Julian calendar. 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 come across different points of view. 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?
• At least find out what it's all about?

To answer these questions we will have to mentally travel to pre-Christian Europe. However, there was no talk of any integral Europe at that time; civilized Rome was surrounded by many disparate barbarian tribes. Subsequently, they were all captured and became part of the Empire, but that's another conversation.

However, history is written by the victors, and we will never know to what extent “ barbaric"were neighbors of Rome. It's no secret that great rulers have a hand in all events in the state. Julius Caesar was no exception when I decided to introduce a new calendar - Julian .

What calendars did you use and for how long?

The ruler cannot be denied modesty, but he made too much of a contribution to the history of the whole world to be criticized over trifles. The calendar he proposed:

1. It was much more accurate than previous versions.
2. All years consisted of 365 days.
3. Every fourth year there was 1 more day.
4. The calendar was consistent with astronomical data known at that time.
5. For one and a half thousand years, not a single worthy analogue has been proposed.

But nothing stands still; at the end of the 14th century, a new calendar was introduced, with the help of the then pope, Gregory XIII. This version of the countdown boiled down to the fact that:

• A normal year has 365 days. A leap year contains the same 366.
• But now not every fourth year was considered a leap year. Now if the year ends with two zeros, and at the same time divisible by both 4 and 100, it is not a leap year.
• For a simple example, 2000 was a leap year, but 2100, 2200 and 2300 will not be leap years. Unlike 2400.

Why was it necessary to change something, was it really impossible to leave everything as it was? The fact is that, according to astronomers, The Julian calendar is not entirely accurate.

The error is only 1/128 of a day, but over 128 years a whole day accumulates, and over five centuries - almost four full days.

How does the Julian calendar differ from the Gregorian calendar?

Fundamental differences between the two calendars are that:

• Julian was adopted much earlier.
• It lasted 1000 years longer than the Gregorian.
• Unlike the Gregorian calendar, the Julian calendar is now almost never used anywhere.
• The Julian calendar is used only for calculating Orthodox holidays.
• The Gregorian calendar is more accurate and avoids minor errors.
• The calendar adopted by Gregory XIII is presented as the final version, an absolutely correct frame of reference that will not change in the future.
• In the Julian calendar, every 4th year is a leap year.
• In Gregorian, years that end in 00 and are not divisible by 4 are not leap years.
• Almost every century ends with the difference between the two calendars increasing by another day.
• The exception is centuries divisible by four.
• According to the Gregorian calendar, almost all Christians in the world celebrate church holidays - Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans.
• According to Julian Orthodox Christians celebrate, guided by apostolic instructions.

What could an error of several days lead to?

But is it really so important to maintain this precision; maybe it’s better to pay tribute to traditions? What terrible thing will happen if in five centuries the calendar shifts by 4 days, is it noticeable?

In addition, those who decide to make changes will certainly not live to see the time when “ wrong“The calculation option will differ by at least a day.

Just imagine that already in February the weather warms up and the first flowering begins. But despite all this, the ancestors describe February as a harsh and frosty winter month.

At this point there may already be a slight misunderstanding about what is happening to nature and the planet? Especially if in November there are snowdrifts instead of fallen leaves. And in October, the variegated foliage on the trees is not pleasing to the eye, because all of it has been rotting on the ground for a long time. This seems insignificant at first glance, when the error is only 24 hours in 128 years.

But calendars regulate, among other things, the most important events in the life of many civilizations - sowing and harvesting. The more accurately all adjustments are made, the more O Larger food supplies will be available next year.

Of course, now this is not so important, in an era of rapid development of scientific and technological progress. But once upon a time it was a matter of life and death for millions of people.

Significant differences between calendars

Distinguishing between the two calendars:

1. More accurate measurement using Gregorian.
2. The irrelevance of the Julian calendar: besides the Orthodox Church, almost no one uses it.
3. The universal use of the Gregorian calendar.
4. By removing the 10 day lag and introducing a new rule - all years ending in 00 and not divisible by 4 are now not leap years.
5. Thanks to this, the difference between calendars is inexorably increasing. For 3 days every 400 years.
6. Julian was adopted by Julius Caesar, still 2 thousand years ago.
7. Gregorian is more “young”, it is not even five hundred years old. And Pope Gregory XIII introduced it.

What the Julian and Gregorian calendars are, the difference between them and the reasons for their introduction can be known for general development. In real life, this information will never be useful. Unless you want to impress someone with your erudition.

Video about the differences between Gregorian and Julian

In this video, Priest Andrei Shchukin will talk about the main differences between these two calendars from the point of view of religion and mathematics:

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 based 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 a different day of the week each time. 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 carried out 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.

At all times, many attempts have been made to streamline chronology. Various methods of measuring time were taken as a basis; calendars took various events, both religious and political, as a starting point. There are lunar calendars, based on the periodicity of the Moon’s movement, solar calendars, based on the Earth’s revolution around the Sun, and mixed ones. Not so long ago, namely on January 31, 1918, Soviet Russia switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. What is the difference between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar?
Julian calendar was introduced during the reign of Julius Caesar, in 45 BC, and was named after him. This solar calendar, focused on the time of successive passage of the equinox by the Sun, was developed by the emperor's court astronomers.
The reason for the appearance Gregorian calendar There were differences in the celebration of Easter: according to the Julian calendar, this bright holiday fell on different days of the week, while Christians believed that Easter should be celebrated only on Sunday. By order of the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Gregory XIII, the Gregorian solar calendar, which is rather a reformed Julian calendar, was prepared and put into operation on February 24, 1582.

While the Gregorian calendar was adopted to organize the celebration of Easter, its introduction disrupted the sequence of Gospel events. So the Russian Orthodox Church still calculates all moving holidays according to the Julian calendar, and non-moving ones - according to the “new style”.

Leap years

Both the first and second calendars consist of 365 days in a regular year and 366 days in a leap year, include 12 months, 7 of which contain 31 days, 4 months - 30 days, and February is either 28 or 29, depending from year. The only difference is the frequency of leap years.
The Julian calendar assumes that a leap year repeats every three years on the fourth. But this means that the calendar year is 11 minutes longer than the astronomical year. That is, every 128 years an extra day is formed. The Gregorian calendar also recognizes every fourth year as a leap year, with the exception of years divisible by 100 in cases where they are not divisible by 400. Thus, an extra day is formed only in 3200 years.

Beginning of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars

During the time of using the Julian calendar, the beginning of the year was determined first by September 1st, and then by March 1st, as they said, the autumn or spring new year. In any case, the year began with a new season. According to the Gregorian calendar, the new year begins on December 1, which is in the middle of the season.

TheDifference.ru determined that the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars is as follows:

The Julian calendar is simpler for chronology, but is ahead of the astronomical year in time.
The Gregorian calendar arose after the reform of the Julian calendar, taking it as a basis.
The Orthodox Church believes that the Gregorian calendar violates the sequence of biblical events.

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used chronological system today, named after the XII, who insisted on its introduction in the Catholic world. Many people mistakenly believe that it was Gregory who came up with this system, however, this is far from the case. According to one version, the main inspirer of this idea was the Italian doctor Aloysius, who theoretically substantiated the need to change the chronology that existed before.

The problem of chronology has always been quite acute, because the development of historical science in the country, and even the worldview of ordinary citizens, largely depends on what is taken as the starting point and what a day, month and year are equal to.

There were and are many chronological systems: some take as a basis the movement of the moon around the Earth, others consider the creation of the world to be the starting point, and others consider the departure of Muhammad from Mecca. In many civilizations, each change of ruler led to a change in the calendar. Moreover, one of the main difficulties is that neither an earthly day nor an earthly year lasts for a round number of hours and days; the whole question is - what to do with the remaining balance?

One of the first most successful systems was the so-called one, named after the reign of which it appeared. The main innovation was that one day was added to every fourth year. This year began to be called a leap year.

However, the introduction only temporarily alleviated the problem. On the one hand, the discrepancy between the calendar year and the tropical year continued to accumulate, although not at such a rapid pace as before, and on the other, Easter Day fell on different days of the week, although, according to most Catholics, Easter should always fall on Sunday .

In 1582, after numerous calculations and based on clear astronomical calculations, Western Europe switched to the Gregorian calendar. This year, in many European countries, the fifteenth day came immediately after October 4th.

The Gregorian calendar largely repeats the main provisions of its predecessor: a regular year also consists of 365 days, and a leap year - of 366, and the number of days changes only in February - 28 or 29. The main difference is that the Gregorian calendar excludes all leap years years divisible by one hundred, with the exception of those divisible by 400. In addition, if according to the Julian calendar the New Year came on the first of September or the first of March, then in the new chronological system it was initially declared on December 1, and then shifted by another month.

In Russia, under the influence of the church, the new calendar was not recognized for a long time, believing that according to it the entire sequence of evangelical events was disrupted. The Gregorian calendar was introduced in Russia only at the beginning of 1918, when the fourteenth day arrived immediately after the first of February.

Despite its much greater accuracy, the Gregorian system is still imperfect. However, if in the Julian calendar an extra day was formed in 128 years, then in the Gregorian calendar this would require 3200.

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

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

The history of the creation of the Julian and Gregorian calendars

To make time calculations, people came up with a chronology system, which was based on the periodicity of the movements of celestial bodies, and this is how the calendar.

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

Yes, y ancient romans every month had 30 days, or rather, 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes. At first this calendar contained 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 lunisolar cycle, it gave an error in the solar year of one day. Used in Egypt solar calendar, compiled on the basis of 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 every.

It was this calendar that became the basis Julian calendar. It is named after the emperor Guy 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)

Lasted Julian calendar more than sixteen centuries, until 1582 G. Pope Gregory XIII did not propose a new chronology system. 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, by which the date of Easter was determined, as well as the discrepancy between the Easter full moons and the 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 would fall on a Sunday, and also return the vernal equinox to the date of March 21.

Pope Gregory XIII (1502-1585)

However, in 1583 year Council of Eastern Patriarchs in Constantinople did not accept the new calendar, since it contradicted the basic rule by which the day of celebration of Christian Easter is determined: in some years, Christian Easter would come earlier than the Jewish one, which was not allowed by the canons of the church.

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

The transition to the Gregorian calendar entailed the following changes :

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

2. a new, more precise rule about leap years came into force - a leap year, that is, 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 Christian (namely Catholic) Easter have changed.

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

History of chronology in Russia

In Rus', before Epiphany, the new year began in March, but since the 10th century, the New Year began to be celebrated 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. While the king Ivan III V 1492 year did not issue a decree stating that the New Year was officially postponed to beginning of autumn. But this did not help, and the Russian people celebrated two new years: in spring and autumn.

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

But, at the same time, in Russia it still remained valid Julian calendar, received from Byzantium with baptism.

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 the church to a new calendar, however To His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon managed to preserve traditions.

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