REMEMBER NO MEAT FRIDAYS?

@saab,

For a long time in Britain the only takeaway food was fish and chips. Most working men would get their pay packet on a Friday. Fish and chips eaten out of the paper means you don't have to worry about cooking or washing up and can go straight down the pub.

1 Reply

@BumbleBeeBoogie,

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

The Friday meat ban, by the way, still applies to the 40 days of the Lenten fast, which ends this Saturday.

That's not totally true:

Quote:

Can. 1250 The days and times of penance for the universal Church are each Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.

Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Source: Canon Law

1 Reply

Am I the only one that finds this no meat on Friday during Lent moronic?

I mean, what if you're a vegetarian anyway?
I thought the whole idea behind it was that you were making a sacrifice.

So, no meat on friday, but enjoy your lobster, grilled tuna, shrimp scampi.

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SO fish is not , technically, a meat? but clams are?. I always got my knuckles wailed for asking that question of the nuns.

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@BumbleBeeBoogie,

Quote:

Did the pope really make a secret pact to sell more fish?

Whether or not it was a Catholic plot to support the fishing industry, health-wise it was not such a bad idea, really .... even if that was not exactly the motivation.
We all ate far too much red meat when I was a young thing.
So the fish on Friday edict probably did us good!
Apart from that, we hardly ever ate out, so the occasional meal from the fish n chip shop was considered something of a treat.

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@izzythepush,

When in GB we always try to find a nice fish and chips.
I just love it.

1 Reply

@msolga,

When I grew up fish was as a rule served on fridays and yellow peasoup on thursday. A lot of restaurants still have it like that in Sweden.
In my home we had fish twice a week - tuesday and friday. But I do come from the coast.

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@Walter Hinteler,

In the U.S. the Episcopal Conference determined that Catholics on the
Fridays outside of Lent "substitute a penitential, or even a charitable,
practice of their own choosing. They must do some penitential/charitable
practice on these Fridays."

1 Reply

@msolga,

msolga wrote:

Quote:
Did the pope really make a secret pact to sell more fish?

Whether or not it was a Catholic plot to support the fishing industry ...

I doubt that someone thought about "fishing industry" in the 13th century.
However, this law gave monks (and nobility) a really good extra income when fishponds were made close to monasteries and castles.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Ah, I see, Walter!
Very sneaky & very clever! Smile

1 Reply

@George,

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales had re-introduced "Friday Penance" last year.
In Germany, it's similar to what the US bishops said.

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@msolga,

In 1300, the Cistercian abbey Waldsassen (in the Upper Palatinate, Bavaria) had more than 200 fish ponds ...

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

I doubt that someone thought about "fishing industry" in the 13th century.

Why not?

Were people not as intelligent as they are today?

1 Reply

@saab,

saab wrote:

Here the fish hangs to dry in Lofoten

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@Walter Hinteler,

I wonder if it did not have more to do with the Hansecities than the pope.
In the 13th century the German Hanseaterne and their trade organisations came to Bergen in Norway and took later over the controll of dry fishtrade with North Norway.
The dry fish was exported to German cities and then sold on international market.
Norway exported fish and imported breadflour.

1 Reply

@saab,

You have to find a good one though, a terrible one can put you off it for life.

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@saab,

Well, the fish ponds had fresh fish. And as far as I could find out, most monasteries started this "business" intensively after "fish on Friday and during lent" became law.

1 Reply

@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:
I doubt that someone thought about "fishing industry" in the 13th century.

Why not?

Were people not as intelligent as they are today?

No, it's a case of not having been organized. At the highest level, you'd have a village of fishermen, but even then, they were all working for themselves. It was a way of life, but there was no reason for them to have thought of it as an industry. In the 13th century, the major industries in Europe were sheep farming (for the wool) and the cloth trade (made from the wool). In those cases, it was an industry, as wealthy people used their wealth, or obtained loans, to either expand their sheep farming, or the weaving of wool into cloth. Fisherman just went to sea and hoped to sell their catch. The money boys weren't interested.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Cloisters and castles and large estates had fishponds and still dried fish was exported from Norway to Germany and southern Europe.
There must have been a reason for that.
Guess people wanted the dried fish for extra security in case they did not get fresh fish. It lasted for years.
Even today with fresh fish shipped fast and frozen fish in every store - dried fish is exported and also eaten ton wise in Norway and Sweden. It is concidered a delicatess.

1 Reply

@saab,

While salted and dried fish were important to feed people in late winter, it was also necessary to feed people during Lent. (I have long suspected that the lenten prohibition on eating meat is a pragmatic response to the lack of meat in late winter--the only way to get fresh meat then would be by hunting, which was strictly conttolled by aristocratic and royal families, or by slaughtering the breeding stock kept over the winter. The lenten dietary prohibition was a good way to assure the presevation of the breeding stock.)

Hansa begins in the 13th century, and can be seen as the invention of the carrying trade industry in Europe. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Dutch would "invent" the fishing industry. Industry in the sense of a production capitalized with the intent of exploiting a large market demand.

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REMEMBER NO MEAT FRIDAYS?

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