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general sense is something like this. Pagans often say that the Christians worship the sun. They think this partly from our custom of turning to the east and partly because we hold a festival on the Sun's day. But our religion is not sun-worship and if we rejoice on the Sun's day we do but follow the pagans, who dedicate the day which precedes it, Saturn's day, to leisure and feasting. Here we seem to have the suggestion that the day of the sinister planet had first, because of its unluckiness, been held to be unsuitable for active work and then by a natural transformation had become a festival or holiday. We have seen much the same thing happen with the old Scottish Fast-days and our own Good Friday.
That the planetary week was a matter of common knowledge and observance after Dion's day is attested by a great body of inscriptional and other evidence. But I need not weary the reader with the details, for the truth of the statement is shewn most effectively by the simple fact that in spite of the opposition of the Church the planetary names held their ground in the Christianized empire at any rate in the West[1]. It is true that where ecclesiastical names were available they could prevail. As already noticed, 'Dominica' and 'Sabbatum' ousted Sun's day and
- ↑ The Eastern Church seems to have been much more successful. The names of the days both in Modern Greek and Russian are not planetary; v. Appendix, pp. 117 ff.
