# Chronologies and Calendars/Chapter 3

THE calendar by Julius Caesar, and the corrections thereon by Pope Gregory three hundred and fourteen years ago, are the two points of chronological light which gleam through the darkness of the Middle Ages, to guide the historian of the nineteenth century. 'The history of Rome was for centuries the history of the civilized world; and even after it ceased to be the capital of the empire, it was the centre of Christendom, and the most interesting and influential city on the planet.' The city of Rome was, according to the usual tradition, founded in the year 753 B.C. Original myths and accruing inferences have supplied dates to 'presumed historical events,' as Dr. Merivale remarks. At another place the same authority says that it was the writings of the Greeks upon Rome which first aroused the emulation of the Roman annalists, 'to begin in the 6th century of the city to construct, but also in the Greek tongue, a history of Rome.' Other authorities, appalled at the amount of fiction which was beclouding the first centuries of the city, tried 'to construct an entirely new theory of Roman history, which, as Ortolan remarks, has the singular merit of having been wholly unknown to the Romans themselves.' Numa ​the Nonconformist—for so we call him, seeing he would neither conform to Neolithic fashions nor Roman barbarites—built the Temple of Janus, and, with astrological abitities which now cause wonder to some and doubt to others, fixed, as regards linquistic forms, ten months, as we presently use them. The period down to 510 B.C. is known as the era of the kings in which Numa was second.
18. In or about the year 509 B.C., the Romans adopted a novel mode of securing a visible tally to the twelve months, and of counting the flight of time. Every year on (what is our) thirteenth day of September, a large nail was publicly driven into the wall of the Temple of Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom and Science. This duty was first performed by the praetor, and afterwards by one of the consuls. These officials were appointed first in 244 A.U.C. or 509 B.C., when the years were calculated as containing 354 days, with bi-annual additions of twenty-two days, which made 1,460 days in four years. The Roman pontiffs, in exchange for private bribes, began to corrupt and falsify the Calendar Rolls. They at times, for instance, ordained special intercalculations, so as to favour a moneyed friend, who wished to retain an office, or they failed to announce annual addition when justly needed, because some wealthy legate wished to return to the Eternal City before his regular recall. But, as the art of the pontiffs, which had become an artifice, was not understood by the people, these chronologic tricks passed unheeded for a long period. Finally the civil and the solar year fell months out of time. Consuls, who were supposed to enter upon office in January, ​began their duties in the preceding October. Festivals came to be held at unnatural seasons. The feast for Flora (the Goddess of Spring) was celebrated, for instance, in the middle of July; and a similar anomaly affected the festival of Vertumnus, which was latterly held long after its appointed day, 23rd August.
19. Julius Cæsar unmade this confusion. He decreed, by his imperial mandate, that:—
(a). That the year 46 B.C., then current, should contain 445 days. This instantly brought the year round to the solar year, and created a rational correspondence between the two.
(b). The year's commencement should be 1st of January instead of on 1st of March; that each of the next three years of twelve calendar months should contain 365 days. For a long time before 45 B.C., the supreme magistrates had entered upon their office on the Kalends of January, or rather, they were presumed to have done so.
(c). That the fourth, the 712th year of the city, should contain 366 days. This was intended to be the first leap year. The extra day came in February, for it was simpler to have February 29th than January or March 32nd, even assuming the verbal structure of the Roman calendar could permit this.
Before the first leap year came into practice, Cæsar had been assassinated, and an erroneous view was taken of his instructions—every third instead of every fourth year, for the next thirty-seven years, having been wrongly observed ​as a leap year. On discovery of these mistakes, a simple remedy was found in the suppression of the four (Julian) leap years then next ensuing. Nicholas specially notices this fact.
20. The Romans had three signal days in every month, and these were Kalends, Nones, and Ides—name-days still permissible to us in Britain under the forms of the Statutory Calendar, as contained in the revised statutes. The first of the month was called the Kalends, and Varro says this term originated in 'the practice of calling together or assembling the people on the first day of the month, when the pontifex informed them of the time of the new moon, the day of the Nones, with the festivals and sacred days to be observed.' In the 450th year of the city this custom lapsed, for lists of the Fasti were then posted in public. The Nones and Ides were in most months on the 5th and 13th days respectively, but in March, May, July, and October, these two name-dates fell severally on the seventh and fifteenth days. The other or intervening days were reckoned as being so many days before the Kalends Nones or Ides as the case might be.
21. As for the annual date of any event, a Roman might refer thereto either (1) by citations of the names of consuls in office then—and the consuls' nominations have been recorded from 366 B.C. to 23 B.C., only two years showing none; or (2) to A.U.C. or the year of Rome; or (3) to a regnal year as, and from, the 732nd year of the city; but the notaries, it can be proved, used to mention the consuls in writings down to the third century A.D. Macaulay, it ​may be remarked, initiated all his well-known 'Lays of Ancient Rome' by mentioning the respective year of the city, seeing that these portrayed the older city customs. Again, I found a quotation from a deed which bore the seemingly scanty date that Gallus was emperor, but from the regnal lists the date can be fixed as in spring, 252 A.D. Further, the Latinist Eutropius, writing at the end of the fourth century A.D., opens his second book of history as the 393rd year of Rome. We, however, come to one important and positive fact bearing upon the present era, namely, the general council held at Nice, in Asia Minor, in what we call the 325th year after the Advent. This gave rise to the Quarto-Decimans who contended that Easter should be celebrated on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month, near the vernal equinox, holding it as synchronous to the Jewish Passover.
22 But this council was not claimed at the time as being held in a certain year Anno Domini. Even Saint Jerome, writing his Evangelistas, calls a first century date as falling in the 'twenty-fifth year after the Passion,' while in the time of the Nicene Council it was becoming the ecclesiastical custom to refer to any year as 'in Indictione Romæ.' The Indiction was a chronological period of much consequence, and even in Scots' Burgh Records of the sixteenth century I have discovered traces of this reckoning. Fifteen years are allotted to an Indiction, and the Premier Indiction, which was introduced by Constantine the Great in connection with tribute-money payments, covered the period from 312 A.D. to 327 A.D. The popes and cardinals of Rome ​used this system; but in the twelfth century the basis of computation was changed, so that the Advent became the starting point, and not 312 A.D. Accordingly in the past nine centuries the true Indication I means the first fifteen years of the Christian era. To convert the year of that era into Indiction years it is necessary:—
(a). In pre-twelfth century dates to subtract 312, and then divide by 15. The whole quotient is the Indiction, and the fraction is the year thereof. Thus the Conquest 1066 would he Indiction 50, year the fourth.
(b). In post-twelfth century dates 3 is added, and then — a division by 15 is made. The answer means the same as, and is read like the former. The present year accordingly can appear as Indiction 126, year the ninth.
23. However, before the expiry of the first (Constantine) indiction, Dionysius Exiguus, an Abbot of Rome, a native of Bithynia, an ancient division of Asia Minor, was considering a new system; and then he issued suggestions for and examples of the 'Anno Domini' reckoning. The change did not find immediate acceptance, for I observe a Latin deed of sale now in the British Museum which bears date the seventh year of the reign of Justin the younger, instead of A.D. 572. In fact, it was afterwards discovered that Dionysius had miscalculated the first date in his era, and chronologers are agreed that the Advent should have been fixed as falling on or about October, the fifth year B.C. Notwithstanding this error, the suggestion of Dionysius as to a new era gradually forced its way westward, especially after ​the sixth century, when the general papal power began to increase. The Benedictines had been securely founded, the strongest order in the sacred college. The regal weaklings who succeeded Justinian; the brilliancy of Gregory the Great; the institution of the mass; and the origin of Christian architecture, all tended to extol the Church and extend her power. Then came the six centuries of those 'dark ages,' wherein the Church almost alone preserved the muniments of the faith; and the accessory reckoning of the Christianity.
24. The spread of that religion brought the need of the Christian era more clearly before the rulers of the different nations. Traces of the new reckoning are to be found in Italy and France in the seventh century, in Germany and possibly in Ireland in the ninth century, but the difficulty is to be sure that one is getting original writings of these times.
25. From the efforts of Abbot Dionysius in the first half of the sixth century to the Gregorian correction of the sixteenth century, there falls to be noticed only the papal change in dating the indiction, already explained. On the coins issued by the Vatican Minter's, the A.D. dates were used.
25. In the year 1582, Pope Gregory XIII, after much consideration, ordered a fundamental amendment in the calendar because the Romish Church authorities had found that the leap years, being twenty-five in the century, had causes the civil year to break with the solar year by ten days. Had the excess of the solar year been six hours exactly beyond the 365 days, then one leap year in every ​four years would readjust the balance. But this is not so, and twenty-five leap years per century caused the fraction of a day to increase so as to be really observable. In 1582, the error amounted to ten days; in 1882, to twelve days—in Russia for instance, The papal authorities therefore set themselves to a two-fold task:—correction for the past, and protection against the future were the remedies necessary. The papal mandate accordingly directed:—
(a), The suppression of the record of ten days, thereby correcting the past errors; and
(b). The rejection of three leap years in every four hundred years, so that while 1600, 2000, and 2400 are now to be known as leap years, yet 1700, 1800, 1900, and 2100 are not. In other words, every non-century year is a leap one if it divides by four without remainder, and every century year which divides by 400 evenly is also a leap year.
27. This Gregorian correction not only caused the spring equinox of 1582 to fall on the same day of the month as it did at the Nicene Council, twelve hundred and fifty-seven years before then, but the corrected calendar will prevent even an error of twenty-four hours from arising in three thousand years. To be even more particular, the calculating party has gone to work and he finds that in about 700,000 years, the British Christmas will be in midsummer. The outlook need not alarm us. Fittingly then is the Gregorian correction spoken of as the 'new style,' which a spirit of conservatism has kept Russia, Servia, and Greece from adopting for themselves. The spread of the English language in Russia very recently renders the rejection of the ​old style more certain, and if it comes before the end of the century, it will save the addition of yet another day of chronological error to their present burden of twelve days. But happily even when I write, the official international press news indicates that 'although it is now generally understood that the Russian government contemplate the introduction of the Gregorian calendar at the close of the century, it has not yet been decided whether the reform shall be effected suddenly and entirely, or by gradual process. The latter scheme consists in omitting the first twelve leap years after 1900, and the change from the old style to the new would in this way cover a period of fortyeight years. There are now twelve days difference, but in 1900 there will be thirteen days, and this unlucky or fatalistic number has not a little weight with superstitious slavs who have hitherto been opposed to a reform of the Julian calendar. If the graduated plan be adopted there will be only nine days difference on the 1st of March, 1908, on the same date in 1912 eight days, and so on during every recurring fourth year until 1944, when the reform will be accomplished. It is, however, by no means certain whether this plan will be adopted or the more sudden and radical change. The majority are in favour of the latter, whilst the former scheme promises to receive less opposition from the ecclesiastical authorities, and is not calculated to shock the popular sentiment so violently as the sudden reform.' See also section 64 infra.
28. Keeping in mind that the Christian era, as a chronological basis, became current in Eastern Europe only in the sixth century, it is interesting and important to recall that Christianity, as a religion, had arisen in France and England ​in the fourth century; in Ireland in the fifth; and in Scotland during the sixth centuries. Thereafter, that is after the A.D. basis had been chronologically suggested, history records that Flanders became Christianised in the seventh; Saxony the eighth; Denmark in the ninth Russia, Hungary, and Norway during the 10th centuries.<ref>Vide Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, under 'Christianity.'</rf>
29. It will be convenient to mention at this point that the Papal Bulls were dated by reference to the year 'ab incarnatione. The Romish Brieves, on the other hand, bore to be given 'in the year of the nativity.' The Encyclicals are dated thus, 'Given at St. Peter's, Rome, the 29th day of June, in the year 1896, and the nineteenth of our pontificate, Leo XIII., Pope.' This is the latest example, being the famous Encyclical Letter upon the Unity of the Church.
* ↑ Gazetteer, p. 597.
* ↑ Merivale, p. 33.
* ↑ Mackenzie, p. 3.
* ↑ Images were introduced long afterwards.
* ↑ The Ides of that month.
* ↑ Mommsen, p. 518, and Merivale, p. 354.
* ↑ Compare the two calendars in sections 141 and 142.
* ↑ It should be remembered that the Greeks, unlike the Romans, had no Kalends.
* ↑ That is 361 B.C., 'Anno trecentesimo nonagesimo tertio post urbem conditam,' is the phrase he uses.
* ↑ Dionysius the Little.
* ↑ In his Cyclus Paschalis, a MS. as to finding Easter.
* ↑ Coins, dated thus, must have helped to familiarise the different nations with the year of grace.
* ↑ The 'old style' calendar will be found in sections 144 infra.