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Question 92 · How Christians lived

Fasting: when, how long, and why?

What the sources show

Didache c. 100 · Tertullian c. 213Weekly fasts

The Didache sets Wednesday and Friday as fast days, and Tertullian calls them "stations", kept until mid-afternoon. 14

Irenaeus of Lyons c. 190Before Easter

Before Easter, churches fasted one day, two, or forty hours; Irenaeus says the difference only confirmed their agreement in faith. Lent's forty days came later. 3

Shepherd of Hermas c. 140Why fast

Fasting was tied to humility, purity of heart, and almsgiving: Hermas says give the day's food money to a widow or orphan. 2

The answers given:
ApostolicBefore NicaeaNicaea and afterMiddle AgesReformation to today

Scroll through the centuries, or tap a dot. J K move between witnesses.

Apostolic Fathers

30–150
100c. AD
Weekly fasts

Didache c. 100 ADDidache 8.1

Do not let your fasts be with the hypocrites: they fast on the second and fifth day of the week, but you fast on the fourth day and the day of Preparation.

Wednesday and Friday, still the fast days in Orthodox practice.

Read in context →
140c. AD
Why fast

Shepherd of Hermas fl. c. 140 ADShepherd of Hermas Similitude 5.3.7

On the day you fast you shall taste nothing but bread and water; and reckoning the cost of the food you would have eaten that day, you shall give it to a widow, an orphan or someone in need.

The purpose of fasting: humility, purity of heart, and gifts to the poor.

Full English of this work is being translated

Before Nicaea

150–325
190c. AD
Before Easter

Irenaeus of Lyons c. 130–c. 202 ADLetter to Victor of Rome, in Eusebius, Church History 5.24 5.24.12–13

The dispute is not only about the day, but also about the form of the fast itself. Some think they should fast one day, others two, others more; some measure their day as forty hours, day and night. Such variety among those who keep it did not arise in our time but long before us ... and all these nonetheless lived in peace, and we live in peace with one another; and the disagreement about the fast confirms the agreement in faith.

The fast before Easter was short and varied in the second century. The forty days of Lent appear in the fourth.

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213c. AD
Weekly fasts

Tertullian c. 155–c. 220 ADOn Fasting 1.4

They charge us with keeping fasts of our own, with prolonging the station fasts until evening, and with observing dry diets, drying our food of all meat, all juice and all moister fruit, and neither eating nor drinking anything with wine.

"Stations" were the Wednesday and Friday fasts, normally kept until the ninth hour (3 pm). The Montanists made them stricter.

Full English of this work is being translated

Witnesses not in the library yet

These writers also matter for this question. Their texts will join the timeline above once they are translated.

  • 334
    Athanasius of Alexandria, Festal Letters 6 and 19

    The forty days of Lent in Egypt.

  • 325
    Council of Nicaea, Canon 5

    Synods to be held "before Lent" (tessarakoste): the first mention of the forty days.

How this page was made

Every early quote was read in its Greek or Latin and translated for this page by Claude (Opus 5.5) on 13 October 2026. Each line names the printed edition it was read from. A quote marked indirect does not state the answer outright; read its note. A writer's silence is never counted as an answer.