The Gregorian calendar differs from the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar in Russia

For all of us, the calendar is a thing familiar and even ordinary. This ancient invention of man fixes the days, numbers, months, seasons, periodicity of natural phenomena, which are based on the system of motion of heavenly bodies: the Moon, the Sun, the stars. The earth sweeps along the solar orbit, leaving behind years and centuries.

Moon calendar

For one day the Earth makes one complete revolution around its own axis. For a year, it passes once around the Sun. The solar or astronomical year lasts three hundred and sixty-five days five hours forty-eight minutes forty-six seconds. Consequently, the whole number of days does not exist. Hence the difficulty in compiling an accurate calendar for correct timing.

Ancient Romans, Greeks used a convenient and simple calendar. The Moon revival occurs at intervals of 30 days, and to be precise, at twenty-nine days twelve hours and 44 minutes. That's why the account for days, and then months, could be kept for the changes in the Moon.

At first there were ten months in this calendar, which were named after the Roman gods. From the third century BC , an analogue was used in the ancient world based on a four-year lunisolar cycle, which gave an error in the magnitude of a solar year in one day.

In Egypt, they used the solar calendar, compiled on the basis of observations of the Sun and Sirius. The year on it was three hundred and sixty-five days. It consisted of twelve months for thirty days. After its expiration, five more days were added. It 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. The Emperor of Ancient Rome, Julius Caesar, introduced the Julian calendar according to the Egyptian pattern. In it for the magnitude of the year was taken a solar year, which was slightly more astronomical and amounted to three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours. The first of January was the beginning of the year. Christmas on the Julian calendar began to celebrate the seventh of January. So there was a transition to a new chronology.

In gratitude for the reform, the Senate of Rome renamed the month Quintilis, when Caesar was born, to Julius (now this is July). A year later, the emperor was killed, and the Roman priests either from ignorance, or intentionally again began to confuse the calendar and began to declare every coming third year a leap year. As a result, from the forty-fourth to the ninth year BC. E. Instead of nine, twelve leap years were announced.

The Emperor Oktivian Augustus saved his life. At his order, in the next sixteen years there were no leap years, and the rhythm of the calendar was restored. In his honor the month Sextilis was renamed Augustus (August).

For the Orthodox Church was very important the lunacy of church holidays. The date of the celebration of Easter was discussed at the First Ecumenical Council, and this question became one of the main. The rules for exact calculation of this celebration established at this Council can not be changed on pain of anathema.

Gregorian calendar

The head of the Catholic Church, Pope Gregory the Thirteenth in 1582, approved and introduced a new calendar. It was called "Gregorian". It would seem that everyone was happy with the Julian calendar, according to which Europe has lived more than sixteen centuries. However, Gregory the Thirteenth considered that the reform was necessary to determine a more precise date for the celebration of Easter, and also for the day of the vernal equinox 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 questioning the canons of the Ecumenical Councils. Indeed, in some years he violates the basic rule of the celebration of Easter. It happens that the Bright Sunday Catholic is due to the time before the Passover Jewish, and this is not allowed by the canons of the church.

Chronology in Russia

On the territory of our country, beginning with 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 postponed, according to church traditions, on the first of September. This lasted more than two hundred years.

On December 19th, seven thousand two hundred and eighth year, Tsar Peter the First issued a decree that the Julian calendar in Russia, accepted from Byzantium with baptism, still remained in effect. The start date of the year has changed. It was officially approved on the territory of the country. New Year for the Julian calendar was to celebrate the first of January "from the Nativity of Christ."

After the revolution on the fourteenth day of February one thousand nine hundred and eighteen, new rules were introduced in our country. The Gregorian calendar excluded three leap years within each four hundredth anniversary. It was his adherence.

What is the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars? The difference between in the leap years calculation. 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 twelve days, thirteen in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and by the twenty-second century this figure would have reached fourteen days.

The Russian Orthodox Church enjoys the Julian calendar, following the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, and the Catholics - the Gregorian calendar.

One often hears the question of why the whole world celebrates Christmas on December twenty-fifth, and we are on the seventh of January. The answer is quite obvious. The Orthodox Russian Church celebrates Christmas on 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 of application 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 in Europe and the United States.

The Gregorian calendar in Russia

In our country, the question of reform of the calendar has been raised repeatedly. In 1830 it was put by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Prince K.A. Lieven, then Minister of Education, considered this proposal untimely. Only after the revolution was the issue brought to the session of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Federation. Already on January 24, Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar.

Features of the transition to the Gregorian calendar

To Orthodox Christians the introduction of a new style of power brought certain difficulties. The new year was turned into a Christmas post, when any fun is not welcome. Moreover, January 1 is the day of the memory of Saint Vonifatius, who patronizes everyone who wants to give up drinking, 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 and sixty-five days in an ordinary year and three hundred and sixty-six a leap year, have 12 months, 4 of which are 30 days and 7 to 31 days, February - either 28 or 29. The difference is only in the periodicity of the onset of leap years years.

According to the Julian calendar, a leap year occurs every three years. In this case it turns out that the calendar year is longer than the astronomical one for 11 minutes. In other words, 128 years later there is an extra day. The Gregorian calendar also recognizes that the fourth year is a leap year. The exception is those years that are multiples of 100, as well as those that can be divided into 400. Based on this, extra days appear only after 3200 years.

What awaits us in the future

Unlike the Gregorian, the Julian calendar is simpler for the chronology, but it is astronomical ahead of the year. The basis of the first was 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, the Orthodox churches that use the first one will celebrate Christmas from 2101, not on January 7, as it is now, but on January 8, and from nine thousand Nine hundred and first year, 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, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the Julian calendar was applied, 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 marked in the same numbers when they happened.

Consequences of calendar reforms

At the present time, the Gregorian calendar is quite accurate. According to many experts, it does not need any changes, but the question of its reform has been discussed for several decades. In this case, we are not talking about the introduction of a new calendar or any new methods of accounting for leap years. It is about regrouping the days of the year in such a way that the beginning of each year falls for one day, for example on Sunday.

Today, the calendar months are from 28 to 31 days, the length of the quarter varies from ninety to ninety-two days, with the first half shorter than the second for 3-4 days. This complicates the work of financial and planning bodies.

What are the new draft calendars

Over the past one hundred and sixty years, various projects have been proposed. In 1923, the Committee for Calendar Reform under the League of Nations was established. After the end of the Second World War, this issue was referred to the UN Economic and Social Committee.

Despite the fact that there are 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 astronomer from France G. Armelin.

In the first variant, the month always begins on Sunday, and ends on Saturday. In a year, one day does not have a name and is inserted at the end of the last thirteenth month. In a leap year such a day appears in the sixth month. According to experts, this calendar has many significant drawbacks, therefore, more attention is paid to the project of Gustave Armelin, according to which the year consists of twelve months and four quarters for ninety-one days.

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

Will Russia return to the "old style"

It is rather difficult for foreigners to explain what the concept "Old New Year" means, why we celebrate Christmas later than Europeans. Today there are people wishing to implement the transition to the Julian calendar in Russia. And 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 that the Russian Orthodox Church uses.