fasting – Art & Theology

Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works.
If you see a person who is poor, take pity on them.
If you see an enemy, be reconciled to them.
If you see a friend being honored, do not envy them.
Let not only your mouth fast, but also your hands and feet and eyes and ears and all the members of your body.
Let the hands fast by being free of avarice.
Let the feet fast by ceasing to run after sin.
Let the eyes fast by not looking with lust.
Let the ears fast by not listening to malicious talk or false reports.
Let the mouth fast from hateful words and unjust rants.
For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes but bite and devour our brothers and sisters?

—John Chrysostom, from Homily 3 on the Statutes, secs. 11–12, written in Greek in 387 CE

* I adapted this excerpt from a public-domain translation by W. R. W. Stephens provided by Kevin Knight at New Advent.

The salty, twisted treats that we call pretzels have their origin, it is thought, in a seventh-century European monastery—according to lore, either in southern France, northern Italy, or Germany. Allegedly a monk invented them by shaping scraps of leftover bread dough to resemble arms crossed in prayer over the chest. (Think upside-down pretzel.)

During the Middle Ages the church’s fasting requirements for Lent were stricter than they are today, forbidding the intake of all nonaquatic animal by-products, including eggs, lard, milk, and butter. Because pretzels could be made with a simple recipe that avoided these banned ingredients, they soon became associated with the season.

Lady Lent with pretzels — Detail from *The Battle between Carnival and Lent* by Pieter Bruegel, 1559, showing the gaunt Lady Lent (a man cross-dressed as a nun) riding a cart bearing traditional Lenten fare: pretzels, waffles, and mussels. He holds, like a lance, a baker’s peel topped with two herring.

The pretzel’s Lenten link, not to mention its popularity as a year-round snack both inside and outside monastic communities, led artists to sometimes paint pretzels into Last Supper images.