In the time of Irenaeus the fast before Easter was very short, but very severe; thus some ate nothing for forty hours between the afternoon of Good Friday and the morning of Easter.
On the other hand the Mors Pilati tells how when condemned by the emperor he committed suicide; and his body, thrown first into the Tiber and then the Rhone, disturbed both waters, and was driven north into " Losania," where it was plunged in the gulf near Lucerne and below Mt Pilatus (originally no doubt Pileatus or cloud-capped), from whence it is raised every Good Friday to sit and wash unavailing hands.
The unsparing satirist described the professor's face as the "gloomiest" in the whole procession of ecclesiastics which took place on Good Friday.
In 1871 a new Lectionary was substituted for the previously existing one, into the merits and demerits of which it is not possible to enter here; and in 1872, by the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act, a shortened form of service was provided instead of the present form of Morning and Evening Prayer for optional use in other than cathedral churches on all days exeept Sunday, Christmas Day, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and Ascension Day; provision was also statutably made for the separation of services, and for additional services, to be taken, however, except so far as anthems and hymns are concerned, entirely out of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.
He reached Rome on Palm Sunday (March 30), only to find his patron ill of a deadly sickness, from which he died on Good Friday (April 4).