Reading an interesting book on life in Medieval times. One thing of interest (to me) was there were more meatless days than observed by today’s Catholic Church.
The meatless days were Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Friday I understand…as in Good Friday and the death of Jesus. What were the reasons for Wednesday and Saturday?
I tried Googling it up and only came up with articles that noted that Medieval meatless days were, indeed, W F & S. But no reasons why.
Any ideas?
Promotion of the local fishing industry. No fooling. Several monarchs instituted meatless days as a way of subsidizing the local fishing fleets. The Church went along with it. IIRC Isabella and Liz 1 both did this.
Fasting on Saturday was to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary, iirc. Using the term “fasting” instead of meatless, I’ve found a few sites that claim Wednesday fasting is for the day Jesus was betrayed but I’d never heard of that before today.
I would have assumed it was because only the rich could afford to eat meat every day, and the church was forcing them to make meat slightly less expensive by limiting how often it could be eaten.
The fishing fleet doubled up as the navy during wartime so it was very important to keep it afloat.
Actually, I’ve heard both explanations, to keep the peasants in business. Also, since only the rich could afford to eat meat more than occasionally, telling them not to eat it two or three times a week was a bigger sacrifice for them than for the poor.
And, as laws were flexible, it wasn’t long before any creature that spent any time in water, from turtles to otters (ick!) became “fish.” Raised as a good Catholic who believed that fasting required mortification of the flesh, I thought that eating lobster was a terrible excuse for fasting. However, in our house Friday was heavy on the fishsticks, which qualify.
Wed might be to reflect Ash Wednesday. Saturday, to piss off the Jews. Or follow the Jews. Different people will tell you different things.
And what days, and what could be eaten,varies greatly, not just by time but by place. Also note that in addition to the weekly fasts, there’s also quarterly Ember Day fasts and the entire Lent (well, excluding Sundays and other Lenten Feast Days). Plus various Saint’s Days were preceded by penitential fasting.
Medieval cooking is replete with recipes saying “And replace this chicken stock with water for Lent” or “Use almond milk if it be an Ember Day”. Not to mention all the illusion foods like fish done up as game or boiled “eggs” made from roe and almond milk.
No first-hand experience of mine, of these doings (I being neither brought up in, nor converted to, Catholicism or Christianity of any kind); but I was intrigued by an in-passing mention by C.S. Lewis, of his own involvement with this matter. He was an Anglican of the “High” variety (doing a good deal of what is generally regarded as Catholic-type stuff): he followed the fish-not-meat-on-Fridays observance, but mentioned “no hardship for me – I like fish”. So in Lewis’s view of things, the enthusiastic piscivore strikes lucky; with the enormous range of different Christian “takes” on various things, I have no doubt that there are other “Friday-restrictioners” who think and act differently concerning this particular circumstance.
I gather that the medieval Catholic church also required married couples to refrain from sex on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Admittedly, this information acquired from historical novels, not from learned non-fiction works. The impression got from said novels is that this ruling could be a considerable annoyance to medieval husbands / wives; and that of all the church’s rules, it was the one most often disobeyed.
Only the rich could afford to eat meat regularly, but on the other hand nobles were obligated to distribute some to their people on their dime every so often (by traditions, by noblesse oblige, to show up the other toffs with their largesse and so on).
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Raised as a good Catholic who believed that fasting required mortification of the flesh, I thought that eating lobster was a terrible excuse for fasting.
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It’s not until quite recently that lobster became a luxury food. Back in the day eating lobster was basically hitting rock bottom. It’s what they fed prisonners on US pontoons in the XVIIIth century, and the prisoners actually wrote complaints that it was cruel & unusual shit to be doing to them ; while progressives wrote petitions to some of the colonies likening feeding lobsters to prisoners with forcing them to eat rats.
Also the myth of the Barnacle Goose – which made it okay to have goose on meatless days.
Yes, “fasting” days were supposed to be sex-free. One of the reasons to eat fish is that red meat is more likely to inflame the passions. 
Maybe the dietary restrictions helped over the long periods of Lent and Advent, but I doubt it.
There’s an amusing flow chart on when medieval couples could have sex… it even covers more rules than just “legally married” and “not a fasting day”.
Just to note that, at least in modern Catholicism, fasting (limited food intake) and abstinence (refraining from eating meat) are two different (though related) practices.
Various ideas, I gather – in non-Christian religions too – about foods likely to inflame the passions, and thus salutary to avoid: onions and garlic have, I believe, often been thought “dicey” re that issue.
Marvellously crazy ! Includes Sunday as a taboo day, I see – leaving just Mon / Tue / Thur as OK ones. I don’t remember mention of Sunday in this connection, in the historical novels…
My personal favorite in this trend was the dispensation to eat capybara meat, on the theory that they were a water animal. 