The Time Reserved for Religious Practice as a Mainstay of the Religious Freedom. Constantine's Statutes on Sunday Rest and its Legacy in Contemporary Multicultural Society

Abstract

Part A. Two fragments of two statutes issued by Constantine, preserved in the Codex Theodosianus and in the Codex Iustinianus, contain the prohibition of jurisdictional activities and of some other forms of work on the dies Solis (Sunday). By means of a detailed survey of the norms issued by the Emperor and his successors and by the analysis of Christian literary testimonies in the early centuries AD, we reached the conclusion of linking – with a high degree of certainty and in disagreement with recent research – the Constantinian rules on dies Solis with the aim of fostering Christian worship on dies Dominica. The Jews had already obtained this recognition, and Constantine afforded this privilege also to Christians. Religious freedom has always had a twofold dimension: having internal freedom which had to be matched with “acting” freely in the political sphere, in order to practice religion in society. Hence, the time to dedicate to worship (along with the space) has been one of the main factors regarding the realization of the external profile of religious freedom.

Part B. Europe today is supposed to be a multicultural society in which diversities can coexist within a multicultural public sphere. But the realization of this objective requires new forms of legal equality and traditions of justice which are the main keys of understanding the demands of recognition that rise from the various communities in Europe. Different religious laws prescribe different days to accomplish religious duties and activities, and the Western calendar is still influenced by the legacy of Costantine’s religious policy. The approaches and goals of this paper are twofold. Part A. considers the norms by which Constantine started the process of “Christianization” of the time of Western society; part B. evaluates to what extent the rules enacted in the Late Antiquity may still be considered as sources of inspiration for the “policies of time” in the contemporary public sphere. At any rate, both approaches aim to improve the effectiveness of religious liberty in a multicultural society.

Keywords: Constantine I the Great, religious freedom in a multicultural society, time devoted to religious practice, Sunday, secularization.