At the time of the _Peregrinatio Silviae_ (about the end of the fourth century), if we may trust the writer, at Jerusalem eight weeks of fasting preceded Easter, which, deducting eight Sundays and seven Saturdays, gave, as she expressly says, forty-one days of fasting. This is highly exceptional, if not unique. At any rate, the practice did not long continue. The number 36 is nearly the tenth of 365—the number of the days of the year; and this thought struck the fancy of more than one writer. We were bound, they urged, to offer to God the holy tithe, not only of our increase, but of our time. And in the fifth century John Cassian presses this point, and attempts to bring the length of the fast to correspond more closely with the tithe of the year by observing that the fast was prolonged for some hours, ‘usque in gallorum cantum,’ on Easter morning[118]. At a later period the thought of the fasts of Moses and Elijah, and more particularly of the Lord’s fast of forty days in the wilderness, seems to have suggested that the fast of the faithful should correspond in length. The addition of four days—the Wednesday and three following days immediately preceding the first Sunday in Lent—has been frequently attributed to Gregory the Great. But the writings of Gregory testify to his knowing only thirty-six fasting days. And it is now generally acknowledged that no support for the supposition can be based on the language of the collects for Feria IV and Feria VI in the week begun on Quinquagesima, which speak of the beginning of the fast, and are to be found in the Gregorian Sacramentary[119]. The Sacramentary, as we now possess it, abounds in additions later than the time of Gregory. It is impossible to say precisely when, or by whom, the additional four days were introduced. Approximately we may assign this change to about the beginning of the eighth century, and to Rome. It did not obtain everywhere. It was not till near the close of the eleventh century that the Scottish Church, at the persuasion of the Saxon princess, Queen Margaret of Scotland, fell into line with most of the other Western Churches, by accepting the four fasting days in the week before the first Sunday in Lent[120]. The Mozarabic Liturgy adopted it only at the instance of Cardinal Ximenes about the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Church of Milan still preserves, among its interesting survivals, the commencement of the rigorous Lenten Fast on the Monday after the first Sunday. But in 1563 St Charles Borromeo, then archbishop of Milan, succeeded, against vigorous local protests, in making the first Sunday in Lent a day of abstinence.