Exceptions and permits during Lent
Lent, now drawing to a close, usually coincides – for the religious – with a period of abstention from sweets, meat and generally fatty foods, so at least the common imagination reminds us. Today this precept is no longer so strict, but in the past there were exceptions.
Not all religious in fact could or had to abide by this diktat, but there existed, even in the Companion of Jesus, so-called ‘indulgences’ – special permissions. The document that accompanies us today on our journey through the foods granted during Lent was found among the papers of the Illyrian-Dalmatian mission, intended for the Jesuits who lived between the residences of Split and Veli Lošinj on the Dalmatian peninsula.
The first point specifies that: “in Lent the use of meat is permitted, except on Fridays and Saturdays, Ash Wednesday, […] and the last three days of Holy Week. Meat was also allowed more than once a day ‘at midday meal, but also, however with due reduction, at evening breakfast’.
The writer continues. “whoever makes use of this dispensation of meat eating during Lent must recite at lunch and dinner before and after eating meat a Pater noster and an Ave Maria”.
In order to avoid excesses, the following rule was then indicated: ‘On the day when the reduction of food is commanded, it is not permitted either during Lent or outside of it for those who for special reasons can eat meat, to eat fish at the same meal’.
Who, therefore, was dispensed with? “Travellers”, but also “those who must eat at the table of others where, against their will, food of fat is brought”.
It is also specified that ‘curators of souls, and confessors are authorised to allow the use of fatty foods on fast days to sick people, but only in individual cases’. Finally, Easter dissolved the precepts of Lent. Religious also celebrated the Resurrection with a banquet, in the residences but also in the colleges, often inviting civil and secular dignitaries or the families of pupils and benefactors.
Maria Macchi
