Abstract: Against an asceticism become sackcloth and whippings, fasts and vigils excessive, the Protestant reformation proclaimed the doctrine of the justification by the faith and refused all external and praiseworthy penitences. However, the Protestantism was not foreign to the asceticism, but under forms very different from those whom lived the medieval Christianity. Max Weber, at the beginning of the 20th century, renewed in a unexpected way the debate in his magisterial study on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of capitalism : he brought to light the originality of what has been called since the « intra-mundane asceticism » of Protestantism.
