Many Early Christians Became Vegetarians During Lent

Even today, the East forbids dairy, fish, meat, and oil during the Great Fast, which means that people are vegetarians if they keep the rules.

From Aleteia

By Philip Kosloski

Before any official rules were set, Christians would create their own fasts to observe during Lent. 

Currently, the Roman Catholic Church has only two days during Lent when Catholics are obliged to fast (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday), and Fridays are traditionally days of abstinence from meat.

These rules have been pared down over the centuries, as abstinence from meat was at one time observed throughout the entirety of Lent.

Fish has always been an accepted alternative, but in the first few centuries of Christianity, even that food group was given up.

Early Christians had a variety of fasts

Initially there were no set rules for fasting during Lent practiced by all Catholics throughout the whole world. It was up to local bishops and priests to advise the faithful on what they should do during the penitential season.

For example, the Catholic Encyclopedia explains, "the historian Socrates tells of the practice of the 5th century: "Some abstain from every sort of creature that has life, while others of all the living creatures eat of fish only. Others eat birds as well as fish, because, according to the Mosaic account of the Creation, they too sprang from the water; others abstain from fruit covered by a hard shell and from eggs."

This means some early Christians were vegetarians throughout Lent, while other allowed themselves fish and others added birds to the menu.

Many of Christians even went further than the above rules, "Some eat dry bread only, others not even that; others again when they have fasted to the ninth hour (three o'clock) partake of various kinds of food."

Generally speaking many Christians would, "take but one meal a day and that only in the evening, while meat and, in the early centuries, wine were entirely forbidden."

Only much later did bishops and popes begin to direct the faithful with explicit laws for fasting and abstinence.

The key behind all of this is that Christians were eager and zealous to perform many penances for Jesus, their Bridegroom. They wanted to unite themselves to his suffering and to offer the privation they experienced as a sacrifice to God.

While the Church does not have many fasting rules for the 40 days of Lent, individual Christians can work with their spiritual directors and physicians to determine what kind of fasts are possible that do not harm a person's body.