Fast
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
total or partial abstinence from or deprivation of food; an omission to take food. Also a time set apart to express national grief for some calamity, or to deprecate an impending evil. Ethnic Fasts. The old Egyptians, the Assyrians (Jonah iii: 5), the Greeks, Romans, and other ancient nations had most of them stated or occasional fasts, as have the modern Mohammedans, Hindus, etc. Jewish Fasts. - The Day of Atonement was the only fasting day enjoined by the law of Moses, but the Mishna speaks of four others, respectively commemorating the storming of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the burning of the Temple by Titus, the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and the receiving by Ezekiel and the other captives of the news of the destruction of Jerusalem. There were also fasts proclaimed by royal or other authority on special occasions (I Kings xxi: 9-12; II Chron. xx: 3; Ezra viii: 2). For the spiritual and unspiritual way of keeping a fast, see Isaiah lviii: 3. Christian Fasts. -No stated fasts are enjoined in the New Testament; they arose subsequently, the Lent fast taking the lead (see LENT). In the 3d century the Latins fasted on the seventh day. In A. D. 813 the Council of Mentz in its 34th canon ordered a fast the first week in March, the second week in June, the third week in September, and the last full week preceding Christmas eve. In the Episcopalian and Roman Catholic Churches the principal fasts of the year are Lent, the Ember days, All-Saints, the Immaculate Conception, Rogation days, and the eves or vigils before certain festivals; as before Christmas day. Some of these fasts are common to both Churches. Modern Fasts. - Several times in the course of political events have different Christian governments proclaimed days of fasting and prayer. As a notable antitype of this custom may be mentioned the American National Thanksgiving, in which feasting and not fasting is the salient feature. See also FASTING. FASTI. Numa Pompilius (715 B. c. to 673 b. c.), instituted the custom of marking monthly records of the feasts, games, etc., observed at Rome, on tables of stone. These, preserved by the priests, became the calendar by which the course of public business and of justice was regulated. C. Flavius copied these fasti, 306 B. C., and exhibited them in the Forum; and they subsequently became a kind of abridged annals, recording the names of public magistrates and the most important political events.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The list Collier's gave in 1921 of Roman Catholic fasts -- Lent, the Ember days, All Saints, the Immaculate Conception, Rogation days and the vigils before certain festivals -- has largely dissolved. Paul VI's 1966 constitution Paenitemini cut the binding fast to two days a year, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, with abstinence from meat on the Fridays of Lent; the Ember and Rogation days vanished from the general calendar in the 1969 reform. The Jewish Day of Atonement and the Muslim month of Ramadan, which Collier's mentions in passing, are kept much as described. What Collier's could not foresee is fasting's move out of religion altogether: the political hunger strike, and since the 2000s a large medical literature on intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating.
Written for this edition, 2026.