RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Calendar Brethren Calendar, The Christian
commemoration of the birth of Christ and of St. Peter (Feb. 22), all the remainder being festivals of martyrs, generally of local origin. The next oldest calendar is a list of the festivals of the Church of Carthage, which apparently dates from the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, and contains the names of bishops and martyrs, the most of whom were natives of Carthage. From such beginnings a wealth of calendars soon developed throughout the Latin world, and the lists of the days of the month received an ina easing proportion of martyrological, hagiological, and heortological material. The active intercourse of the churches, especially of Rome with Africa, Gaul, Spain, and England, resulted in the addition of such numbers of foreign saints that those who received honor throughout the Church exceeded the saints of local fame, and finally there was no day of the year which did not have one or more saints. Since martyrs were commemorated in the early Church especially in the place where they had suffered, each community originally had its own list of feasts and its own calendar. This usage was of long duration, despite the frequent interchange of names and despite the increasing prestige of the Roman calendar and list of feasts. The diversity of calendars was augmented, moreover, by the reverence paid to the local saints of individual countries and dioceses, while a still more important factor was the discrepancy in the dating of the beginning of the year. The first of the year was reckoned from no less than six days:
(1) the Feast of the Circumcision (Jan. 1; used in conformity to the Julian calendar); (2) Mar. 1 (Merovingian France, the Lombards, Venice, and, for a time, Russia); (3) the Feast of the Annunciation (Mar. 25; first in Florence and Pisa, whence it extended to France, Germany, England, and Ireland, being retained in the latter two countries
until the eighteenth century); (4) 3. Compli- Easter (especially in France); (5) Sept. 1 cations in (Byzantine Empire, and, until mod- Dating, em times, Russia); (6) Christmas (Carolingian France, the Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavia, Prussia, Hungary, and portions of Holland, Switzerland, etc.). The problem was further complicated by the various methods of indicating the day of the month, of which at least five systems were used contemporaneously: (1) the ancient Roman method of calends, ides, and nones;
(2) the Greco-Christian consecutive numbering of the days of the month, now generally used; (3) the consuetudo Bononiensis, which divided the month into two halves, in one of which (mensis intrans) the days were numbered forward from 1, while in the other (mensis exiens) they were reckoned backward from 30 or 31; (4) the method of Cisiojanus or Cisianus, which designated the days of the month by the syllables of arbitrary mnemonic verses (long popular in Poland and North Germany); (5) the designation of the day by the feast celebrated on it. This confusion was worse confounded oy the various reckonings of Easter, while the movable feasts based upon it and running side by side with the fixed festivals, or even crossing them, added their quota of perplexity.
In the Middle Ages calendars were multiplied, partly in consequence of the chronological intricacies already noted and partly because of the universal need for ecclesiastical data of this character. It is true that there are few calendars still extant which were prepared previous to the eighth century, but this deficiency is made good in various ways, especially by the sacramentaries which give the list of feasts, while liturgical books, particularly manuscripts of the Psalter, frequently have a calendar prefixed to them. Such calendars are usually perpetual, that is, available for any year, but are usually provided with methods for the determination of the movable feasts of any particular year. Not only are the letters
4. Early A-G repeated in them from Jan. 1 to Medieval designate the days of the week, but
Calendars, they also contain the numbers I.-XIX. to denote all new moons which fall, in the course of a cycle of nineteen years, on the day of the month designated by one of these numbers. By means of such a calendar, when the Dominical Letter and the Golden Number (qq.v.) of the cycle are known, may be obtained the day of the week of any date and all new moons throughout the year. From the latter is derived the date of the spring new moon, which gives, when the day of the week on which it falls is determined by the Dominical Letter, the date of Easter. An Easter table for a series of years is also frequently added to the calendars.
All calendars of the Greek and Slavic churches begin their ecclesiastical year, as already noted, with Sept. 1. The great majority of their immovable feasts are consecrated to the saints and the Virgin, while a number of the movable feasts are consecrated to Christ. The latter, like the Sundays of the year, are divided into three periods: Trioidion (beginning with the tenth Sunday before Easter), Pentekostarion (from Easter to the close of the second week after Whitsuntide), and Oktoechos (extending from the second Sunday after Whitsuntide into the Western Epiphany).
5. Greek The calendar of the Greek Church is and Slavic characterized by numerous fasts, Calendars, partly of single days and partly of
several weeks. To the latter belong the four " great fasts." Two of these are movable, the Easter fast of seven weeks, and the Fast of the Apostles, the latter lasting from the Feast of All Martyrs on the Sunday after Whitsuntide to the day of SS. Peter and Paul (June 29). The other two, the Fast of the Virgin (August 1-15) and the Fast of Advent (Nov. 24-Dec. 24), are immovable. In a number of the more important feasts the Greek calendar harmonizes with the Western, but it deviates in numerous instances from the latter in its dating of the feasts of saints and martyrs.
In the Western Church the majority of calendars were written in Latin until the end of the Crusades. Among them special mention may be made of the ancient list of feasts prepared at Rome during the reign of Gregory II. or Gregory III., and noteworthy as giving the Roman stations in which the feasts were celebrated and the lessons from the Gospels. Other .noteworthy calendars include one prepared
Calendar Calf