• To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.

    Barbara Tuchman: To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
    Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century”, p.36, Random House