[92]. Kitto, Bible Cyclopædia; Church Festivals and their Household Words; Grimm, Acta Sanctorum; Pott; Michaelis.
Section V.—Sunday Names.
Sabbath (rest), in Hebrew, distinguished the seventh day, set apart from the service of the world in memory, first, of the cessation of the work of creation, and next, of the repose of the Israelites after their labours in Egypt.
While the Sabbath was still the sacred day, it does not appear to have suggested any historical name, except that of the father of Joses Barsabas, whose father must have been Sabas. In 532, however, was born in Cappadocia, Sabas, who became one of the most distinguished patriarchs of the monks in Palestine; and in 372, one of the first converts to Christianity among the Goths, then stationed in Wallachia, who had taken the name of Sabas, was martyred by being thrown into the river Musæus, now Mussovi. The locality attached the Slavonians to his name, and Sava is still common among them, as is Ssava in Russia.
Whether Sabea or Sabra, the king of Egypt’s daughter, whom St. George saved from the dragon, was named with any view to St. Sabas, cannot be guessed. I have seen the name in an old English register, no doubt in honour of the exploit of our patron saint.
The day of rest gave place to the day of Resurrection, the Lord’s day, as we still emphatically call it, after the example of the Apostles.
St. John called it Κυριακή ἡμέρα (the Lord’s day), and in this he has been followed by the entire Greek Church, with whom Sundays are still Kyriakoi.
It seems to have been the translators of the Septuagint that first gave its highest sense to Κύριος (Kyrios), a lord or master, from the verb κυρέω (kyreo), to find, obtain, or possess.
St. Kyriakos, or, as Rome spelt him, Cyriacus, was martyred under Diocletian, had his relics dug up afterwards, and his arm given to the abbey of Altdorff, in Alsace. From him came the Roman Ciriaco and the French Cyriac, all of which may mean either “the Lord’s,” or “the Sunday child.”
At the same time a little Kyriakos of Iconium, a child of three years old, fell, with his mother, Julitta, into the hands of the persecutors of Seleucia. The prefect tried to save the child, but he answered all the promises and threats alike with “I am a Christian,” till, in a rage, the magistrate dashed his head on the steps of the tribunal, and his mother, in her tortures, thanked Heaven for her child’s glorious martyrdom. Their touching story made a deep impression, perhaps the more from the wide dispersion of their supposed relics, which were said to have been brought from Antioch by St. Amator, to Auxerre, about the year 400, and thence were dispersed through many French towns, and villages, in which he was called St. Quiric or St. Cyr.