Ember days

Ember days are four separate sets of three days within the same week - specifically, the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday - roughly equidistant in the circuit of the year, formerly set aside for fasting and prayer in the liturgical calendar of the Western Churches, but significantly not in the Eastern Orthodox Church (where Celtic traditions were not a concern). These days are set apart for special prayer and fasting, and considered especially suitable for the ordination of clergy. The Ember Days were known in the medieval church as quatuor tempora (the "four seasons"), or jejunia quatuor temporum ("fasts of the four seasons").

The Ember Weeks - the weeks in which the Ember Days occur - are the week between the third and fourth Sundays of Advent, between the first and second Sundays of Lent, the week between Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, and the calendar week after the one in which Holy Cross Day (September 14) falls (e.g. if September 14 were a Sunday, September 24, 26 and 27 would be Ember Days, the latest dates possible; with September 14 as a Saturday, however, the Ember Days would occur on September 18, 20 and 21 - the earliest possible dates).

These dates are given in the following mnemonic distich with a frank indifference to quantity and metre

Dant Crux, Lucia, Cineres, Charismata Dia

Ut sit in angariâ quarta sequens feria

Or in the equally clumsy old English rhyme

"Fasting days and Emberings be

Lent, Whitsun, Holyrood, and Lucie."

Prior to the reforms instituted by the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church mandated fasting (only one full meal per day plus two partial, meatless meals) on all Ember Days (which meant both fasting and abstinence from meat on those Ember Days which were also Fridays), and the faithful were encouraged (though not required) to receive the sacrament of penance whenever possible. Starting in 1969, Ember Days are no longer listed in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, and were made optional by churches of the Anglican Confession in 1976.

The word "ember" perfectly simply derives from the Anglo-Saxon ymb-ren, a circuit or revolution (from ymb, around, and rennen, to run), the annual wheel of the sun, clearly. The occurrence of the Anglo-Saxon compounds ymbren-tid ("Embertide"), ymbren-wucan ("Ember weeks"), ymbren-fisstan ("Ember fasts"), ymbren-da gas ("Ember days") makes the etymology quite certain. However, the Roman Catholic Church prefers that the term be derived from the Latin quatuor tempora, meaning "four times" (a year), while folk etymology even cites the phrase "may ye remember (the inevitability of death)" as the source. The word imbren even makes it into the acts of the council of A.D. 1009 (jejunia quatuor tempora quae imbren vocant, "the fasts of the four seasons which are called "imbren'"). It corresponds also with Pope Leo the Great's definition, jejunia ecclesiastica per totius anni circulum distributa ("fasts of the church distributed through the whole circuit of the year").

J. M. Neale's Essays of Liturgiology (1863), Chapter X, finds difficulties:

"The Latin name has remained in modern languages, though the contrary is sometimes affirmed, Quatuor Tempora, the Four Times. In French and Italian the term is the same; in Spanish and Portuguese they are simply Temporas. The German converts them into Quatember, and thence, by the easy corruption of dropping the first syllable, a corruption which also takes place in some other words, we get the English Ember. Thus, there is no occasion to seek after an etymology in embers; or with Nelfon, to extravagate still further to the noun ymbren, a recurrence, as if all holy seasons did not equally recur. In Welsh, Ember-week is Wythnos y cydgorian, the Week of the Processions. In mediæval Germany they were called Weihfasten, Wiegfastan, Wiegefasten, or the like, on the general principle of their sanctity.... We meet with the term Frohnfasten, frohne being the then word for travail. Why they were named foldfasten it is less easy to say."

Though the origins of the term "ember" are clear enough, nevertheless, the reasons for the observance are open to considerable debate. What is generally agreed upon, however, is that the concept of the observance predates the Christian era, and that since Ember Days have never been observed in the Eastern Churches, the pagan origins must lie in the west. In pagan Rome offerings were made to various gods and goddesses of agriculture in the hope that the deities would provide a bountiful harvest (in June), a rich vintage (in September), or a productive seeding (in December). Others point to much more specific Celtic origins, linked to the Celtic custom of observing various festivals at three-month intervals: (Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain). In any event, the ancient Christian church often sought to co-opt pagan feasts and reorient them to different purposes, and that seems to have been applicable in this instance.

These seasonal fasts, four in number, do not appear in early Christian observations: they are first known from the writings of Philastrius, bishop of Brescia(died c. 387) (De haeres. 119). He also connects them with the great Christian festivals.

The Christian observation of these (possibly Celtic) seasonal observance of the Ember days had its origin as an ecclesiastical ordinance in Rome and spread from there to the rest of the Western Church.. They were known as the jejunium vernum, aestivum, autumnale and hiemale, so that to quote Pope Leo's words (A.D. 440 - 461) the law of abstinence might apply to every season of the year. In Leo's time, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday were already days of special observance. In order to tie them to the fasts preparatory to the three great festivals of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, a fourth needed to be added "for the sake of symmetry" as the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 has it. The correspondence is forced.

From Rome the Ember days gradually spread unevenly through the whole of Western Christendom. Neither in Gaul nor Spain do they seem to have been generally recognized much before the 8th century.

Their observation in Britain, however, was embraced earlier than in Gaul or Spain, interestingly, and Christian sources connect the Ember Days observations with Augustine, AD. 597, said to be acting under the direct authority of Pope Gregory the Great. The precise dates appears to have varied considerably however, and in some cases, quite significantly, the Ember Weeks lost their connection with the Christian festivals altogether.

The Ordo Romanus fixes the spring fast in the first week of March (then the first month), thus loosely associated with the first Sunday in Lent; the summer fast in the second week of June, after Whitsunday; the autumnal fast in the third week of September following the Exaltation of the Cross, September 14; and the winter fast in the complete week next before Christmas Eve, following St Lucy's Day (Dec. 13).

Other regulations prevailed in different countries, until the inconveniences arising from the want of uniformity led to the rule now observed being laid down under Pope Urban II. as the law of the church, in the Councils of Piacenza and of Clermont, AD. 1095.

Ordination of clergy

The present rule which fixes the ordination of clergy in the Ember weeks was set in documents traditionally associated with Pope Gelasius I (492 - 496). In the earlier church ordinations took place whenever necessity required. Gelasius is stated to have been the first who limited them to these particular times. The rule once introduced commended itself to the mind of the church, and its observance spread. We find it laid down in the pontificate of Archbishop Ecgbert of York, A.D. 732 - 766, and referred to as a canonical rule in a capitulary of Charlemagne, and it was finally established as a law of the church in the pontificate of Gregory VII, ca 1085.

The dates of their celebration are now determined by national hierarchies rather than by the universal Roman liturgical calendar, and they have been transformed into “days of prayer for peace."

External links

• Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 (http://32.1911encyclopedia.org/E/EM/EMBER_DAYS.htm)

• Readings and Litanies for the Ember Days (http://www.liturgies.net/Ember/emberdays.htm)