The Repository Ancient Paths Faith

The History of Lent: How Long Did It Really Last?

October 27, 2026 · Runtime 15:13 · Watch on YouTube

Ask almost anyone how long Lent lasts and the answer is forty days. But in the fourth century a pilgrim in Jerusalem named Egeria wrote that there the fast lasted eight weeks, and a historian said that no two churches counted it the same way. We translated the Latin of Egeria's account ourselves, from the critical edition of 1898, and counted her days against the letters of Athanasius and two church historians.

Chapters

  1. 0:00 How long was Lent?
  2. 0:38 The word: quadragesima
  3. 0:57 Nicaea, 325: what the canon says
  4. 1:24 Before Nicaea: the Didache
  5. 1:50 Irenaeus, c. 190: days and hours
  6. 2:37 Four cities
  7. 2:50 Athanasius, 329 and 330
  8. 4:09 Cyril and the candidates for baptism
  9. 4:41 Egeria
  10. 5:02 Eight weeks in Jerusalem
  11. 5:22 Counting to forty-one
  12. 6:19 The week at the holy places
  13. 7:09 Socrates: no two churches agree
  14. 8:17 Sozomen's map
  15. 9:25 Why forty?
  16. 10:51 Rome and the tithe of the year
  17. 11:24 The reading: Egeria on the fast
  18. 13:24 What the text does not say
  19. 13:39 Bruegel, 1559
  20. 14:26 How long did Lent really last?
  21. 14:57 Next: Brother Lawrence

Transcript

How long was Lent? 0:00

The history of Lent: how long did it really last? Ask almost anyone, and the answer is forty days. But in the fourth century, a pilgrim in Jerusalem wrote that there, the fast lasted eight weeks. And a historian said that no two churches counted it the same way.

So how long was it? We translated the Latin of Egeria's account of Lent ourselves, from the critical edition of 1898, and counted her days against the letters of Athanasius and two church historians. The forty days, it turns out, were a name before they were a number.

The word: quadragesima 0:38

First, the word. Lent is an old Teutonic word that meant no more than the spring season. The Latin name is quadragesima, the fortieth, and it copies the Greek tessarakoste, made on the pattern of Pentecost, the fiftieth. The name says a day, not a duration.

Nicaea, 325: what the canon says 0:57

The Greek word turns up in the early fourth century, in the fifth canon of the Council of Nicaea, in the year 325. Here is all that the canon says. Let synods be held twice a year, the one before Lent, that the pure gift may be offered to God, and the second about autumn. It names no length. And the Catholic Encyclopedia grants that the word may point to a feast, not a season.

Before Nicaea: the Didache 1:24

Before that, the sources are quieter still. The Didache, a short Christian manual, tells its readers to fast on the fourth day and the Preparation, Wednesday and Friday, and not on Monday and Thursday, like the hypocrites. Before baptism, it adds, let the baptizer fast, and the baptized, and whatever others can, one or two days before. No forty days.

Irenaeus, c. 190: days and hours 1:50

Around the year 190, Irenaeus wrote to Victor, the bishop of Rome, about the days before Easter, and the historian Eusebius kept the letter. The quarrel, Irenaeus says, is not only about the day, but about the very manner of the fast. Some think they should fast one day, others two, yet others more; some count their day as forty hours, day and night.

Forty hours, not forty days. A translator's note on that page admits that the punctuation of the sentence is disputed, and that some editors read forty days. He keeps forty hours, because the Greek seems to him to require it, and because, he says, we have no other trace of a forty days' fast so early.

Four cities 2:37

Now the places. Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem. By the fourth century each of them kept the season in its own way, and the sources let us hear all four.

Athanasius, 329 and 330 2:50

In Alexandria, the bishop Athanasius wrote a letter every year to announce Easter. In the one for the year 329, the fast he announces is the six days of Holy Week. The next letter, for 330, begins differently: we begin the fast of forty days on the thirteenth of the month Phamenoth, March the ninth.

In 334 he makes it a rule. In no other manner, he writes, is it possible to go up to Jerusalem, and to eat the Passover, except by observing the fast of forty days. And he gives the dates: the fast begins on the first of Phamenoth, February 25, and is suspended on the Sundays and the Saturdays before them.

He gives a reason from Scripture. As Israel, going up to Jerusalem, was first purified in the wilderness, so, typifying the holy fast of forty days, let us first be purified and freed from defilement, that we may ascend with the Lord to the upper chamber, to sup with him.

He did not want Egypt to fall behind. In a letter probably of the year 340, he asks his correspondent Serapion to proclaim the fast of forty days to the brethren, lest, while all the world is fasting, we who are in Egypt should be derided.

Cyril and the candidates for baptism 4:09

In Jerusalem, the bishop Cyril gave lectures to the candidates for baptism, and opened them with a notice. A long notice is allowed thee, he tells them; thou hast forty days for repentance. For Cyril the forty days were the time of preparing for baptism.

He presses the point in his first lecture. Hast thou run so many circles of the years busied in vain about the world, he asks, and hast thou not forty days to be free for prayer, for thine own soul's sake?

Egeria 4:41

Then there is Egeria. Her book was found in a manuscript of the eleventh century at Arezzo, and first published in 1887. Her translator, M. L. McClure, put her journey toward the end of the fourth century. A monk of the seventh century praised her as a woman from the far shore of the western ocean.

Eight weeks in Jerusalem 5:02

This is what she writes about the season, in our translation. As with us the forty days are observed before Easter, so here eight weeks are observed before Easter. And she explains why eight: on Sundays no one fasts, and on Saturdays no one fasts, except the one Saturday of the Easter Vigil.

Counting to forty-one 5:22

Now we count, as she does. Eight weeks is fifty-six days. Take away the eight Sundays. Take away seven of the Saturdays, because the Saturday of the Vigil is a day of fasting. What remains, she writes, is forty-one days of fasting, which they call here the eortae, that is, the quadragesimae.

Forty-one days, and still the name is the fortieths. Her translator thought her Greek was imperfect here, and that eortae is probably a slip. But the count is hers, in her own Latin: quadraginta et unus. The name did not count the days.

Notice what Egeria and Athanasius share. Both take the Sundays out of the fast, and the Saturdays with them. A translator's note on Athanasius quotes Ambrose: Lent is fasted on all days except the Saturday and the Sunday.

The week at the holy places 6:19

She describes the week at the holy places. Every night they go to the Anastasis, the church of the Resurrection, before dawn. In Lent, she says, one service is added: they go there also at the third hour. And on Wednesdays and Fridays, at the ninth hour, they go to Sion, as they do all year.

On those Wednesdays and Fridays, she adds, the bishop and the presbyters preach without ceasing, so that the people may always learn the law. The fast, in her Jerusalem, came with teaching.

On Friday night the vigil is kept in the Anastasis. The people come from Sion singing hymns, and the vigil lasts until morning. In Lent, she notes, the evening service is held later than at any other time of the year.

Socrates: no two churches agree 7:09

In the fifth century, the church historian Socrates looked across the world and noticed something odd. The fasts before Easter, he writes, are differently observed among different people. Those at Rome fast three successive weeks before Easter, excepting Saturdays and Sundays.

Later scholars argued with parts of what he says about Rome. Baronius, in a note the translator kept on the same page, finds two mistakes: the three weeks, and the Saturdays. We give the historian's words as his, and the doubt as theirs.

Those in Illyria, he says, and all over Greece, and Alexandria, keep a fast of six weeks, which they call the forty days' fast. Others begin from the seventh week before Easter, and fast only at intervals, yet call that time the forty days' fast.

It is indeed surprising to me, Socrates writes, that thus differing in the number of days, they should both give it one common name. Some assign one reason for it, and others another, according to their several fancies.

Sozomen's map 8:17

The historian Sozomen draws a different map. Six weeks in Illyria, the western regions, Libya, Egypt, and Palestine. Seven weeks at Constantinople and in the neighbouring provinces as far as Phoenicia. Three weeks in some churches, and, among the Montanists, only two. Palestine, in his count, is six. In Jerusalem itself, Egeria counted eight.

Put side by side, in the weeks that each source counts, Rome is three, Greece and Alexandria six, Constantinople seven, Jerusalem eight. They are not all counting the same thing, and every one of them calls it the forty days.

That is how the sources run. A quarrel about hours around the year 190. A canon that mentions the word in 325. Athanasius announcing forty days in 330. Egeria, late in the century, counting eight weeks. And Rome, at the end of the sixth century, doing it differently again.

Why forty? 9:25

Why forty? The Bible gives the number three times. Moses, on the mountain: he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. Elijah, who went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb, the mount of God. And Christ: when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

The Apostolic Constitutions, a book of church order, tie the season to the Lord's own life. The fast of Lent, it says, is to be observed as a memorial of the Lord's mode of life and legislation, and it is to be observed before the fast of the Passover, beginning from the second day of the week and ending at the day of the Preparation.

A set of rules called the Apostolic Canons is blunter. A bishop, or a presbyter, or a deacon who does not fast the fast of forty days, it says, is to be deprived of his office, unless he is hindered by weakness of body. A layman in the same case is to be suspended.

In the fifth century, some writers said the forty days came from the apostles themselves. Leo, the bishop of Rome, urged his hearers to fulfil with their fasts the apostolic institution of the forty days. The Catholic Encyclopedia answers that the best modern scholars almost unanimously reject that view.

Rome and the tithe of the year 10:51

At Rome, in the time of Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, Lent was apparently six weeks of six days, thirty-six days of fasting. Gregory called it the tithe of the year, since thirty-six days is about a tenth of three hundred and sixty-five.

At a later date, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, the wish to reach the exact number of forty days led to beginning Lent on what we now call Ash Wednesday. It adds that the church of Milan, even in 1910, kept the older arrangement.

The reading: Egeria on the fast 11:24

But Egeria did not only count. She watched people fast. Here, now, a few of her paragraphs from the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters, in our translation, without comment.

On the sixth day, the vigil is kept in the Anastasis, from the hour when they come from Sion with hymns, until the morning. All night, psalms are said in turn, and antiphons in turn, and lessons of every kind in turn, and all of it is drawn out until the morning.

The custom of fasting here, in Lent, is this. Some, when they have eaten on the Lord's day after the dismissal, that is, at the fifth or sixth hour, do not eat again through the whole week, until the Saturday comes, after the dismissal at the Anastasis. These are the ones who keep the whole week.

And what they have eaten on Saturday morning, they do not eat again in the evening. They take their meal on the next day, the Lord's day, after the dismissal of the church, at the fifth hour or later, and after that they do not eat until the Saturday comes.

For the custom here is this: all who are, as they call them here, aputactitae, men or women, not only in the days of Lent but all the year, when they eat, eat once in the day.

And if any of these aputactitae cannot keep the whole weeks of fasting, as we said above, they dine in the middle of the week, on the fifth day, all through Lent. Whoever cannot even do that, keeps two days' fast through the whole of Lent. Whoever cannot even do that, eats every evening.

And no one demands how much each should do, but each does as he can. He who has done much is not praised, and he who has done less is not blamed. Such is the custom here. And their food in the days of Lent is this: they taste no oil, nor anything that comes from trees, but only water, and a little gruel of flour.

What the text does not say 13:24

Read it again, and notice what it does not say. It does not say forty days. It does not say what everyone must do. It says that no one demands, and that no one is praised, and no one is blamed.

Bruegel, 1559 13:39

Nearly twelve centuries after Egeria, in 1559, Pieter Bruegel painted the argument in a town square. On one side Carnival, fat, astride a barrel, with a spit of meat. On the other Lent, thin and pale, with a baker's peel and two herrings.

By then the forty days were a settled habit. What the centuries left us is a name that stayed, and a count that was adjusted until it fit the name.

One translator of Eusebius, in a note of 1890, put the settling of the present length, forty days not counting Sundays, in the seventh or eighth century. That is one scholar's estimate, and we give it as that. The sources we read show the road, not the moment it ended.

How long did Lent really last? 14:26

So how long did Lent really last? Three weeks at Rome, by one historian's account. Six at Alexandria, seven at Constantinople. Eight at Jerusalem, and forty-one days of fasting in the count of the woman who wrote it down. The forty days were a name before they were a number.

And the oldest rule we read for keeping it is hers. No one demands how much each should do. Each does as he can.

Next: Brother Lawrence 14:57

Next time: Brother Lawrence, a footman and a soldier, who became a lay brother among the Carmelites in Paris in 1666, and who wrote that in the noise and clutter of his kitchen, he possessed God as if he were on his knees at the blessed sacrament.

Description and sources

The word is older than the count: quadragesima means the fortieth, and it copies the Greek tessarakoste. The fifth canon of the Council of Nicaea uses that word in 325, but only to say when synods should meet, and it names no length. The episode follows the sources city by city: the Didache's Wednesday and Friday fasts, Irenaeus on a quarrel about days and hours, Athanasius announcing a fast of forty days from 330, Cyril teaching the candidates for baptism in Jerusalem, and the church historians Socrates and Sozomen, who give Rome three weeks, Greece and Alexandria six, and Constantinople seven. At the centre is Egeria, who counts eight weeks in Jerusalem, takes away the Sundays and the Saturdays, and gets forty-one days of fasting. Her description of how people kept it, translated here from the Latin, is read without comment, and ends with the rule that no one demands how much each must do.

PRIMARY SOURCES

ARCHIVE PLATES — public-domain documents, with author, date, archive and licence.

  • Bruegel - The Fight between Carnival and Lent - detail Lady Lent. Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1559. Wikimedia Commons (Public domain) | Public domain

... and 51 more plates, each credited on screen in the video and listed in this project's manifest.

Ancient Paths Faith reads the Christian contemplative tradition, East and West, from the primary source: the life, the rule, the letter, the codex.

About the material. Prints, paintings and manuscripts: Library of Congress, Rijksmuseum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Kunsthistorisches Museum and other public collections, all public domain or CC0, credited on screen. Book pages: Internet Archive scans of public-domain editions, including the 1898 critical edition of Egeria's Latin. Every diagram is drawn in code from the sources listed. Nothing in this video is AI-generated imagery.

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