Gregorian calendar

“ As all other civilised states had already adopted the Gregorian calendar, the alteration of the New Year, and the change from the old to the new calendar, was accomplished without opposition on the part of the people in England. It was only in Buckinghamshire that a rebel rising threatened, and the cause of this was an old belief which was threatened by the new calendar. ”

“ The rapid progress of astronomy led to the consideration of this subject, and many new calendars were proposed. [ [ [Author:Ugo Boncompagni|Pope Gregory XIII.] ] convoked a large number of mathematicians, astronomers, and prelates, who decided upon the adoption of the calendar proposed by the Jesuit Lilius Clavius. To rectify the errors of the Julian calendar it was agreed to write in the new calendar the 15th of October immediately after the 4th of October of the year 1582. The Gregorian calendar met with a great deal of opposition both among scientists and among Protestants. ”

“ In order to restore the equinox to its former place, Pope Gregory XIII. directed ten days to be suppressed in the calendar; and as the error of the Julian intercalation was now found to amount to three days in 400 years, he ordered the intercalations to be omitted on all the centenary years excepting those which are multiples of 400. According to the Gregorian rule of intercalation, therefore, every year of which the number is divisible by four without a remainder is a leap year, excepting the centurial years, which are only leap years when divisible by four after omitting the two ciphers. ”

“ Let us remain where we are."
I have read in a work remarkable on many accounts that it was on the occasion of the Concordat of the 15th July 1801 that the First Consul abolished the republican calendar and reestablished the Gregorian. This is an error. He did not make the calendar a religious affair. The 'Senatus-consulte', which restored the use of the Gregorian calendar, to commence in the French Empire from the 11th Nivose, year XIV. (1st January 1806) , was adopted on the 22d Fructidor, year XIII. (9th September 1805) , more than four years after the Concordat. ”

“ Although Scotland had accepted the Gregorian calendar in 1600, until 1752, England still followed the Julian calendar (after Julius Caesar, 44 B.C.) , and celebrated New Year's Day on March 25th (Annunciation Day) . Most Catholic countries accepted the Gregorian calendar (after Pope Gregory XIII) from some time after 1582 (the Catholic countries of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy in 1582, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland within a year or two, Hungary in 1587, and Scotland in 1600) , and celebrated New Year's Day on January 1st. ”

“ The cycle being interrupted by the Gregorian rule of intercalation, causes all events which occur between 28 and 12 years of the close of the centuries to fall on the same day of the week again in 40 years; and those events that fall within 12 years of the close of these centuries, to fall on the same day of the week again in 12 years ”

“ De Morgan, "On the Ecclesiastical Calendar," the statements of which, so far as concerns the Gregorian Calendar, are taken direct from the work of Clavius, the principal agent in the arrangement of the reformed reckoning. This was followed, in the Companion to the Almanac for 1846, by a second paper, by the same author, headed "On the Earliest Printed Almanacs," much of which is written in direct supplement to the former article.—S. E. De Morgan. ”

“ It supposes the year to consist of 365 days 5 hours 48 min. 45 sec., and is practically exact.
The fraction 8/33 offers a convenient and very accurate method of intercalation. It implies a year differing in excess from the true year only by 19.45 sec., while the Gregorian year is too long by 26 sec. It produces a much nearer coincidence between the civil and solar years than the Gregorian method; and, by reason of its shortness of period, confines the evagations of the mean equinox from the true within much narrower limits. ”

“ The calendar thus altered is called Gregorian to distinguish it from the older, Julian calendar, and it found speedy acceptance in those civilized countries whose Church adhered to Rome; but the Protestant powers were slow to adopt it, and it was introduced into England and her American colonies by act of Parliament in the year 1752, nearly two centuries after Gregory's time. In Russia the Julian calendar has remained in common use to our own day, but in commercial affairs it is there customary to write the date according to both calendars—e. ”

“ These documents are all dated in such and such a month of such and such a year of some king’s reign; the months are the same (at first under their earlier Accadian names [3] ) as those we [5] find in the almanacs translated by Epping and Strassmaier, and we meet in them, and in other historical inscriptions, with the intercalary months, the second Elul, and the second Adar. It would seem, then, that it was the same calendar, worked in the same way, that held its place through these two thousand years. ”

“ The Roman calendar was in early times even more confused than the Greek. There appears to have been at one time a year of either 304 or 354 days; tradition assigned to Numa the introduction of a cycle of four years, which brought the calendar into fair agreement with the sun, but made the average length of the month considerably too short. Instead, however, of introducing further refinements the Romans cut the knot by entrusting to the ecclesiastical authorities the adjustment of the calendar from time to time, so as to make it agree with the sun and moon. ”

“ Romans, after the first day of the month, began to reckon so many days before the Nones, as 4th, 3d, 2d, then Nones; after the Nones, so many days before the Ides, as 8th, 7th, 6th, etc., and after the Ides, so many before the Calends of the next month, the highest numbers being reckoned first.
In reducing the Roman calendar to our own, it should be remembered that in reckoning backward from a fixed point, that the point of departure is counted; also, that the last day of the month is not the point from which the Calends are reckoned, but the first day of the following month. ”

“ Attention is called to four points on the ecliptic, namely, the vernal equinox, the autumnal equinox, the winter solstice, and the summer solstice. These occur, in the order given above, on the 21st of March, the 21st of September, the 21st of December and the 21st of June. It has already been stated that if the civil year correspond with the solar, the seasons of the year will always come at the same period. Julius Cæsar found the ancient Roman year in advance of the solar; Gregory found the Julian behind the solar year; so one reforms the calendar by intercalation, the other by suppression. ”

“ But every leap year one day must be added to the lunar month in which the 29th of February is included. Now if leap year happens on the first, second or third year of the period, there will be five leap years in the period, but only four when the first leap year falls on the fourth. In the former case the number of days in the period becomes 6940 and in the latter 6939. The mean length of the cycle is therefore 69393/4 days, agreeing exactly with nineteen Julian years.
By means of the lunar cycle the new moons of the calendar were indicated before the Reformation. ”

“ Only once in history have the measures of the ancient calendar been set aside. That was in France at the time of the Revolution, when the French people, in their passionate hatred of all the traditional things that reminded them of their past sufferings, invented a new calendar, in which they changed the names of months and days, and counted the years from 1792, the first of their liberty. ”

“ In consequence of the solar and lunar equations, it is evident that the epact or moon's age at the beginning of the year, must, in the course of centuries, have all different values from one to thirty inclusive, corresponding to the days in a full lunar month. Hence, for the construction of a perpetual calendar, there must be thirty different sets or lines of epacts. ”

“ Meyer has specially pointed out, must have begun to run its course in a year in which the rising of Sirius and New Year’s Day coincided, i. e. it began with a Sothic period.
The months within each season are numbered from I to IV. Among primitive peoples it frequently happens that a season gives its name to two months, which are distinguished as the first and second, but a numbering such as that of the Egyptian calendar is unexampled and shews once more a desire to get away from the moon-month. The so-called ‘months’ are rather subdivisions of the seasons. ”

“ If, then, it should appear that these races possessed and incorporated into their mythologies a knowledge of the Zodiac, and of the first degree of Aries as its initial point, their separation from the parent stock must have been subsequent to the formation of the scheme that dealt with a calendar based on an observation of the colure of the winter solstice at that point, and under this supposition the date of 6,000 B.C. becomes a foothold for the chronology of ancient history. ”

“ When P = 2 the new moon falls on the ninth, and the epact is consequently twenty-two; and, in general, when P becomes 1 + x, E becomes 23 − x, therefore P + E = 1 + x + 23 − x = 24, and P = 24 − E. In like manner, when P = 1, l = D = 4; for D is the dominical letter of the calendar belonging to the 22nd of March. But it is evident that when l is increased by unity, that is to say, when the full moon falls a day later, the epact of the year is diminished by unity ”

“ The European three-score-day-tide calendar is rather an ingenious conjecture than an ascertained fact of history. When the Germano-Keltic peoples came under the influence of Roman civilization, they adopted amongst other things the Roman calendar, first in its primitive form and then in the more scientific one given to it under Julius Caesar. The latter divided the year into four quarters and twelve months, and carried with it a knowledge of the solstices, at which the astronomy neither of Kelts nor of Germans seems to have previously arrived [379] . ”

“ But it is a fact opposed to the hitherto received opinion touching the necessary connexion of the equinoctial point and of the initial point of the Zodiac. “A prehistoric reform” of the calendar is supposed, and corrections of the ancient texts to suit this reform, are suggested. Until traces of such reform and corrections can be shown to exist, the evidence of the tablets may still be cited as pointing to a year counted from the sun’s entry into Aries, in the earliest ages of Babylonian civilization. ”

“ If we take the mean of these three periods, that is to say 840,057 days, as being the cycle, it brings into harmony the day, the anomalistic month, the ordinary month, and the solar year. It is from this point of view the most perfect cycle known.
[343] Dr. H. Grattan Guinness [343:1] has shown what a beautifully simple and accurate calendar could have been constructed on the basis of this period of 2,300 years; thus:—
2,300 solar years contain 28,447 synodic months, of which 847 are intercalary, or epact months. ”

“ The systematising tendency which arose at the end of the kingdom of Judah, and became ever stronger during and after the Exile, necessitated a calendar. If this tendency was unrelated to practical life, it was all the more closely bound up with the religious cult. Since people were now accustomed to numbering the months, the novelty consisted in the fixing of a calendarial beginning of the year. ”

“ The Saros of the Chaldaeans, the Olympiad of the Greeks, and the Roman Indiction are instances of this mode of reckoning time. Several cycles were formerly known in Europe; but most of them were invented for the purpose of adjusting the solar and lunar divisions of time, and were rather employed in the regulation of the calendar than as chronological eras. They are frequently, however, of very great use in fixing dates that have been otherwise imperfectly expressed, and consequently form important elements of chronology. (W. L. R. C.)
Modern Results of Archaeological Research. ”

“ POPULAR MONTHS OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES. In ancient times, and even at the present day in lands which lie outside the path of the great leveller, civilisation, the months taken over with the Roman calendar are not numbered divisions of the year, the names of which are a matter of indifference, but are concretely conceived and named as seasons. They are, in fact, nothing but seasons, the number and duration of which are determined by the conventional calendar. ”

“ The more intelligent people have become, the less attention they have paid to it. The defective year was brought a little nearer to the actual year by adding an intercalary month every three. The Babylonian year is supposed to have been introduced in Athens about 600 B.C. Half a century later the calendar was further improved by Cleostratus, but in all the Greek states the method of reckoning by days and months always remained a good deal wide of the mark. ”

“ Until 304 B.C. the lore of the calendaria remained the exclusive and lucrative monopoly of the priesthood; but in that year Gnaeus Flavius, a pontifical secretary, introduced the custom of publishing in the forum tables containing the requisite information, besides brief references to victories, triumphs, prodigies, &c. This list was the origin of the public Roman calendar, in which the days were divided into weeks of eight days each, and indicated by the letters A-H. Each day was marked by a certain letter to show its nature ”