18 FLOWERS AND SEASONS 



V 



To the Venerable Bede must be assigned credit as 

 Flowers being the first to call attention in literature 

 and to the error in the Julian calendar, arising 

 seasons rom ne gj ect to ta ^ e mto acc0 unt the anticipa- 

 tion of the equinoxes. Writing in the eighth century, 

 he pointed out that the divergence of the true equinox, 

 as fixed on March 21 by the Council of Nice in A.D. 

 325, had already in the year 730 caused the calendar to 

 fall three days behind the season. ' Vox clamantis hi 

 deserto ' : nobody paid any attention to the warning 

 of the erudite, but obscure, priest of Jarrow. Five 

 hundred years later two other Englishmen reopened 

 the question, namely, John of Halifax (Johannes de 

 Sacro-bosco) and the Franciscan Roger Bacon, showing 

 that the error had increased to seven or eight days; 

 but these also failed to gain the Pope's ear. Two more 

 centuries slipped away before Pope Sextus iv. com- 

 mitted the question of reform to the astronomer 

 Regiomontanus, which had the effect of concentrating 

 mathematical inquiry upon the problem ; and at last, 

 in March 1582, Pope Gregory xm. issued a brief to the 

 States of Europe, substituting what is known as the 

 Gregorian, or New Style, calendar for the Julian, or 

 Old Style. 



Use and wont died hard in England. The Scottish 

 Government adopted the New Style in the year 1600 ; 

 but in England prejudice against any change prevailed 

 till 1751, by which time the difference in the styles 

 amounted to eleven days. In the present century this 



