Meat

[aquinas138]

It is indeed a traditional latin rite custom to eat meat and dairy freely as desired for the entire Octave of the Holy Pasche. Go to any Orthodox or Eastern Catholic Church and find out for yourself if you don't believe me. This is a universal custom for all of the Catholic Church regardless of rite.

Is it for the Roman rite, though? I've never actually seen a source permitting meat on Easter Friday prior to the NO. Remember that prior to the mid-20th century reforms, only Easter Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were duplex I. classis; the rest of Easter week was semiduplex, except for Low Sunday, which was duplex major.

[Christopher McAvoy]

"The Great Household in Late Medieval England by C.M. Woolgar" which documents exactly what was eaten and what was not eaten on specific days. The cooks and heads of house made grocery lists and they survived in books to this very day...all one has to do is look at what was bought at market everyday of the week. That book has a chapter anlyzing them quite specifically. The lists are documented for 3 centuries before the reformation. Someone else can look up this but I am confident beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am abosolutely one hundred percent correct. Although the Octave of Nativity did have some fasting it is partly because it has other days mixed into it. The Holy Pasche is the feast of all feasts, all of that week is for Our Lord's triumph over death, to emphasize fasting at that time would be bizarre. If you still sing Haec Dies (This is the day the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it) during the office, which is done on that Friday than it has to be part of Easter continuing. The next Friday afterward in Paschatide has a regular metrical hymn "Ad cenam agni providi" so life returns to the normal routine, but the first friday after "Easter Sunday" is the only consistent exception to that rule for the liturgical entire year.

from a post I made 3 years ago:

The Great Household in Late Medieval England by C.M. Woolgar:


--- Quote ---    In the weekly cycle, one of the most prominent features was the impact of religious observance on diet. By c. 1200, it was common in the great household for there to be three days each week when flesh was not normally eaten. This pattern of abstinence on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, when the great household largely ate fish, persisted throughout the Middle Ages, with some important variations. Closely linked to it was a pattern of eating which postponed lunch on fast days until a later hour and which, by the end of the fourteenth century (there is circumstantial evidence for it earlier), restricted  consumption on days of fasting to lunch alone. This was most common on Fridays, but was employed on other days as well, to intensify the regime of abstinence.

    Abstinence at its most straightforward can be seen at Bristol Castle in the househouse of Eleanor of Brittany. She had been captured by King John in France in 1202 and spent the rest of her life imprisoned, but in some style, befitting a granddaughter of Henry II. On Saturday, 16 August 1225, besides bread and ale, there were purchased sole, almonds, butter and eggs; on Sunday, mutton, pork, chicken (or pullet) and eggs; on Monday, beef, pork, honey and vinegar; on Tuesday, pork, eggs and egret; on Wednesday, herring, conger, sole, eels, almonds and eggs; on Thursday, pork, eggs, pepper and honey; concluding on Friday, a fish day, with conger, sole, eels, herring and almonds. The household of Joan de Valence presents some distinctive variations from this pattern. If the year from Michaelmas 1296 had followed the pattern of three non-meat days per week, with the additions of Lent, it would have had a balance of 183 days when meat was eaten and 182 of abstinence. In practice, many Wednesdays - 34 in the course of the year - were treated as days when some meats could be eaten. The mitigation of the regime of abstinence required licence. (See butter towers for more information...)  It persisted throughout the Middle Ages. In the 1470s, in a specimen budget for the household of a knight, the projected costs were based on 167 days of abstinence and 198 days of meat consumption. Fourteenth century evidence suggests the practice on Wednesdats involved eating meat at one meal and fish at another. In the Valence househouse, there was no distinction in the sort of meat eaten on Wednesdays. Other househouses restricted consumption to the lighter meats - to poultry in the household of the Duke and Duchess of Brittany in 1377-8.

    The annual course of the household was charted against the Christian year, its great festivals and fasts. To the weekly pattern of abstinence, additional days were added when fasting could take one of two forms, either the eating of fish instead of meat, or near-complete abstention from food. The extra fish days concentrated on the vigils of major feasts, delineating those of especial popularity, to be relieved on the feast itself by celebration. Christmas might be observed with a day of abstinence on the vigil, with a pattern of celebration and abstinence also marking St. Stephen, Holy Innocents, the Circumcision, through to Epiphany. Typically the Lenten fast was preceded by Collop Monday and Shrove Tuesday, to consume the surplus meat and eggs (in which combination may lie the origin of the so-called English breakfast). Easter week included a feast for the poor on Maundy Thursday, followed by a complete fast (perhaps with the exception of bread and ale) on Good Friday. Easter itself was marked by a feast of meats, in some househouses including a little lamb as Paschal symbol, and a customary payment to the cooks. Ascension week commenced with additional days of fasting (or abstinence) on the Rogation days, Monday and Tuesday, as well as the abstinence already provided for Wednesday, with a celebratory feast on Thursday.
    The great Marian feasts - the Purification (2 February), the Annunciation (25 March), the Assumption (15 August) and the Nativity (8 September) - were marked by abstinence on their eve in nearly all households. To these occasions were frequently added Corpus Christi (in the later Middle Ages), the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (midsummer, 24 June), All Saints (1 November). In 1296-7, the household of Joan de Valance supplemented the days of abstinence with 25 April (St Mark); 28 June (vigil of SS Peter and Paul); 24 July (vigil of SS James and John); 9 August (vigil of St Lawrence); 29 November (vigil of St Andrew); and 20 December (vigil of St Thomas the Apostle). If a major feast days, or its vigil, fell on a day abstinence, a further degree of abstention might be observed, either absolute fasting (except for bread or ale), or avoidance of dairy products. Friday, 7 September 1296, was already a fish day: the household of Joan de Valence therefore consumed little (only herring, eggs and pottage, and no butter) and some individuals may have fasted absolutely.
Similarly on Friday, 14 September 1296, the Exaltation of St Cross, only herring and eggs were consumed. In an interesting reversal, on some fish days at festival time, an exception was made for the poor within Joan's household, who were treated to mutton.
   The weekly routine could vary in another way. The household of Joan de Valence was not untypical in containing a group within it that a followed a stricter regime. Some of these individuals were friars. They abstained from meat - usually eating a fish diet - on some Mondays and Tuesdays. The friars also fasted throughout Advent in 1296, up to and including 9 Januart 1297, with the sole exception of 27 December. On Christmas Day itself, the friars were joined in their feast (on a Tuesday) by Aymer de Valence, who also fasted with them on 8 January.
    With the appearance of a record of the portions (fercula) served at the day's meals, in the second half of the fourteenth century, comes further evidence of the regime of abstinence. In the household of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, in 1393, lunch was the only meal taken on Fridays. In addition, in Holy Week, on Wednesday, 2 April and Saturday, 5 April, lunch was the only meal. On the Monday of Ascension week, there was only one meal - of fish; on the eve of Whitsun and the three Ember Days in the following week, equally only one meal was taken. As well as Fridays, Ash Wednesday and the other Wednesdays in Lent, there were  a further 26 days in 1412-1413 on which Dame Alice de Breyne confined supper to a small group of invididuals.
    While there was a degree of consonance in the observation of the main festivals, the pattern was subject to personal variation. The practice diverged from the theory of liturgical observance: not all households marked the Ember Days, or the vigils of the feasts of all the apostles. The degree of abstinence practised was flexible and many observed the fasts on dates that were not obligatory. There were further changes and mitigations to the weekly dietary regime in the fifteenth century. The dispensations for individuals, themselves matters of status, and the refinements of artistocratic piety were gradually followed at large. In Anne Stafford's household, by mid-August of 1465, the fish content of Wednesday's means was diminishing, replaced by lighter meats such as piglets and poultry. At the same time, fish appeared on Mondays on a regular basis, but only as a part of the foodstuffs. suggesting a pattern of one meal of meat and one of fish on that day.

In 1501, for that part of the household of the Duke of Buckingham in London, at Queenhithe and at Barnes and Richmond, the transformation of Wednesday from a day of abstinence (to no longer being one) had almost been completed; there is also evidence that on Monday one meal was of fish. On six days of the week, the usual pattern was to provide both lunch and supper (the Duke and a few others had breakfast as well); but on Fridays there was only one meal - lunch. On other days. abstinence might be enhanced by restricting food to a single meal. In another account for the Duke, for 1507-8, covering the great household at Thornbury, a slightly different pattern occurs. Here the consumption of fish on Wednesdays had a stronger presence - and this may indicate that it was those of a lesser status in the household who continued to eat more fish on this day. During Lent, the household employed a stricter regime on Fridays and other celebratory days by withdrawing dairy items and eggs (which had previously been completely excluded in Lent as a matter of course). The pattern of two main meals per day for the whole household continued, for six days a week, with a much smaller group at breakfast. On Fridays, however, most people had one meal only, lunch; a small group of gentiles had both lunch and supper, but on that day no breakfast. There was a genuine reduction in the quantity of food consumed: about twice as much was consumed on Saturdays as on Fridays. On the other hand Archbishop Bourgchier's household, in 1459, although it had the same pattern of one meal on a Friday and two on Saturday, consumed as much at Friday's single meal as at both Saturday meals combined.
--- End quote ---

My understanding is that by 1600 wednesday was no longer a fast day, something clearly went wrong in the end of the 15th or during 16th c. catholic-counter reformation.

[VeraeFidei]

It is indeed a traditional latin rite custom to eat meat and dairy freely as desired for the entire Octave of the Holy Pasche. Go to any Orthodox or Eastern Catholic Church and find out for yourself if you don't believe me. This is a universal custom for all of the Catholic Church regardless of rite.

Is it for the Roman rite, though? I've never actually seen a source permitting meat on Easter Friday prior to the NO. Remember that prior to the mid-20th century reforms, only Easter Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were duplex I. classis; the rest of Easter week was semiduplex, except for Low Sunday, which was duplex major.

You are Eastern, you should know better! Waaay back when, the whole week was duplex I. classis and, consequently, of Obligation. It was a later relaxation that made only Monday and Tuesday duplex I. classis and of obligation; a yet further relaxation made only Monday obligatory, and then even later that was dropped, but with the days retaining their Festal rank.

[Maximilian]

"The Great Household in Late Medieval England by C.M. Woolgar" which documents exactly what was eaten and what was not eaten on specific days. The cooks and heads of house made grocery lists and they survived in books to this very day...all one has to do is look at what was bought at market everyday of the week. That book has a chapter anlyzing them quite specifically. The lists are documented for 3 centuries before the reformation. Someone else can look up this but I am confident beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am abosolutely one hundred percent correct. Although the Octave of Nativity did have some fasting it is partly because it has other days mixed into it. The Holy Pasche is the feast of all feasts, all of that week is for Our Lord's triumph over death, to emphasize fasting at that time would be bizarre. If you still sing Haec Dies (This is the day the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it) during the office, which is done on that Friday than it has to be part of Easter continuing. The next Friday afterward in Paschatide has a regular metrical hymn "Ad cenam agni providi" so life returns to the normal routine, but the first friday after "Easter Sunday" is the only consistent exception to that rule for the liturgical entire year.

from a post I made 3 years ago:

The Great Household in Late Medieval England by C.M. Woolgar:


--- Quote ---    In the weekly cycle, one of the most prominent features was the impact of religious observance on diet. By c. 1200, it was common in the great household for there to be three days each week when flesh was not normally eaten. This pattern of abstinence on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, when the great household largely ate fish, persisted throughout the Middle Ages, with some important variations. Closely linked to it was a pattern of eating which postponed lunch on fast days until a later hour and which, by the end of the fourteenth century (there is circumstantial evidence for it earlier), restricted  consumption on days of fasting to lunch alone. This was most common on Fridays, but was employed on other days as well, to intensify the regime of abstinence.

    Abstinence at its most straightforward can be seen at Bristol Castle in the househouse of Eleanor of Brittany. She had been captured by King John in France in 1202 and spent the rest of her life imprisoned, but in some style, befitting a granddaughter of Henry II. On Saturday, 16 August 1225, besides bread and ale, there were purchased sole, almonds, butter and eggs; on Sunday, mutton, pork, chicken (or pullet) and eggs; on Monday, beef, pork, honey and vinegar; on Tuesday, pork, eggs and egret; on Wednesday, herring, conger, sole, eels, almonds and eggs; on Thursday, pork, eggs, pepper and honey; concluding on Friday, a fish day, with conger, sole, eels, herring and almonds. The household of Joan de Valence presents some distinctive variations from this pattern. If the year from Michaelmas 1296 had followed the pattern of three non-meat days per week, with the additions of Lent, it would have had a balance of 183 days when meat was eaten and 182 of abstinence. In practice, many Wednesdays - 34 in the course of the year - were treated as days when some meats could be eaten. The mitigation of the regime of abstinence required licence. (See butter towers for more information...)  It persisted throughout the Middle Ages. In the 1470s, in a specimen budget for the household of a knight, the projected costs were based on 167 days of abstinence and 198 days of meat consumption. Fourteenth century evidence suggests the practice on Wednesdats involved eating meat at one meal and fish at another. In the Valence househouse, there was no distinction in the sort of meat eaten on Wednesdays. Other househouses restricted consumption to the lighter meats - to poultry in the household of the Duke and Duchess of Brittany in 1377-8.

    The annual course of the household was charted against the Christian year, its great festivals and fasts. To the weekly pattern of abstinence, additional days were added when fasting could take one of two forms, either the eating of fish instead of meat, or near-complete abstention from food. The extra fish days concentrated on the vigils of major feasts, delineating those of especial popularity, to be relieved on the feast itself by celebration. Christmas might be observed with a day of abstinence on the vigil, with a pattern of celebration and abstinence also marking St. Stephen, Holy Innocents, the Circumcision, through to Epiphany. Typically the Lenten fast was preceded by Collop Monday and Shrove Tuesday, to consume the surplus meat and eggs (in which combination may lie the origin of the so-called English breakfast). Easter week included a feast for the poor on Maundy Thursday, followed by a complete fast (perhaps with the exception of bread and ale) on Good Friday. Easter itself was marked by a feast of meats, in some househouses including a little lamb as Paschal symbol, and a customary payment to the cooks. Ascension week commenced with additional days of fasting (or abstinence) on the Rogation days, Monday and Tuesday, as well as the abstinence already provided for Wednesday, with a celebratory feast on Thursday.
    The great Marian feasts - the Purification (2 February), the Annunciation (25 March), the Assumption (15 August) and the Nativity (8 September) - were marked by abstinence on their eve in nearly all households. To these occasions were frequently added Corpus Christi (in the later Middle Ages), the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (midsummer, 24 June), All Saints (1 November). In 1296-7, the household of Joan de Valance supplemented the days of abstinence with 25 April (St Mark); 28 June (vigil of SS Peter and Paul); 24 July (vigil of SS James and John); 9 August (vigil of St Lawrence); 29 November (vigil of St Andrew); and 20 December (vigil of St Thomas the Apostle). If a major feast days, or its vigil, fell on a day abstinence, a further degree of abstention might be observed, either absolute fasting (except for bread or ale), or avoidance of dairy products. Friday, 7 September 1296, was already a fish day: the household of Joan de Valence therefore consumed little (only herring, eggs and pottage, and no butter) and some individuals may have fasted absolutely.
Similarly on Friday, 14 September 1296, the Exaltation of St Cross, only herring and eggs were consumed. In an interesting reversal, on some fish days at festival time, an exception was made for the poor within Joan's household, who were treated to mutton.
   The weekly routine could vary in another way. The household of Joan de Valence was not untypical in containing a group within it that a followed a stricter regime. Some of these individuals were friars. They abstained from meat - usually eating a fish diet - on some Mondays and Tuesdays. The friars also fasted throughout Advent in 1296, up to and including 9 Januart 1297, with the sole exception of 27 December. On Christmas Day itself, the friars were joined in their feast (on a Tuesday) by Aymer de Valence, who also fasted with them on 8 January.
    With the appearance of a record of the portions (fercula) served at the day's meals, in the second half of the fourteenth century, comes further evidence of the regime of abstinence. In the household of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, in 1393, lunch was the only meal taken on Fridays. In addition, in Holy Week, on Wednesday, 2 April and Saturday, 5 April, lunch was the only meal. On the Monday of Ascension week, there was only one meal - of fish; on the eve of Whitsun and the three Ember Days in the following week, equally only one meal was taken. As well as Fridays, Ash Wednesday and the other Wednesdays in Lent, there were  a further 26 days in 1412-1413 on which Dame Alice de Breyne confined supper to a small group of invididuals.
    While there was a degree of consonance in the observation of the main festivals, the pattern was subject to personal variation. The practice diverged from the theory of liturgical observance: not all households marked the Ember Days, or the vigils of the feasts of all the apostles. The degree of abstinence practised was flexible and many observed the fasts on dates that were not obligatory. There were further changes and mitigations to the weekly dietary regime in the fifteenth century. The dispensations for individuals, themselves matters of status, and the refinements of artistocratic piety were gradually followed at large. In Anne Stafford's household, by mid-August of 1465, the fish content of Wednesday's means was diminishing, replaced by lighter meats such as piglets and poultry. At the same time, fish appeared on Mondays on a regular basis, but only as a part of the foodstuffs. suggesting a pattern of one meal of meat and one of fish on that day.

In 1501, for that part of the household of the Duke of Buckingham in London, at Queenhithe and at Barnes and Richmond, the transformation of Wednesday from a day of abstinence (to no longer being one) had almost been completed; there is also evidence that on Monday one meal was of fish. On six days of the week, the usual pattern was to provide both lunch and supper (the Duke and a few others had breakfast as well); but on Fridays there was only one meal - lunch. On other days. abstinence might be enhanced by restricting food to a single meal. In another account for the Duke, for 1507-8, covering the great household at Thornbury, a slightly different pattern occurs. Here the consumption of fish on Wednesdays had a stronger presence - and this may indicate that it was those of a lesser status in the household who continued to eat more fish on this day. During Lent, the household employed a stricter regime on Fridays and other celebratory days by withdrawing dairy items and eggs (which had previously been completely excluded in Lent as a matter of course). The pattern of two main meals per day for the whole household continued, for six days a week, with a much smaller group at breakfast. On Fridays, however, most people had one meal only, lunch; a small group of gentiles had both lunch and supper, but on that day no breakfast. There was a genuine reduction in the quantity of food consumed: about twice as much was consumed on Saturdays as on Fridays. On the other hand Archbishop Bourgchier's household, in 1459, although it had the same pattern of one meal on a Friday and two on Saturday, consumed as much at Friday's single meal as at both Saturday meals combined.
--- End quote ---

My understanding is that by 1600 wednesday was no longer a fast day, something clearly went wrong in the end of the 15th or during 16th c. catholic-counter reformation.

Thanks for posting this.
It is fascinating reading.