372 



GREGORIAN CALENDAR. 



a calendar regulated by the relative positions 

 of the earth and any one of the planets ; but, 

 of course, no one would think of calculating 

 time by the motions of any other heavenly 

 body than the sun and moon. The year, 

 therefore, the principal division of every calen- 

 dar, is either solar or lunar, or a compromise 

 between both. Our civil year is an example 

 of the first. The length of our civil month 

 has now no reference to the duration of the 

 moon's revolution round the earth. It is 

 purely a matter of convenience, a division of 

 the 365 days of the solar year into twelve 

 periods, as nearly equal as possible. The Mo- 

 hammedan year, on the other hand, is entirely 

 lunar. Its twelve lunations only amount, on 

 the average, to 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes, 

 so that it falls short of the solar year by 10$- 

 days, and consequently retrogrades through all 

 the seasons in about thirty-four years. But even 

 the lunar year, in its origin, was luni-solar, for it 

 was always probably a rude attempt to punc- 

 tuate the solar year by lunar divisions. Of the 

 luni-solar the Jewish year is an example. 

 Like the Mohammedan, it consists of twelve 

 lunar months, but by means of intercalation it 

 is brought every nineteen years into renewed 

 correspondence with the solar year. Besides 

 the solar year, the lunar month and the astro- 

 nomical day are the other natural divisions of 

 time. The conventional divisions are the 

 week, the civil day, hour, minute, and second. 

 The week of seven days is one among other 

 methods of approximately dividing the month. 

 Its origin is not very clear. The seven-day 

 week, it is true, was widely known by Greeks 

 and Romans, yet for the most part it was used 

 as a measure of time by astrologers, Chaldean 

 and Egyptian. The planetary names for each 

 day of the week came to the Romans (proba- 

 bly before the Christian era) from Alexandria, 

 as an astrological not religious institute. Ac- 

 cording to this, each of the twenty-four hours 

 of the day, beginning at sunrise, was assigned 

 to one of the seven " planets," taken in the 

 then received order, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, 

 Mercury, Venus, Moon, continued without in- 

 terruption from day to day.* The Teutonic 

 races, though borrowing the week from the 

 .Romans, adopted in place of Latin names of 

 deities those with which they were more 

 familiar, as Tiw, Woden, Thor, Fraya; the 

 other days' names were simply translations, as 

 Sun, Moon. Saturn. Among the early Romans 

 the mode of dividing the month was cumbrous 

 in the extreme, and it seems surprising that 

 such a system as that of calends, nones, and 

 ides, should have held its place so long as it 

 did. The Greeks divided their months into 

 decades of days; and the decade, too, was 

 strongly urged for adoption in the calendar 

 framed at the time of the French Revolution, 

 so as to have ten months instead of twelve in 

 the year. The more natural division, however, 



* For a full explanation of this curious scheme, see Smith's 

 " Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," article " Week." 



into lunar months proved too convenient to be 



Above, the Christian in comparison with the 

 Jewish and Mohammedan calendars has been 

 spoken of; but there is yet a noticeable point 

 to be mentioned. It is, that the Christians 

 alone have two calendars, a purely solar and 

 a luni-solar, a civil and an ecclesiastical, exist- 

 ing side by side. The Gregorian civil calendar 

 is the direct bequest of the Romans, modified 

 in a few respects, but still preserving the 

 features of its progenitor. Passing by the 

 traditional calendars of Romulus and Numa, it 

 is tolerably certain that, until the decemvirs, 

 who threw the calendar into hopeless confu- 

 sion by a clumsy attempt to introduce Greek 

 methods of calculating the year, the Roman 

 year was exclusively lunar. The early Roman 

 calendar-makers seem to have known of the 

 nineteen years' cycle,* and the decemvirs 

 employed it by instituting a luni-solar year, 

 supplementing the lunar with intercalations. 

 They bungled, however, in their calculations, 

 and they lengthened or shortened the interca- 

 lations, whenever they chose, so as to affect the 

 time of the elections, in the interest of the 

 aristocratic party. Hence, when Julius Caesar 

 took the matter in hand (in B. o. 46), he found 

 the year in a state of chaos ; and, in order to 

 make things straight, he made the "last year 

 of confusion" to consist of no less than 445 days, 

 whereby he was enabled to start fair and square 

 on his own system. 



The first Julian year began January 1st, B. o. 

 45. It was purely solar, consisting of 365 

 days, with an additional day every fourth year, 

 thus making the average length of the year 365 

 days, 6 hours. This period was divided into 

 twelve parts, called months as heretofore. In 

 Cassar's arrangement the months had 31 and 

 30 days alternately, except February, which had 

 29 days in common years and 30 in leap-years. 

 Augustus Caasar, however, meddled with this 

 arrangement; for, being resolved to have 

 place in the calendar, he had the month Sextilis 

 named after himself (just as Julius Caesar had 

 named Quintilis after himself), and added 

 another day to it, so as not to be inferior to 

 the month of July in any respect. This led 

 to February being deprived of one of its days, 

 and in order not to have three months of 31 

 days each following one another, a day apiece 

 was taken from September and November and 

 given to October and December. Hence the 

 irregular order of our long and short months. 



The average length of the Julian year, as 

 above stated, was fixed at 365 days, 6 hours ; 

 but the actual length of the solar year is 365 

 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 48 seconds. The 

 Julian year, therefore, gained upon the true 



* That is, in brief, if the new moon happens on the first day 

 of the solar year, it happens on the first day of the twentieth 

 solar year next following ; so that the lunar and the solar year 

 after nineteen solar years, or two hundred and thirty-five rev- 

 olutions of the moon round the earth, start level on the first 

 day of the twentieth. Though not absolutely correct, this 

 cycle is extremely convenient. 



