This Page Updated: 27 November 2006
Queries? Contact wooff.co.uk
You may think that there's nothing more complicated about calendars and years, other than remembering a few things:
Well you'd be surprised. If you do a search on the internet for julien or gregorian calendars, you'll get loads of hits returned and lots and lots of information. Below is my understanding of what this means to family historians as simply as it needs to be for my old grey cells to cope with it!
About 45BC, Julius Ceasar implemented reforms to the old Roman calendar (which had 10 months of 30 or 31 days with the year beginning in March) to a 365 day, twelve month year with the introduction of the new months of January and February and that every 4 years would have 366 days. To reflect the tradition of the Senate taking office on the 1st January, the Roman civil year now began on the 1st January instead of March. This julien (or julian) calendar as it became known, spread widely and was used throughout the Roman empire, which covered great swathes of the planet and was later retained by many christian churches.
The julien calendar wasn't without it's flaws, mainly being that every 400 years it would gain 3 days on "real" time. So in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal edict whereby the 10 days between October 4th and 15th 1582 were chopped out of the year. He also decreed that in future, leap years would continue to be every 4 years apart from when the year was divisible by 100 but not by 400 (2000 was a leap year, 1900 wasn't and 2100 won't be). This stops the 3 days gain over 400 years. Typically, this reformed calendar became known as the gregorian calendar.
The problem for many countries with the gregorian calender was that it was a catholic invention. It was adopted in catholic countries in 1582 because it was a papal edict. Non-catholic countries however had mixed feelings about it, so much so that the wide adoption of the gregorian calendar took centuries. England didn't make the change until 1752, some 170 years later!
In 1751, England still celebrated the New Year on the 25th March (The Feast of Annunciation) this meant that January, February and March (1st to 24th) were at the end of the year not the beginning as they are now. So the government at the time passed an Act of Parliament whereby England (and all it's lands) would change the start of the year and convert to the gregorian calendar in 1752 in two stages. Stage one was the movement of the new year. So what would have been 1st January 1751 in the julien calendar (the 10th month of 1751) became the 1st January 1752 under the gregorian calendar (the first month of the year). Stage two of the change took place in September to correct the 11 days discrepancy between the two calendars from 1582 to 1752. This was achieved by jumping from the 2nd September to the 14th September and "losing" the 11 days in between.
To avoid confusion, dates for January to March for the years 1582 to 1752 need to be written slightly differently to others. There are a couple of ways of recording the dates:
Old Style and New Style
This method simply requires the use of "OS" or "NS" after the date to identify which calendar you are referring to.
"OS" meaning Old Style and referring to Julien calendar and "NS" meaning New Style and referring to the Gregorian calendar.
For example, 18 January 1729 recorded under the julien calendar could be displayed as "18 January 1729 OS" or "18 January 1730 NS".
Double Dating
This method displays both the julien and gregorian date in the format "18 January 1729/30".
The year before the "/" records the julien year and after the "/" is the gregorian year.
On this site I will follow the double dating method.
This Page Updated: 27 November 2006
Queries? Contact wooff.co.uk