Laudator Temporis Acti

Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 78:

Tertullian spoke for the New Prophecy, advocating long fasts and continence with unrelenting, medical precision. Fasting was necessary, otherwise

the whole dwelling-place of the inner person becomes blocked up with food . . . a thought-flow panting to burn off its load of excrement becomes no more than an obsession with the lavatory. Nothing else remains but to pass on from this to thoughts of lust.⁷⁸

⁷⁸ Tertullian, de ieiunio 5.1, Corpus Christianorum 2:1261.

The Tertullian reference is incorrect — it should be de ieiunio 6.1, Corpus Christianorum 2:1262:

totum illud domicilium interioris hominis escis stipatum, uinis inundatum, decoquendis iam stercoribus exaestuans praemeditatorium efficitur latrinarum, in quo plane nihil tam in proximo supersit quam ad lasciuiam sapere.

As many have noted, Tertullian is imitated by Jerome, Against Jovinianum 2.12 = Patrologia Latina, vol. 23, col. 315 (tr. W.H. Fremantle):

But even if our food be the commonest, we must avoid repletion. For nothing is so destructive to the mind as a full belly, fermenting like a wine vat and giving forth its gases on all sides. What sort of fasting is it, or what refreshment is there after fasting, when we are blown out with yesterday's dinner, and our stomach is made a factory for the closet? We wish to get credit for protracted abstinence, and all the while we devour so much that a day and a night can scarcely digest it. The proper name to give it is not fasting, but rather debauch and rank indigestion.

Sed et ex vilissimis cibis vitanda satietas est. Nihil enim ita obruit animum, ut plenus venter et exaestuans, et huc illucque se vertens, et in ructus vel in crepitus ventorum efflatione respirans. Quale illud jejunium est, aut qualis illa refectio post jejunium, cum pridianis epulis distendimur, et guttur nostrum meditatorium efficitur latrinarum? Dumque volumus prolixioris inediae famam quaerere, tantum voramus, quantum vix alterius diei nox digerat. Itaque non tam jejunium appellandum est, quam crapula, ac fetens, et molesta digestio.

The passage from Jerrome translated a bit more literally:

But even if our food be the commonest, we must avoid repletion. For nothing is so destructive to the mind as a full belly, seething and turning itself hither and thither and transforming its gases into belches and farts. What sort of fasting is it, or what refreshment is there after fasting, when we are swollen with yesterday's dinner, and our gullet is made a preparation for latrines? We wish to get credit for protracted abstinence, and all the while we devour so much that the night of a second day can scarcely digest it. The proper name to give it is not fasting, but rather debauch and rank indigestion.

Labels: noctes scatologicae, typographical and other errors