Editing Sabbath in Christianity (section)

====Continuations of Hebrew practices====
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Seventh-day Sabbath was observed at least sporadically by a minority of groups during the Middle Ages.<ref>{{Cite book |last=González |first=Justo L. |title=A brief history of Sunday: from the New Testament to the new creation |date=2017 |isbn=978-1-4674-4693-8 |location=Grand Rapids |publisher=William. B. Eerdmans |pages=5, 23 |oclc=987791206}}</ref>

In the early church in Ireland, there is evidence that a sabbath-rest on Saturday may have been kept along with Mass on Sunday as the Lord's Day. It appears that many of the canon laws in Ireland from that period were derived from parts of the laws of Moses. In Adomnan of Iona's biography of [[St Columba]] it describes Columba's death by having Columba say on a Saturday, "Today is truly my sabbath, for it is my last day in this wearisome life, when I shall keep the Sabbath after my troublesome labours. At midnight this Sunday, as Scripture saith, 'I shall go the way of my fathers'" and he then dies that night. The identification of this Sabbath day as a Saturday in the narrative is clear in the context, because Columba is recorded as seeing an angel at the Mass on the previous Sunday and the narrative claims he dies in the same week, on the Sabbath day at the end of the week, during the 'Lord's night' (referring to Saturday night-Sunday morning).<ref>Adomnan of Iona. Life of St Columba. Penguin books, 1995</ref>

An Eastern body of Christian Sabbath-keepers mentioned from the 8th century to the 12th is called Athenians ("touch-not") because they abstained from uncleanness and intoxicating drinks, called Athinginians in Neander: "This sect, which had its principal seat in the city of Armorion, in upper Phrygia, where many Jews resided, sprung out of a mixture of Judaism and Christianity. They united baptism with the observance of all the rites of Judaism, circumcision excepted. We may perhaps recognize a branch of the older Judaizing sects."<ref>Neander, fourth period, 6, 428.</ref>

Cardinal Hergenrother says that they stood in intimate relation with Emperor Michael II (AD 821–829), and testifies that they observed Sabbath.<ref>Kirchengeschichte, I, 527</ref> As late as the 11th century Cardinal Humbert still referred to the Nazarenes as a Sabbath-keeping Christian body existing at that time. But in the 10th and 11th centuries, there was a great extension of sects from the East to the West. Neander states that the corruption of the clergy furnished a most important vantage-ground on which to attack the dominant church. The abstemious life of these Christians, the simplicity and earnestness of their preaching and teaching, had their effect. "Thus we find them emerging at once in the 11th century, in countries the most diverse, and the most remote from each other, in Italy, France, and even in the Harz districts in Germany." Likewise, also, "traces of Sabbath-keepers are found in the times of Gregory I, Gregory VII, and in the 12th century in Lombardy."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dedication.www3.50megs.com/historyofsabbath/hos_twentyone_b.html#027|title=SABBATH DURING THE DARK AGES|website=dedication.www3.50megs.com}}</ref>