Days of the Week in the Chronicon Paschale

Beschreibung

Although it is well known that probably in the year 321 the Sunday law of Emperor Constantine was enacted, and although additional legal texts and ecclesiastical canons are also known, this is too little for a cultural history of Sunday. What did people do on Sunday? Think about Sunday? How was it that Sunday, and therefore the weekly rhythm, became the dominant general orientation framework, which was not the case for the time of the Roman Republic and before? Sunday veneration became more and more important in Late Antiquity but not directly after Constantine’s Sunday law, but later, since the beginning in the fifth century.
In this respect, one interesting though strange text is the Chronicon Paschale (7th century).
One gets the impression, that the author has an interest in weekdays, and especially in Sundays. First of all, he uses the weekdays for chronological calculations. In addition, he obviously likes to present a sequence of events more precisely, including the weekdays. Perhaps he wants to enforce the dramatic steps of the story and stimulate the imagination of the reader. However, the author seems to be interested in the week beyond these calculatory and rhetorical aspects of the days of the week: Interestingly, he twice presents imperial laws on Sunday veneration and Sunday rest.
The paper demonstrates in which respect Sunday is an identity marker of a Christian society for the author of the chronicle. This is part of a four years research project financed by the Austrian FWF.

Zeitraum	23 Aug. 2019
Ereignistitel	International Conference on Patristic Studies
Veranstaltungstyp	Konferenz
Ort	Oxford, Großbritannien / Vereinigtes KönigreichAuf Karte anzeigen
Bekanntheitsgrad	International