Les transformations du jeûne chez les chrétiens d'Orient

Abstract

The Christian rules for fasting and abstinence are of a huge complexity in determining their annual rhythm and their prohibitions of various foods. In that sense, they distinguish absolutely the Christian practice from the Muslim one. But the two religions could have some underlying anthropological conceptions in common.These rules became enacted progressively, between the 4th and the 13th Century, and differentiated more and more not only the Oriental Churches from the Latin, but each Oriental Church from each other, perceived as a concurrent. It is yet rather difficult to get a clear idea about the prescriptions and the prohibitions in matter of fast, and even more about their actual application in each Christian congregation.On and after the 17th century, the Oriental Churches had to answer the questioning of the western missionaries and scholars about their practices in matter of fasting and abstinence, and to define firm and clear rules on that. But in the same time, the opportunity to refer to the Latin Catholic principles, leads some Oriental Christians to a lost of the sense of fasting as a collective ritual, on behalf of an individual and interiorized asceticism, focused on the sacraments. This evolution could be considered as a sign of the beginning of “modernization” among the Oriental Christians.