[Illustration: RELIGIOUS MUSIC From a window of the cathedral of Bourges, a city in central France. Shows a pipe organ and chimes.]
SUNDAY
The Christians from the start appear to have observed "the first day of the week" [7] in memory of Christ's resurrection. They attended public worship on the Lord's Day, but otherwise did not rigidly abstain from worldly business and amusements. The Jewish element in some churches, and especially in the East, was strong enough to secure an additional observance of Saturday as a weekly festival. Saturday long continued to be marked by religious assemblies and feasting, though not by any compulsory cessation of the ordinary occupations. During the fourth century Sunday, as the Lord's Day was now generally called, came more and more to be kept as a day of obligatory rest. Constantine's Sunday law [8] formed the first of a long series of imperial edicts imposing the observance of that day as a legal duty. In this manner Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, was dedicated wholly to the exercises of religion.
FESTIVALS
The great yearly festivals of the Church gradually took shape during the early Christian centuries. The most important anniversary to be observed was Easter, in memory of the resurrection of Christ. A period of fasting (Lent), which finally lasted forty days, preceded the festival. Whitsunday, or Pentecost, was celebrated on the fiftieth day after Easter. [9] Two other festivals of later adoption were Christmas, the celebration of which was finally assigned to the 25th of December, [10] and Epiphany (January 6), commemorating the baptism of Christ. In course of time many other feasts and fasts, together with numerous saints' days, were added to the calendar of the "Christian Year."
121. EASTERN CHRISTIANITY
EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE EAST
By the time of Constantine, Christianity had spread widely throughout the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Asia Minor was then largely Christian. Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, and Greece were all ecclesiastical provinces with their own metropolitans. Many Christians were found in Syria and Egypt. Churches also existed in Mesopotamia and Arabia, and even beyond the boundaries of the empire in Armenia and Persia. Between the time of Constantine and that of Justinian, Christianity continued to expand in the East, until the gospel had been carried to such distant regions as Abyssinia and India.
UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE
Most of the Christian communities in the Orient owed allegiance to the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. The Roman emperor, however, was the supreme religious authority in the East. He felt it as much his duty to maintain the doctrines and organization of Christianity as to preserve the imperial dominions against foreign foes. Since he presided over the Church, there could be no real independence for its officers. Bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs were in every respect subordinate to his will. This union of Church and State formed one of the most characteristic features of Christianity in the East.