Switching to a new calendar style. How is the Julian calendar different from the Gregorian calendar

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: to consider three years 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 prescribing "to return the vernal equinox to March 21." By that time, it had gone ten days from the designated date, which were removed from that 1582 year. And so that the error does not accumulate in the future, it was prescribed to throw out three days out of every 400 years. Years that are a multiple of 100 but not a multiple of 400 became non-leap years.

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

Which calendar is more accurate

Disputes, which of the calendars - Gregorian or Julian, more precisely, do not subside to this day. On the one hand, the year of the Gregorian calendar is closer to the so-called tropical year - the interval during which the Earth makes a complete revolution around the Sun. According to modern data, the tropical year is 365.2422 days. On the other hand, scientists in astronomical calculations still use the Julian calendar.

The purpose 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 the ancient Christian councils on the timing of the celebration of Easter. However, the task was not completely solved.

The widespread opinion that the Gregorian calendar is "more correct" and "more advanced" than the Julian calendar is just a propaganda cliché. The Gregorian calendar, according to some scientists, is astronomically unjustified and is a distortion of the Julian calendar.

Different peoples, religious cults, astronomers tried to make the calculation of the inexorably current time both the most accurate and simple for any person. The starting point was the movement of the Sun, Moon, Earth, the location of the stars. There are dozens of calendars developed and used so far. For the Christian world, there were only two significant calendars used for centuries - Julian and Gregorian. The latter is still the basis of the chronology, which is considered the most accurate, not subject to the accumulation of errors. The transition to the Gregorian calendar in Russia occurred in 1918. With what it was connected, this article will tell.

From Caesar to the present day

The Julian calendar was named after this multifaceted personality. The date of its appearance is considered to be January 1, 45. BC e. by decree of the emperor. It's funny that the starting point has little to do with astronomy - this is the day the consuls of Rome take office. This calendar, however, was not born from scratch:

• The basis for it was the calendar of ancient Egypt, which has existed for centuries, in which there were exactly 365 days, the change of seasons.
• The second source for compiling the Julian calendar was the existing Roman one, where there was a division into months.

It turned out to be a fairly balanced, thoughtful way of visualizing the flow of time. It harmoniously combined ease of use, clear periods with astronomical correlation between the Sun, Moon and stars, known for a long time and influencing the movement of the Earth.

The appearance of the Gregorian calendar, completely tied to the solar or tropical year, grateful humanity is obliged to Pope Gregory XIII, who indicated that all Catholic countries should switch to a new time on October 4, 1582. It must be said that even in Europe this process was neither shaky nor rough. So, Prussia switched to it in 1610, Denmark, Norway, Iceland - in 1700, Great Britain with all overseas colonies - only in 1752.

When did Russia switch to the Gregorian calendar?

Thirsty for everything new after everything was destroyed, the fiery Bolsheviks gladly gave the command to switch to a new progressive calendar. The transition to it in Russia took place on January 31 (February 14), 1918. The Soviet government had quite revolutionary reasons for this event:

• Almost all European countries have long since switched to this method of reckoning, and only the reactionary tsarist government suppressed the initiative of peasants and workers who were very inclined towards astronomy and other exact sciences.
• The Russian Orthodox Church was against such violent intervention, which violated the sequence of biblical events. And how can "sellers of dope for the people" be smarter than the proletariat armed with the most advanced ideas.

Moreover, the differences between the two calendars cannot be called fundamentally different. By and large, the Gregorian calendar is a modified version of the Julian. The changes are mainly aimed at eliminating, less accumulation of temporary errors. But as a result of the dates of historical events that happened long ago, the births of famous personalities have a double, confusing reckoning.

For example, the October Revolution in Russia happened on October 25, 1917 - according to the Julian calendar or according to the so-called old style, which is a historical fact, or on November 7 of the same year in a new way - Gregorian. It feels like the Bolsheviks carried out the October uprising twice - the second time for an encore.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which the Bolsheviks were not able to force to recognize the new calendar either by executions of clergy or by organized robbery of artistic values, did not deviate from the biblical canons, counting the passage of time, the onset of church holidays according to the Julian calendar.

Therefore, the transition to the Gregorian calendar in Russia is not so much a scientific, organizational event as a political one, which at one time affected the fate of many people, and its echoes are still heard today. However, against the backdrop of a fun game of "set the time forward / backward by an hour", which is still not completely over, judging by the initiatives of the most active deputies, this is already just a historical event.

On the doorstep new years When one year follows another, we don’t even think about what style we live in. Surely, from the lessons of history, many of us remember that there was once a different calendar, later, people switched to a new one and began to live in a new way style.

Let's talk about how these two calendars differ: Julian and Gregorian .

History of the creation of the Julian and Gregorian calendars

To make time calculations, people came up with a system of chronology, which was based on the periodicity of the movement of celestial bodies, so it was created calendar.

Word "calendar" derived from the Latin word calendarium, which means "debt book". This is due to the fact that the debtors paid their debt on the day calendar, so called the first days of each month, they coincided with new moon.

Yes, at ancient romans had every month 30 days, or rather, 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes. At first this calendar had ten months, hence, by the way, the name of our last month of the year - December(from Latin decem- tenth). All months were named after Roman gods.

But, starting from the 3rd century BC, a different calendar was used in the ancient world, based on a four-year period. lunisolar cycle, he gave an error in the value of the solar year in one day. In Egypt they used solar calendar compiled on the basis of observations of the Sun and Sirius. The year for it was three hundred sixty five days. It consisted of twelve months thirty days every.

It was this calendar that became the basis julian calendar. It is named after the emperor Gaius Julius Caesar and was introduced into 45 BC. The beginning of the year according to this calendar began 1st of January.

Gaius Julius Caesar (100 BC-44 BC)

Existed Julian calendar over sixteen centuries, until 1582 G. Pope Gregory XIII did not propose a new system of reckoning. The reason for the adoption of the new calendar was the gradual shift in relation to the Julian calendar of the day of the vernal equinox, according to which the date of Easter was determined, as well as the discrepancy between the Easter full moons and astronomical ones. The head of the Catholic Church believed that it was necessary to determine the exact calculation of the celebration of Easter so that it fell on a Sunday, and also return the day of the spring equinox to the date of March 21.

Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585)

However, most European countries followed the call of Pope Gregory XIII and switched to a new style chronology.

The transition to the Gregorian calendar led to the following changes :

1. to correct accumulated errors, the new calendar at the time of adoption immediately shifted the current date by 10 days;

2. a new, more precise rule about a leap year began to operate - a leap year, that is, it contains 366 days, if:

The year number is a multiple of 400 (1600, 2000, 2400);

The year number is a multiple of 4 and not a multiple of 100 (… 1892, 1896, 1904, 1908…);

3. The rules for calculating the Christian (namely Catholic) Easter were changed.

The difference between the dates of the Julian and Gregorian calendars increases by three days for every 400 years.

History of chronology in Russia

In Rus', before Baptism, the new year began in March, but from the 10th century, they began to celebrate the New Year in September, according to the Byzantine church calendar. However, people accustomed to the centuries-old tradition continued to celebrate the New Year with the awakening of nature - in the spring. Until the king Ivan III V 1492 year did not issue a decree, which reported that the New Year was officially postponed to beginning of autumn. But this did not help either, and the Russian people celebrated two New Years: in spring and autumn.

Tsar Peter the First, striving for everything European, December 19, 1699 issued a decree that the Russian people, together with the Europeans, celebrate the New Year 1st of January.

February 14, 1918, after the coup, all of Russia switched to a new style, now the secular state began to live according to Gregorian calendar. Later, in 1923 year, the new authorities tried to transfer to a new calendar and the church, however His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon succeeded in preserving the traditions.

Today Julian and Gregorian calendars continue to exist together. Julian calendar enjoy Georgian, Jerusalem, Serbian and Russian churches, whereas Catholics and Protestants guided Gregorian.

Since by this time the difference between the old and new styles was 13 days, the decree ordered that after January 31, 1918, not February 1, but February 14 be counted. By the same decree, until July 1, 1918, after the number of each day according to the new style, in brackets, write the number according to the old style: February 14 (1), February 15 (2), etc.

From the history of chronology in Russia.

The ancient Slavs, like many other peoples, initially based their calendar on the period of change in the lunar phases. But already by the time of the adoption of Christianity, that is, by the end of the tenth century. n. e., Ancient Rus' used the lunisolar calendar.

Calendar of the ancient Slavs. It was not finally possible to establish what the calendar of the ancient Slavs was. It is only known that initially time was counted according to the seasons. Probably, the 12-month lunar calendar was also used at that time. In later times, the Slavs switched to the lunisolar calendar, in which an additional 13th month was inserted seven times every 19 years.

The oldest monuments of Russian writing show that the months had purely Slavic names, the origin of which was closely connected with natural phenomena. At the same time, the same months, depending on the climate of those places in which different tribes lived, received different names. So, January was called where the cross section (the time of deforestation), where it was blue (after the winter cloudiness, a blue sky appeared), where it was jelly (because it became cold, cold), etc .; February - cut, snow or fierce (severe frosts); March - berezosol (there are several interpretations here: birch begins to bloom; they took sap from birches; burned birch on coal), dry (the poorest in precipitation in ancient Kievan Rus, in some places the earth was already drying up, sokovik (a reminder of birch sap); April - pollen (flowering gardens), birch (beginning of birch flowering), oak tree, oak tree, etc.; May - grass (grass turns green), summer, pollen; June - worm (cherries turn red), isok (grasshoppers are chirping - “isoki ”), milky; July - Lipets (linden blossom), worm (in the north, where phenological phenomena are late), sickle (from the word “sickle”, indicating harvest time); August - sickle, stubble, glow (from the verb “roar "- the roar of deer, or from the word "glow" - cold dawns, and possibly from "pazors" - polar lights); September - veresen (heather bloom); ruen (from the Slavic root of the word meaning tree, giving yellow paint); october - leaf fall, "pazdernik" or "kastrychnik" (pazders - hemp bonfires, the name for the south of Russia); November - breast (from the word "pile" - a frozen rut on the road), leaf fall (in the south of Russia); December - jelly, breast, blueberry.

The year began on March 1, and from about that time they started agricultural work.

Many of the ancient names of the months later passed into a number of Slavic languages ​​and have largely survived in some modern languages, in particular in Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish.

At the end of the tenth century Ancient Rus' adopted Christianity. At the same time, the chronology used by the Romans passed to us - the Julian calendar (based on the solar year), with the Roman names of the months and the seven-day week. The account of years in it was conducted from the "creation of the world", which allegedly occurred 5508 years before our reckoning. This date - one of the many options for eras from the "creation of the world" - was adopted in the 7th century. in Greece and has long been used by the Orthodox Church.

For many centuries, March 1 was considered the beginning of the year, but in 1492, in accordance with church tradition, the beginning of the year was officially moved to September 1 and was celebrated this way for more than two hundred years. However, a few months after the Muscovites celebrated their regular New Year on September 1, 7208, they had to repeat the celebration. This happened because on December 19, 7208, a personal decree of Peter I was signed and promulgated on the reform of the calendar in Russia, according to which a new beginning of the year was introduced - from January 1 and a new era - the Christian chronology (from the "Christmas").

Petrovsky's decree was called: "On writing henceforth Genvar from the 1st of 1700 in all papers of the summer from the Nativity of Christ, and not from the creation of the world." Therefore, the decree ordered the day after December 31, 7208 from the "creation of the world" to be considered January 1, 1700 from the "Christmas". In order for the reform to be adopted without complications, the decree ended with a prudent clause: “And if anyone wants to write both those years, from the creation of the world and from the Nativity of Christ, in a row freely.”

Meeting of the first civil New Year in Moscow. The day after the announcement on Red Square in Moscow of the decree of Peter I on the reform of the calendar, i.e. December 20, 7208, a new decree of the tsar was announced - "On the celebration of the New Year." Considering that January 1, 1700 is not only the beginning of a new year, but also the beginning of a new century (Here a significant mistake was made in the decree: 1700 is the last year of the 17th century, and not the first year of the 18th century. The new century began on January 1 1701. A mistake that is sometimes repeated even today.), the decree ordered to celebrate this event with special solemnity. It gave detailed instructions on how to organize a holiday in Moscow. On New Year's Eve, Peter I himself lit the first rocket on Red Square, thus signaling the opening of the holiday. The streets were illuminated with illumination. The ringing of bells and cannon fire began, the sounds of trumpets and timpani were heard. The king congratulated the population of the capital on the New Year, the festivities continued all night. Multi-colored rockets flew up from the courtyards into the dark winter sky, and “along the large streets, where there is space,” fires burned - bonfires and tar barrels attached to poles.

The houses of the inhabitants of the wooden capital were dressed up in needles “from trees and branches of pine, spruce and juniper”. For a whole week the houses stood decorated, and at nightfall the lights were lit. Shooting "from small cannons and from muskets or other small weapons", as well as launching "rockets" were entrusted to people "who do not count gold." And the “meager people” were offered “everyone, at least a tree or a branch on the gate or over his temple.” Since that time, the custom has been established in our country every year on January 1 to celebrate New Year's Day.

After 1918, there were more calendar reforms in the USSR. In the period from 1929 to 1940, calendar reforms were carried out in our country three times, caused by production needs. Thus, on August 26, 1929, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the transition to continuous production in enterprises and institutions of the USSR", in which it was recognized as necessary from the 1929-1930 financial year to begin a systematic and consistent transfer of enterprises and institutions to continuous production. In the autumn of 1929, a gradual transition to "continuous work" began, which ended in the spring of 1930 after the publication of a resolution by a special government commission under the Council of Labor and Defense. This resolution introduced a single production time sheet-calendar. The calendar year provided for 360 days, i.e. 72 five-day periods. It was decided to consider the remaining 5 days as holidays. Unlike the ancient Egyptian calendar, they were not located all together at the end of the year, but were timed to coincide with Soviet memorable days and revolutionary holidays: January 22, May 1 and 2, and November 7 and 8.

The employees of each enterprise and institution were divided into 5 groups, and each group was given a day of rest every five days for the whole year. This meant that after four days of work there was a day of rest. After the introduction of the "continuity" there was no need for a seven-day week, since days off could fall not only on different days of the month, but also on different days of the week.

However, this calendar did not last long. Already on November 21, 1931, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted a resolution "On the Intermittent Production Week in Institutions", which allowed the people's commissariats and other institutions to switch to a six-day interrupted production week. For them, regular days off were set on the following dates of the month: 6, 12, 18, 24 and 30. At the end of February, the day off fell on the last day of the month or was postponed to March 1. In those months that contained but 31 days, the last day of the month was considered a full month and paid separately. The decree on the transition to a discontinuous six-day week came into force on December 1, 1931.

Both the five-day and six-day days completely broke the traditional seven-day week with a common day off on Sunday. The six-day week was used for about nine years. Only on June 26, 1940, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree "On the transition to an eight-hour working day, to a seven-day working week and on the prohibition of unauthorized departure of workers and employees from enterprises and institutions", In the development of this decree, on June 27, 1940, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted the resolution, in which he established that “beyond Sundays, non-working days are also:

January 22, May 1 and 2, November 7 and 8, December 5. The same decree abolished the six special days of rest and non-working days that existed in rural areas on March 12 (Day of the overthrow of the autocracy) and March 18 (Day of the Paris Commune).

On March 7, 1967, the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions adopted a resolution “On the transfer of workers and employees of enterprises, institutions and organizations to a five-day work week with two days off”, but this reform did not in any way concern the structure of the modern calendar.

But the most interesting thing is that the passions do not subside. The next round happens already in our new time. Sergey Baburin, Viktor Alksnis, Irina Savelyeva and Alexander Fomenko submitted a bill to the State Duma in 2007 - on the transition of Russia from January 1, 2008 to the Julian calendar. In the explanatory note, the deputies noted that "the world calendar does not exist" and proposed to establish a transitional period from December 31, 2007, when within 13 days the chronology will be carried out simultaneously according to two calendars at once. Only four deputies took part in the voting. Three are against, one is for. There were no abstentions. The rest of the elect ignored the vote.

Humanity has been using chronology since ancient times. Take, for example, the famous Mayan circle that made a lot of noise in 2012. Measuring day by day, the pages of the calendar take weeks, months and years away. Almost all countries of the world today live according to the generally recognized Gregorian calendar, however, for many years the state was Julian. What is the difference between them, and why is the latter now used only by the Orthodox Church?

Julian calendar

The ancient Romans counted the days by the phases of the moon. This simple calendar had 10 months named after gods. The Egyptians had a familiar modern reckoning: 365 days, 12 months of 30 days. In 46 BC. Emperor of Ancient Rome Gaius Julius Caesar ordered the leading astronomers to create a new calendar. The solar year with its 365 days and 6 hours was taken as a model, and the starting date was January 1st. The new way of counting days then, in fact, was called a calendar, from the Roman word "calends" - that was the name of the first days of each month when interest on debts was paid. To the glory of the ancient Roman commander and politician, in order to perpetuate his name in the history of a grandiose invention, one of the months was called July.

After the assassination of the emperor, the Roman priests got a little confused and declared every third year to be a leap year to even out the six-hour shift. The calendar was finally aligned under the emperor Octavian Augustus. And his contribution was recorded by the new name of the month - August.

Julian to Gregorian

For centuries julian calendar states lived. It was also used by Christians during the First Ecumenical Council, when the date for celebrating Easter was approved. Interestingly, this day is celebrated differently every year, depending on the first full moon after the spring equinox and the Jewish Passover. This rule could only be changed on pain of anathema, but in 1582 the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Gregory XIII, took the risk. The reform was successful: the new calendar, called the Gregorian, was more accurate and returned the day of the equinox to March 21. The hierarchs of the Orthodox Church condemned the innovation: it turned out that the Jewish Easter happened later than the Christian Easter. This was not allowed by the canons of the Eastern tradition, and another point appeared in the discrepancies between Catholics and Orthodox.

The chronology in Rus'

In 1492, the New Year in Rus' began to be celebrated according to church tradition on September 1, although earlier the New Year began simultaneously with spring and was considered "from the creation of the world." Emperor Peter I established that adopted from Byzantium Julian calendar on the territory of the Russian Empire is valid, but the New Year was now celebrated without fail on January 1. The Bolsheviks brought the country to Gregorian calendar, according to which the whole of Europe has long lived. It is interesting that in this way the then February became the shortest month in the history of the chronology: February 1, 1918 turned into February 14.

WITH Julian to Gregorian calendar in 1924, Greece officially crossed, followed by Turkey, and in 1928, Egypt. In our time, according to the Julian chronology, only some Orthodox churches live - Russian, Georgian, Serbian, Polish, Jerusalem, as well as eastern ones - Coptic, Ethiopian and Greek Catholic. Therefore, there are discrepancies in the celebration of Christmas: Catholics celebrate the birthday of Christ on December 25, and in the Orthodox tradition this holiday falls on January 7. The same with secular holidays - confusing foreigners, is celebrated on January 14 as a tribute to the previous calendar. However, it does not matter who lives according to what calendar: the main thing is not to waste precious days.

Kaluga region, Borovsky district, Petrovo village

Welcome to ! On January 6, 2019, the magic of Christmas Eve will envelop the entire park, and its visitors will find themselves in a real winter fairy tale!

An exciting thematic program of the park awaits all guests of the park: interactive excursions, craft workshops, street games with mischievous buffoons.

Enjoy the winter views of ETNOMIR and the festive atmosphere!