The practice of the Church at Rome spread gradually, with some varieties as to the particular weeks in which the three days of fasting were observed. For England the notices of the Ember days are earlier than they are for France. At first, at Rome, the spring fast seems to have been in the first week in March, but afterwards always in Lent. And as soon as it came to be observed in Lent it would (as regards the fast) require no special injunction. This may perhaps account for the omission of any mention of the fast of the first month in the canon of the Council of Cloveshoe referred to above. The fixing of the particular days now observed in the West is generally assigned to about the close of the eleventh century; but in England, as late as A.D. 1222, the Council of Oxford still speaks of the fast in the first week in March[132]. In the Eastern Church there is nothing corresponding to the fasts of the Four Seasons. There is some uncertainty as to the etymology of our English phrase ‘Ember Days.’ The weight of authority is in favour of the derivation from the Old English words _ymb_, ‘about,’ ‘round,’ and _ryne_, ‘course,’ ‘running’; but the _New English Dictionary_ (Oxford) adds that it is not wholly impossible that the word may have been due to popular etymology working upon some vulgar Latin corruption of _quatuor tempora_, as the German _quatember_, ‘ember tide.’ II. _Eastern Churches._ The fasts before the Nativity and Easter have been treated of under Advent and Lent. In the Greek Church the season before Easter is called ‘the great Tessarakoste,’ for the word Tessarakoste is also applied to three other penitential seasons, (1) to the fast before the Lord’s Nativity, (2) the fast of the Apostles (Peter and Paul), and (3) the fast of the Assumption of the Theotokos. But, though the word Tessarakoste is applied to each of these, there is no apparent connexion between the number _forty_ and the number of days observed as fasting-days; and this is notably the case in regard to the third and fourth. The fast of the Apostles extends for a variable number of days from the Monday after the Sunday of All Saints (_i.e._ the first Sunday after Pentecost) to June 28, both inclusive. Examination will show that the interval between these two limits can very rarely amount to forty days; and when Easter falls at its latest possible date (April 25) the first Sunday after Pentecost is June 20, so that the Tessarakoste of the Apostles would in that case be only eight days in length. The length of the Tessarakoste of the Assumption is fixed, and extends only from Aug. 1 to Aug. 14. It would appear then that the term Tessarakoste has come in practice to signify simply a fast of a number of days, and has lost all reference to the number 40. The Exaltation of the Cross (Sept. 14), although regarded as a festival (ἑορτή) of the highest dignity, is observed as a strict fast.