The Week (Colson)/Chapter 7

by F. H. Colson

§ 7

The Week in Northern Europe

The question of when, how and under what influence the week diffused itself in Northern Europe is one on which we have little knowledge beyond the precarious inferences which may be drawn from the names. Welsh has a complete set of Roman planetary names. It stands in fact alone in this respect among European languages. Saturday is Dydd-sadwrn, Sunday Dydd-sul, Monday Dydd-llun. There has been no tendency to supplant the first two of these, as in Latin Europe by Dominica and Sabbatum, nor again have Sol and Luna been replaced by the Celtic equivalents for Sun and Moon. The natural inference is that the week spread through the Romanized element in Britain, as it did through the rest of the Empire, under planetary rather than Christian influence, and that the names, now become mere names, then found their way into the vernacular. The later isolation of Britain from the sphere of Roman Christianity will, I imagine, give a quite satisfactory explanation why the Church influence which established the 'Lord's day' so firmly in the south was not so effective in this country.

In the other two great branches of Celtic speech, the Gaelic and the Irish, things took a different course. Monday, Tuesday and Saturday are the days of Luna, Mars and Saturn, but Sunday is Di-domhnaich, and the three other names are formed on quite another principle. The name for Wednesday means 'the first fast,' Friday is 'the fast' or 'the great fast,' while Thursday is something which is variously interpreted as 'the eve of the fast,' 'the second fast,' or 'the day between the fasts,' but at any rate has some such connexion. Here again it is a natural conjecture that the week reached these tribes which lay outside Roman civilization at a later period and in the wake of Christianity. The names for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday distinctly suggest this, that for Sunday is obviously compatible with it, and those for Monday and Tuesday do not suggest the contrary. For as we have seen, the ordinary Christian of the south, if not the strict churchman, continued to use the planetary names for these two. Saturday is indeed a difficulty on this hypothesis. Perhaps we may account for it partly by the influence of their Welsh kinsmen, partly on the supposition that sabbatum, though the accepted ecclesiastical name, had not the sanctity of dominica and was less likely to be pressed by the Church on the converted or semi-converted population. But all these inferences from names are, as I have said, precarious, and I put them forward rather as theses for consideration than as settled conclusions.

The history of the week-names among the Teutonic nations presents a more important and perplexing problem. We see that the first day is named as in the planetary week from the Sun. The Teuton like the Briton does not accept the Christian alternative of the Lord's day, but unlike the Briton he translates the word sol into its Teutonic equivalent. The second day is as elsewhere called after the Moon, and here too the word 'luna' has been translated, not taken over, as it stands, as in Welsh. The third in its various forms can be traced back to a Teutonic deity, whom we may presume and indeed know to have been held as an equivalent of Mars. 'The fourth in German is merely 'mid-week,' but in English, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages evidently retains the name of Woden or Odin, whom we have reason to think the Romans who were interested in Teutonic mythology identified with their own Mercury. The fifth bears the names of Thunor or Thor, a reasonable equivalent for Jupiter, and the goddess Frigg, who everywhere gives her name to the sixth, is an equally natural representation of Venus. The seventh has become in German Samstag, presumably a corruption of Sabbatum, but in English and Dutch it presents unmistakably Saturn's day, and in this case alone is the name taken over untranslated^[1]; while among the Scandinavians both the pagan and Christian names are absent, and we have nothing but a word, which in its various forms means 'washing-day,' or, as a middle-class Englishman of the last generation might have said, 'Tub-night.'^[2] Now it is true that we first find these names in later Christian writers speaking of the heathen whom they had converted or with whom they came in contact, but it is obvious that they represent or are the equivalents of the Roman planetary week-names and almost equally obvious that they must have been introduced while the Teutonic world was still pagan, and through pagan not Christian influence. If Augustine's English converts had only known the week, as presented to them in a Christian form, it is quite conceivable that they should pick up these pagan names for five days of the week, which, as the present week-day names in the Latin countries shew, remained in general currency, but in this case we should expect that they would have been taken over as they stood, with merely linguistic variations. But it is hardly conceivable that these converts should have proceeded to turn these mere survivals of a pagan terminology into the names of the deities whom they were in the act of discarding. It is hardly less unintelligible that they should go one better than their converters and turn the Lord's day back into the Sun's day and in some countries at any rate Sabbath into Saturn's day. The conclusion^[3] seems inevitable that the week was carried into the lands beyond the Rhine and Danube from the still unchristianized Empire, that is to say, not much later and probably earlier than the fourth century. It is quite possible that the remarkably strong Mithraistic zeal which, as inscriptions shew, prevailed in the Roman army may have had something to do with this. At any rate it seems clear to me, that when the week originally obtained a footing outside the borders of the Empire it must have been as a religious institution of some kind. For the argument used above about the changes of the names applies here also. If the week had been accepted as a form of time-measurement current among their more civilized neighbours and therefore worthy of imitation, or for commercial purposes, the names would have been taken over as they stood and not converted into those of Teutonic deities. At the same time it is difficult to suppose that this religious motive had the astrological character which belonged to week-observance when it first spread within the Empire. There does not seem to be the slightest trace of these astrological ideas in what we know of Teutonic mythology, or any hint that the deities had any connexion with the planets. Furthermore, we have to account for the fact that the system with its non-Latin names was not only introduced but preserved during the considerable and obscure gap between the latest time at which it can have been introduced and the date at which it re-appears, when it comes into contact with Christianity. For that it was so preserved is clear. Augustine's Kentish converts when they were bidden to hear Mass on the Lord's day already knew it as the Sun's day. What were the ideas that preserved it? To those who think that a seven-day continuous cycle is so natural and valuable a way of time-measurement that it will preserve itself automatically the question will seem superfluous. I have already given my reasons for thinking the contrary. I can only suppose that one or more of the days preserved some civil or religious significance during this interval. But what this was we can only guess. One hint only I have found. Grimm notes that some special observance continued to be paid for centuries in Central Europe to Thursday^[4]. This can hardly be a Christian growth, as we might have thought in the case of Sunday or Friday, and it looks like an indication that the Teutonic world, having taken the week-day names from their neighbours and having identified first the planet of Jupiter with the god Jupiter and then the latter with their own thunder-god, came to believe that he needed propitiation once in seven days. This in itself was bound to preserve the week-cycle, even if no other observance attached itself to the other six. But in all this section it must be remembered that I am speaking without the special knowledge that can lend authority to conjecture^[5]. It would obviously be impossible to conclude my investigation of the planetary week without some mention of at any rate the Teutonic adoption of it. But I can do little more than state a case in the hope that those who are specialists in Celtic or Teutonic mythology and antiquities may give it a consideration which I do not think it has yet received.

I have been obliged to end, as I began, on a note of uncertainty, and it may also be said that much of the intermediate part, particularly as to the relation between the Christian Church and the planetary week, is somewhat conjectural. But there is a great difference between the two forms of uncertainty. In the one—that which besets the question of the existence of the prehistoric week and the meaning of the Teutonic week—we suffer from a paucity of facts. In the case of the other we have abundance of facts, though the inferences to be drawn from them may be doubtful. But, apart from these two conjectural elements, there is much which is certainly historical. That our week rests upon a combination of the Jewish and the planetary week, that the latter obtained a remarkable currency during the first two centuries A.D., and that it is in origin an hour rather than a day system, are truths to my mind established beyond question. If this little treatise falls into the hands of what are called 'general readers,' experience tells me that to the great majority the matter will be new, and if they fail to find it interesting, I shall conclude that it is my method of presenting the subject, rather than the subject itself, which is at fault.

1. Earlier authorities (e.g. the art. on 'Calendar' in the Enc. Brit.) postulated a Teutonic deity Seterne, but this seems to be pure invention.
2. Danish Loverdag; v. Appendix, p. 117. Professor Chadwick has pointed out to me an interesting illustration of this. The chronicler John of Wallingford (died 1214), in describing the massacre of the Danes by Ethelred, says that 'the Danes had occupied the best parts of East Anglia and that it was their custom to comb their hair every day, to change their clothes frequently and bathe on Saturdays (sabbatis balneare) and improve their outward appearance by many such frivolities. Hence they were a snare to the chastity of the English matrons and had many daughters of nobles for their concubines.' Ethelred was thus induced to consent to the fatal massacre of St Brice's day, Nov. 13th, 1002, and for this, according to John, Saturday, as their bathing day, was chosen.

   Freeman, Norman Conquest, I, p. 65, commenting on this story, says that though John does not mention St Brice's day, that day did fall on Saturday in 1002. But he is mistaken in this: it was actually Friday, and as there appears to be no question as to the accuracy of the date, this part of John's story must be untrue. I leave to experts to consider how far this invalidates the earlier part.

3. This was also Grimm's opinion.
4. Teutonic Mythology (Eng. trans.), I, p. 191. The evidence after the eighth century or so does not seem very strong, and I should add that Professor Chadwick considers the suggestion somewhat fanciful.
5. Though I am glad to say that so high an authority as Professor Chadwick has read the pages on the Teutonic week and does not raise any objection, except that just mentioned.