Part 3
The gradual transition of worship from Saturday to Sunday culminated in the enactment of laws against work on Sunday.
It is a curious fact that the references dealing with both Sabbath and Sunday increased sharply in the fourth century AD and that many of these had over–tones of controversy. In some instances, there was an emphasis to keep both days (as, for example, in the Apostolic Constitutions), and Gregory of Nyssa and Asterius of Amaseia could refer to the Sabbath and Sunday as “sisters” and as a “team,” respectively. These were among the references discussed in our first article.[1]
On the other side, however, stood the anti–Sabbath church leaders. For example, John Chrysostom, a contemporary of Gregory and Asterius, went so far as to declare, “There are many among us now, who fast on the same day as the Jews, and keep the sabbaths in the same manner; and we endure it nobly or rather ignobly and basely”![2]
A day of fasting. In the previous article in this series, we noted that the Sabbath fast –which made the Sabbath a sad and hungry day– helped bring about the rise of Sunday observance in Rome and in some other places in the West. Indeed, as early as the first quarter of the third century Tertullian of Carthage in North Africa argued against the practice.[3] About the same time Hippolytus in Rome took issue with those who observed the Sabbath fast.[4]
However, in the fourth and fifth centuries evidence of controversy on this matter heightened. Augustine (died AD 430) dealt with the issue in several of his letters, including one in which he gave rebuttal to a zealous Roman advocate of Sabbath fasting – an individual who caustically denounced those who refused to fast on the Sabbath.[5]
As another evidence of the controversy, Canon 64 of the Apostolic Constitutions specifies that “if any one of the clergy be found to fast on the Lord’s day, or on the Sabbath–day, excepting one only, let him be deprived; but if he be one of the laity, let him be suspended.”[6]
The interpolater of Ignatius, who probably wrote at about the same time, even declared that “if any one fasts on the Lord’s Day or on the Sabbath, except on the paschal Sabbath only, he is a murderer of Christ.”[7] (On the paschal Sabbath, the anniversary of the Sabbath during which Christ was in the tomb, Christians considered it appropriate to fast.)
The last two sources noted may indicate that the controversy had extended beyond Western Christianity; but as far as the actual official practice was concerned, only Rome and certain other Western churches adopted it. John Cassian (died about AD 440) speaks of “some people in some countries of the West, and especially in the city [Rome]” who fasted on the Sabbath.[8] And Augustine refers to “the Roman Church and some other churches… near to it or remote from it” where the Sabbath fast was observed.
But Milan, an important church in northern Italy, was among the Western churches that did not observe the Sabbath fast, as Augustine also makes clear.[9] Nor did the Eastern churches ever adopt it. The question remained a point of disagreement between East and West as late as the eleventh century.[10]
The increase in references about the Sabbath –both for and against– indicate that some sort of struggle was beginning to manifest itself on a rather widespread basis. No longer did the controversy center in only Rome and Alexandria. What could have triggered this struggle on such a wide scale in the fourth and fifth centuries?
Undoubtedly, one of the most important factors is to be found in the activities of Emperor Constantine the Great in the early fourth century, followed by later “Christian emperors.” Not only did Constantine give Christianity a new status within the Roman Empire (from being persecuted to being honored), but he also gave Sunday a “new look.” By his civil legislation, he made Sunday a rest day.
His famous Sunday law of March 7, 321, reads:
“On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain–sowing or for vine–planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost.”[11]
This was the first in a series of steps taken by Constantine and by later “Christian emperors” in regulating Sunday observance. It is obvious that this first Sunday law was not particularly Christian in orientation (note the pagan designation “venerable Day of the Sun”); but very likely Constantine, on political and social grounds, endeavored to merge together heathen and Christian elements of his constituency by focusing on a common practice.
In AD 386, Theodosius I and Gratian Valentinian extended Sunday restrictions so that litigation should entirely cease on that day and there would be no public or private payment of debt.[12] Laws forbidding circus, theater, and horse racing also followed and were reiterated as felt necessary.[13]
Reaction to early Sunday laws. How did the Christian church react to Constantine’s Sunday edict of March, 321, and to subsequent civil legislation that made Sunday a rest day? As desirable as such legislation may have seemed to Christians from one standpoint, it also placed them in a dilemma. Heretofore, Sunday had been a workday, except for special worship services. What would happen, for example, to nuns such as those described by Jerome in Bethlehem, who, after following their mother superior to church and then back to their communions, the rest of their time on Sunday devoted “themselves to their allotted tasks, and made garments either for themselves or else for others”?[14]
There is no evidence that Constantine’s Sunday laws were ever specifically made the basis for Christian regulations of the day, but it is obvious that Christian leaders must do something to keep the day from becoming one of idleness and vain amusement. Added emphasis on worship and reference to the Sabbath commandment in the Old Testament seem to have been the twin routes now taken. (It is interesting to note that even Constantine did not intend to reflect the Sabbath commandment of the Decalogue in his Sunday law, inasmuch as he exempted agricultural work – a type of work strictly prohibited in the Sabbath commandment.)
Perhaps a first inkling of the new trend comes as early as the time of Constantine himself – through the church historian Eusebius, who was also Constantine’s biographer and keen admirer. In his commentary on Psalm 92, “the Sabbath Psalm,” Eusebius writes that Christians would fulfill on the Lord’s day all that in this Psalm was prescribed for the Sabbath – including worship of God early in the morning. He then adds that through the new covenant the Sabbath celebration was transferred to “the first day of light [Sunday].”[15]
Later in the fourth century Ephraem Syrus suggested that honor was due “to the Lord’s day, the firstborn of all days,” which had “taken away the right of the firstborn from the Sabbath.” Then he goes on to point out that the law prescribes that rest should be given to servants and animals.[16] The reflection of the Old Testament Sabbath commandment is obvious.
With his sort of Sabbath emphasis now being placed on Sunday, it was inevitable that the Sabbath day itself (Saturday) would take on lesser and lesser importance. And the controversy that is evident in literature of the fourth and fifth centuries between those who would debase the Sabbath and those who would honor it reflects the struggle.
Moreover, it was a struggle that did not terminate quickly; for as we have seen, the fifth–century church historians Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen provide a picture of Sabbath worship services alongside Sunday worship services as being the pattern throughout Christendom in their day, except in Rome and Alexandria. It appears that the “Christian Sabbath” as a replacement for the earlier Biblical Sabbath was mainly a development of the sixth century and later.
The earliest church council to deal with the matter was a regional eastern one meeting in Laodicea about AD 364. Although this council still manifested respect for the Sabbath as well as Sunday in the special lections (Scripture readings) designated for those two days, it nonetheless stipulated the following in its Canon 29: “Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday but shall work on that day; but the Lord’s day they shall especially honour, and, as being Christians, shall, if possible, do no work on that day. If, however, they are found Judaizing, they shall be shut out from Christ.”[17]
The regulation with regard to working on Sunday was rather moderate in that Christians should not work on that day if possible! However, more significant was the fact that this council reversed the original command of God and the practice of the earliest Christians with regard to the seventh–day Sabbath.
God had said, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work" (Exodus 20:8–10, RSV). This council said, instead, "Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday but shall work on that day."
Work forbidden on Sunday. The Third Synod of Orleans in 538, though deploring Jewish Sabbatarianism, forbade "field labours" so that "people may be able to come to church and worship."[18] Half a century later, the Second Synod of Macon in 585 and the Council of Narbonne in 589 stipulated strict Sunday observance.[19] The ordinances of the former "were published by King Guntram in a decree of November 10, 585, in which he enforced careful observance of the Sunday."[20]
Finally, during the Carolingian Age a great emphasis was placed on Lord's day observance according to the Sabbath commandment. Walter W. Hyde, in his Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire, has well summed up several centuries of the history of Sabbath and Sunday up to Charlemagne:
"The emperors after Constantine made Sunday observance more stringent but in no case was their legislation based on the Old Testament… At the Third Synod of Aureliani (Orleans) in 538 rural work was forbidden but the restriction against preparing meals and similar work on Sunday was regarded as a superstition.
"After Justinian's death in 565 various epistolae decretales were passed by the popes about Sunday. One of Gregory I (590–604) forbade men 'to yoke oxen or to perform any other work, except for approved reasons,' while another of Gregory II (715–731) said: 'We decree that all Sundays be observed from vespers to vespers and that all unlawful work the abstained from.' …
"Charlemagne at Aquisgranum (Aachen) in 788 decreed that all ordinary labor on the lords day be forbidden, since it was against the Fourth Commandment, especially labor in the field or vineyard which Constantine had exempted."[21]
God’s Sabbath never forgotten. And thus Sunday came to be the Christian rest day substitute for the Sabbath. But the seventh–day Sabbath was never entirely forgotten, of course. This was true in Europe itself. But particularly in Ethiopia, for example, groups kept both Saturday and Sunday as "Sabbaths," not only in the early Christian centuries but down into modern times.[22]
Nevertheless, for a good share of Christendom, the history of the Sabbath and Sunday had by the sixth through eighth centuries taken a complete circle. For most Christians, God’s rest day of both Old Testament and New Testament times had through a gradual process become a workday and had been supplanted by a substitute rest day. God’s command that on the seventh day “you shall not do any work” had been replaced by the command of man: Work on the seventh day; rest on the first.
However, all Christians who consider the New Testament as the normative guide for their lives, rather than the decisions of men hundreds of years later, will ask whether the worship day of Christ and the apostles –Saturday, the seventh day of the week– should still be observed today. We believe it should.
[1] See These Times, November, 1978.
[2] Comment on Galatians 1:7 in Commentary on Galatians (The Nicene and Post–Nicene Fathers [NPNF], 1st Series, Vol. 13, p. 8).
[3] In On Fasting, ch. 14 (The Ante–Nicene Fathers [ANF], Vol. 4, p. 112), Tertullian indicates that the Sabbath is “a day never to be kept as a fast except at the passover season, according to a reason elsewhere given.” He also indicates his opposition to the Sabbath fast in Against Marcion, iv. 12 (ANF, Vol. 3, 363).
[4] Hippolytus mentions some who “give heed to doctrines of devils” and “often appoint a fast on the Sabbath and on the Lord’s day, which Christ has, however, not appointed” (from his Commentary on Daniel, iv. 20; the Greek text and French translation are given by Maurice Lefevre [Paris, 1947], pp. 300–303).
[5] See Augustine’s Epistles 36 (to Casulanus), 54 (to Januarius), and 82 (to Jerome) (NPNF, 1st Series, Vol. 1, pp. 265–270, 300, 301, 353, 354). They are dated between AD 396 and 405. It is Epistle 36 that gives rebuttal to the Roman advocate of the Sabbath fast.
[6] English trans. in ANF, Vol. 7, p. 504. This canon is numbered 66 in the Hefele edition (see note 17 (Charles J. Hefele) below).
[7] Pseudo–Ignatius, To the Philippians, ch. 13 (ANF, Vol. 1, p. 119).
[8] Institutes, iii. 10 (NPNF, 2nd Series, Vol. 11, p. 218).
[9] The first statement appears in Epistle 36, par. 27 (NPNF, 1st Series, Vol. 1, 268), and a similar remark is made in Epistle 82, par. 14 (ibid., p. 353). References to Milan are found in Epistle 36, par. 32, and in Epistle 54, par. 3 (ibid., pp. 270, 300, 301).
[10] See R. L. Odom, “The Sabbath in the Great Schism of AD 1054,” Andrews University Seminary Studies [AUSS], Vol. 1 (1963), pp. 77, 78.
[11] Codex Justinianus, iii., Tit. 12.3, trans. in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 5th ed. (New York, 1902), Vol. 3, p. 380, note 1.
[12] Theodosian Code, 11.7.13, trans. by Clyde Pharr (Princeton, N.J., 1952), p. 300.
[13] The further laws include a law of Theodosius II in 425, in Theodosian Code, 15.5.5, p. 433.
[14] See Jerome, Epistle cviii., 20 (NPNF, 2nd Series, Vol. VI, p. 206).
[15] Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. 23, Col. 1169.
[16] S. Ephraem Syri hymni et sermones, ed. by T. J. Lamy (1882), Vol. 1, pp. 542–544.
[17] Charles J. Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, trans. Henry N. Oxenham, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1896), p. 316. Canon 16 (ibid., p. 310) refers to lections; and the fact that Saturday as well as Sunday had special consideration during Lent, as indicated in Canons 49 and 51 (ibid., p. 320), also reveals that regard for the Sabbath was not entirely lacking.
[18] Ibid., Vol. 4, pp. 208, 209.
[19] Ibid., pp. 407, 422.
[20] Ibid., p. 409.
[21] W. W. Hyde, Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire (Philadelphia, 1946, p. 261).
[22] For a brief discussion of the early period, see my article “A Further Note on the Sabbath in Coptic Sources,” AUSS Vol. 6 (1968), pp. 150–157. For the reference mentioning both Saturday and Sunday as being “named Sabbaths,” see p. 151. The source is Statute 66 in G. Horner, The Statutes of the Apostles (London, 1904 and 1915), pp. 211, 212. A number of sources deal with the Sabbath in later Ethiopian history.
Part 3
The gradual transition of worship from Saturday to Sunday culminated in the enactment of laws against work on Sunday.
It is a curious fact that the references dealing with both Sabbath and Sunday increased sharply in the fourth century AD and that many of these had over–tones of controversy. In some instances, there was an emphasis to keep both days (as, for example, in the Apostolic Constitutions), and Gregory of Nyssa and Asterius of Amaseia could refer to the Sabbath and Sunday as “sisters” and as a “team,” respectively. These were among the references discussed in our first article.[1]
On the other side, however, stood the anti–Sabbath church leaders. For example, John Chrysostom, a contemporary of Gregory and Asterius, went so far as to declare, “There are many among us now, who fast on the same day as the Jews, and keep the sabbaths in the same manner; and we endure it nobly or rather ignobly and basely”![2]
A day of fasting. In the previous article in this series, we noted that the Sabbath fast –which made the Sabbath a sad and hungry day– helped bring about the rise of Sunday observance in Rome and in some other places in the West. Indeed, as early as the first quarter of the third century Tertullian of Carthage in North Africa argued against the practice.[3] About the same time Hippolytus in Rome took issue with those who observed the Sabbath fast.[4]
However, in the fourth and fifth centuries evidence of controversy on this matter heightened. Augustine (died AD 430) dealt with the issue in several of his letters, including one in which he gave rebuttal to a zealous Roman advocate of Sabbath fasting – an individual who caustically denounced those who refused to fast on the Sabbath.[5]
As another evidence of the controversy, Canon 64 of the Apostolic Constitutions specifies that “if any one of the clergy be found to fast on the Lord’s day, or on the Sabbath–day, excepting one only, let him be deprived; but if he be one of the laity, let him be suspended.”[6]
The interpolater of Ignatius, who probably wrote at about the same time, even declared that “if any one fasts on the Lord’s Day or on the Sabbath, except on the paschal Sabbath only, he is a murderer of Christ.”[7] (On the paschal Sabbath, the anniversary of the Sabbath during which Christ was in the tomb, Christians considered it appropriate to fast.)
The last two sources noted may indicate that the controversy had extended beyond Western Christianity; but as far as the actual official practice was concerned, only Rome and certain other Western churches adopted it. John Cassian (died about AD 440) speaks of “some people in some countries of the West, and especially in the city [Rome]” who fasted on the Sabbath.[8] And Augustine refers to “the Roman Church and some other churches… near to it or remote from it” where the Sabbath fast was observed.
But Milan, an important church in northern Italy, was among the Western churches that did not observe the Sabbath fast, as Augustine also makes clear.[9] Nor did the Eastern churches ever adopt it. The question remained a point of disagreement between East and West as late as the eleventh century.[10]
The increase in references about the Sabbath –both for and against– indicate that some sort of struggle was beginning to manifest itself on a rather widespread basis. No longer did the controversy center in only Rome and Alexandria. What could have triggered this struggle on such a wide scale in the fourth and fifth centuries?
Undoubtedly, one of the most important factors is to be found in the activities of Emperor Constantine the Great in the early fourth century, followed by later “Christian emperors.” Not only did Constantine give Christianity a new status within the Roman Empire (from being persecuted to being honored), but he also gave Sunday a “new look.” By his civil legislation, he made Sunday a rest day.
His famous Sunday law of March 7, 321, reads:
“On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain–sowing or for vine–planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost.”[11]
This was the first in a series of steps taken by Constantine and by later “Christian emperors” in regulating Sunday observance. It is obvious that this first Sunday law was not particularly Christian in orientation (note the pagan designation “venerable Day of the Sun”); but very likely Constantine, on political and social grounds, endeavored to merge together heathen and Christian elements of his constituency by focusing on a common practice.
In AD 386, Theodosius I and Gratian Valentinian extended Sunday restrictions so that litigation should entirely cease on that day and there would be no public or private payment of debt.[12] Laws forbidding circus, theater, and horse racing also followed and were reiterated as felt necessary.[13]
Reaction to early Sunday laws. How did the Christian church react to Constantine’s Sunday edict of March, 321, and to subsequent civil legislation that made Sunday a rest day? As desirable as such legislation may have seemed to Christians from one standpoint, it also placed them in a dilemma. Heretofore, Sunday had been a workday, except for special worship services. What would happen, for example, to nuns such as those described by Jerome in Bethlehem, who, after following their mother superior to church and then back to their communions, the rest of their time on Sunday devoted “themselves to their allotted tasks, and made garments either for themselves or else for others”?[14]
There is no evidence that Constantine’s Sunday laws were ever specifically made the basis for Christian regulations of the day, but it is obvious that Christian leaders must do something to keep the day from becoming one of idleness and vain amusement. Added emphasis on worship and reference to the Sabbath commandment in the Old Testament seem to have been the twin routes now taken. (It is interesting to note that even Constantine did not intend to reflect the Sabbath commandment of the Decalogue in his Sunday law, inasmuch as he exempted agricultural work – a type of work strictly prohibited in the Sabbath commandment.)
Perhaps a first inkling of the new trend comes as early as the time of Constantine himself – through the church historian Eusebius, who was also Constantine’s biographer and keen admirer. In his commentary on Psalm 92, “the Sabbath Psalm,” Eusebius writes that Christians would fulfill on the Lord’s day all that in this Psalm was prescribed for the Sabbath – including worship of God early in the morning. He then adds that through the new covenant the Sabbath celebration was transferred to “the first day of light [Sunday].”[15]
Later in the fourth century Ephraem Syrus suggested that honor was due “to the Lord’s day, the firstborn of all days,” which had “taken away the right of the firstborn from the Sabbath.” Then he goes on to point out that the law prescribes that rest should be given to servants and animals.[16] The reflection of the Old Testament Sabbath commandment is obvious.
With his sort of Sabbath emphasis now being placed on Sunday, it was inevitable that the Sabbath day itself (Saturday) would take on lesser and lesser importance. And the controversy that is evident in literature of the fourth and fifth centuries between those who would debase the Sabbath and those who would honor it reflects the struggle.
Moreover, it was a struggle that did not terminate quickly; for as we have seen, the fifth–century church historians Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen provide a picture of Sabbath worship services alongside Sunday worship services as being the pattern throughout Christendom in their day, except in Rome and Alexandria. It appears that the “Christian Sabbath” as a replacement for the earlier Biblical Sabbath was mainly a development of the sixth century and later.
The earliest church council to deal with the matter was a regional eastern one meeting in Laodicea about AD 364. Although this council still manifested respect for the Sabbath as well as Sunday in the special lections (Scripture readings) designated for those two days, it nonetheless stipulated the following in its Canon 29: “Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday but shall work on that day; but the Lord’s day they shall especially honour, and, as being Christians, shall, if possible, do no work on that day. If, however, they are found Judaizing, they shall be shut out from Christ.”[17]
The regulation with regard to working on Sunday was rather moderate in that Christians should not work on that day if possible! However, more significant was the fact that this council reversed the original command of God and the practice of the earliest Christians with regard to the seventh–day Sabbath.
God had said, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work" (Exodus 20:8–10, RSV). This council said, instead, "Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday but shall work on that day."
Work forbidden on Sunday. The Third Synod of Orleans in 538, though deploring Jewish Sabbatarianism, forbade "field labours" so that "people may be able to come to church and worship."[18] Half a century later, the Second Synod of Macon in 585 and the Council of Narbonne in 589 stipulated strict Sunday observance.[19] The ordinances of the former "were published by King Guntram in a decree of November 10, 585, in which he enforced careful observance of the Sunday."[20]
Finally, during the Carolingian Age a great emphasis was placed on Lord's day observance according to the Sabbath commandment. Walter W. Hyde, in his Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire, has well summed up several centuries of the history of Sabbath and Sunday up to Charlemagne:
"The emperors after Constantine made Sunday observance more stringent but in no case was their legislation based on the Old Testament… At the Third Synod of Aureliani (Orleans) in 538 rural work was forbidden but the restriction against preparing meals and similar work on Sunday was regarded as a superstition.
"After Justinian's death in 565 various epistolae decretales were passed by the popes about Sunday. One of Gregory I (590–604) forbade men 'to yoke oxen or to perform any other work, except for approved reasons,' while another of Gregory II (715–731) said: 'We decree that all Sundays be observed from vespers to vespers and that all unlawful work the abstained from.' …
"Charlemagne at Aquisgranum (Aachen) in 788 decreed that all ordinary labor on the lords day be forbidden, since it was against the Fourth Commandment, especially labor in the field or vineyard which Constantine had exempted."[21]
God’s Sabbath never forgotten. And thus Sunday came to be the Christian rest day substitute for the Sabbath. But the seventh–day Sabbath was never entirely forgotten, of course. This was true in Europe itself. But particularly in Ethiopia, for example, groups kept both Saturday and Sunday as "Sabbaths," not only in the early Christian centuries but down into modern times.[22]
Nevertheless, for a good share of Christendom, the history of the Sabbath and Sunday had by the sixth through eighth centuries taken a complete circle. For most Christians, God’s rest day of both Old Testament and New Testament times had through a gradual process become a workday and had been supplanted by a substitute rest day. God’s command that on the seventh day “you shall not do any work” had been replaced by the command of man: Work on the seventh day; rest on the first.
However, all Christians who consider the New Testament as the normative guide for their lives, rather than the decisions of men hundreds of years later, will ask whether the worship day of Christ and the apostles –Saturday, the seventh day of the week– should still be observed today. We believe it should.
[1] See These Times, November, 1978.
[2] Comment on Galatians 1:7 in Commentary on Galatians (The Nicene and Post–Nicene Fathers [NPNF], 1st Series, Vol. 13, p. 8).
[3] In On Fasting, ch. 14 (The Ante–Nicene Fathers [ANF], Vol. 4, p. 112), Tertullian indicates that the Sabbath is “a day never to be kept as a fast except at the passover season, according to a reason elsewhere given.” He also indicates his opposition to the Sabbath fast in Against Marcion, iv. 12 (ANF, Vol. 3, 363).
[4] Hippolytus mentions some who “give heed to doctrines of devils” and “often appoint a fast on the Sabbath and on the Lord’s day, which Christ has, however, not appointed” (from his Commentary on Daniel, iv. 20; the Greek text and French translation are given by Maurice Lefevre [Paris, 1947], pp. 300–303).
[5] See Augustine’s Epistles 36 (to Casulanus), 54 (to Januarius), and 82 (to Jerome) (NPNF, 1st Series, Vol. 1, pp. 265–270, 300, 301, 353, 354). They are dated between AD 396 and 405. It is Epistle 36 that gives rebuttal to the Roman advocate of the Sabbath fast.
[6] English trans. in ANF, Vol. 7, p. 504. This canon is numbered 66 in the Hefele edition (see note 17 (Charles J. Hefele) below).
[7] Pseudo–Ignatius, To the Philippians, ch. 13 (ANF, Vol. 1, p. 119).
[8] Institutes, iii. 10 (NPNF, 2nd Series, Vol. 11, p. 218).
[9] The first statement appears in Epistle 36, par. 27 (NPNF, 1st Series, Vol. 1, 268), and a similar remark is made in Epistle 82, par. 14 (ibid., p. 353). References to Milan are found in Epistle 36, par. 32, and in Epistle 54, par. 3 (ibid., pp. 270, 300, 301).
[10] See R. L. Odom, “The Sabbath in the Great Schism of AD 1054,” Andrews University Seminary Studies [AUSS], Vol. 1 (1963), pp. 77, 78.
[11] Codex Justinianus, iii., Tit. 12.3, trans. in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 5th ed. (New York, 1902), Vol. 3, p. 380, note 1.
[12] Theodosian Code, 11.7.13, trans. by Clyde Pharr (Princeton, N.J., 1952), p. 300.
[13] The further laws include a law of Theodosius II in 425, in Theodosian Code, 15.5.5, p. 433.
[14] See Jerome, Epistle cviii., 20 (NPNF, 2nd Series, Vol. VI, p. 206).
[15] Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. 23, Col. 1169.
[16] S. Ephraem Syri hymni et sermones, ed. by T. J. Lamy (1882), Vol. 1, pp. 542–544.
[17] Charles J. Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, trans. Henry N. Oxenham, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1896), p. 316. Canon 16 (ibid., p. 310) refers to lections; and the fact that Saturday as well as Sunday had special consideration during Lent, as indicated in Canons 49 and 51 (ibid., p. 320), also reveals that regard for the Sabbath was not entirely lacking.
[18] Ibid., Vol. 4, pp. 208, 209.
[19] Ibid., pp. 407, 422.
[20] Ibid., p. 409.
[21] W. W. Hyde, Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire (Philadelphia, 1946, p. 261).
[22] For a brief discussion of the early period, see my article “A Further Note on the Sabbath in Coptic Sources,” AUSS Vol. 6 (1968), pp. 150–157. For the reference mentioning both Saturday and Sunday as being “named Sabbaths,” see p. 151. The source is Statute 66 in G. Horner, The Statutes of the Apostles (London, 1904 and 1915), pp. 211, 212. A number of sources deal with the Sabbath in later Ethiopian history.