THE STORY OF THE CALENDAR.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 6, 11 September 1906, Page 2

THE STORY OF THE CALENDAR.

—-r The story, of the calendar is a curi- { ous one in many ways, and its features include the rivalry of. Koman emperors, Papal bulls, Acts of Par-. 1 foment, and a National Convention. Looking at our calendar, we should never dream of this, yet-the com* putation of time may be numbered | among the vexed questions and controversies of the past. It is difficult to imagine the period when Time was not, and we have to go back in ■ the very dim recesses of the ages to j discover the adoption of a standard I for measuring time, though this course must haytr been pretty obvious. Time was marked by the observation of the heavenly bodies. The earliest standard interval was the day, divided by the alternation 1 of light and darkness, and determine ! ed by the ratio of the earth on its axis, This was the first fixed stanj dard. The second was the moon, 1 | which determined the >L\mar month ; ! and the third was the recurrence of the seasons. i % . yy | | The duration of the year was determined by the nations of-antiquity in various ways. The year of the ancient Egyptions, for instance, was very simple. Each month consisted l of thirty days, with five added at . ! the years’ end, as a sort of make- | I weight, to complete the,, necessary j | total. But this resulted in ap annual loss of une-forth of a day, and thus the commencement of the year gradually receded, and made a complete revolytion of the seasons in a cycle of 1416 years. The Egyptians, | however, relied on Nature rather I than their almanac. Thus, the ris- ' ing of the Nile, the greatest of all j annual events, was found to coincide I with the heliacal uprising of of Sarij us, the Dog-star. j One of the earliest ways adopted ; by the nations of antiquity, was to i make the year include a certain numI ber of lunar months. The adoption ! of twelve lunar months in process of | time required adjustment, because | the seasons did not correspond to | the same months, and the Greeks inj tercalated a month three times in a cycle of eight years, and the Jews j did the same thing, though they ilt- | tercalated a month seven times in a | cvcle of nineteen years. The ancient ; Egyptians calculated a year as being 365* days—the nearest to the solar year. The Roman year was originally one of ten months, commencing with March. The period was 304 days, and the last four months of our modern calendar still retain the titles they had in those bygone times—viz., September, October, November, and December, which respectively signify the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth. In Numa’s reign, however, two months were ad-ded to the ten, and a lunar year of 355 days was adopted, the odd number being selected because of the early belief that odd numbers were lucky. February and January were | the two months added—February at the end of the year, and January at the beginning. During 452 B.C. February was altered to follow January and the rotation of the months was decided as they now appear in i our calendar to-day. The Roman j reckoning of the calendar, however, ! was confused and unsatisfactory, for, like the Grecian year the lunar year refused to be accomodated to the solar year, and the Romans were compelled to have recourse to intercalculations in the same way, as the Greeks and the Jews. A month of twenty-two or twenty-three days was j inserted alternately between the 23rd j and 24th of February every second j year, so that the twenty-fourth of ; the month was posponod for about three weeks. Having sole charge of the calendar, the Popes were responsible for these intercalations, and being human they were prone to abuse j their power in order to gratify j friends and to annoy enemies. They j lengthened or curtailed the year to aocomodate financial ends, with a j fine disregard for the seasons and their unsettlement, and hopeless confusion reigned supreme when Julius Caesar arose, like the strong man that he was, and put an end to a system which permitted spring festivals to be held late in the summer. With the help of an Alexandrian astronomer, Sosigenes, Julius Caesar ; restored the calendar to something j like order. He adopted the Greek plan of reckoning. Making the year consist of 365*, days, and the first year of the Julian calandar is nota- j ble as “the year of confusion.” It j was a long year, containing 445 ; days, and the succeeding were 'arranged t# contain 365 days, the odd quarter being disposed »f every four yedrs by the doubling af February ; 24* Having effected these changes, ! he perpetuated his name by changing j the name of the/'month Quintilis to July. The defect of the Julian calendar, however, was that it made the year eleven minutes too long,

and this extension amounted to three days in nearly, 400. years. The Pontiffs, too, went wrong in their application of the Julian correction. They inserted a leap year every three years instead of every four, with the that when the Emperor Augustus came upon the scene he ordered that there should be no leap year for twelve years, and thus, according to the Roman method of reckoning, there was no leap year until the fourth year of the Christian era. Augustus, like Julius, changed the name of the year Sextilis to August, and as his vanity would hot allow that month to have fewer days than that belonging to July he robbed February of a day to give it to August, September and November were reduced to 30 days, while October and November were increased to 31, In the course of centuries the vernal equinox retrograded sensibly, and the error of the Julian calendar manifested itself. But until 1582 no one took the matter in hand, and then Pope Gregory XIII, abolished it, because in that year ten days had been lost. Gregory published a Bull dropping the ten days, so that what would have been reckoned October 5, in that year was advanced to the 15th, The future excess of nearly eleven minutes annually was rectified by the simple plan of arranging that the last year of eaoh century should not be aJeap year, unless it were also the last year of a period of four centuries. Thus lfiQO wee a leap year, 17#+, 1800, and 190# were eemwai years, and 20## will again be a leap year. This rectification am by only one day in ftif* fofeT *****& tedJay

unuf mat r-ngiarva and Ireland embraced the new calendar, and then it was. only enforced by act of Parliament. An attempt to do this had previously been made—in 1585—but the Act only reached the second reading in the House of Lords. The new bill was one “for regulating the commencement of the year and for corroding the calander now in use.” It was enacted that eleven days should be omitted after September 2, 1752, and the 3rd should be the 14th. i Among the uneducated people this ' was . regarded as wholesale robbery of time, and as depriving them of so many days of their lives. They imagined,, and unpopular statesmen were greeted with the cry, ‘'Give ‘us. back our eleven days”—a cry which is reminiscent to-day in the fiscal coni troversy. * To-day the cry would have made a fine electioneering war ' trump. i The difference between the Old and the New Styles is twelve days,, and, | with the exception of Russia, Greece and the smaller states belonging to i the Greek Church, the whole of j Christendom has adopted the new method, which nearly as possible reconciles the cival with the solar I year. The Act which settled the adoption of the Gregorian system shortened the year 1751 by, nearly three months It had been the practice to commence the year on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, j but 1752 commenced With January j 1 and this date has been maintained ever since. Among the ancients, the Athenians began the year in June ; the Romans first in March and afterwards in January. The national and financial year differs, howeyer, inasmuch as it begins on April 1, and ends on March 31, which, with the exception of a few days, almost corresponds with the old legal practice —the awkward practice of dividing March, so that one part came at the end of the year and the other part at the beginning, and was confusing when January 1. was popularly recognised as the beginning af the year. In France the National on vent ion of the first Republic 11793)' decided to abolish the common era*in all civil affairs, and to commence a new era with the foundation of the Republic on September 22, 1792. The year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, with five complementary days at the enfli to be celebrated as festivals. In addition every fourth year was to have a sixth complimentary day, to be called “Revolution Day.” This system was, however, abolished by Napoleon and. on*January 1, 1806, the Gregorian calendar was resumed in France. Thus even such a prosaic institution as the modern calendar has its romance, which hangs like a halo around it ; for has not Shakespeare told us that there are sermons in stones, tongues in trees, and books in the running brookp ? And, may we not add, “romance in everything.” ?—“Weekly Budget/*