Sir Henry Spelman, who is recognized as high authority, in discussing the origin of practices in the English courts, says that all ancient nations prohibited legal proceedings on sacred days. His words are:
“To be short, it was so common a thing in those days of old to exempt the times of exercise of religion from all worldly business, that the barbarous nations, even our Angli, while they were yet in Germany, the Suevians themselves, and others in those Northern parts would in no wise violate or interrupt it. Tacitus says of them that during this time of holy rites, non bellum ineunt, non arma sumunt. Clausum omne ferrum. Pax et quies tunc tantum nota, tunc tantum amat.”
Speaking of the origin of the English “court terms,” Spelman says:
“I will therefore seek the original of our terms only from the Romans, as all other nations that have been subject to their civil and ecclesiastical monarch do, and must.
“The ancient Romans, while they were yet heathens, did not, as we at this day, use certain continual portions of the year for a legal decision of controversies, but out of superstitious conceit that some days were ominous and more unlucky than others (according to that of the Egyptians), they made one day to be fastus or term day and another (as an Egyptian day), to be vacation or nefastus; seldom two fast days or law days together; yea, they sometimes divided one and the same day in this manner:
“Qui modo fastus erat, mune nefastus erat.
“The afternoon was term, the morning holy day.
“Nor were all their fasti applied to judicature, but some of them to other meetings and consultations of the commonwealth; so that being divided into three sorts, which they called fastos proprie, fastos endotercisos, and fastos comitiales, containing together one hundred and eighty-four days through all the months of the year, there remained not properly to the prætor, as judicial or triverbial days, above twenty-eight.”[200]
Nothing more is needed to show that the Sunday edict was the product of the heathen cult, as truly as that which was issued in connection with it, relative to the Aruspices. There is an evident connection between the two edicts. Apollo was the patron deity of the soothsayers, as well as of Constantine. At least nine years later than this, Constantine placed his new residence at Byzantium under the protection of the heathen goddess of Fortune; he never gave up the title of high-priest of the heathen religion; he did not formally embrace Christianity until sixteen years later.