Old Style and New Style Calendars

About forty-five years before Christ, Julius Caesar having, by the help of Sosigenes, an Alexandrian philosopher, come to a more accurate measurement of the year, or the time of one revolution of the earth around the sun, decreed that every fourth year should be held to consist of three hundred and sixty-six days, in order to absorb the odd hours; one revolution, strictly expressed, being 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 49 7/10 seconds.

The Julian arrangement was, that one day in February of every fourth year, the sixth before the Calends of March (sextilis), should be bissextile, or as if the 23d of February, in every fourth year, should be reckoned twice. But as a whole day every fourth year was 11 minutes and 10 3/10 seconds too much, the natural time fell behind the reckoning; and the vernal equinox, which in the year 325 fell on the 21st of March, in 1582 fell on the 11th of March, making a difference of ten days.

To correct this error in time, Pope Gregory XIII. decreed that the 5th of October of that year, 1582, should be reckoned as the 15th; and, to keep the year right in future, he ordered that every hundredth year, that could not be divided by four, should not be bissextile.

The Pope made use of his power to secure the adoption of the new or Gregorian style in all Catholic countries of Europe; but England, Sweden, and Russia still retained the old or Julian style. In 1752 the discrepancy between the Julian and Gregorian calendars amounted to eleven days.

The English merchants found it a great inconvenience to use a different mode of computing time from their foreign correspondents; and the hatred of the Pope, which led to the retention of this error for so long a time after it had been discovered, having greatly subsided, the British Parliament ordered the "new style" to be adopted in England.

The eleven days were taken out of September of the year 1752, the day after the 2d being called the 14th instead of the 3d. The year ecclesiastical was reckoned to begin on the 25th of March, or lady-day, and the secular year on Jan. 1. So that, in many older writings, we find a date given thus, Feb. I, 1601-2; meaning that it was in 1601 of the ecclesiastical, and in 1602 of the secular, year. The former computation was gradually disused, and is now never employed.

In Russia alone, of all Christian countries, is the old style still retained; wherefore it becomes necessary for one writing in that country to any foreign correspondent, to set his date thus: 12/24 March, or 28 Dec., 1884/9 Jan., 1885.