[Sca-cooks] Sundays in Lent

[Terry Decker]

During the Middle Ages, the Western Church followed the Roman practice of 
observing forty weekdays of fasting (one meal a day general taken after 
sundown, although this was not a hard and fast rule) broken by Sundays. 
Even on Sundays meat and milk products were prohibited.  So the coronation 
meals likely represent normal Sunday fare with dispensation for the meat

Bear

> I've been studying feast menus from around the time of Henry V, and
> have a question about them. Both Henry V and his bride Catherine of
> Valois were apparently crowned in Lent, and if I have the dates right
> (this depends on whether my sources agree on how to handle
> Julian-Gregorian conversion), they were both crowned on Sundays.
>
> My question is this: Both feasts were almost entirely of fish, with
> one or two dishes of flesh. Does this mean that these Sundays were
> fish days, and flesh was included by dispensation, or did most of each
> menu amount to a voluntary fast?
>
> -- 
> Henry/Alex