5. First of all, let us examine the sin of fasting on Saturdays; for
indeed Canon 64 of the Holy Apostles strictly censures those that fast on
Saturdays and casts them out of the Church, as seen here: “If any of the clergy
be found fasting on the Lord’s day, or on the Sabbath, excepting the one only,
let him be deposed. If a layman, let him be excommunicated.”
6. Yet the second accusation is also characteristic of the Jacobite
and the Armenian heresies, something completely unacceptable for Orthodox Christians;
I am referring to the eating of cheese, the sucking of eggs, and the drinking
of milk during Holy and Great Lent. For that is unacceptable for the pious. Be
mae aware, therefore, of Canon 56 of the Sixth Holy and Oecumenical Council. You
own Pope Agathon agreed with this council. Now hear what this canon says: “Likewise
we have learned that in the country of the Armenians and in other regions on
the Saturdays, and on the Sundays of holy Lent some persons eat eggs and
cheese. It has therefore seemed best to decree also this, that the Church of
God throughout the inhabited earth, carefully following a single procedure,
shall carry out fasting, and abstain, precisely as from every kind of thing
sacrificed, so and especially from eggs and cheese, which are fruit and produce
from which we have to abstain. As for those who fail to observe this rule, if
they are Clergymen, let them be deposed from office; but if they are laymen,
let them be excommunicated.” (John
II, Metropolitan of Kiev (d. 1089), Letter to Pope Clement II, in The
Orthodox Patristic Witness Concerning Catholicism [Uncut Mountain Press,
2024], 312)
Thus, as I was saying the Latins
seem to be erroneous in many things: they use unleavened bread in their
offering, fast on Saturdays, and calculate differently the periods of the fast
before the Passion; . . . (Theophylact of Ohrid (d. 1107), “Regarding the
Charges Against the Latins,” in The Orthodox Patristic Witness Concerning
Catholicism [Uncut Mountain Press, 2024], 318)
