist correcting his opponents as to real reason for finishing it at the time they do; while they apparently appeal to the example of Peter going to the Temple to pray at the ninth hour (Acts 3.1), Tertullian prefers the association with the chronology of Jesus’ death (Mark 15.33).
The actual practice of the statio is not fully described. Not eating may be assumed; this included abstaining from the eucharist, and most preferred not to attend at all. Tertullian criticizes this custom (De Orat. 19), and also that of abstaining from the Kiss at the eucharist when fasting (De Orat. 18), thus doubly indicating that there were exceptions to this avoidance. His advice on the first issue was to attend, and reserve the eucharist for later consumption. The more common custom of not attending at all (as well as that of refusing the Kiss) can probably be understood in terms of the generally liminal state ascribed to those fasting, who were somewhat removed from normal social interaction and might avoid other "normalizing" practices such as bathing. This may well mean that the conduct of the fast was understood to be largely individual and private – in keeping with the position of the "psychic" Christians that it was a discretionary and personal matter, rather than a communal one. Similarly, not practicing the Kiss was a marker of the individual faster in a non-fasting group – a situation to which Tertullian objects in terms of the Sermon on the Mount’s instruction to perform pious acts in secret.
The presence of these issues in the treatise On Prayer suggests that differences of opinion and practice were not specifically driven by uniquely or distinctively Montanist issues, but reveal a tension in the community about the proper use of fasting practice.
Officia recisi pabuli
Montanist ascetic patterns included refusal of particular foods, at least for certain periods. Much of the treatise On Fasting has Tertullian defending refusal of meat and wine against attacks from the "psychics," who apparently had no such bans (except during general fasts, and granted individual discretion once again). Although he gives general rationales against consumption of these substances, Tertullian also contrasts Montanist Christian practice with absolute exclusions of meat and wine of Marcion and Tatian, among others (McGowan: 164-70). Yet the only example of more moderate Montanist practice he offers is that of the temporary nature of the formal xerophagy, which might well have included avoidance of meat and wine, but seems unlikely to have been the only case where it took place. Tertullian never returns to address the accusation that the Montanist Christians will not eat or drink anything at all with vinositas (1.4). The real thrust of his argument seems in fact to be that there is a difference between avoiding foods in order to express rejection of the Creator, and doing so to render honor to the same (15.4).
A similar sentiment had actually been expressed in the earlier work On the Apparel of Women II (see Barnes: 53, 55), where complete abstinence from meat and wine are praised, if undertaken for the right reason. In fact, in On Fasting itself Tertullian indicates that a temporary bread and water diet was practiced even by some among the "psychics" also (13.1). These are further reminders that the practices characteristic of the Montanizing group in the Carthaginian Church were not necessarily unique to them or introduced from "outside," as it were. Rather, the impetus given by the New Prophecy may have catalysed ascetic tendencies and harnessed them in the service of the movement. What is controversial is not the practices themselves but their application, whether individual and voluntary, or communal and general.
Conclusions – The Meanings of Fasting
Recent studies indicate that it is still tempting to read the history of ascetic practice, and of fasting in particular, in terms either of some other grand narrative (such as a fall from healthy integration into self-hatred and self-starvation) or of some other (not necessarily unrelated) issue, such as sexuality. Granted the value of making historical and cross-cultural connections, the assumption here has been that fasting "bears no inherent and self-evident meaning except that which is assigned it in a system" (Valantasis: 548), and that an effort to consider fasting practice specifically within the Carthaginian milieu is fundamental.
Fasting in Tertullian’s Carthaginian Christian community appears in a variety of settings and for a variety of purposes: in association with unique experiences of status transformation and with repeated experiences of personal piety; as regular ritual practice and as occasional response to critical need; with formation of individuals, and with communal self-definition. If there is an explicit theory of fasting or reason given for its practice it seems to be that of intensifying prayer, although this is more readily seen in some cases than others.
Using more "etic" terms, it might be fair to say that fasting (or xerophagy), like involuntary privation (cf. Passio Perpetuae), makes the practitioner "liminal" or "other," somehow distinguished from the regular world and capable of other actions not generally expected or recognized. The lack of a clearer instrumental link with ecstatic phenomena may be surprising, and for that matter the connections Tertullian makes between dietary and sexual asceticism are indirect - parallel constructions, rather than a question of one desire fueling the other (De Ieiun. 1; see Grimm:138). It seems rather than all these and other forms of practice are understood to be associated, from the Montanist point of view at least, in a rigorist collection of behaviors that mark and make holiness.
The contrast between the "New Prophecy" and the "psychic" Christians in their fasting seems to be less a matter of the propriety or usefulness of given practices than of the way these are related to the lives of individuals and communities. While it has been suggested that ascetic performance is "designed to inaugurate an alternative culture, to enable different social relations, and to create a new identity" (Valantasis: 548), the various elements of that definition are differently stressed and enacted in the different tendencies of the Carthaginian Church. The "psychic" Christians use fasting largely (but not wholly) as a marker of individuals and their identity; the statio is voluntary and dietary prohibitions likewise, both probably linked to specific intentions or goals of the practitioner. The Montanists see fasting as a collective marker that defines the Church against the world; the statio is observed collectively and, like xerophagies, is expected of all.
The tension is to be understood not simply as one of ascetic practice per se, but as a sign of differing understandings of the place of the Christian community in the wider society. The more socially-accommodating psychics can use ascetic practice as a means of internal self-differentiation, while the sectarian Montanists are more concerned about boundary-maintenance. Yet in the latter case what was perhaps begun or intended as a marker of the Christians often functioned to distinguish the New Prophecy from the rest of the Church.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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