For all of us, the calendar is a familiar and even ordinary thing. This ancient human invention fixes days, numbers, months, seasons, periodicity of natural phenomena, which are based on the system of movement of celestial bodies: the Moon, the Sun, the stars. The Earth sweeps through the solar orbit, leaving years and centuries behind.
Lunar calendar
In one day the Earth makes one complete revolution around its own axis. It goes around the sun once a year. A solar or astronomical year lasts three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours, forty-eight minutes, and forty-six seconds. Therefore, there is no integer number of days. Hence the difficulty in drawing up an accurate calendar for the correct timing.
Ancient Romans, Greeks used a convenient and simple calendar. The rebirth of the moon occurs at intervals of 30 days, and to be precise, in twenty-nine days, twelve hours and 44 minutes. That is why the days, and then the months, could be counted according to the changes of the moon.
In the beginning there were ten in this calendarmonths that were named after Roman gods. From the third century BC, the ancient world used an analogue based on a four-year lunisolar cycle, which gave an error in the value of the solar year in one day.
In Egypt, they used a solar calendar based on observations of the Sun and Sirius. The year according to it was three hundred and sixty-five days. It consisted of twelve months of thirty days. After its expiration, five more days were added. This was formulated as "in honor of the birth of the gods."
History of the Julian calendar
Further changes occurred in 46 BC. e. Julius Caesar, the emperor of ancient Rome, introduced the Julian calendar following the Egyptian model. In it, the solar year was taken as the value of the year, which was a little more than the astronomical one and was three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours. The first of January was the beginning of the year. Christmas according to the Julian calendar began to be celebrated on the seventh of January. So there was a transition to a new chronology.
In gratitude for the reform, the Senate of Rome renamed the month of Quintilis, when Caesar was born, to Julius (now it is July). A year later, the emperor was killed, and the Roman priests, either out of ignorance or deliberately, again began to confuse the calendar and began to declare every third year a leap year. As a result, from the forty-fourth to the ninth year BC. e. instead of nine, twelve leap years were declared.
The emperor Octivian August saved the situation. By his order, in the followingthere were no leap years for sixteen years, and the rhythm of the calendar was restored. In his honor, the month of Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August).
The simultaneity of church holidays was very important for the Orthodox Church. The date of the celebration of Easter was discussed at the First Ecumenical Council, and this issue became one of the main ones. The rules established at this Council for the exact calculation of this celebration cannot be changed under pain of anathema.
Gregorian calendar
The head of the Catholic Church Pope Gregory the Thirteenth in 1582 approved and introduced a new calendar. It was called "Gregorian". It would seem that the Julian calendar was good for everyone, according to which Europe lived for more than sixteen centuries. However, Gregory the Thirteenth considered that the reform was necessary to determine a more accurate date for the celebration of Easter, as well as to ensure that the day of the spring equinox returned to the twenty-first of March.
In 1583, the Council of the Eastern Patriarchs in Constantinople condemned the adoption of the Gregorian calendar as violating the liturgical cycle and questioning the canons of the Ecumenical Councils. Indeed, in some years it violates the basic rule of celebrating Easter. It happens that Catholic Bright Sunday falls in time before Jewish Easter, and this is not allowed by the canons of the church.
Chronology in Russia
On the territory of our country, starting from the tenth century, the New Year was celebrated on the first of March. Five centuries later, in 1492, in Russia, the beginning of the yearmoved, according to church traditions, to the first of September. This went on for more than two hundred years.
On December 19, seven thousand two hundred and eight, Tsar Peter the Great issued a decree that the Julian calendar in Russia, adopted from Byzantium along with baptism, was still valid. The start date has changed. It has been officially approved in the country. New Year according to the Julian calendar was to be celebrated on the first of January "from the birth of Christ."
After the revolution on February 14, 1918, new rules were introduced in our country. The Gregorian calendar excluded three leap years within each four hundred years. It was he who began to adhere.
What is the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars? The difference between in the calculation of leap years. It increases over time. If in the sixteenth century it was ten days, then in the seventeenth it increased to eleven, in the eighteenth century it was already equal to twelve days, thirteen in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and by the twenty-second century this figure will reach fourteen days.
The Orthodox Church of Russia uses the Julian calendar, following the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, and the Catholics use the Gregorian.
You can often hear the question of why the whole world celebrates Christmas on the twenty-fifth of December, and we - on the seventh of January. The answer is quite obvious. The Orthodox Russian Church celebrates Christmas according to the Julian calendar. This isalso applies to other major church holidays.
Today, the Julian calendar in Russia is called the "old style". At present, its scope is very limited. It is used by some Orthodox Churches - Serbian, Georgian, Jerusalem and Russian. In addition, the Julian calendar is used in some Orthodox monasteries in Europe and the USA.
Gregorian calendar in Russia
In our country, the issue of calendar reform has been raised repeatedly. In 1830 it was staged by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Prince K. A. Lieven, who at that time was the Minister of Education, considered this proposal untimely. Only after the revolution, the issue was submitted to a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Federation. Already on January 24, Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar.
Features of the transition to the Gregorian calendar
For Orthodox Christians, the introduction of a new style by the authorities caused certain difficulties. The New Year turned out to be shifted to Advent, when any fun is not welcome. Moreover, January 1 is the day of remembrance of St. Boniface, who patronizes everyone who wants to give up drunkenness, and our country celebrates this day with a glass in hand.
Gregorian and Julian calendar: differences and similarities
They are both three hundred and sixty-five days in a normal year and three hundred and sixty-six in a leap year, have 12 months, 4 of which are 30 days and 7 are 31 days, February is either 28 or 29. The difference is only in the period of occurrenceleap years.
According to the Julian calendar, a leap year occurs every three years. In this case, it turns out that the calendar year is 11 minutes longer than the astronomical year. In other words, after 128 years there is an extra day. The Gregorian calendar also recognizes that the fourth year is a leap year. The exceptions are those years that are a multiple of 100, as well as those that can be divided by 400. Based on this, an extra day appears only after 3200 years.
What awaits us in the future
Unlike the Gregorian, the Julian calendar is simpler for chronology, but it is ahead of the astronomical year. The basis of the first became the second. According to the Orthodox Church, the Gregorian calendar violates the sequence of many biblical events.
Due to the fact that the Julian and Gregorian calendars increase the difference in dates over time, Orthodox churches that use the first of them will celebrate Christmas from 2101 not on January 7, as it happens now, but on January 8, and from nine thousand nine hundred and one, the celebration will take place on the eighth of March. In the liturgical calendar, the date will still correspond to the twenty-fifth of December.
In countries where the Julian calendar was used by the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Greece, the dates of all historical events that occurred after October fifteenth, one thousand five hundred and eighty-two, are nominally celebrated on the same dates when they happened.
Consequences of calendar reforms
BCurrently, the Gregorian calendar is fairly accurate. According to many experts, it does not need to be changed, but the question of its reform has been discussed for several decades. In this case, we are not talking about the introduction of a new calendar or any new methods of accounting for leap years. It is about rearranging the days of the year so that the beginning of each year falls on one day, such as Sunday.
Today, calendar months are from 28 to 31 days, the length of a quarter ranges from ninety to ninety-two days, with the first half of the year shorter than the second by 3-4 days. This complicates the work of financial and planning authorities.
What are the new calendar projects
During the last one hundred and sixty years various projects have been proposed. In 1923, a calendar reform committee was created under the League of Nations. After the end of World War II, this issue was referred to the UN Economic and Social Committee.
Despite the fact that there are quite a lot of them, preference is given to two options - the 13-month calendar of the French philosopher Auguste Comte and the proposal of the French astronomer G. Armelin.
In the first version, the month always starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday. In a year, one day has no name at all and is inserted at the end of the last thirteenth month. In a leap year, such a day occurs in the sixth month. According to experts, this calendar has many significant shortcomings, so more attention is paid to the projectGustave Armeline, according to which the year consists of twelve months and four quarters of ninety-one days.
In the first month of the quarter there are thirty-one days, in the next two - thirty. The first day of each year and quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday. In a normal year, one extra day is added after December 30th, and in a leap year after June 30th. This project was approved by France, India, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and some other countries. For a long time, the General Assembly delayed the approval of the project, and recently this work at the UN has stopped.
Will Russia return to the "old style"
It is quite difficult for foreigners to explain what the concept of "Old New Year" means, why we celebrate Christmas later than Europeans. Today there are people who want to make the transition to the Julian calendar in Russia. Moreover, the initiative comes from well-deserved and respected people. According to them, 70% of Russian Orthodox Russians have the right to live according to the calendar used by the Russian Orthodox Church.
