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The Gregorian Calendar


                       The present Gregorian calendar, which is solar based, came into being in March of 1582 --
               when Pope Gregory issued a brief in which he abolished the use of the ancient Julian calendar and
               replaced it with what became known as the Gregorian or New Style Calendar. The originator of
               the system adopted by Pope Gregory was Aloysius Lilius, or Luigi Lilio Ghiraldi, a learned as-
               tronomer and physician of Naples; but the individual who contributed the most toward giving the
               ecclesiastical calendar its present form was a man by the name of Clavius. He was charged with
               all the calculations necessary for its verification, and published in 1603 a great folio treatise of
               800 pages explaining the new calendar's development.

                       The previous Julian calendar was founded on two suppositions that proved to be inaccu-
               rate -- namely that the year contains 365 1/4 days and that 235 lunations are exactly equal to 19 so-
               lar years. It could not, therefore, long continue to preserve its correspondence with the seasons, or
               to indicate the days of the new moons with the same accuracy. The Julian year was 11 minutes
               and 14 seconds longer than the solar year. This discrepancy accumulated until by 1582 the vernal
               equinox occurred ten days early and Church holidays did not occur in the appropriate seasons.

                       Explains Herbert W. Armstrong:


                       The Julian calendar was imperfect -- it inserted leap years too frequently. Back in 45 B.C.
                       they supposed the year was exactly 365 1/4 days long, and to take care of the extra one-
                       fourth day each year, added a day to the month of February every four years. But it was
                       found later the year was 12 minutes and 14 seconds shorter than this. Consequently, by
                       the time of Pope Gregory, the calendar had drifted TEN DAYS away from the seasons.
                       The Spring equinox, consequently, fell on March 11th, instead of March 21st (ibid., p.6).


                       Gregory's brief or decree dropped ten days from the Julian calendar and restored the be-
               ginning of the year to the same place in the seasons that it had occupied at the time of the council
               of Nicea in 325 A.D. Gregory directed that the day following the feast of St. Francis (October 5)
               be reckoned as October 15. By this regulation the vernal equinox, which then occurred on March
               11, was restored to the 21st.

                       The Gregorian calendar was slowly adopted throughout Europe and is used today through-
               out most of the Western world and in parts of Asia. When this new calendar was adopted in Great
               Britain in 1752, another correction of an eleven-day discrepancy was made -- the day after Sep-
               tember 2, 1752 became September 14. The British also adopted January 1 as the day when a new
               year begins. The Soviet Union adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, and Greece adopted it in
               1923 for civil purposes, but many countries associated with the Greek Church retain the Julian (or
               Old Style) calendar for the celebration of Church feasts.


                       How did this affect the weekly cycle as observed in the old Julian calendar? Notes Herbert
               Armstrong --






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