Sunday

Sunday.

India, Boston, 1895; R. W. Frazer, Literary I. History of Observance of Sunday. The Apostolic Age (� 1). To the Reformation (� 2). Post-Reformation Conceptions of Sunday (� 3). Three Theories of Sunday (� 4). SUNDAY. Recent Movements in Germany (� 5). II. Sunday Legislation. Origin and Character of the Sabbath (� 1). The Week (� 2). Roman Legislation for Sunday (� 3).

I. History of Observance of Sunday: The earliest traces of the observance of the first day of the week in remembrance of Christ's resurrection

is found in the Pauline period of the r. The Apostolic Age. Preceding this, Chris-

Apostolic tians had, after the example of Christ Age. himself and as a continuation of the

Old-Testament custom, kept the Sabbath, but with some freedom as to the method of its observance. At first daily meetings were held for the expression of thanks for salvation. But soon a movement began among gentile Christians (cf. I Cor. xvi. 2 with Acts xx. 7) to hold longer services on Sunday characterized in part by the collection of free-will offerings. The name, " the Lord's day," became a designation for it (Rev. i. 10; Ignatius, " Magnesians," ix., Eng. transl., ANF, i. 62; Didache, xiv.). The author of the Epistle of Barnabas (chap. xv., ANF, i. 147) speaks of the day as the " eighth day " and justifies its observance as celebrating the resurrection of Christ, his first appearance to the disciples, and his ascension. The day is called Sunday by Justin Martyr as commemorating the creation of light on the first day of the creation and also the awakening of Christ, the " Sun of righteousness," from the darkness of the grave. After Justin, the mention of the Lord's day as the weekly observance of the Christians becomes ever more frequent. Opposed to the claim that the Christians in celebrating Sunday had indirectly appropriated a day already observed in honor of a heathen deity, it is to be considered that in addition to the motive for observing that day assigned by Justin Martyr and Barnabas, the great aversion of the early Christians to idolatry would preclude the possibility of such appropriation.

From Tertullian (De corona, iii., ANF, iii. 94) and other sources it appears that, after the Apostolic Age, since Sunday was a day of rejoicing, fasting and kneeling at prayer was not observed. Tertullian advised that the ordinary daily routine XL-10

History of India, New York, 1898; W. G. Aston, Shinto, chap. vii. et passim, London, 1905; L. R. Famell, Cults of the Greek States, vol. iv., Oxford, 1907; and literature under BRAHMANISM; CHINA; HINDUISM; INDIA; and JAPAN.

For practises among primitive peoples consult: G. Cattin, O-%ee-Pa; a Religious Ceremony, Philadelphia, 1867; W. Manahardt, Wald- and Feldkulte, 2 vols., Berlin, 18751877; A. Reville, Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, pp. 39 sqq., London, 1884; S. D. Peet, Animal Worship and Sun Worship in the East and the West Compared, in JAOS, 1889, pp. celxx-celxxix.; D. G. Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, pp. 138-139, New York, 1897; J. W. Fewkes, in American Anthropologist, xi (1898), 65-87 (on an Arizoniau Indian winter solstice. ceremony); G. A. Dorsey, in Columbian Museum Publication no. 76, June 1, Washington, 1903; E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, London, 1903; A. L. Kroeber, Religion of the Indians of California, San Francisco, 1907; J. Dechelette, Le Cults du soleel aux temps prihiatoriques, Paris, 1909.

Early English Legislation (� 4).

Legislative Results of Puritanism (� 5).

Legislation in the Several States (� 6).

Conditions in Europe (� 7).

of labor be avoided, not out of respect to the OldTestament law (Ex. xx. 8-9), but because it was in keeping with the purpose of devoting the day to a

celebration of joy. This conception of 2. To the Sunday continued for a number of cenReforma- turies; as late as 538, at the Third

tion. Synod of Orleans (Hefele, Concilienge-

schichte, ii. 778; Fr. transl., ii. 2, p.1162; Eng. tranal., iv. 208-209), the idea that meals could not be prepared on Sunday and that other like work could not be done was condemned as Jewish superstition. Sunday was first regulated by civil authority in 321, under Constantine, directing that the day be hallowed and observed appropriately. By this law juridical and industrial activities were suspended. The laws regulating Sunday observance were gradually made more comprehensive and stringent by subsequent emperors, forbidding participation in or attendance at places of public amusement and prescribing a more humane treatment of prisoners on that day. A synodical decree of 585 (canon i, Synod of Macon; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, iii. 40, Fr. transl., iii. 209, cf. note 2, Eng. tranal., iv. 407) established severe punishments for the desecration of Sunday. But these strict regulations were not borrowed from Old-Testament legislation, the day being only broadly regarded as corresponding to the Old-Testament Sabbath. " Sabbath signifies rest, Sunday signifies resurrection," taught Augustine (on Ps. cl.). Not until the time of the Carolingians did the idea of substitution of Sunday for the Old-Testament Sabbath prevail in Christian Europe. Charlemagne's numerous strict Sunday regulations were explicitly based upon the Old-Testament command to keep the Sabbath day holy, and henceforth, throughout the Middle Ages, the Old-Testament idea of the Sabbath was the basis for laws regulating the observance of Sunday. And the situation in the East repeated that in the West, labor being strictly prohibited on Sunday-as by Leo the Isaurian,

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199 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA

efforts of the priesthood to Romanize or to break up the public schools, or, where neither can be done from want of power, to neutralize them by parochial schools in which the doctrines and principles of Trent and the Vatican are inculcated upon the rising generation. The encyclical Pascendi gregis (ut sup.) sounds almost like a continuation of the Syllabus, being a condemnation of " Modernism " (q.v.). The text of the encyclical is given in The Programme of Modernism (ut sup.).

P. SCHAFFt. D. S. SCHAFF.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The text is most convenient of access in Schaff, Creeds, ii. 213-233; it is also in Acta et decreta concilii Vaticani, Freiburg, 1871, and in W. E. Gladstone, Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion, London and New York, 1875 (containing three tracts of Gladstone on the subject, the text of the Syllabus, and a history of the Vatican Council). On the subject consult besides the literature named in the text: Pronier, La Liberle religieuse et le Syllabus, Geneva, 1870; Cardinal H. E. Manning, The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, ib. 1875 (reply to Gladstone, ut sup.); Cardinal J. H. Newman, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation, ib. 1875; and much of the literature under INFALLIBILITY; ULTRAMONTANISM; and VATICAN COUNCIL.

SYLVESTER. See SILVESTER.

SYLVESTRINS: A Roman Catholic congregation under Observantine Benedictine rule, established by Silvestro Gonzelini (b. at Osimo, 9 m. s.