VATICAN CORNER
A calendar is like a chain that emerges out of the waters of oblivion and holds the ship of history to its moorings. Beneath the surface of the waters, there must have been sunk some kind of an anchor. — P.W. Wilson. There are six principal calendars currently in use in the world: the Julian, Jewish, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Gregorian calendars. The Gregorian calendar is named for Pope Gregory XIII and it was introduced in 1582 and has become the internationally accepted civil calendar. The Gregorian calendar was a refinement of the Julian calendar named for Julius Caesar, emperor of Rome, and it was introduced in the year 45 BC. (“Before Christ” (birth)). The calendar of Rome counted years beginning with the legendary founding of the City of Rome by Romulus and Remus in the year we now call 753 B.C. Dates in Roman writings and inscriptions are neither B.C. nor A.D. (“Anno Domini”-“the year of the Lord” (birth), but rather based on the year of the city’s foundation, or based on some other notable event such as the beginning of the reign of an emperor. In about the year 530 A.D. there lived a monk named Dionysius Exiguus – “Denis the Little” – from Scythia in south-west Russia. Like many scholars at the time, he was concerned with the correct calculation of the date of Easter and he constructed a table of Easter dates. At that time dates were being measured from the beginning of the reign of the emperor Diocletian. Dionysius desired to change this dating system since emperor Diocletian was a notorious persecutor of Christians during his rule. Dionysius determined that the year 248 based on the reign of emperor Diocletian was 532 years since the birth of Christ and the birth of Christ was 753 years after the founding of Rome. By making this calculation Dionysius established the birth year of Christ, or year 1 A.D. Historians and theologians now agree that Dionysius made a mistake in calculating Christ’s birth year, since historical evidence makes it impossible for the Nativity to have occurred later than about 4 B.C. because that was the year in which King Herod the Great is known to have died. Despite this error, Dionysius established the system of how we number the years in the Gregorian calendar and invented the anchor which chains our calendar to its Christian origins.
Sources: obliquity.com, exovedate.com, aa.usno.navy.mil