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Re: Millennium Madness



The best explanation I've seen on the web of the whole calendar issue is at 
http://www.pjbsware.demon.co.uk/calendar/faq/node3.htm

...including how, and why, Dionysius fudged the date of the birth of Christ
to make his system for calculating the date of Easter work out neatly.

I found it interesting that, despite all the calendar adjustments and
reforms over the centuries, the seven-day week cycle has never been
disturbed. As the author of these pages, Claus Tøndering, states:

There is no record of the 7-day week cycle ever having been broken. Calendar
changes and reform have never interrupted the 7-day cycles. It very likely
that the week cycles have run uninterrupted at least since the days of Moses
(c.1400 BC), possibly even longer. 


Thomas J. Wood
Archivist
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144
University of Illinois at Springfield
P.O. Box 19243
Springfield IL 62794-9243
217-206-6520 | wood@uis.edu | http://www.uis.edu/~lib-arch


-----Original Message-----
From: Metzer, Laren [mailto:LMetzer@SS.CA.GOV]
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 5:22 PM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Millennium Madness


Are we all thoroughly confused about the end/start of the third millennium?
If so, we can blame it all on Dennis and Gregory.

For the record, the end of the second millennium and the beginning of the
third will be reached on January 1, 2001. This date is based on the widely
used Gregorian calendar, the initial epoch of which was established by the
sixth-century scholar Dionysius Exiguus (aka Dennis the Short - I guess
today we would call him "vertically challenged"), who was compiling a table
of dates for Easter. Rather than starting with the year zero, Dennis decided
(quite logically, I think) to begin with 1 A.D. Thus, the first decade (by
definition, a unit of ten), ended in 10 A.D., the first century ended in 100
A.D., and the first millennium ended in 1000 A.D.

The fruit of Dennis' hard work, however, was not realized until much later
and resulted from a perceived need to reform the method of calculating dates
of Easter, the high point of the Roman Catholic liturgical year. Under the
Julian calendar, the dating of Easter had become standardized, using March
21st as the date of the equinox. By the thirteenth century, however, church
leaders noticed that the true equinox had shifted from March 21 to a date
earlier in the month. As a result, Easter was drifting away from its
springtime position and was losing its relationship to the Jewish Passover.
Over the next four centuries, scholars debated the "correct" time for
celebrating Easter and the means of regulating this time through revisions
to the Julian calendar.

In 1572, Pope Gregory created a Calendar Commission to fix the problem once
and for all. The Commission recommended that the new calendar should begin
with 1 A.D. as determined by Dennis the Short, and that a leap day be added
every four years, except no leap year would be added to any year ending with
two zeros (1600, 1700, etc.) unless that year was also evenly divisible by
400. Thus, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 did not have leap years, but 1600
and 2000 did and will. To remedy the principal problem of establishing the
date of Easter, ten days were deleted from the calendar, so that October 4,
1582  was followed by October 15, 1582. (This probably really messed up
scheduled vacations, but certainly shortened the working month!). Pope
Gregory accepted the recommendations and issed a papal bull to give them
authority in 1582.

The new calendar was not widely accepted at first and rioting occurred in
England to protest the event. (And this was before soccer matches!)
Protestant states initially rejected the calendar, but gradually accepted it
over the coming centuries. The Eastern Orthodox churches rejected the new
calendar and continued to use the Julian calendar with traditional lunar
tables for calculating Easter. Because the purpose of the Gregorian calendar
was to regulate the cycle of Christian holidays, its acceptance in the
non-Christian world was initially moot. As international communications
developed and the power of the church expanded,  the Gregorian calendar was
gradually adopted around the world. Greece was the last European country to
adopt the calendar in 1913. Today, although there are over 40 different
calendars still in use for various purposes, the Gregorian calendar is used
by all nations for at least some functions.

So, what do we make of the overwhelming popular decision to celebrate the
"new millennium" a few weeks ago? I can't really blame the public. 2000 is a
very nice, round number. And, after all, sometimes language and common
convention betrays reality. Don't we all refer to Sunday as part of the
"weekend"? The media, however, could have done much to lighten the band
wagon. Instead, they pushed us on with big headlines, televised events, and
story overkill. It's interesting to note that many of the media
organizations that accepted the "millennium scam" (for example, the New York
Times), didn't pay much attention to how they heralded the beginning of the
20th Century, which, according to the Times headlines, occurred on January
1, 1901!

Do I like the system? NO! But, until we modify the present calendar, we are
stuck with the work of good ole Dennis. By the way, this is the same guy who
calculated that Christ was born on December 25th!
For me, as long as I get paid at the end of each month (year, decade,
century, millennium), I don't care WHAT happened to those ten days in 1582!!

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