VOLUME X SLICE II Fairbanks, Erastus to Fens (continued 6)

In 1586 Alexander Farnese became duke of Parma by the death of his father. He applied for leave to visit his paternal territory, but Philip would not permit him. He could not replace him in the Netherlands; but while retaining him in his command at the head of a formidable army, the king would not give his sanction to his great general’s desire to use it for the reconquest of the Northern Provinces. Never was there a better opportunity than the end of 1586 for an invading army to march through the country almost without opposition. The misgovernment and lack of high statesmanship of the earl of Leicester had caused faction to be rampant in the United Provinces; and on his return to England he left the country without organized forces or experienced generals to oppose an advance of a veteran army under the greatest commander of his time. But Philip’s whole thoughts and energies were already directed to the preparation of an Invincible Armada for the conquest of England, and Parma was ordered to collect an enormous flotilla of transports and to keep his army concentrated and trained for the projected invasion of the island realm of Queen Elizabeth. Thus the critical period passed by unused, and when the tempests had finally dispersed the defeated remnants of the Great Armada the Dutch had found a general, in the youthful Maurice of Nassau, worthy to be the rival in military genius even of Alexander of Parma. Moreover, the accession to the throne of France of Henry of Navarre had altogether altered the situation of affairs, and relieved the pressure upon the Dutch by creating a diversion, and placing Parma and his army between hostile forces. The ruinous expenditure upon the Great Armada had also depleted the Spanish treasury and Philip found himself virtually bankrupt. In 1590 the condition of the Spanish troops had become intolerable. Farnese could get no regular supplies of money from the king for the payment of the soldiery, and he had to pledge his own jewels to meet the demand. A mutiny broke out, but was suppressed. In the midst of these difficulties Parma received orders to abandon the task on which he had spent himself for so many years, and to raise the siege of Paris, which was blockaded by Henry IV. He left the Netherlands on the 3rd of August 1590 at the head of 15,000 troops. By brilliant generalship he outwitted Henry and succeeded in relieving Paris; but owing to lack of money and supplies he was compelled immediately to retreat to the Netherlands, abandoning on the march many stragglers and wounded, who were killed by the peasantry, and leaving all the positions he had taken to be recaptured by Henry.

Again in 1591, in the very midst of a campaign against Maurice of Nassau, sorely against his will, the duke of Parma was obliged to give up the engrossing struggle and march to relieve Rouen. He was again successful in his object, but was wounded in the arm before Caudebec, and was finally compelled to withdraw his army with considerable losses through the privations the troops had to undergo. He himself was shattered in health by so many years of continuous campaigning and exposure, and by the cares and disappointments which had befallen him. He died at Arras on the 3rd of December 1592, in the forty-seventh year of his age. The feeling that his immense services had not won for him either the gratitude or confidence of his sovereign hastened his end. He was honoured by a splendid funeral at Brussels, but his body was interred at his own capital city of Parma. He left two sons, Ranuce, who succeeded him, and Edward, who was created a cardinal in 1591 by Pope Gregory XIV. His daughter Margaret married Vincent, duke of Mantua.

See L.P. Gachard, Correspondance d’Alexandre Farnese, Prince de Parme, gouverneur général des Pays-Bas, avec Philippe II, 1578-1579 (Brussels, 1850); Fra Pietro, Alessandro Farnese, duca di Parma (Rome, 1836).

FARNESE, ELIZABETH (1692-1766), queen of Spain, born on the 25th of October 1692, was the only daughter of Odoardo II., prince of Parma. Her mother educated her in strict seclusion, but seclusion altogether failed to tame her imperious and ambitious temper. At the age of twenty-one (1714) she was married by proxy at Parma to Philip V. of Spain. The marriage was arranged by Cardinal Alberoni (q.v.), with the concurrence of the Princess des Ursins, the Camerara Mayor. On arriving at the borders of Spain, Elizabeth was met by the Princess des Ursins, but received her sternly, and, perhaps in accordance with a plan previously concerted with the king, at once ordered her to be removed from her presence and from Spain. Over the weak king Elizabeth quickly obtained complete influence. This influence was exerted altogether in support of the policy of Alberoni, one chief aim of which was to recover the ancient Italian possessions of Spain, and which actually resulted in the seizure of Sardinia and Sicily. So vigorously did she enter into this policy that, when the French forces advanced to the Pyrenees, she placed herself at the head of one division of the Spanish army. But Elizabeth’s ambition was grievously disappointed. The Triple Alliance thwarted her plans, and at length in 1720 the allies made the banishment of Alberoni a condition of peace. Sicily also had to be evacuated. And finally, all her entreaties failed to prevent the abdication of Philip, who in 1724 gave up the throne to his heir, and retired to the palace of La Granja. Seven months later, however, the death of the young king recalled him to the throne. During his later years, when he was nearly imbecile, she directed the whole policy of Spain so as to secure thrones in Italy for her sons. In 1736 she had the satisfaction of seeing her favourite scheme realized in the accession of her son Don Carlos (afterwards Charles III. of Spain) to the throne of the Two Sicilies and his recognition by the powers in the treaty of Vienna. Her second son, Philip, became duke of Parma. Elizabeth survived her husband twenty years, dying in 1766.

See Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire d’Espagne sous le règne de Philippe V, by the Marquis de St Philippe, translated by Maudave (Paris, 1756); Memoirs of Elizabeth Farnese (London, 1746); and E. Armstrong, Elizabeth Farnese, the Termagant of Spain (1892).

FARNHAM, a market town in the Guildford parliamentary division of Surrey, England, 37½ m. S.W. by W. from London by the London & South Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 6124. It lies on the left bank of the river Wey, on the southern slope of a hill rising about 700 ft. above the sea-level. The church of St Andrew is a spacious transitional Norman and Early English building, with later additions, and was formerly a chapel of ease to Waverley Abbey, of which a crypt and fragmentary remains, of Early English date, stand in the park attached to a modern residence of the same name. This was the earliest Cistercian house in England, founded in 1128 by William Gifford, bishop of Winchester. The Annales Waverlienses, published by Gale in his Scriptores and afterwards in the Record series of Chronicles, are believed to have suggested to Sir Walter Scott the name of his first novel. Farnham Castle, on a hill north of the town, the seat of the bishops of Winchester, was first built by Henry de Blois, bishop of Winchester, and brother of King Stephen; but it was razed by Henry III. It was rebuilt and garrisoned for Charles I. by Denham, from whom it was taken in 1642 by Sir W. Waller; and having been dismantled, it was restored by George Morley, bishop of Winchester (1662-1684). Farnham has a town hall and exchange in Italian style (1866), a grammar school of early foundation, and a school of science and art. It was formerly noted for its cloth manufacture. Hops of fine quality are grown in the vicinity. William Cobbett was born in the parish (1766), and is buried in the churchyard of St Andrew’s. The neighbouring mansion of Moor Park was the residence of Sir William Temple (d. 1699), and Swift worked here as his secretary. Hester Johnson, Swift’s “Stella,” was the daughter of Temple’s steward, whose cottage still stands. The town has grown in favour as a residential centre from the proximity of Aldershot Camp (3 m. N.E.).

Though there is evidence of an early settlement in the neighbourhood, the town of Farnham (Ferneham) seems to have grown up round the castle of the bishops of Winchester, who possessed the manor at the Domesday Survey. Its position at the junction of the Pilgrim’s Way and the road from Southampton to London was important. In 1205 Farnham had bailiffs, and in 1207 it was definitely a mesne borough under the bishops of Winchester. In 1247 the bishop granted the first charter, giving, among other privileges, a fair on All Saints’ Day. The burgesses surrendered the proceeds of the borough court and other rights in 1365 in return for respite of the fee farm rent; these were recovered in 1405 and rent again paid. Bishop Waynflete is said to have confirmed the original charter in 1452, and in 1566 Bishop Horne granted a new charter by which the burgesses elected 2 bailiffs and 12 burgesses annually and did service at their own courts every three weeks, the court leet being held twice a year. In resisting an attack made by the bishop in 1660 on their right of toll, the burgesses could only claim Farnham as a borough by prescription as their charters had been mislaid, but the charters were subsequently found, and after some litigation their rights were established. In the 18th century the corporation, a close body, declined, its duties being performed by the vestry, and in 1789 the one survivor resigned and handed over the town papers to the bishop. Farnham sent representatives to parliament in 1311 and 1460, on both occasions being practically the bishop’s pocket borough. In accordance with the grant of 1247 a fair was held on All Saints’ day and also on Holy Thursday; the former was afterwards held on All Souls’ Day. Farnham was early a market of importance, and in 1216 a royal grant changed the market day from Sunday to Thursday in each week. It was famous in the early 17th century for wheat and oats; hop-growing began in 1597.

FARNWORTH, an urban district in the Radcliffe-cum-Farnworth parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, on the Irwell, 3 m. S.E. of Bolton by the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway. Pop. (1901) 25,925. Cotton mills, iron foundries, brick and tile works, and collieries employ the large industrial population.

FARO, the capital of a district bearing the same name, in southern Portugal; at the terminus of the Lisbon-Faro railway, and on the Atlantic Ocean. Pop. (1900) 11,789. Faro is an episcopal see, with a Renaissance cathedral of great size, an ecclesiastical seminary, and a ruined castle surrounded by Moorish fortifications. Its broad but shallow harbour is protected on the south by the long island of Cães, and a number of sandy islets, which, being constantly enlarged by silt from the small river Fermoso, render the entrance of large vessels impossible. Fishing is an important industry, and fish, with wine, fruit, cork, baskets and sumach, are the principal articles of export. Little has been done to develop the mineral resources of the district, which include tin, lead, antimony and auriferous quartz. Faro was taken from the Moors by Alphonso III. of Portugal (1248-1279). It was sacked by the English in 1596, and nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1755.

The administrative district of Faro coincides with the ancient kingdom and province of Algarve (q.v.); pop. (1900) 255,191; area, 1937 sq. m.

FARO (from Pharaoh, a picture of the Egyptian king appearing on a card of the old French pack), a game of cards, played with a full pack. Originally the pack was held in the dealer’s left hand, but nowadays very elaborate and expensive implements are used. The dealer places the pack, after shuffling and cutting, in a dealing-box face upwards, and the cards are taken from the top of the box in couples through a slit in the side. The exposed card on top is called soda, and the last card left in the box is in hoc. The implements include counters of various colours and values, a dealing-box, a case or frame manipulated by a “case-keeper,” upon which the cards already played are arranged in sight, a shuffling-board, and score-sheets for the players. Upon the table is the “lay-out,” a complete suit of spades, enamelled on green cloth, upon or near which to place the stakes. The dealer takes two cards from the box, placing the first one near it and the second close beside it. Each deal of two cards is called a turn, and there are twenty-five such, soda and hoc not counting. The players stake upon any card they please, or in such manner as to take in several cards, reducing the amount, but increasing the chances, of winning, as at roulette. The dealer, having waved the hand, after which no more bets may be made, deals the turn, and then proceeds to gather in the stakes won by him, and to pay those he has lost. The chances as between dealer and punters, or players, are equal, except that the banker wins half the money staked on the cards of a turn should they chance to be alike. Faro is played considerably in parts of the United States, whither it is said to have been taken from France, where it had a great vogue during the reign of Louis XIV. Owing to the dishonest methods of many gambling “clubs” the game is in disrepute.

FARQUHAR, GEORGE (1677-1707), British dramatist, son of William Farquhar, a clergyman, was born in Londonderry, Ireland, in 1677. When he was seventeen he was entered as a sizar at Trinity College, Dublin, under the patronage of Dr Wiseman, bishop of Dromore. He did not long continue his studies, being, according to one account, expelled for a profane joke. Thomas Wilkes, however, states that the abrupt termination of his studies was due to the death of his patron. He became an actor on the Dublin stage, but in a fencing scene in Dryden’s Indian Emperor he forgot to exchange his sword for a foil, with results which narrowly escaped being fatal to a fellow-actor. After this accident he never appeared on the boards. He had met Robert Wilks, the famous comedian, in Dublin. Though he did not, as generally stated, go to London with Wilks, it was at his suggestion that he wrote his first play, Love and a Bottle, which was performed at Drury Lane, perhaps through Wilks’s interest, in 1698. He received from the earl of Orrery a lieutenancy in his regiment, then in Ireland, but in two letters of his dated from Holland in 1700 he says nothing of military service. His second comedy, The Constant Couple: or a Trip to the Jubilee (1699), ridiculing the preparations for the pilgrimage to Rome in the Jubilee year, met with an enthusiastic reception. Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair contributed substantially to its success. In 1701 Farquhar wrote a sequel, Sir Harry Wildair. Leigh Hunt says that Mrs Oldfield, like Wilks, played admirably well in it, but the original Lady Lurewell was Mrs Verbruggen. Mrs Oldfield is said to have been the “Penelope” of Farquhar’s letters. In 1702 Farquhar published a slight volume of miscellanies—Love and Business; in a Collection of Occasionary Verse and Epistolary Prose—containing, among other things, “A Discourse on Comedy in reference to the English Stage,” in which he defends the English neglect of the dramatic unities. “The rules of English comedy,” he says, “don’t lie in the compass of Aristotle or his followers, but in the pit, box and galleries.” In 1702 he borrowed from Fletcher’s Wild Goose Chase, The Inconstant, or the Way to win Him, in which he followed his original fairly closely except in the last act. In 1703 he married, in the expectation of a fortune, but found too late that he was deceived. It is said that he never reproached his wife, although the marriage increased his liabilities and the rest of his life was a constant struggle against poverty. His other plays are: The Stage Coach (1704), a one-act farce adapted from the French of Jean de la Chapelle in conjunction with Peter Motteux; The Twin Rivals (Drury Lane, 1702); The Recruiting Officer (Drury Lane, 1706); and The Beaux’ Stratagem (Haymarket, 1707). The Recruiting Officer was suggested to him by a recruiting expedition (1705) in Shropshire, and is dedicated to his “friends round the Wrekin.” The Beaux’ Stratagem, is the best o£ all his plays, and long kept the stage. Genest notes nineteen revivals up to 1828. Two embarrassed gentlemen travel in the country disguised as master and servant in the hope of mending their fortune. The play gives vivid pictures of the Lichfield inn with its rascally landlord, and of the domestic affairs of the Sullens. Archer, the supposed valet, whose adventurous spirit secures full play, was one of Garrick’s best parts.

Meanwhile one of his patrons, said to have been the duke of Ormond, had advised Farquhar to sell out of his regiment, and had promised to give him a captaincy in his own. Farquhar sold his commission, but the duke’s promise remained unfulfilled. Before he had finished the second act of The Beaux’ Stratagem he knew that he was stricken with a mortal illness, but it was necessary to persevere and to be “consumedly lively to the end.” He had received in advance £30 for the copyright from Lintot the bookseller. The play was staged on the 8th of March, and Farquhar lived to have his third night, and there was an extra benefit on the 29th of April, the day of his death. He left his two children to the care of his friend Wilks. Wilks obtained a benefit at the theatre for the dramatist’s widow, but he seems to have done little for the daughters. They were apprenticed to a mantua-maker, and one of them was, as late as 1764, in receipt of a pension of £20 solicited for her by Edmund Chaloner, a patron of Farquhar. She was then described as a maidservant and possessed of sentiments “fitted to her humble situation.”

The plots of Farquhar’s comedies are ingenious in conception and skilfully conducted. He has no pretensions to the brilliance of Congreve, but his amusing dialogue arises naturally out of the situation, and its wit is never strained. Sergeant Kite in the Recruiting Officer, Scrub, Archer and Boniface in The Beaux’ Stratagem are distinct, original characters which had a great success on the boards, and the unexpected incidents and adventures in which they are mixed up are represented in an irresistibly comic manner by a man who thoroughly understood the resources of the stage. The spontaneity and verve with which his adventurous heroes are drawn have suggested that in his favourite type he was describing himself. His own disposition seems to have been most lovable, and he was apparently a much gayer person than the reader might be led to suppose from the “Portrait of Himself” quoted by Leigh Hunt. The code of morals followed by these characters is open to criticism, but they are human and genial in their roguery, and compare far from unfavourably with the cynical creations of contemporary drama. The advance which he made on his immediate predecessors in dramatic construction and in general moral tone is more striking when it is remembered that he died before he was thirty.

Farquhar’s dramatic works were published in 1728, 1742 and 1772, and by Thomas Wilkes with a biography in 1775. They were included in the Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh and Farquhar (1849), with biographical and critical notices, by Leigh Hunt. See also The Dramatic Works of George Farquhar, with Life and Notes, by A.C. Ewald (2 vols., 1892); The Best Plays of George Farquhar (Mermaid series, 1906), with biographical and critical introductions, by William Archer; The Beaux’ Stratagem, edited (1898) by H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon for “The Temple Dramatists”; and D. Schmid, “George Farquhar, sein Leben und seine Original-Dramen” (1904) in Wiener Beiträge zur engl. Philol.

FARR, WILLIAM (1807-1883), English statistician, was born at Kenley, in Shropshire, on the 30th of November 1807. When nineteen he became the pupil of a doctor in Shrewsbury, also acting as dresser in the infirmary there. He then went to Paris to study medicine, but after two years returned to London, where, in 1832, he qualified as L.S.A. Next year he began to practise, but without very brilliant results, for five years later he definitely abandoned the exercise of his profession on accepting the post of compiler of abstracts in the registrar-general’s office. The commissioners for the 1841 census consulted him on several points, but did not in every case follow his advice. For the next two decennial censuses he acted as assistant-commissioner; for that of 1871 he was a commissioner, and he wrote the greater part of the reports of all. He had an ambition to become registrar-general; and when that post became vacant in 1879, he was so disappointed at the selection of Sir Brydges Henniker instead of himself, that he refused to stay any longer in the registrar’s office. He died of paralysis of the brain a year or two later, on the 14th of April 1883. A great part of Farr’s literary production is to be found in the papers which, from 1839 to 1880, he wrote for each annual report of the registrar-general on the cause of the year’s deaths in England. He was also the author of many papers on general statistics and on life-tables for insurance, some read before the Royal Statistical Society, of which he was president in 1871 and 1872, some contributed to the Lancet and other periodicals. A selection from his statistical writings was published in 1885 under the editorship of Mr Noël Humphreys.

FARRAGUT, DAVID GLASGOW (1801-1870), first admiral of the United States navy, was the son of Major George Farragut, a Catalan by descent, a Minorquin by birth, who had emigrated to America in 1776, and, after the peace, had married a lady of Scottish family and settled near Knoxville, in Tennessee; there Farragut was born on the 5th of July 1801. At the early age of nine he entered the navy, under the protection of his name-father, Captain David Porter, with whom he served in the “Essex” during her cruise in the Atlantic in 1812, and afterwards in the Pacific, until her capture by the “Phoebe,” in Valparaiso Bay, on the 28th of March 1814. He afterwards served on board the “Washington” (74) carrying the broad pennant of Commodore Chauncey in the Mediterranean, and pursued his professional and other studies under the instruction of the chaplain, Charles Folsom, with whom he contracted a lifelong friendship. Folsom was appointed from the “Washington” as U.S. consul at Tunis, and obtained leave for his pupil to pay him a lengthened visit, during which he studied not only mathematics, but also French and Italian, and acquired a familiar knowledge of Arabic and Turkish. He is said to have had a great natural aptitude for languages and in after years to have spoken several fluently.

After more than four years in the Mediterranean, Farragut returned to the States in November 1820. He then passed his examination, and in 1822 was appointed for service in what was called the “mosquito” fleet, against the pirates, who then infested the Caribbean Sea. The service was one of great exposure and privation; for two years and a half, Farragut wrote, he never owned a bed, but lay down to rest wherever he found the most comfortable berth. By the end of that time the joint action of the British and American navies had driven the pirates off the sea, and when they took to marauding on shore the Spanish governors did the rest. In 1825 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, whilst serving in the navy yard at Norfolk, where, with some breaks in sea-going ships, he continued till 1832; he then served for a commission on the coast of Brazil, and was again appointed to the yard at Norfolk.

It is needless to trace the ordinary routine of his service step by step. The officers of the U.S. navy have one great advantage which British officers are without; when on shore they are not necessarily parted from the service, but are employed in their several ranks in the different dockyards, escaping thus not only the private grievance and pecuniary difficulties of a very narrow half-pay, but also, what from a public point of view is much more important, the loss of professional aptitude, and of that skill which comes from unceasing practice. On the 8th of September 1841 Farragut was promoted to the rank of commander, and on the 14th of September 1855 to that of captain. At this time he was in charge of the navy yard, Mare Island, California, from which post he was recalled in 1858, and appointed to the “Brooklyn” frigate, the command of which he held for the next two years. When the war of secession broke out in 1861, he was “waiting orders” at Norfolk. By birth and marriage he was a Southerner, and the citizens of Norfolk counted on his throwing in his lot with them; but professional pride, and affection for the flag under which he had served for more than fifty years, held him true to his allegiance; he passionately rejected the proposals of his fellow-townsmen, and as it was more than hinted to him that his longer stay in Norfolk might be dangerous, he hastily quitted that place, and offered his services to the government at Washington. These were at once accepted; he was requested to sit on the Naval Retiring Board—a board then specially constituted for clearing the navy of unfit or disloyal officers—and a few months later was appointed to the command of the “Western Gulf Blockading Squadron,” with the rank of flag-officer, and ordered to proceed forthwith, in the “Hartford,” to the Gulf of Mexico, to collect such vessels as could be spared from the blockade, to proceed up the Mississippi, to reduce the defences which guarded the approaches to New Orleans, and to take and hold the city. All this Farragut executed to the letter, with a skill and caution that won for him the love of his followers, and with a dash and boldness that gained him the admiration of the public and the popular name of “Old Salamander.” The passage of the Mississippi was forced on the 24th of April 1862, and New Orleans surrendered on the 26th; this was immediately followed by the operations against Vicksburg, from which, however, Farragut was compelled to withdraw, having relearnt the old lesson that against heavy earthworks, crowning hills of sufficient height, a purely naval attack is unavailing; it was not till the following summer, and after a long siege, that Vicksburg surrendered to a land force under General Grant. During this time the service on the Mississippi continued both difficult and irksome; nor until the river was cleared could Farragut seriously plan operations against Mobile, a port to which the fall of New Orleans had given increased importance. Even then he was long delayed by the want of monitors with which to oppose the ironclad vessels of the enemy. It was the end of July 1864 before he was joined by these monitors; and on the 5th of August, undismayed by the loss of his leading ship, the monitor “Tecumseh,” sunk by a torpedo, he forced the passage into the bay, destroyed or captured the enemy’s ships, including the ram “Tennessee” bearing Admiral Buchanan’s flag, and took possession of the forts. The town was not occupied till the following April, but with the loss of its harbour it ceased to have any political or strategical importance.

With this Farragut’s active service came to an end; for though in September 1864 he was offered the command of the force intended for the reduction of Wilmington, the state of his health, after the labours and anxieties of the past three years, in a trying climate, compelled him to decline it and to ask to be recalled. He accordingly returned to New York in December, and was received with the wildest display of popular enthusiasm. It was then that the Government instituted the rank of vice-admiral, previously unknown in the American service. Farragut was promoted to it, and in July 1866 was further promoted to the rank of admiral. In 1867, with his flag flying in the “Franklin,” he visited Europe. The appointment was an honourable distinction without political or naval import: the “Franklin” was, to all intents, for the time being, a yacht at Farragut’s disposal; and her arrival in the different ports was the signal for international courtesies, entertainments and social gaiety. She returned to America in 1868, and Farragut retired into private life. Two years later, on the 14th of August 1870, he died at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Farragut was twice married, and left, by his second wife, a son, Loyall Farragut, who, in 1878, published a Life of his father “embodying his Journal and Letters.” Another Life (1892), by Captain A.T. Mahan, though shorter, has a greater value from the professional point of view, by reason of the critical appreciation of Farragut’s services.

(J. K. L.)

FARRANT, RICHARD, composer of English church music, flourished during the 16th century. Very little is known about him. Fétis gives 1530 as the date of his birth, but on what authority does not appear. He became a gentleman of the Chapel Royal in the reign of Edward VI., but resigned his post in 1564 on being appointed master of the children of St George’s chapel, Windsor. In this capacity he presented a play before the queen at Shrovetide 1568, and again at Christmas of the same year, receiving on each occasion the sum of £6: 13: 4d. In November 1569 he was reinstated as gentleman of the Chapel Royal. It is stated by Hawkins (History of Music, vol. iii. 279) that Farrant was also one of the clerks and organists of St George’s chapel, Windsor, and that he retained these posts till his death. Many of his compositions are printed in the collections of Barnard and Boyce. Among the most admired of them are a service in G minor, and the anthems “Call to remembrance” and “Hide not thou thy face.” It is doubtful whether Farrant is entitled to the credit of the authorship of the beautiful anthem “Lord, for thy tender mercies’ sake.” No copy of the music under his name appeared in print till 1800, although it had been earlier attributed to him. Some writers have named John Hilton, and others Thomas Tallis, as the composer. From entries in the Old Check Book of the Chapel Royal (edited for the Camden Society by Dr Rimbault) it appears that Farrant died, not in 1585, as Hawkins states, but on the 30th of November 1580 or 1581.

FARRAR, FREDERIC WILLIAM (1831-1903), English divine, was born on the 7th of August 1831, in the Fort of Bombay, where his father, afterwards vicar of Sidcup, Kent, was then a missionary. His early education was received in King William’s College, Castletown, Isle of Man, a school whose external surroundings are reproduced in his popular schoolboy tale, Eric; or, Little by Little. In 1847 he entered King’s College, London. Through the influence of F.D. Maurice he was led to the study of Coleridge, whose writings had a profound influence upon his faith and opinions. He proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1851, and in the following year took the degree of B.A. at the university of London. In 1854 he took his degree as fourth junior optime, and fourth in the first class of the classical tripos. In addition to other college prizes he gained the chancellor’s medal for the English prize poem on the search for Sir John Franklin in 1852, the Le Bas prize and the Norrisian prize. He was elected fellow of Trinity College in 1856.

On leaving the university Farrar became an assistant-master under G.E.L. Cotton at Marlborough College. In November 1855 he was appointed an assistant-master at Harrow, where he remained for fifteen years. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1864, university preacher in 1868, honorary chaplain to the queen in 1869 and Hulsean lecturer in 1870. In 1871 he was appointed headmaster of Marlborough College, and in the following year he became chaplain-in-ordinary to the queen. In 1876 he was appointed canon of Westminster and rector of St Margaret’s, Westminster. He took his D.D. degree in 1874, the first under the new regulations at Cambridge. Farrar began his literary labours with the publication of his schoolboy story Eric in 1858, succeeded in the following year by Julian Home and Lyrics of Life, and in 1862 by St Winifred’s; or the World of School. He had already published a work on The Origin of Language, and followed it up by a series of works on grammar and scholastic philology, including Chapters on Language (1865); Greek Grammar Rules (1865); Greek Syntax (1866); and Families of Speech (1869). He edited Essays on a Liberal Education in 1868; and published Seekers after God in the Sunday Library (1869). It was by his theological works, however, that Farrar attained his greatest popularity. His Hulsean lectures were published in 1870 under the title of The Witness of History to Christ. The Life of Christ, which was published in 1874, speedily passed through a great number of editions, and is still in much demand. It reveals considerable powers of imagination and eloquence, and was partly inspired by a personal knowledge of the sacred localities depicted. In 1877 appeared In the Days of My Youth, sermons preached in the chapel of Marlborough College; and during the same year his volume of sermons on Eternal Hope—in which he called in question the dogma of everlasting punishment—caused much controversy in religious circles and did much to mollify the harsh theology of an earlier age. There is little doubt that his boldness and liberality of thought barred his elevation to the episcopate. In 1879 appeared The Life and Works of St Paul, and this was succeeded in 1882 by The Early Days of Christianity. Then came in order of publication the following works: Everyday Christian Life; or, Sermons by the Way (1887); Lives of the Fathers (1888); Sketches of Church History (1889); Darkness and Dawn, a story of the Neronic persecution (1891); The Voice from Sinai (1892); The Life of Christ as Represented in Art (1894); a work on Daniel (1895); Gathering Clouds, a tale of the days of Chrysostom (1896); and The Bible, its Meaning and Supremacy (1896). Farrar was a copious contributor of articles to various magazines, encyclopaedias and theological commentaries. In 1883 he was made archdeacon of Westminster and rural dean; in 1885 he was appointed Bampton lecturer at Oxford, and took for his subject “The History of Interpretation.” He was appointed dean of Canterbury in 1895. From 1890 to 1895 he was chaplain to the speaker of the House of Commons, and in 1894 he was appointed deputy-clerk of the closet to Queen Victoria. He died at Canterbury on the 22nd of March 1903.

As a theologian Farrar occupied a position midway between the Evangelical party and the Broad Church; while as a somewhat rhetorical preacher and writer he exerted a commanding influence over wide circles of readers. He was an ardent temperance and social reformer, and was one of the founders of the institution known as the Anglican Brotherhood, a religious band with modern aims and objects.

See his Life, by his son R. Farrar (1904).

FARREN, ELIZABETH (c. 1759-1829), English actress, was the daughter of George Farren, an actor. Her first London appearance was in 1777 as Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. Subsequent successes established her reputation and she became the natural successor to Mrs Abington when the latter left Drury Lane in 1782. The parts of Hermione, Olivia, Portia and Juliet were in her repertory, but her Lady Betty Modish, Lady Townly, Lady Fanciful, Lady Teazle and similar parts were her favourites. In 1797 she married Edward, 12th earl of Derby (1752-1834).

FARREN, WILLIAM (1786-1861), English actor, was born on the 13th of May 1786, the son of an actor (b. 1725) of the same name, who played leading rôles from 1784 to 1795 at Covent Garden. His first appearance on the stage was at Plymouth at the Theatre Royal, then under the management of his brother, in Love à la mode. His first London appearance was in 1818 at Covent Garden as Sir Peter Teazle, a part with which his name is always associated. He played at Covent Garden every winter until 1828, and began in 1824 a series of summer engagements at the Haymarket which also lasted some years. At these two theatres he played an immense variety of comedy characters. From 1828 until 1837 he was at Drury Lane, where he essayed a wider range, including Polonius and Caesar. He was again at Covent Garden for a few years, and next joined Benjamin Webster at the Haymarket, as stage-manager as well as actor. In 1843 at the close of his performance of the title-part in Mark Lemon’s Old Parr, he was stricken with paralysis on the stage. He was, however, able to reappear the following year, and he remained at the Haymarket ten years more, though his acting never again reached its former level. For a time he managed the Strand, and, 1850-1853, was lessee of the Olympic. During his later years he confined himself to old men parts, in which he was unrivalled. In 1855 he made his final appearance at the Haymarket, as Lord Ogleby in a scene from the Clandestine Marriage. He died in London on the 24th of September 1861. In 1825 he had married the actress Mrs Faucit, mother of Miss Helena Saville Faucit (Lady Martin), and he left two sons, Henry (1826-1860) and William (1825-1908), both actors. The former was the father of Ellen [Nellie] Farren (1848-1904), long famous for boy’s parts in Gaiety musical burlesques, in the days of Edward Terry and Fred Leslie. As Jack Sheppard, and in similar rôles, she had a unique position at the Gaiety, and was an unrivalled public favourite. From 1892 her health failed, and her retirement, coupled with Fred Leslie’s death, brought to an end the type of Gaiety burlesque associated with them.

FARRER, THOMAS HENRY FARRER, 1st Baron (1819-1899), English civil servant and statistician, was the son of Thomas Farrer, a solicitor in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Born in London on the 24th of June 1819, he was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1840. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1844, but retired from practice in the course of a few years. He entered the public service in 1850 as secretary to the naval (renamed in 1853 the marine) department of the Board of Trade. In 1865 he was promoted to be one of the joint secretaries of the Board of Trade, and in 1867 became permanent secretary. His tenure of this office, which he held for upwards of twenty years, was marked by many reforms and an energetic administration. Not only was he an advanced Liberal in politics, but an uncompromising Free-trader of the strictest school. He was created a baronet for his services at the Board of Trade in 1883, and in 1886 he retired from office. During the same year he published a work entitled Free Trade versus Fair Trade, in which he dealt with an economic controversy then greatly agitating the public mind. He had already, in 1883, written a volume on The State in its Relation to Trade. In 1889 he was co-opted by the Progressives an alderman of the London County Council, of which he became vice-chairman in 1890. His efficiency and ability in this capacity were warmly recognized; but in the course of time divergencies arose between his personal views and those of many of his colleagues. The tendency towards socialistic legislation which became apparent was quite at variance with his principles of individual enterprise and responsibility. He consequently resigned his position. In 1893 he was raised to the peerage. From this time forward he devoted much of his energy and leisure to advocating his views at the Cobden Club, the Political Economy Club, on the platform, and in the public press. Especially were his efforts directed against the opinions of the Fair Trade League, and upon this and other controversies on economic questions he wrote able, clear, and uncompromising letters, which left no doubt that he still adhered to the doctrines of free trade as advocated by its earliest exponents. In 1898 he published his Studies in Currency. He died at Abinger Hall, Dorking, on the 11th of October 1899. He was succeeded in the title by his eldest son Thomas Cecil (b. 1859).

FARRIER, and FARRIERY (from Lat. ferrarius, a blacksmith, ferrum, iron). Farrier is the name given generally either to the professional shoer of horses or in a more extended sense to a practitioner of the veterinary art; and farriery is the term for his business. Primarily the art of farriery is identical with that of the blacksmith, in so far as he makes and fixes shoes on horses (see Horse-Shoes); he is liable in law for negligence, as one who holds himself out as skilled; and he has a lien on the animal for his expenses. William the Conqueror is supposed to have introduced horse-shoeing into England, and the art had an important place through the middle ages, the days of chivalry, and the later developments of equitation. In modern times it has been closely allied with the general progress in veterinary science, and in the knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the horse’s foot and hoof.

See Fisher, The Farrier (1893); Lungwitz, Text-Book of Horse-shoeing (Eng. trans., 1898).

FARS (the name Farsistan is not used), one of the five mamlikats (great provinces) of Persia, extending along the northern shore of the Persian Gulf and bounded on the west by Arabistan, on the north by Isfahan and on the east by Kerman. It lies between 49° 30′ and 56° 10′ E. and 26° 20′ and 31° 45′ N. and has an area of nearly 60,000 sq. m. Fars is the same word as the Greek Persis, and, originally the name of only a part of the Persian empire (Iran), has become the name which Europeans have applied to the whole (see Persis). The province is popularly, but not for administrative purposes, divided according to climate into germsīr and sardsīr, or the warm and cold regions. The former extends from the sea to the central chain of hills and contains all the lowlands and many mountainous districts, some of the latter rising to an elevation of between 3000 and 4000 ft. and the sardsīr comprises the remaining and northern districts of the province.

In Arrian’s relation of the voyage of Nearchus (Indica, 40), these two regions are well described. “The first part of Persis which lies along the Persian Gulf is hot, sandy and barren and only the date palm thrives there. The other part comprehends inner Persis lying northwards; it enjoys a pleasant climate and has fertile and well-watered plains, gardens with trees of all kinds, rich pasturages and forests abounding with game; with the exception of the olive all fruits are produced in profusion, particularly the vine. Horses and other draught animals are reared in the province, and there are several lakes frequented by water-fowl, and streams of clear water flow through it, as for instance the Kyros (Kur) formed by the junction of the Medos and Araxes.”

The mountains of Fars may be considered as a continuation of the Zagros and run parallel to the shores of the Persian Gulf. They comprise several ranges which the roads from the sea to the interior have to cross at right angles, thereby rendering communication and transport very difficult. The highest of the mountains of Fars (14,000 ft.) is the Kuh Dinā in the north-western part of the province. Of the rivers of Fars only three important ones flow into the sea: (1) the Mand (Arrian’s Sitakos), Karaaghach in its upper course; (2) the Shapur or Khisht river (Granis); (3) the Tab (Oroatis). Some rivers, notably the Kur (Kyros, Araxes) which flows into the Bakhtegan lake east of Shiraz, drain into inland depressions or lakes.

The capital of the province is Shiraz, and the subdivision in districts, the chief places of the districts and their estimated population, and the number of inhabited villages in each as they appear in lists dated 1884 and 1905 are shown on the following page.

Name of District. Chief Place or Seat of Government. Number of inhabited Villages in District.

Name. Population.

1 Abādeh Iklīd Abādeh 4,000 33

2 Abādeh-Tashk Tashk 600 8

3 Abarj Dashtek 2,000 6

4 Abbāsi

(1) Bander Abbāsi1 and villages Bander Abbāsi 10,000 14

(2) Issīn and Taziān Issīn 6

(3) Shamil Shamil 1,000 18

(4) Moghistan Ziarat 10

(5) Mināb Mināb 4,000 23

5 Afzar Nī-mdeh 12

6 ‘Alemrūd Sabzpushan 1,000 16

7 Arb’ah (the four)

(1) Deh Rūd

(2) Deh Ram Deh Ram 1,500 19

(3) Hengam

(4) Rudbāl

8 Ardakān Ardakān 5,000 10

9 Arsinjan Arsinjan 5,000 25

10 Asīr Asīr 500 10

11 Baiza Baiza 2,000 55

12 Bī-dshahr and Juvī-m Bī-dshahr 3,000 23

13 Bovanāt Suriān 500 23

14 Darāb Darāb 5,000 62

15 Dashti

(1) Bardistan Bander Dair 1,000 28

(2) Buluk Bushgān 18

(3) Māndistan Kāki 1,500 40

(4) Tassūj Tang Bagh 500 11

(5) Shumbeh Shumbeh 15

16 Dashtistān

(1) Angāli Haftjūsh 10

(2) Ahrom Ahrom 1,500 5

(3) Borazjan Borazjan 4,000 19

(4) Bushire1 Bushire 25,000 20

(5) Daliki Daliki 1,500 7

(6) Gonāvah Gonāvah 1,000 12

(7) Hayāt Daūd Bander Rig 1,000 6

(8) Khurmuj Khurmuj 1,000 5

(9) Rūd Hillah Kelat Sukhteh 10

(10) Shaban Kareh Deh Kohneh 27

(11) Tangistan Tangistan 1,000 31

(12) Zengeneh Samal 750 4

(13) Zirāh Zirāh 6

17 Dizkurd Cherkes 500 6

18 Famur Pagah 300 3

19 Ferrashband Ferrashband 1,000 14

20 Fessa Fessa 5,000 40

21 Firuzabad Firuzabad 4,000 20

22 Gillehdār Gillehdār 1,000 43

23 Hūmeh of Shiraz Zerkān 1,000 89

24 Istahbanat Istahbanat 10,000 12

25 Jahrum Jahrum 10,000 33

26 Jireh Ishfāyikān 23

27 Kamfiruz Palangeri 34

28 Kamin Kalilek 11

29 Kazerun Kazerun 8,000 46

30 Kavār Kavār 26

31 Kir and Karzīn Kir 1,000 23

32 Khafr Khafr 1,000 41

33 Khajeh Zanjiran 500 15

34 Khisht Khisht 2,500 25

35 Khunj Khunj 1,500 27

36 Kongān Bander Kongān 12

37 Kuh Gilū and Behbahan Behbahan 10,000 182

38 Kurbāl Gavkan 600 67

39 Kuh i Marreh Shikeft Shikeft 41

40 Kunkuri Kazian 29

41 Laristan

(1) Lar Lar 8,000 34

(2) Bikhah Ihsham Bairam 11

(3) Bikhah Fal Ishkenān 10

(4) Jehāngiriyeh Bastak 4,000 30

(5) Shib Kūh Bander Chārak 36

(6) Fūmistan or Gavbandi Gāvbandi 13

(7) Kauristān Kauristān 4

(8) Lingah1 Bander Lingah 10,000 11

(9) Mazāyijan Mazāyijan 6

42 Mahūr Milāti Jemalgird 5

43 Maimand Maimand 5,000 14

44 Maliki Bander Assalu 1,000 25

45 Mamasenni (Shūlistan)

(1) Bekesh 8

(2) Javīdi or Jāvi 6

(3) Dushmanziaris 16

(4) Rustami Kal‘ah Safid 26

(5) Fahlian 7

(6) Kākān 5

46 Māyin Māyin 8

47 Mervast and Herāt Mervast 14

48 Mervdasht

(1) Upper Khafrek 14

(2) Lower Khafrek Fathabad 1,250 16

(3) Mervdasht 22

49 Meshhed Mader Sulimān Murghāb 800 6

50 Nīrīz Nīrīz 9,000 24

51 Ramjird Jashian 36

52 Rūdan and Ahmedī Dehbariz 21

53 Sab‘ah (the seven)

(1) Bīvunj (Bī-vanej) Durz 14

(2) Hasanabad Hasanabad 7

(3) Tarom Tarun 2,000 15

(4) Fāraghān Fāraghān 1,500 13

(5) Forg Forg 3,000 18

(6) Fīn and Guhrah Fīn 13

(7) Gileh Gāh (abandoned) Ziaret 1,000 11

54 Sarchahān

55 Sarhad Chahār Dungeh

(1) Dasht Ujān

(2) Dasht Khosro va Shirin Kūshk 31

(3) Dasht Khūngasht

(4) Dasht Kushk Zard

56 Sarhad Shesh Nahīyeh

(1) Pādinā (foot of Mount Dinā Khūr

(2) Hennā Hennā

(3) Samiram Samiram

(4) Felārd Felārd 24

(5) Vardasht Germabad

(6) Vank Vank

57 Sarvistan Sarvistan 4,500 23

58 Shiraz (town) in 1884 53,6072 . .

59 Siyākh Darinjān 13

60 Simkān Dūzeh 28

The above sixty districts are grouped into eighteen sub-provinces under governors appointed by the governor-general of Fars, but the towns of Bushire, Lingah and Bander Abbasi, together with the villages in their immediate neighbourhood, form a separate government known as that of the “Persian Gulf Ports” (Benādir i Khalij i Fars), under a governor appointed from Teheran. The population of the province has been estimated at 750,000 and the yearly revenue it pays to the state amounts to about £150,000. Many districts are fertile, but some, particularly those in the south-eastern part of the province, do not produce sufficient grain for the requirements of the sparse population. In consequence of droughts, ravages of locusts and misgovernment by local governors the province has been much impoverished and hundreds of villages are in ruins and deserted. About a third of the population is composed of turbulent and lawless nomads who, when on the march between their winter and summer camping grounds, frequently render the roads insecure and occasionally plunder whole districts, leaving the inhabitants without means of subsistence.

The province produces much wheat, barley, rice, millet, cotton, but the authorities every now and then prohibiting the export of cereals, the people generally sow just as much as they think will suffice for their own wants. Much tobacco of excellent quality, principally for consumption in Persia, is also grown (especially in Fessa, Darab and Jahrom) and a considerable quantity of opium, much of it for export to China, is produced. Salt, lime and gypsum are abundant. There are also some oil wells at Daliki, near Bushire, but several attempts to tap the oil have been unsuccessful. There are no valuable oyster-banks in Persian waters, and all the Persian Gulf pearls are obtained from banks on the coast of Arabia and near Bahrein.

(A. H.-S.)

1 Are forming separate administrative division of “Persian Gulf Ports.”

2 Persian census in 1884; 25,284 males, 28,323 females.

FARTHING (A.S. feórtha, fourth, +ing, diminutive), the smallest English coin, equal to the fourth of a penny. It became a regular part of the coinage from the reign of Edward I., and was, up to the reign of Mary, a silver coin. No farthing was struck in the reign of Elizabeth, but a silver three-farthing piece was issued in that reign, with a profile bust of the queen crowned, with a rose behind her head, and inscribed “E.D.G. Rosa sine spina.” The copper farthing was first introduced in the reign of James I., a patent being given to Lord Harington of Exton in 1613 for the issue of copper tokens of this denomination. It was nominally of six grains’ weight, but was usually heavier. Properly, however, the copper farthing dates from the reign of Charles II., in whose reign also was issued a tin farthing, with a small copper plug in the centre, and an inscription on the edge, “Nummorum famulus 1684.” No farthings were actually issued in the reign of Queen Anne, though a number of patterns were prepared (see Numismatics: medieval section, England). In 1860 the copper farthing was superseded by one struck in bronze. In 1842 a proclamation was issued giving currency to half-farthings, and there were several issues, but they were demonetized in 1869. In 1897 the practice was adopted of darkening farthings before issue, to prevent their being mistaken for half-sovereigns.

FARTHINGALE (from the O. Fr. verdagalle, or vertugalle, a corruption of the Spanish name of the article, verdagado, from verdago, a rod or stick), a case or hoop, originally of bent rods, but afterwards made of whalebone, upon which were hung the voluminous skirts of a woman’s dress. The fashion was introduced into England from Spain in the 16th century. In its most exaggerated shape, at the beginning of the 17th century, the top of the farthingale formed a flat circular surface projecting at right angles to the bodice (see Costume).

FARUKHABAD, Farrakhabad, or Furruckabad, a city and district of British India in the Agra division of the United Provinces. The city is near the right bank of the Ganges, 87 m. by rail from Cawnpore. It forms a joint municipality with Fatehgarh, the civil headquarters of the district with a military cantonment. Pop. (1901) 67,338. At Fatehgarh is the government gun-carriage factory; and other industries include cotton-printing and the manufacture of gold lace, metal vessels and tents.

The District of Farukhabad has an area of 1685 sq. m. It is a flat alluvial plain in the middle Doab. The principal rivers are: the Ganges, which has a course of 87 m. either bordering on or passing through the district, but is not at all times navigable by large boats throughout its entire course; the Kali-nadi (84 m.) and the Isan-nadi (42 m.), both tributaries of the Ganges; and the Arind-nadi, which, after a course of 20 m. in the south of the district, passes into Cawnpore. The principal products are rice, wheat, barley, millets, pulses, cotton, sugar-cane, potatoes, &c. The grain crops, however, are insufficient for local wants, and grain is largely imported from Oudh and Rohilkhand. The district is, therefore, liable to famine, and it was severely visited by this calamity six times during the 19th century—in 1803-1804, 1815-1816, 1825-1826, 1837-1838, 1868-1869 and 1899-1900. Farukhabad is one of the healthiest districts in the Doab, but fevers are prevalent during August and September. The average annual mean temperature is almost 80° F.; the average annual rainfall, 29.4 in.

In the early part of the 18th century, when the Mogul empire was breaking up, Mahommed Khan, a Bangash Afghan from a village near Kaimganj, governor of Allahabad and later of Malwa, established a considerable state of which the present district of Farukhabad was the nucleus, founding the city of Farukhabad in 1714. After his death in 1743, his son and successor Kaim Khan was embroiled by Safdar Jang, the nawab wazir of Oudh, with the Rohillas, in battle with whom he lost his life in 1749. In 1750 his brother, Ahmad Khan, recovered the Farukhabad territories; but Safdar Jang called in the Mahrattas, and a struggle for the possession of the country began, which ended in 1771, on the death of Ahmad Khan, by its becoming tributary to Oudh. In 1801 the nawab wazir ceded to the British his lands in this district, with the tribute due from the nawab of Farukhabad, who gave up his sovereign rights in 1802. In 1804 the Mahrattas, under Holkar, ravaged this tract, but were utterly routed by Lord Lake at the town of Farukhabad. During the mutiny Farukhabad shared the fate of other districts, and passed entirely out of British hands for a time. The native troops, who had for some time previously evinced a seditious spirit, finally broke into rebellion on the 18th of June 1857, and placed the titular nawab of Farukhabad on the throne. The English military residents took shelter in the fort, which they held until the 4th of July, when, the fort being undermined, they endeavoured to escape by the river. One boat succeeded in reaching Cawnpore, but only to fall into the hands of Nana. Its occupants were made prisoners, and perished in the massacre of the 10th of July. The other boat was stopped on its progress down the river, and all those in it were captured or killed, except four who escaped. The prisoners were conveyed back to Fatehgarh, and murdered there by the nawab on the 19th of July. The rebels were defeated in several engagements, and on the 3rd of January 1858 the English troops recaptured Fatehgarh fort; but it was not till May that order was thoroughly re-established. In 1901 the population was 925,812, showing an increase of 8% in one decade. Part of the district is watered by distributaries of the Ganges canal; it is traversed throughout its length by the Agra-Cawnpore line of the Rajputana railway, and is also served by a branch of the East Indian system. Tobacco, opium, potatoes and fruit, cotton-prints, scent and saltpetre are among the principal exports.

FASCES, in Roman antiquities, bundles of elm or birch rods from which the head of an axe projected, fastened together by a red strap. Nothing is known of their origin, the tradition that represents them as borrowed by one of the kings from Etruria resting on insufficient grounds. As the emblem of official authority, they were carried by the lictors, in the left hand and on the left shoulder, before the higher Roman magistrates; at the funeral of a deceased magistrate they were carried behind the bier. The lictors and the fasces were so inseparably connected that they came to be used as synonymous terms. The fasces originally represented the power over life and limb possessed by the kings, and after the abolition of the monarchy, the consuls, like the kings, were preceded by twelve fasces. Within the precincts of the city the axe was removed, in recognition of the right of appeal (provocat-io) to the people in a matter of life and death; outside Rome, however, each consul retained the axe, and was preceded by his own lictors, not merely by a single accensus (supernumerary), as was originally the case within the city when he was not officiating. Later, the lictors preceded the officiating consul, and walked behind the other. Valerius Publicola, the champion of popular rights, further established the custom that the fasces should be lowered before the people, as the real representatives of sovereignty (Livy ii. 7; Florus i. 9; Plutarch, Publicola, 10); lowering the fasces was also the manner in which an inferior saluted a superior magistrate. A dictator, as taking the place of the two consuls, had 24 fasces (including the axe even within the city); most of the other magistrates had fasces varying in number, with the exception of the censors, who, as possessing no executive authority, had none. Fasces were given to the Flamen Dialis and (after 42 B.C.) even to the Vestals. During the times of the republic, a victorious general, who had been saluted by the title of imperator by his soldiers, had his fasces crowned with laurel (Cicero, Pro Ligario, 3). Later, under the empire, when the emperor received the title for life on his accession, it became restricted to him, and the laurel was regarded as distinctive of the imperial fasces (see Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, i., 1887, p. 373).

FASCIA (Latin for a bandage or fillet), a term used for many objects which resemble a band in shape; thus in anatomy it is applied to the layers of fibrous connective tissue which sheathe the muscles or cover various parts or organs in the body, and in zoology, and particularly in ornithology, to bands or stripes of colour. In architecture the word is used of the bands into which the architrave of the Ionic and Corinthian orders is subdivided; their origin would seem to have been derived from the superimposing of two or more beams of timber to span the opening between columns and to support a superincumbent weight; the upper beam projected slightly in front of the lower, and similar projections were continued in the stone or marble beam though in one block. In the Roman Corinthian order the fasciae, still projecting one in front of the other, were subdivided by small mouldings sometimes carved. The several bands are known as the first or upper fascia, the second or middle fascia and the third or lower fascia. The term is sometimes applied to flat projecting bands in Renaissance architecture when employed as string courses. It is also used, though more commonly in the form “facia,” of the band or plate over a shop-front, on which the name and occupation of the tradesman is written.

FASCINATION (from Lat. fascinare, to bewitch, probably connected with the Gr. βασκαίνειν, to speak ill of, to bewitch), the art of enchanting or bewitching, especially through the influence of the “evil eye,” and so properly of the exercise of an evil influence over the reason or will. The word is thus used of the supposed paralysing attraction exercised by some reptiles on their victims. It is also applied to a particular hypnotic condition, marked by muscular contraction, but with consciousness and power of remembrance left. In a quite general sense, fascination means the exercise of any charm or strong attraction.

FASCINE (from the Lat. fascina, fascis, a bundle of sticks), a large faggot of brushwood used in the revetments of earthworks and for other purposes of military engineering. The British service pattern of fascine is 18 ft. long; it is tied as tightly as possible at short intervals, and the usual diameter is 9 in. Similar bundles of wood formed part of the foundations of the early lake-dwellings, and in modern engineering fascines are used in making rough roads over marshy ground and in building river and sea walls and breakwaters.

FASHION (adapted from Fr. façon, Lat. factio, making, facere, to do or make), the action of making, hence the shape or form which anything takes in the process of making. It is thus used in the sense of the pattern, kind, sort, manner or mode in which a thing is done. It is particularly used of the common or customary way in which a thing is done, and so is applied to the manner or custom prevalent at or characteristic of a particular period, especially of the manner of dress, &c., current at a particular period in any rank of society, for which the French term is modes (see Costume).

FASHODA (renamed, 1904, Kodok), a post on the west bank of the Upper Nile, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, in 9° 53′ N., 32° 8′ E., 459 m. S., by river, of Khartum. It is the headquarters of the mudiria (province) of the Upper Nile. The station is built on a flat peninsula connected by a narrow strip of land with a ridge which runs parallel with the river. The surrounding country is mostly deep swamp and the station is most unhealthy; mosquitoes are present in millions. The climate is always damp and the temperature rarely below 98° in the shade. The government offices are well-built brick structures. In front of the station is a long low island, and when the Nile is at its lowest this channel becomes dry. Several roads from Kordofan converge on the Nile at this point, and near the station is the residence of the mek, or king, of the Shilluk tribe, whose designation of the post was adopted when it was decided to abandon the use of Fashoda. At Lul, 18 m. farther up stream, is an Austrian Roman Catholic mission station.

An Egyptian military post was established at Fashoda in 1865. It was then a trading station of some importance, slaves being the chief commodity dealt in. In 1883-1884 the place fell into the hands of the Mahdists. On the 10th of July 1898 it was occupied by a French force from the Congo under Commandant J.B. Marchand, a circumstance which gave rise to a state of great tension between Great Britain and France. On the 11th of December following the French force withdrew, returning home via Abyssinia (see Africa, § 5, and Egypt: History, and Military Operations).

FAST AND LOOSE, a cheating game played at fairs by sharpers. A strap, usually in the form of a belt, is rolled or doubled up with a loop in the centre, and laid edgewise on a table. The swindler then bets that the loop cannot be caught with a stick or skewer as he unrolls the belt. As this looks to be easy to do the bet is often taken, but the sharper unrolls the belt in such a manner as to make the catching of the loop practically impossible. Centuries ago it was much practised by gipsies, a circumstance alluded to by Shakespeare in Anthony and Cleopatra (iv. 12):

“Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose, Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.”

From this game is taken the colloquial expression “to play fast and loose.” At the present day it is called “prick the garter” or “prick the loop.”

FASTI, in Roman antiquities, plural of the Latin adjective fastus, but more commonly used as a substantive, derived from fas, meaning what is binding, or allowable, by divine law, as opposed to jus, or human law. Fasti dies thus came to mean the days on which law business might be transacted without impiety, corresponding to our own “lawful days”; the opposite of the dies fasti were the dies nefasti, on which, on various religious grounds, the courts could not sit. The word fasti itself then came to be used to denote lists or registers of various kinds, which may be divided into two great classes.

1. Fasti Diurni, divided into urbani and rustici, a kind of official year-book, with dates and directions for religious ceremonies, court-days, market-days, divisions of the month, and the like. Until 304 B.C. the lore of the calendaria remained the exclusive and lucrative monopoly of the priesthood; but in that year Gnaeus Flavius, a pontifical secretary, introduced the custom of publishing in the forum tables containing the requisite information, besides brief references to victories, triumphs, prodigies, &c. This list was the origin of the public Roman calendar, in which the days were divided into weeks of eight days each, and indicated by the letters A-H. Each day was marked by a certain letter to show its nature; thus the letters F., N., N.P., F.P., Q. Rex C.F., C., EN., stood for fastus, nefastus, nefastus in some unexplained sense, fastus priore, quando rex (sacrorum) comitiavit fastus, comitialis and intercisus. The dies intercisi were partly fasti and partly nefasti. Ovid’s Fasti is a poetical description of the Roman festivals of the first six months, written to illustrate the Fasti published by Julius Caesar after he remodelled the Roman year. Upon the cultivators fewer feasts, sacrifices, ceremonies and holidays were enjoined than on the inhabitants of cities; and the rustic fasti contained little more than the ceremonies of the calends, nones and ides, the fairs, signs of zodiac, increase and decrease of the days, the tutelary gods of each month, and certain directions for rustic labours to be performed each month.

2. Fasti Magistrales, Annales or Historici, were concerned with the several feasts, and everything relating to the gods, religion and the magistrates; to the emperors, their birthdays, offices, days consecrated to them, with feasts and ceremonies established in their honour or for their prosperity. They came to be denominated magni, by way of distinction from the bare calendar, or fasti diurni. Of this class, the fasti consulares, for example, were a chronicle or register of time, in which the several years were denoted by the respective consuls, with the principal events which happened during their consulates. The fasti triumphales and sacerdotales contained a list in chronological order of persons who had obtained a triumph, together with the name of the conquered people, and of the priests. The word fasti thus came to be used in the general sense of “annals” or “historical records.” A famous specimen of the same class are the fasti Capitolini, so called because they were deposited in the Capitol by Alexander Farnese, after their excavation from the Roman forum in 1547. They are chiefly a nominal list of statesmen, victories, triumphs, &c., from the expulsion of the kings to the death of Augustus. A considerable number of fasti of the first class have also been discovered; but none of them appear to be older than the time of Augustus. The Praenestine calendar, discovered in 1770, arranged by the famous grammarian Verrius Flaccus, contains the months of January, March, April and December, and a portion of February. The tablets give an account of festivals, as also of the triumphs of Augustus and Tiberius. There are still two complete calendars in existence, an official list by Furius Dionysius Philocalus (A.D. 354), and a Christian version of the official calendar, made by Polemius Silvius (A.D. 448). But some kinds of fasti included under the second general head were, from the very beginning, written for publication. The Annales Pontificum—different from the calendaria properly so called—were “annually exhibited in public on a white table, on which the memorable events of the year, with special mention of the prodigies, were set down in the briefest possible manner.” Any one was allowed to copy them. Like the pontifices, the augurs also had their books, libri augurales. In fact, all the state offices had their fasti corresponding in character to the consular fasti named above.

For the best text and account of the fragments of the Fasti see Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, i. (2nd ed.); on the subject generally, Teuffel-Schwabe, Hist. of Roman Literature, §§ 74, 75, and article by Bouché-Leclercq in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités.

FASTING (from “fast,” derived from old Teutonic fastêjan; synonyms being the Gr. νηστεύειν, late Lat. jejunare), an act which is most accurately defined as an abstention from meat, drink and all natural food for a determined period. So it is defined by the Church of England, in the 16th homily, on the authority of the Council of Chalcedon1 and of the primitive church generally. In a looser sense the word is employed to denote abstinence from certain kinds of food merely; and this meaning, which in ordinary usage is probably the more prevalent, seems also to be at least tolerated by the Church of England when it speaks of “fast or abstinence days,” as if fasting and abstinence were synonymous.2 More vaguely still, the word is occasionally used as an equivalent for moral self-restraint generally. This secondary and metaphorical sense (νηστεύειν κακότητος) occurs in one of the fragments of Empedocles. For the physiology of fasting, see Dietetics; Nutrition; also Corpulence.

Starvation itself (see also Hunger and Thirst) is of the nature of a disease which may be prevented by diet; nevertheless there are connected with it a few peculiarities of scientific and practical interest. “Inedia,” as it is called in the nomenclature of diseases by the London College of Physicians, is of two kinds, arising from want of food and from want of water. When entirely deprived of nutriment the human body is ordinarily capable of supporting life under ordinary circumstances for little more than a week. In the spring of 1869 this was tried on the person of a “fasting girl” in South Wales. The parents made a show of their child, decking her out like a bride on a bed, and asserting that she had eaten no food for two years. Some reckless enthusiasts for truth set four trustworthy hospital nurses to watch her; the Celtic obstinacy of the parents was roused, and in defence of their imposture they allowed death to take place in eight days. Their trial and conviction for manslaughter may be found in the daily periodicals of the date; but, strange to say, the experimental physiologists and nurses escaped scot-free. There is no doubt that in this instance the unnatural quietude, the grave-like silence, and the dim religious light in which the victim was kept contributed to deter death.

One thing which remarkably prolongs life is a supply of water. Dogs furnished with as much as they wished to drink were found by M. Chossat (Sur l’inanition, Paris, 1843) to live three times as long as those who were deprived of solids and liquids at the same time. Even wetting the skin with sea-water has been found useful by shipwrecked sailors. Four men and a boy of fourteen who got shut in the Tynewydd mine near Porth, in South Wales, in the winter of 1876-1877 for ten days without food, were not only alive when released, but several of them were able to walk, and all subsequently recovered. The thorough saturation of the narrow space with aqueous vapour, and the presence of drain water in the cutting, were probably their chief preservatives—assisted by the high even temperature always found in the deeper headings of coal mines, and by the enormous compression of the confined air. This doubtless prevented evaporation, and retarded vital processes dependent upon oxidation. The accumulation of carbonic acid in the breathed air would also have a similar arrestive power over destructive assimilation. These prisoners do not seem to have felt any of the severer pangs of hunger, for they were not tempted to eat their candles. With the instinctive feeling that darkness adds a horror to death, they preferred to use them for light. At the wreck of the “Medusa” frigate in 1816, fifteen people survived on a raft for thirteen days without food.

It is a paradoxical fact, that the supply of the stomach even from the substance of the starving individual’s body should tend to prolong life. In April 1874 a case was recorded of exposure in an open boat for 32 days of three men and two boys, with only ten days’ provisions, exclusive of old boots and jelly-fish. They had a fight in their delirium, and one was severely wounded. As the blood gushed out he lapped it up; and instead of suffering the fatal weakness which might have been expected from the haemorrhage, he seems to have done well. Experiments were performed by a French physiologist, M. Anselmier (Archives gén. de médecine, 1860, vol. i. p. 169), with the object of trying to preserve the lives of dogs by what he calls “artificial autophagy.” He fed them on the blood taken from their own veins daily, depriving them of all other food, and he found that the fatal cooling incident to starvation was thus postponed, and existence prolonged. Life lasted till the emaciation had proceeded to six-tenths of the animal’s weight, as in Chossat’s experiments, extending to the fourteenth day, instead of ending on the tenth day, as was the case with other dogs which were not bled.

Various people have tried, generally for exhibition purposes, how long they could fast from food with the aid merely of water or some medicinal preparation; but these exhibitions cannot be held to have proved anything of importance. A man named Jacques in this way fasted at Edinburgh for thirty days in 1888, and in London for forty-two days in 1890, and for fifty days in 1891; and an Italian named Succi fasted for forty days in 1890.

Religious Fasts.—Fasting is of special interest when considered as a discipline voluntarily submitted to for moral and religious ends. As such it is very widely diffused. Its modes and motives vary considerably according to climate, race, civilization and other circumstances; but it would be difficult to name any religious system of any description in which it is wholly unrecognized.3 The origin of the practice is very obscure.4 In his Principles of Sociology Herbert Spencer collected, from the accounts we have of various savage tribes in widely separated parts of the globe, a considerable body of evidence, from which he suggested that it may have arisen out of the custom of providing refreshments for the dead, either by actually feeding the corpse, or by leaving eatables and drinkables for its use. It is suggested that the fasting which was at first the natural and inevitable result of such sacrifice on behalf of the dead may eventually have come to be regarded as an indispensable concomitant of all sacrifice, and so have survived as a well-established usage long after the original cause had ceased to operate.5 But this theory is repudiated by the best authorities; indeed its extreme precariousness at once becomes evident when it is remembered that, now at least, it is usual for religious fasts to precede rather than to follow sacrificial and funeral feasts, if observed at all in connexion with these. Spencer himself (p. 284) admits that “probably the practice arises in more ways than one,” and proceeds to supplement the theory already given by another—that adopted by E.B. Tylor—to the effect that it originated in the desire of the primitive man to bring on at will certain abnormal nervous conditions favourable to the seeing of those visions and the dreaming of those dreams which are supposed to give the soul direct access to the objective realities of the spiritual world.6 Probably, if we leave out of sight the very numerous and obvious cases in which fasting, originally the natural reflex result of grief, fear or other strong emotion, has come to be the usual conventional symbol of these, we shall find that the practice is generally resorted to, either as a means of somehow exalting the higher faculties at the expense of the lower, or as an act of homage to some object of worship. The axiom of the Amazulu, that “the continually stuffed body cannot see secret things,” meets even now with pretty general acceptance; and if the notion that it is precisely the food which the worshipper foregoes that makes the deity more vigorous to do battle for his human friend be confined only to a few scattered tribes of savages, the general proposition that “fasting is a work of reverence toward God” may be said to be an article of the Catholic faith.7

Although fasting as a religious rite is to be met with almost everywhere, there are comparatively few religions, and those only of the more developed kind, which appoint definite public fasts, and make them binding at fixed seasons upon all the faithful. Brahmanism, for example, does not appear to enforce any stated fast upon the laity.8 Among the ancient Egyptians fasting seems to have been associated with many religious festivals, notably with that of Isis (Herod. ii. 40), but it does not appear that, so far as the common people were concerned, the observance of these festivals (which were purely local) was compulsory. The νηστεία on the third day of the Thesmophoria at Athens was observed only by the women attending the festival (who were permitted to eat cakes made of sesame and honey). It is doubtful whether the fast mentioned by Livy (xxxvi. 37) was intended to be general or sacerdotal merely.

Jewish Fasts.—While remarkable for the cheerful, non-ascetic character of their worship, the Jews were no less distinguished from all the nations of antiquity by their annual solemn fast appointed to be observed on the 10th day of the 7th month (Tisri), the penalty of disobedience being death. The rules, as laid down in Lev. xvi. 29-34, xxiii. 27-32 and Numb. xxix. 7-11, include a special injunction of strict abstinence (“ye shall afflict your souls”9) from evening to evening. This fast was intimately associated with the chief feast of the year. Before that feast could be entered upon, the sins of the people had to be confessed and (sacramentally) expiated. The fast was a suitable concomitant of that contrition which befitted the occasion. The practice of stated fasting was not in any other case enjoined by the law; and it is generally understood to have been forbidden on Sabbath.10 At the same time, private and occasional fasting, being regarded as a natural and legitimate instinct, was regulated rather than repressed. The only other provision about fasting in the Pentateuch is of a regulative nature, Numb. xxx. 14 (13), to the effect that a vow made by a woman “to afflict the soul” may in certain circumstances be cancelled by her husband.

The history of Israel from Moses to Ezra furnishes a large number of instances in which the fasting instinct was obeyed both publicly and privately, locally and nationally, under the influence of sorrow, or fear, or passionate desire. See, for example, Judg. xx. 26; 1 Sam. vii. 6 (where the national fast was conjoined with the ceremony of pouring out water before the Lord); Jer. xxxvi. 6, 9; and 2 Sam. xii. 16.11 Sometimes the observance of such fasts extended over a considerable period of time, during which, of course, the stricter jejunium was conjoined with abstinentia (Dan. x. 2). Sometimes they lasted only for a day. In Jonah iii. 6, 7, we have an illustrative example of the rigour with which a strict fast might be observed; and such passages as Joel ii. and Isa. lviii. 5 enable us to picture with some vividness the outward accompaniments of a Jewish fast day before the exile.

During the exile many occasional fasts were doubtless observed by the scattered communities, in sorrowful commemoration of the various sad events which had issued in the downfall of the kingdom of Judah. Of these, four appear to have passed into general use—the fasts of the 10th, 4th, 5th and 7th months—commemorating the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem, the capture of the city, the destruction of the temple, the assassination of Gedaliah. As time rolled on they became invested with increasing sanctity; and though the prophet Zechariah, when consulted about them at the close of the exile (Zech. viii. 19), had by no means encouraged the observance of them, the rebuilding of the temple does not appear to have been considered an achievement of sufficient importance to warrant their discontinuance. It is worthy of remark that Ezekiel’s prophetic legislation contains no reference to any fast day; the book of Esther (ix. 31), on the other hand, records the institution of a new fast on the 13th of the 12th month.

In the post-exile period private fasting was much practised by the pious, and encouraged by the religious sentiment of the time (see Judith viii. 6; Tob. xii. 8, and context; Sirach xxxiv. 26, Luke ii. 37 and xviii. 12). The last reference contains an allusion to the weekly fasts which were observed on the 2nd and 5th days of each week, in commemoration, it was said, of the ascent and descent of Moses at Sinai. The real origin of these fasts and the date of their introduction are alike uncertain; it is manifest, however, that the observance of them was voluntary, and never made a matter of universal obligation. It is probable that the Sadducees, if not also the Essenes, wholly neglected them. The second book (Seder Moed) of the Mishna contains two tractates bearing upon the subject of fasting. One (Yoma, “the day”) deals exclusively with the rites which were to be observed on the great day of expiation or atonement the other (Taanith, “fast”) is devoted to the other fasts, and deals especially with the manner in which occasional fasting is to be gone about if no rain shall have fallen on or before the 17th day of Marcheschwan. It is enacted that in such a case the rabbis shall begin with a light fast of three days (Monday, Thursday, Monday), i.e. a fast during which it is lawful to work, and also to wash and anoint the person. Then, in the event of a continued drought, fasts of increasing intensity are ordered; and as a last resort the ark is to be brought into the street and sprinkled with ashes, the heads of the Nasi and Ab-beth-din being at the same time similarly sprinkled.12 In no case was any fast to be allowed to interfere with new-moon or other fixed festival. Another institution treated with considerable fulness in the treatise Taanith is that of the אנשי מעמד (viri stationis), who are represented as having been laymen severally representing the twenty-four classes or families into which the whole commonwealth of the laity was divided. They used to attend the temple in rotation, and be present at the sacrifices; and as this duty fell to each in his turn, the men of the class or family which he represented were expected in their several cities and places of abode to engage themselves in religious exercises, and especially in fasting. The suggestion will readily occur that here may be the origin of the Christian stationes. But neither Tertullian nor any other of the fathers seems to have been aware of the existence of any such institution among the Jews; and very probably the story about it may have been a comparatively late invention. It ought to be borne in mind that the Aramaic portion of the Megillath Taanith (a document considerably older than the treatises in the Mishna) gives a catalogue only of the days on which fasting was forbidden. The Hebrew part (commented on by Maimonides), in which numerous fasts are recommended, is of considerably later date. See Reland, Antiq. Hebr. p. iv. c. 10; Derenbourg, Hist. de Palestine, p. 439.

Practice of the Early Christian Church.—Jesus Himself did not inculcate asceticism in His teaching, and the absence of that distinctive element from His practice was sometimes a subject of hostile remark (Matt. xi. 19). We read, indeed, that on one occasion He fasted forty days and forty nights; but the expression, which is an obscure one, possibly means nothing more than that He endured the privations ordinarily involved in a stay in the wilderness. While we have no reason to doubt that He observed the one great national fast prescribed in the written law of Moses, we have express notice that neither He nor His disciples were in the habit of observing the other fasts which custom and tradition had established. See Mark ii. 18, where the correct reading appears to be—“The disciples of John, and the Pharisees, were fasting” (some customary fast). He never formally forbade fasting, but neither did He ever enjoin it. He assumed that, in certain circumstances of sorrow and need, the fasting instinct would sometimes be felt by the community and the individual; what He was chiefly concerned about was to warn His followers against the mistaken aims which His contemporaries were so apt to contemplate in their fasting (Matt. vi. 16-18). In one passage, indeed, He has been understood as practically commanding resort to the practice in certain circumstances. It ought to be noted, however, that Matt. xvii. 21 is probably spurious; and that in Mark ix. 29 the words “and fasting” are omitted by Westcott and Hort as well as by Tischendorf on the evidence of the Cod. Sinaiticus (first hand) and Cod. Vaticanus.13 The reference to “the fast” in Acts xxvii. 9 has generally been held to indicate that the apostles continued to observe the yearly Jewish fast. But this inference is by no means a necessary one. According to Acts xiii. 2, 3, xiv. 23, they conjoined fasting with prayer at ordinations, and doubtless also on some other solemn occasions; but at the same time the liberty of the Christian “in respect of an holiday, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath” was strongly insisted on, by one of them at least, who declared that meat whether taken or abstained from commendeth not to God (Col. ii. 16-23; 1 Cor. viii. 8; Rom. xiv. 14-22; 1 Tim. iv. 3-5). The fastings to which the apostle Paul alludes in 2 Cor. vi. 5, xi. 27, were rather of the nature of inevitable hardships cheerfully endured in the discharge of his sacred calling. The words which appear to encourage fasting in 1 Cor. vii. 5 are absent from all the oldest manuscripts and are now omitted by all critics;14 and on the whole the precept and practice of the New Testament, while recognizing the propriety of occasional and extraordinary fasts, seem to be decidedly hostile to the imposition of any of a stated, obligatory and general kind.

The usage of the Christian church during the earlier centuries was in this, as in so many other matters, influenced by traditional Jewish feeling, and by the force of old habit, quite as much as by any direct apostolic authority or supposed divine command. Habitual temperance was of course in all cases regarded as an absolute duty; and “the bridegroom” being absent, the present life was regarded as being in a sense one continual “fast.” Fasting in the stricter sense was not unknown; but it is certain that it did not at first occupy nearly so prominent a place in Christian ritual as that to which it afterwards attained. There are early traces of the customary observance of the Wednesday and Friday fasts—the dies stationum (Clem. Alex. Strom. vii. 877), and also of a “quadragesimal” fast before Easter. But the very passage which proves the early origin of “quadragesima,” conclusively shows how uncertain it was in its character, and how unlike the Catholic “Lent.” Irenaeus, quoted by Eusebius (v. 24), informs us with reference to the customary yearly celebration of the mystery of the resurrection of our Lord, that disputes prevailed not only with respect to the day, but also with respect to the manner of fasting in connexion with it. “For some think that they ought to fast only one day, some two, some more days; some compute their day as consisting of forty hours night and day; and this diversity existing among those that observe it is not a matter that has just sprung up in our times, but long ago among those before us.” It was not pretended that the apostles had legislated on the matter, but the general and natural feeling that the anniversaries of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ ought to be celebrated by Christians took expression in a variety of ways according to the differing tastes of individuals. No other stated fasts, besides those already mentioned, can be adduced from the time before Irenaeus; but there was also a tendency—not unnatural in itself, and already sanctioned by Jewish practice—to fast by way of preparation for any season of peculiar privilege. Thus, according to Justin Martyr (Apol. ii. 93), catechumens were accustomed to fast before baptism, and the church fasted with them. To the same feeling the quadragesimal fast which (as already stated) preceded the joyful feast of the resurrection, is to be, in part at least, attributed. As early as the time of Tertullian it was also usual for communicants to prepare themselves by fasting for receiving the eucharist. But that Christian fasts had not yet attained to the exaggerated importance which they afterwards assumed is strikingly shown in the well-known Shepherd of Hermas (lib. iii. sim. v.), where it is declared that “with merely outward fasting nothing is done for true virtue”; the believer is exhorted chiefly to abstain from evil and seek to cleanse himself from feelings of covetousness, and impurity, and revenge: “on the day that thou fastest content thyself with bread, vegetables and water, and thank God for these. But reckon up on this day what thy meal would otherwise have cost thee, and give the amount that it comes to to some poor widow or orphan, or to the poor.” The right of bishops to ordain special fasts, “ex aliqua sollicitudinis ecclesiasticae causa” (Tertullian), was also recognized.

Later Practice of the Church.—According to an expression preserved by Eusebius (H.E. v. 18), Montanus was the first to give laws (to the church) on fasting. Such language, though rhetorical in form, is substantially correct. The treatise of Tertullian,—Concerning Fasting: against the Carnal,—written as it was under Montanistic influence, is doubly interesting, first as showing how free the practice of the church down to that time had been, and then as foreshadowing the burdensome legislation which was destined to succeed. In that treatise (c. 15) he approves indeed of the church practice of not fasting on Saturdays and Sundays (as elsewhere, De corona, c. 3, he had expressed his concurrence in the other practice of observing the entire period between Easter and Pentecost as a season of joy); but otherwise he evinces great dissatisfaction with the indifference of the church as to the number, duration and severity of her fasts.15 The church thus came to be more and more involved in discussions as to the number of days to be observed, especially in “Lent,” as fast days, as to the hour at which a fast ought to terminate (whether at the 3rd or at the 9th hour), as to the rigour with which each fast ought to be observed (whether by abstinence from flesh merely, abstinentia, or by abstinence from lacticinia, xerophagia, or by literal jejunium), and as to the penalties by which the laws of fasting ought to be enforced. Almost a century, however, elapsed between the composition of the treatise of Tertullian (cir. 212) and the first recorded instances of ecclesiastical legislation on the subject. These, while far from indicating that the church had attained unanimity on the points at issue, show progress in the direction of the later practice of catholicism. About the year 306 the synod of Illiberis in its 26th canon decided in favour of the observance of the Saturday fast.16 The council of Ancyra in 314, on the other hand, found it necessary to legislate in a somewhat different direction,—by its 14th canon enjoining its priests and clerks at least to taste meat at the love feasts.17 The synod of Laodicea framed several rules with regard to the observance of “Lent,” such as that “during Lent the bread shall not be offered except on Saturday and Sunday” (can. 49), that “the fast shall not be relaxed on the Thursday of the last week of Lent, thus dishonouring the whole season; but the fast shall be kept throughout the whole period” (can. 50), that “during the fast no feasts of the martyrs shall be celebrated” (can. 51), and that “no wedding or birthday feasts shall be celebrated during Lent” (can. 52). The synod of Hippo (393 A.D.) enacted that the sacrament of the altar should always be taken fasting, except on the Thursday before Easter. Protests in favour of freedom were occasionally raised, not always in a very wise manner, or on very wise grounds, by various individuals such as Eustathius of Sebaste (c. 350), Aerius of Pontus (c. 375), and Jovinian, a Roman monk (c. 388). Of the Eustathians, for example (whose connexion with Eustathius can hardly be doubted), the complaint was made that “they fast on Sundays, but eat on the fast-days of the church.” They were condemned by the synod of Gangra in Paphlagonia in the following canons:—Can. 19, “If any one fast on Sunday, let him be anathema.”18 Can. 20, “If any one do not keep the fasts universally commanded and observed by the whole church, let him be anathema.” Jovinian was very moderate. He “did not allow himself to be hurried on by an inconsiderate zeal to condemn fasting, the life of celibacy, monachism, considered purely in themselves.... He merely sought to show that men were wrong in recommending so highly and indiscriminately the life of celibacy and fasting, though he was ready to admit that both under certain circumstances might be good and useful” (Neander). He was nevertheless condemned (390) both by Pope Siricius at a synod in Rome, and by Ambrose at another in Milan. The views of Aerius, according to the representations of his bitter opponent Epiphanius (Haer. 75, “Adv. Aerium”), seem on this head at least, though unpopular, to have been characterized by great wisdom and sobriety. He did not condemn fasting altogether, but thought that it ought to be resorted to in the spirit of gospel freedom according as each occasion should arise. He found fault with the church for having substituted for Christian liberty a yoke of Jewish bondage.19