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147 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
race, and that contemporary with it was the week of seven days as a division of time. So far as is known the Hebrews never had names for the days of their week, but knew them by numbers only. Aside from the Bible record, the division of time into weeks, consisting of seven days each, one of which days was by law made a rest day, appears very early in the history of oriental peoples, other than the Hebrews (see WEEB).
Upon the basis of the archeological discoveries of the last half-century it is claimed by many archeologists, with apparent justification, that the Akkadians, who inhabited North Babylonia long before the time of Abraham (see BABYLONIA,
a. The V., § 1), divided time into periods of Week. weeks, and that each week consisted of seven days, named for the sun, the moon, and five of the planets. One day of each week, or the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty first, and twenty-eighth days of each month, each known as Sabatu, was a rest day, on which all labor was unlawful, and even the king was interdicted from labor and from ordinary and royal pleasures (see WEEK). The regulations in that regard will compare in drastic repression with any of the re quirements of the mythical blue-laws of Connecti cut. The weekly calendar of seven days was un known to the early Greeks. Their week consisted of ten days. The early Romans divided the year into months and the months into three unequal and varying parts, the Kalends, of thirteen to fifteen days, the Ides, of seven to nine days, and the Nones, of nine days. The Egyptians, like the Assyrians and Babylonians, were advanced astronomers, and in very remote time, but how early is not known, had their weeks of seven days each. How they came to have weeks of seven days like the Akkadians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians is not known. Nor is it known why they also called their days for the sun, the moon, and five of the planets. This Egyp tian division of time was introduced into Rome and supplanted the Roman calendar, but the time of the innovation is not certainly known; some authori ties placing it in the second and others in the fourth century of the Christian era. In this Roman week of seven days, one day was named for the sun, and called " day of the sun." It is clear that this naming it after the sun was wholly distinct from and uncon nected with the worship of the sun or of Apollo, who, in Greek, and later in Roman, mythology rep resented the sun, and was worshiped in Greece on the seventh day of each month, and in Rome on a like day, and not on the first day of the week of seven days, the day in the calendar named for the sun. With the progress of the Greek armies under Alexander many oriental customs disappeared, and with the destruction of the Jewish nation and the supremacy of the Roman empire, the general and open keeping of the Mosaic law as to Sabbath ob servance ended, though the Jews privately continued the observance.Not until the Christian religion had made its converts throughout the Roman Empire, and the body of Christians had become so great as to be an element to be reckoned with, does legislation concerning the rest day again recur. The Christians had
passed through the throes of persecution, and had been deprived of property and of civil rights.
Legislation conditions for Christians. And when for Sunday. he came to power in 313 A.D., he
was joined by Maxentius in the celebrated edict of Milan, by which civil rights were accorded to Christians, their property restored, and general religious liberty guaranteed to all. In 321 A.D. Constantine, having become sole emperor, issued his famous edict, prohibiting certain labor and trades on Sunday. (" Let all magistrates and people of the city, and all who work as artisans, rest on the venerable day of the sun "; text and transl. of the edict given in Schaff, Christian Church, iii. 380, note 1). Exceptions follow as to farmers and vine-growers, who might otherwise lose their crops. However one may strain not to see in this edict of the Roman emperor any recognition of the religious element or of Christian rites, it remains clear that it was not the inauguration of a feast to the sun, or to Apollo the heathen representative of the sun, for it was not Apollo's day. Apollo never was worshiped on the first day of the week, nor on the seventh day of the week, but upon the seventh day of the month, which was his festal day. It is also beyond dispute that it was a setting apart by law for the first time of the first day of the week as a festum, or feast day, which day was then kept holy only by Christians, who observed it as a rest day as well as a day of worship. By the edict of Constantine the keeping of the day in the same manner as Christians kept it was enjoined by making physical labor unlawful on that day. Sixty-six years later, 387 A.D., in another Roman decree, Sunday is called " The Lord's Day." This constitutes legal recognition of the Christian name for the day, used by Christians from the middle of the first century. In 392 A.D., another Roman decree forbade on that day all exhibitions that might turn away attendance from the mysteries of the Christian religion. The Sunday legislation of the Roman empire never went backward. The decrees of Valens, Valentinian I., Gratian, Valentinian II., Theodosius the Great, Honorius, Arcadius, Theodosius II., Leo I., and Athenius, between 364 and 467, added other inhibitions, but also made from time to time exemption from certain prohibitions of the law. In the time of Justinian 685 A.D., the laws of the empire on the subject were gathered into the codes, which contained the law of the Roman empire, and from the year 800, when Charlemagne was crowned, this code was of force and effect all over. the " Holy Roman Empire," that " complex Frankish empire," a State composed of many ,states. During the Middle Ages.there were decrees and canons of popes and of councils concerning the observance of Sunday, which, though ecclesiastical, were of civil force because enforced by the civil power.
It would seem that English Sunday legislation got its impulse and initiative from the Christian religion. Such early statutes as are known followed the advent of Augustine in England and the conversion of the Saxon kings to Christianity. They
