The modern Western calendar has a messy history. The mess comes about because of the difficulty of coordinating the cycles of day and night with the seasons.
The year is measured by the earth's position around the sun. The moon doesn't like whole numbers. There are over 12 thousand lunar months in the year. The same seasons have been tried to make sure.
Intercalation is a process of adding extra months every now and then, which is what ancient calendars from Mesopotamia did. The Islamic Hijri calendar can be seen as a lunar system in which the months can wander through the seasons.
Our modern Western calendar is based on the solar calendar of ancient Rome. The solar year was approximated by the Julian calendar, which added an extra day each four years. That left 11 and a bit minutes to be found. More on those minutes later.
We had months in strange positions because of the calendar. The Latin for the number nine derives from the fact that the start of the year was moved from March to January.
New months and names were changed to match the mechanisms of power. August is named after the Emperor Augustus. As Christopher Clark has said, "As gravity bends light, so power bends time".
The power that bent time most successfully was that of the church as the Roman empire shifted into the world.
The church had a variety of internal identities and struggles, and it was a lot like the present. The start of the year could be different across medieval societies.
March 25 was the day when Gabriel appeared to Mary. December 25 was the perfect day to celebrate Jesus' birthday. The date of Easter was a confusing one.
The 11 and a bit minutes had their revenge during this time. The seasons began to shift and this had important implications for Christian time-keeping.
The Northern Spring equinox is a natural symbol of light conquering darkness, and the date of Easter Sunday was timed to follow it.
There was a difference between a "legal" Easter and a "natural" equinox, which could be observed.
Scientists and theologians fought over proposals to reform the calendar as the gap widened. Should a number of days be omitted from the year to realign legal and observable time? How many? Who should be in charge of the change?
The question became more intense in the 15th century as a number of calendar reform proposals failed the test of pragmatics or political backing from rulers across Europe. A hidden proposal was found in a printed book at the University Library in Cambridge.
It was written in 1488 by a theologian from the University of Louvain who suggested that 10 days be removed from the calendar.
Peter thought that the perfect time to make the reform known to the world would be during the jubilee, when crowds of pilgrims traveled from all over Europe to Rome. The proposal was not the last to fall.
Pope Gregory reformed the calendar in 1582. The Gregorian calendar jumped from October 4th to October 15th. It made a better approximation of the natural length of the year by using leap years.
The reform landed in a world of religious divisions. The changes were not adopted by Protestant England until the 18th century. Many Orthodox Christian communities continued to follow the Julian calendar despite the fact that it was later revised to cause further schisms.
It's easy to lose track of time. The calendar gives us a map to the revolutions of the seasons, the shape of our lives, and the larger arcs of history. We are placed in a matrix of calendar time, but we also make a point that we could do better than the Gregorian calendar.
In the 18th century, the question was asked by so-called enlightened thinkers and was brought to a head in the French Revolution.
In 1793, the revolutionary government regularised the month to a standard 30 days, leaving a messy five to six unallocated days a year, and giving workers only three days off each month.
The start of the year was changed to the autumn equinox because it was a symbol of the new republic's ideals.
If reason is aligned with simplicity, clarity, and the number of our fingers, the calendar was a victory of reason. Nature is unreasonable. The system lasted a short time.
The problem with calendar reform is that it has to do with our lived experiences of time, our habits, and our memories. To make radical changes requires certain fervor.
The history of calendars can make us ask if we might modify our ordering of time in a more gentle way. Changing the calendar at a global or national level may not be what this means.
What about us here in Australia? We don't live with a four-season year, what if we adopted the more interesting and attentive seasonal calendars developed by Indigenous cultures?
Matthew S. Champion is a Senior Research Fellow in Medieval and Early Modern Studies.
The Conversation's article is a Creative Commons licensed one. The original article can be found here.
