What calendar or style do we live by? Our calendars: why the Russian Church lives according to the old style.

Before the transition to the Gregorian calendar, which different countries occurred at different times, the Julian calendar was used everywhere. It is named after the Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar, who is believed to have carried out a calendar reform in 46 BC.

The basis Julian calendar, apparently, based on the Egyptian solar calendar. A year according to the Julian calendar was 365.25 days. But there can only be an integer number of days in a year. Therefore, it was supposed: three years should be considered equal to 365 days, and the fourth year following them equal to 366 days. This year with an extra day began to be called a leap year.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a bull ordering “the return of the vernal equinox to March 21.” By that time it had moved away from the designated date by ten days, which were removed from that year 1582. And to prevent the error from accumulating in the future, it was prescribed to discard three days out of every 400 years....

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Calendar (lat. calendarium - debt book: in Ancient Rome, debtors paid interest on the day of the calendar, the first days of the month) - a number system for large periods of time, based on the frequency of movement celestial bodies: Suns - in solar calendars, Moons - in lunar calendars and at the same time both the Sun and the Moon in lunisolar calendars.

There are calendars based on other astronomical objects, for example, in the ancient Egyptian calendar, a year is the period of time between two successive heliactic risings of Sirius. But such calendars are very rare.

Each nation used its own dating methods historical events. Some tried to count the years from the creation of the world: the Jews dated it to 3761 BC. e. , Alexandrian chronology considered this date to be May 25, 5493 BC. e. The Romans began counting from the legendary foundation of Rome (753 BC). The Parthians, Bithynians and Seleucids counted the years from the accession to the throne of the first king, the Egyptians - from the beginning...

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You definitely need to know this (rhythms of life)

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A good friend sent me a very interesting information.
This will be the topic for all of us today. After all, Catholic Christmas passed a couple of days ago, right around the corner New Year, and then Orthodox Christmas, and then Old New Year.
These “amazing” holidays must be explained.
So we read:

JULIAN AND GRIGORIAN CALENDARS

The calendar is a familiar table of days, numbers, months, seasons, years and is the oldest invention of mankind. It records the frequency natural phenomena, based on the pattern of movement of celestial bodies: the Sun, Moon, stars. The Earth rushes along the solar orbit, counting down the years and centuries. It makes one revolution around its axis per day, and around the Sun per year. Astronomical,...

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Archimandrite Nazariy (Omelyanenko), KDAiS teacher, tells the story

How did the Julian calendar get into our Church, why do we still use it and not switch to another? For the common man, this is a question to which he often cannot find an answer...

The church began to use a calendar starting in the 4th century. Before this, all ancient peoples used so-called “smart calendars”. If we take the Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian calendars, they were actually associated with the phases of the Moon, primarily with river floods, because... this natural phenomenon directly depended on the phases of the planet. In order to successfully engage in farming, people calculated everything and tied their activities to this.

For a long time known fact, that in 45 BC. Julius Caesar introduced new calendar, which began its countdown on January 1. Alexandrian astronomers - this is Egypt - came to the conclusion that it is more important to calculate the spring and autumn equinoxes and in accordance with this...

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We Orthodox Christians live according to the Gregorian calendar, i.e. according to the old style. The Catholic world lives according to the Julian calendar. Unlike the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar takes into account only one object - the Sun.
Gregorian calendar is based on the fraction 97/400, i.e. There are 97 leap years in the 400-year cycle.
The word calendar itself comes from the Latin Calendae, which means “time for paying debts.” Kalends began each month of the Roman civil calendar, established by Numa Pompilius and which became the prototype for the subsequent Julian and Gregorian calendars. The most important Kalends during the year were, of course, the January Kalends, with which the new year of the Roman calendar actually began. On January 1, in Rome, consuls replaced each other at the highest state post, transferring to their successors the affairs and debts of the state. Now people no longer think about the fact that January 1 is the time for the necessary payment of debts and interest, and the celebration of the New Year on the day of payment...

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Gregorian calendar

Disadvantages of the Julian calendar. In 325 AD e. The Nicene Church Council took place. It adopted the Julian calendar for the entire Christian world, according to which at that time the spring equinox fell on March 21. For the church it was important point in determining the time of celebration of Easter - one of the most important religious holidays. By accepting the Julian calendar, the clergy believed that it was perfectly accurate. However, as we know, for every 128 years an error of one day accumulates.

An error in the Julian calendar led to the fact that the actual time of the vernal equinox no longer coincides with the calendar. The moment of equality between day and night moved to earlier and earlier dates: first to March 20, then to 19, 18, etc. By the second half of the 16th century. the error was 10 days: according to the Julian calendar, the moment of the equinox was supposed to occur on March 21, but in reality it already occurred on March 11.

History of the Gregorian...

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Gregorian calendar

Since 46 BC, most countries in the world have used the Julian calendar. However, in 1582, by the decision of Pope Gregory XIII, it was replaced by Gregorian. That year, the next day after the fourth of October was not the fifth, but the fifteenth of October. Now the Gregorian calendar is officially adopted in all countries except Thailand and Ethiopia.

Reasons for adopting the Gregorian calendar

The main reason for the introduction of a new chronology system was the movement of the vernal equinox, depending on which the date of the celebration of Christian Easter was determined. Due to discrepancies between the Julian and tropical calendars (the tropical year is the period of time during which the sun completes one cycle of changing seasons), the day of the vernal equinox gradually shifted to earlier dates. At the time of the introduction of the Julian calendar, it fell on March 21, both according to the accepted calendar system and in fact. But by XVI...

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Why do we have the October Revolution in November, Christmas is not with everyone, and there is a strange holiday under the no less strange name “Old New Year”? What happened in Russia from the first to the fourteenth of February 1918? Nothing. Because this time did not exist in Russia - neither the first of February, nor the second, nor further until the fourteenth happened that year. According to the “Decree on the introduction of Russian Republic Western European calendar".

The decree was signed by Comrade Lenin and adopted, as stated in the document, “in order to establish in Russia the same calculation of time with almost all cultural peoples.”

Of course, the decision was political. But also for those who are sick, of course. As they say, they combined one with the other, or, again, as the great Gorin wrote: “First, celebrations were planned, then arrests, then they decided to combine.”...

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Julian and Gregorian calendars: differences from each other. History of origin

There are no problems with measuring certain quantities. When it comes to length, volume, weight - no one has any disagreements. But as soon as you touch the dimension of time, you will immediately encounter different points vision. Special attention should be paid to what the Julian and Gregorian calendars are; the difference between them has really changed the world.

Difference between Catholic and Orthodox holidays

It's no secret that Catholics celebrate Christmas not on January 7, like the Orthodox, but on December 25. The situation is the same with other Christian holidays.

A whole series of questions arises:

Where did these 13 days difference come from? Why can't we celebrate the same event on the same day? Will the 13 day difference ever change? Maybe it will shrink over time and disappear altogether? Yes, at least find out what it's all about...

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The difference in style arises from the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.

The Julian calendar (“old style”) is the calendar adopted in Europe and Russia before the transition to the Gregorian calendar. Introduced into the Roman Republic by Julius Caesar on January 1, 45 BC, or 708 from the founding of Rome.

The Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The Pope removed 10 days from this year (from October 4 to 14), and also introduced a rule according to which, in the future, 3 days will be removed from every 400 years of the Julian calendar to align with the tropical year.

According to the Julian calendar, every 4th year (the number of which is divisible by 4) is a leap year, i.e. contains 366 days, not 365, as usual. This calendar lags behind the solar calendar by 1 day in 128 years, i.e. by about 3 days in 400 years. This lag was taken into account in the Gregorian calendar ("new style"). For this purpose, "hundredths" (ending in 00) years are made not to be leap years, unless their number is...

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The Gregorian calendar (new style) has been introduced in Russia. Decree on the introduction of the Western European calendar in Russia.
Do you know what happened in Russia in the period from February 1 to February 13, 1918, according to the new style? Nothing! Not a single event - no one was born, no one was baptized, no one got married, no one died... Is this possible? It turns out yes. These days are not on the Russian calendar. The period from February 1 to February 13, 1918 fell out of the Russian calendar.

On January 24, 1918, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, the Gregorian calendar was introduced, in accordance with which an amendment of 13 days was introduced. After January 31, 1918, the day of February 14 came in Russia - a new style calendar (Gregorian) was introduced in the country.

In the practice of dating events, all events and documents relating to the period before February 1, 1918 are dated according to the Julian calendar ("old" style), from February 1, 1918 - according to the Gregorian calendar ("new" style). The main date may be accompanied by a date of a different style...

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17.10.2014

What calendar do we live by?

As you know, our country once lived according to the ancient Julian calendar. In Europe, in 1582, Catholics switched to the Gregorian calendar following the reform of Pope Gregory XIII. It is interesting that this reform was not recognized by the Orthodox, and therefore the traditions of the Julian calendar still live in this church. So gradually the counting of days according to different calendars did not coincide.

Since 1917, in Russia, the “social life calendar,” as in Europe, has been shifted by thirteen days to coincide with the Gregorian calendar. After the October Revolution of 1918, we switched to the “new style” and, according to the Decree of the Soviet Government, the date of February 1 was automatically considered the date of February 14. Currently, all secular states and our country live according to this chronology system, and now everyone knows for sure which calendar we live by. According to Gregorian, and this is completely logical. Where did the calendar innovation begin?

It's noteworthy that...

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Why is the Julian calendar more accurate than the Gregorian calendar?

Why is the old style more accurate than the new one? And is it really more accurate? After all, here in Russia, children are still taught at school that in the Church backward people live according to a backward calendar. Journalists are shouting to the whole world that the old calendar (Julian, as the Orthodox say) lags behind the modern one (Gregorian, introduced by Pope Gregory). And those who are more well-read even claim that the old calendar lags behind the modern one every 128 years. Let's check and we will make sure that the opposite is true: the modern calendar, the so-called new style, is inaccurate.

In a book that is a guide to modern astronomy, for it contains all the basic astronomical and physical information, “Astrophysical Quantities” (author K. W. Allen, published in 1977, Mir Publishing House, translated from English, page 35) The length of the year is given in various precise...

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As is known, the Russian Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar in its worship, while Russian state, along with most countries, has been using the Gregorian calendar for some time now. At the same time, both in the Church itself and in society, voices are heard from time to time calling for a transition to a new style.

The arguments of the defenders of the Julian calendar, which can be found in the Orthodox press, mainly come down to two. The first argument: the Julian calendar has been sanctified by centuries of use in the Church, and there are no compelling reasons to abandon it. The second argument: when switching to the “new style” while maintaining the traditional Paschalia (the system for calculating the date of Easter), many inconsistencies arise, and violations of the liturgical Rules are inevitable.

Both of these are arguments for the believer Orthodox man quite convincing. However, they do not seem to relate to the Julian calendar as such. After all, the Church did not create a new calendar, but...

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Why and how did the Calendar come into being?

Calendars, as a real opportunity to measure time, came to us from such distant antiquity that now it is not even possible to determine exactly when exactly the first of them was compiled. Since ancient times, they have become an urgent need for all inhabitants of the planet. Since the main types labor activity people were cultivating the land and caring for animals, the calendar served farmers and cattle breeders as the most faithful adviser in matters of when to expect river floods, to start plowing and prepare for sowing, to drive livestock to new pastures, to complete work and to harvest crops. How can we do without a calendar? But it was possible to create a calendar only on the basis of some periodically repeating rhythms. And then people noticed that day always gives way to night, and the seasons pass in a strict sequence: after spring comes summer, after summer comes autumn, then comes winter, after winter comes spring, after which the cycle repeats again in the same...

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What time are we living in?

Our calendar

WHAT TIME ARE WE LIVING IN?

N.S.Blinov

To always know exact time, it is not enough to have a good watch. We also need a standard against which these watches will be checked. Long years Such a standard was the day - the period of rotation of the Earth around its axis - and the second - 1/86400 of a day. The period of rotation of the Earth is constant with an accuracy of one thousandth of a second, but with the development of science and technology, even such high accuracy turned out to be insufficient.

In the 50s, physicists proposed using as a standard unit of time the duration of a certain number of electromagnetic oscillations emitted and absorbed by atoms during the transition from one energy state to another. This is how the standard atomic clocks appeared, the stability of the second of which is now almost a million times higher than the stability of the Earth’s rotation. The era of atomic time has begun.

The duration of an atomic second can be chosen arbitrarily, but...

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2. Time and calendar

Entering initial data into the program is the first operation that an astrologer faces. It is very important not to make a mistake at this stage in order to get correct result. This is where we begin our acquaintance with computer astrology.

What calendar do we live by?

Currently, the most widespread calendar in the world is called the Gregorian calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII after familiarizing himself with the project of Luigi Lilio in 1582. Before this, the calendar introduced in 46 BC was used for more than one and a half thousand years. Julius Caesar, Julian calendar. The average length of the year in the Julian calendar -365.25 - was achieved very simply - by introducing leap days every 4 years. In the Gregorian calendar, only those century years that are divisible by 400 are leap years, i.e. 1600, 2000, 2400, etc. The years 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100 are simple. It turns out that three days in 4 centuries are removed from the Julian calendar....

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To always know the exact time, it is not enough to have a good watch. We also need a standard against which these watches will be checked. For many years, such a standard was the day - the period of rotation of the Earth around its axis - and the second - 1/86400 of a day. The period of rotation of the Earth is constant with an accuracy of one thousandth of a second, but with the development of science and technology, even such high accuracy turned out to be insufficient.

In the 50s, physicists proposed using as a standard unit of time the duration of a certain number of electromagnetic oscillations emitted and absorbed by atoms during the transition from one energy state to another. This is how the standard atomic clocks appeared, the stability of the second of which is now almost a million times higher than the stability of the Earth’s rotation. The era of atomic time has begun.

The duration of the atomic second can be chosen arbitrarily, but of course it must be close to the second determined by the rotation of the Earth. After all, we live on Earth, our life largely depends on its rotation, and therefore astronomical and atomic time should not diverge noticeably. If such a discrepancy reaches several fractions of a second, the atomic clock, from which the well-known signals of exact time are transmitted, is moved forward or backward a second in order to combine atomic time with astronomical time. Such transfers are allowed only twice a year - on June 30 or December 31, and they are made all over the world.

Atomic time coordinated with astronomical time is called Universal Coordinate Time; This is the time we live by.

So far we have talked about systems for counting time within a day. Now let's get acquainted with the systems for counting the day itself, which are called calendars.

The calendar year we live by consists of 365 days; Every fourth year is one day longer. This year is called a leap year.

Why do we need a leap year? It turns out that it is necessary to coordinate the calendar year with the solar year, which is the time of one revolution of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The length of the solar, or "tropical" year, as astronomers call it, is 365.2422 days, or 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds.

Thus, the solar year is longer than the calendar year by about 6 hours, and over 4 years this difference is almost a whole day. If this is not taken into account, the beginning of the calendar year will slowly move through the seasons and eventually fall from winter to summer. To prevent this from happening, a leap year is introduced.

The first calendar of 365 days with one leap year was adopted in ancient Rome in 46 BC under Julius Caesar. This calendar became known as the Julian or old style.

For a long time The Julian calendar was considered perfectly accurate, but in fact this is not entirely true. Even with leap years, the Julian calendar year is 11 minutes 14 seconds shorter than the solar year. It is easy to imagine that in 128 years the difference between the calendar and astronomical counting of time will be a whole day.

Such a minor difference naturally could not play an important role for most people, but the clergy, who demanded punctual execution church holidays, was concerned about the discrepancy between the calendar and nature.

One of the most important religious holidays is Easter, which should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first spring full moon. The spring full moon was considered to be the full moon that occurs shortly after the vernal equinox, i.e. 21 March. But over the centuries, the spring equinox began to gradually slide away from March 21 due to a discrepancy between the calendar and the astronomical counting of time. The definition of Easter Day has become very complex, confusing, and sometimes simply incorrect. To avoid this, the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Gregory XIII, issued a special decree on calendar reform.

According to this decree, after October 4, 1582, it was necessary to count not October 5, but October 15. This eliminated the error of the Julian calendar that had accumulated over the previous 12 centuries.

To prevent this kind of error from accumulating in the future, it was decided that of the years that end with two zeros, for example, 1600, 1700, 1800, only those whose number of hundreds is divisible by 4 (1600, 2000, 2400) are considered leap years. The remaining century years should be simple, while according to the Julian calendar they were considered leap years. With the new account, a calendar error on one day will accumulate only over 3300 years, which, of course, has no practical significance. New system calendar began to be called the Gregorian calendar or the new style.

To be fair, it must be said that our calendar is still not very convenient for life. So, if you need to determine what day of the week will be on such and such a date in the current year, you must definitely look at the calendar or make calculations; for other years the task becomes even more difficult. Months are divided into different number days (30, 31, 28/29), the length of all quarters is different.

Why do we use such an inconvenient calendar, is it possible to change it? Of course you can.

A special commission has been organized at the UN to reform our calendar. Several hundred proposals for the design of a new calendar were sent to this commission. The most interesting of them are the following two proposals:

1. The calendar year consists of 13 months of 28 days each, so each month has exactly 4 weeks. Same numbers all months fall on the same day of the week, for example, the first day of any month will always be Monday, the second - Tuesday, etc.

Since such a year will last 364 days instead of the usual 365, after the last day of the year a special day without a number or name is introduced - it is proposed to be considered New Year's Day. In leap years there will be two such days without number.

This thirteen-month calendar has one significant drawback - the number of months is different from what we are used to. We need to come up with a name for the thirteenth month and build our whole life around the extra month.

God created the world outside of time, the change of day and night, seasons allows people to put their time in order. For this purpose, humanity invented the calendar, a system for calculating the days of the year. The main reason for switching to another calendar was disagreement about the celebration of the most important day for Christians - Easter.

Julian calendar

Once upon a time, back during the reign of Julius Caesar, in 45 BC. The Julian calendar appeared. The calendar itself was named after the ruler. It was the astronomers of Julius Caesar who created a chronology system focused on the time of successive passage of the equinox by the Sun , therefore the Julian calendar was a “solar” calendar.

This system was the most accurate for those times; each year, not counting leap years, contained 365 days. In addition, the Julian calendar did not contradict the astronomical discoveries of those years. For fifteen hundred years, no one could offer this system a worthy analogy.

Gregorian calendar

However, at the end of the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII proposed a different chronology system. What was the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars, if there was no difference in the number of days between them? Every fourth year was no longer considered a leap year by default, as in the Julian calendar. According to the Gregorian calendar, if a year ended in 00 but was not divisible by 4, it was not a leap year. So 2000 was a leap year, but 2100 will no longer be a leap year.

Pope Gregory XIII was based on the fact that Easter should be celebrated only on Sunday, and according to the Julian calendar, Easter fell on each time different days weeks. 24 February 1582 the world learned about the Gregorian calendar.

Popes Sixtus IV and Clement VII also advocated reform. The work on the calendar, among others, was carried out by the Jesuit order.

Julian and Gregorian calendars – which is more popular?

The Julian and Gregorian calendars continued to exist together, but in most countries of the world it is the Gregorian calendar that is used, and the Julian remains for calculating Christian holidays.

Russia was among the last to adopt the reform. In 1917, immediately after the October Revolution, the “obscurantist” calendar was replaced with a “progressive” one. In 1923, they tried to transfer the Russian Orthodox Church to the “new style,” but even with pressure on His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, a categorical refusal followed from the Church. Orthodox Christians, guided by the instructions of the apostles, calculate holidays according to the Julian calendar. Catholics and Protestants count holidays according to the Gregorian calendar.

The issue of calendars is also a theological issue. Despite the fact that Pope Gregory XIII considered the main issue to be astronomical and not religious, later discussions appeared about the correctness of a particular calendar in relation to the Bible. In Orthodoxy, it is believed that the Gregorian calendar violates the sequence of events in the Bible and leads to canonical violations: Apostolic rules do not allow the celebration of Holy Easter before the Jewish Passover. The transition to a new calendar would mean the destruction of Easter. Scientist-astronomer Professor E.A. Predtechensky in his work “Church Time: Reckoning and Critical Review of Existing Rules for Determining Easter” noted: "This collective work(Editor's note - Easter), in all likelihood by many unknown authors, was executed in such a way that it still remains unsurpassed. The later Roman Easter, now accepted by the Western Church, is, in comparison with the Alexandrian one, so ponderous and clumsy that it resembles a popular print next to an artistic depiction of the same object. Despite all this, this terribly complex and clumsy machine does not yet achieve its intended goal.”. In addition, the descent of the Holy Fire at the Holy Sepulcher takes place on Holy Saturday according to the Julian calendar.

For all of us, the calendar is a familiar and even mundane thing. This ancient human invention records days, numbers, months, seasons, and the periodicity of natural phenomena, which are based on the system of movement of the celestial bodies: the Moon, the Sun, and the stars. The Earth rushes through the solar orbit, leaving years and centuries behind.

Moon calendar

In one day, the Earth makes one full turn around its own axis. It passes around the Sun once per year. Solar or lasts three hundred sixty-five days five hours forty-eight minutes forty-six seconds. Therefore, there is no integer number of days. Hence the difficulty in compiling accurate calendar for correct timing.

The ancient Romans and Greeks used a convenient and simple calendar. The rebirth of the Moon occurs at intervals of 30 days, or to be precise, at twenty-nine days, twelve hours and 44 minutes. That is why days and then months could be counted by changes in the Moon.

In the beginning, this calendar had ten months, which were named after the Roman gods. From the third century to ancient world an analogue was used based on the four-year lunar-solar cycle, which gave an error in the value of the solar year of 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 sixty-five days. It consisted of twelve months of thirty days. After it expired, another five days were added. This was formulated as “in honor of the birth of the gods.”

History of the Julian calendar

Further changes occurred in the forty-sixth year BC. e. Emperor Ancient Rome Julius Caesar, based on the Egyptian model, introduced the Julian calendar. In it, the solar year was taken as the size of the year, which was slightly larger than the astronomical one and amounted to three hundred sixty-five days and six hours. The first of January marked the beginning of the year. According to the Julian calendar, Christmas began to be celebrated on January 7th. This is how the transition to a new calendar took place.

In gratitude for the reform, the Senate of Rome renamed the month of Quintilis, when Caesar was born, to Julius (now 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 forty-four to nine BC. e. Instead of nine, twelve leap years were declared.

Emperor Octivian Augustus saved the situation. By his order, there were no leap years for the next sixteen years, and the rhythm of the calendar was restored. In his honor, the month Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August).

For the Orthodox Church, the simultaneity of church holidays was very important. The date of Easter was discussed at First and this issue became one of the main ones. The rules for the exact calculation of this celebration established at this Council cannot be changed under pain of anathema.

Gregorian calendar

Chapter Catholic Church Pope Gregory the Thirteenth approved and introduced a new calendar in 1582. It was called "Gregorian". It would seem that everyone was happy with the Julian calendar, according to which Europe lived for more than sixteen centuries. However, Gregory the Thirteenth considered that reform was necessary to determine more exact date celebration of Easter, and also for the day to return to the twenty-first of March.

In 1583, the Council of Eastern Patriarchs in Constantinople condemned the adoption of the Gregorian calendar as violating the liturgical cycle and calling into question the canons Ecumenical Councils. Indeed, in some years he breaks the basic rule of celebrating Easter. It happens that Catholic Bright Sunday falls earlier than Jewish Easter, and this is not allowed by the canons of the church.

Calculation of chronology in Rus'

In 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 year was moved, according to church traditions, on the first of September. This went on for more than two hundred years.

On the nineteenth of December, 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 in force. The start date of the year has changed. It was officially approved in the country. The New Year according to the Julian calendar was to be celebrated on the first of January “from the Nativity of Christ.”

After the revolution of February fourteenth, one thousand nine hundred and eighteen, new rules were introduced in our country. The Gregorian calendar excluded three within each four hundred years. It was this that began to be followed.

How are the Julian and Gregorian calendars different? The difference between is in the calculation of leap years. Over time it increases. 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 Catholics use the Gregorian calendar.

You can often hear the question of why the whole world celebrates Christmas on the twenty-fifth of December, and we celebrate the seventh of January. The answer is completely obvious. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas according to the Julian calendar. This also applies to other major church holidays.

Today the Julian calendar in Russia is called the “old style”. Currently, 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 Europe and USA.

in Russia

In our country, the issue of calendar reform has been raised more than once. In 1830 it was staged Russian Academy Sci. Prince K.A. Lieven, who served as Minister of Education at the time, considered this proposal untimely. Only after the revolution the issue was brought to a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars 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 a time when any fun is not welcome. Moreover, January 1 is the day of remembrance of St. Boniface, the patron saint of 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

Both of them consist of three hundred sixty-five days in a normal year and three hundred sixty-six in a leap year, have 12 months, 4 of which are 30 days and 7 of 31 days, February - either 28 or 29. The difference lies only in the frequency of leap days 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 multiples of 100, as well as those that can be divided by 400. Based on this, extra days appear only after 3200 years.

What awaits us in the future

Unlike the Gregorian calendar, 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 order of many biblical events.

Due to the fact that the Julian and Gregorian calendars increase the difference in dates over time, orthodox churches who use the first of them will celebrate Christmas from 2101 not on January 7, as is now the case, but on the eighth of January, 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, for example in Greece, the dates of all historical events that occurred after the fifteenth of October one thousand five hundred and eighty-two are nominally celebrated on the same dates on which they occurred.

Consequences of calendar reforms

Currently, the Gregorian calendar is quite accurate. According to many experts, it does not need changes, but the issue of its reform has been discussed for several decades. This is not about introducing a new calendar or any new methods for accounting for leap years. This 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 last from 28 to 31 days, the length of the quarter ranges from ninety to ninety-two days, with the first half of the year being 3-4 days shorter than the second. This complicates the work of financial and planning authorities.

What new calendar projects exist?

Various projects have been proposed over the past one hundred and sixty years. In 1923, a calendar reform committee was created at the League of Nations. After the end of the Second World War this question was transferred to the Economic and Social Committee of the United Nations.

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 option, the month always begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday. One day in the year has no name at all and is inserted at the end of the last thirteenth month. IN leap year such a day appears in the sixth month. According to experts, this calendar has many significant shortcomings, so more attention is paid to the project of Gustave Armelin, according to which the year consists of twelve months and four quarters of ninety-one days.

The first month of the quarter has thirty-one days, the next two - thirty. The first day of each year and quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday. In a normal year, one additional day is added after the thirtieth of December, and in a leap year - after the 30th of June. This project was approved by France, India, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and some other countries. For a long time the General Assembly delayed approval of the project, and in Lately this work at the UN ceased.

Will Russia return to the “old style”

It is quite difficult for foreigners to explain what the concept of “Old New Year” means and 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. In their opinion, 70% of Russian Orthodox Russians have the right to live according to the calendar used by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Before the transition to the Gregorian calendar, which occurred at different times in different countries, the Julian calendar was widely used. It is named after the Roman emperor Gaius Julius Caesar, who is believed to have carried out a calendar reform in 46 BC.

The Julian calendar appears to be based on the Egyptian solar calendar. A Julian year was 365.25 days. But there can only be an integer number of days in a year. Therefore, it was supposed: three years should be considered equal to 365 days, and the fourth year following them equal to 366 days. This year with an extra day.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a bull ordering “the return of the vernal equinox to March 21.” By that time it had moved away from the designated date by ten days, which were removed from that year 1582. And to prevent the error from accumulating in the future, it was prescribed to eliminate three days from every 400 years. Years whose numbers are divisible by 100, but not divisible by 400, are not leap years.

The Pope threatened with excommunication anyone who did not switch to the Gregorian calendar. They switched to it almost immediately Catholic countries. After some time, Protestant states followed their example. IN Orthodox in Russia and Greece adhered to the Julian calendar until the first half of the 20th century.

Which calendar is more accurate?

The debate about which calendar is Gregorian or Julian, or rather, does not subside to this day. On the one hand, the year of the Gregorian calendar is closer to the so-called tropical year - the period during which the Earth makes a full revolution around the Sun. According to modern data, the tropical year is 365.2422 days. On the other hand, scientists still use the Julian calendar for astronomical calculations.

The goal of the calendar reform of Gregory XIII was not to bring the length of the calendar year closer to the length of the tropical year. In his time, there was no such thing as a tropical year. The purpose of the reform was to comply with the decisions of ancient Christian councils on the timing of Easter celebrations. However, the problem was not completely solved.

The widespread belief that the Gregorian calendar is “more correct” and “advanced” than the Julian calendar is just a propaganda cliche. The Gregorian calendar, according to a number of scientists, is not astronomically justified and is a distortion of the Julian calendar.