Why the ordinary week-day is called ‘Feria,’ when in classical Latin ‘feriae’ was used for ‘days of rest,’ ‘holidays,’ ‘festivals,’ is a question that cannot be answered with any confidence. A conjecture which seems open to various objections, though it has found supporters, is as follows: all the days of Easter week were holidays, ‘feriatae’; and, this being the first week of the ecclesiastical year, the other weeks followed the mode of naming the days which had been used in regard to the first week. A fatal objection to this theory, for which the authority of St Jerome has been claimed, is that we find ‘feria’ used, as in Tertullian, for an ordinary week-day long before we have any reason to think that there was any ordinance for the observance of the whole of Easter week by a cessation from labour[15].
Another conjecture, presented however with too much confidence, is that put forward on the authority of Isidore of Seville[16] by the learned Henri de Valois (Valesius). He alleges that the ancient Christians, receiving, as they did, the week of seven days from the Jews, imitated the Jewish practice, which used the expression ‘the second of the Sabbath,’ ‘the third of the Sabbath,’ and so on for the days of the week: that ‘Feria’ means a day of rest, in effect the same as ‘Sabbath,’ and that in this way the ‘second Feria’ and ‘third Feria,’ etc., came to be used for the second and third days of the week[17].
The astrological names for the days of the week, as of the Sun, of the Moon, of Mars, of Mercury, etc., were generally avoided by Christians; but they are not wholly unknown in Christian writers, and sometimes appear even in Christian epitaphs.
In the ecclesiastical records of the Greeks the first day of the week is ‘the Lord’s day’; and the seventh, the Sabbath, as in the West. But Friday is Parasceve (παρασκευή), a name which in the Latin Church is confined to one Friday in the year, the Friday of the Lord’s Passion, which day in the Eastern Church is known as ‘the Great Parasceve.’ With these exceptions the days of the week are ‘the second,’ ‘the third,’ ‘the fourth,’ etc., the word ‘day’ being understood.
It is worth recording that among the Portuguese the current names for the week-days are: segunda feira, terça feira, etc.
Wednesday and Friday.
Long prior to any clear evidence for the special observance among Christians of the last day of the week we find testimonies to a religious character attaching to the fourth and sixth days.
The devout Jews were accustomed to observe a fast twice a week, on the second and fifth days, Monday and Thursday[18]; and these days, together with the Christian fasts substituted for them, are referred to in the Teaching of the Apostles (8), ‘Let not your fastings be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week; but do ye keep your fast on the fourth and parasceve (the sixth).’ In the Shepherd of Hermas we find the writer relating that he was fasting and holding a station[19]. And this peculiar term is applied by Tertullian to fasts (whether partial or entire we need not here discuss) observed on the fourth and sixth days of the week[20]. Clement of Alexandria, though not using the word station, speaks of fasts being held on the fourth day of the week and on the parasceve[21].
At a much later date than the authorities cited above we find the Apostolic Canons decreeing under severe penalties that, unless for reasons of bodily infirmity, not only the clergy but the laity must fast on the fourth day of the week and on the sixth (parasceve). And the rule of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays still obtains in the Eastern Church[22].