A page for November from the calendar in the Book of Common Prayer (edition of 1614). The calendar and its rules for finding the date of Easter all assumed the Julian calendar used as the civil calendar of Europe from 45 BC to 1582, and in England until 1752.
Part 1 of 2
AT the close of the tenth century, peoples from the eastern borders of the Roman Empire to newly-Christian Russia and even Britain shared one calendar, the Julian, introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC. And thanks in no small degree to eighth-century Northumbrian monk Bede and his best-seller ‘On the Reckoning of Time’, they also shared one Easter, looking up the first full moon of Spring in tables devised in fourth-century Alexandria, and taking March 21st as a convenient first day of Spring.*
However, Bede himself noted that the Julian civil calendar had a flaw, and was increasingly out of step with the heavens. In his time, the discrepancy was three days; by the sixteenth century the drift had reached ten, and the tables for predicting the Paschal full moons required some tidying up too.* Eventually Pope Gregory XIII responded by rolling out a new calendar in 1582, the Gregorian, undoubtedly more accurate, but bitterly controversial, not least in England.
For the background, see our post Bede and the Paschal Controversy.
By 1752, when England introduced the modern Gregorian calendar, the difference was eleven days, and since 1900 it has increased to thirteen.
Part Two
‘Pysanky’, decorated Easter eggs from the Ukraine. These are in the traditional style of the Hutsul ethnographic region of the Carpathian Mountains. The lettering reads ‘Christ is Risen’. The Russian Church and those in communion with her continue to keep their church year according to the Julian calendar and the method for dating Easter used in England from Roman times to 1752.
FOR some, the objections were political. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy had declared that the Pope could no longer claim any legal authority in England, and Westminster stubbornly refused to sign into law any calendar or Easter maths issued by her former master.
For others, the objections were more personal. When Parliament finally relented in 1752, September 2nd that year was immediately followed by September 14th, giving labourers less time to find the rent for Michaelmas Quarter Day. Long after, the ‘English style’ calendar was remembered with fondness, and much country lore remained tied to it.*
Rome also made changes that were not strictly necessary, redefining the first day of Spring, and allowing Easter to fall a day early, something the Church Fathers had always agreed obscured Christ’s crucifixion.* To this day, the Russian Church rejects these changes, keeping Easter and all her feasts according to the old Calendar – that is, she keeps them ‘English style’.*
For some examples, see ‘Fragments Of Orthodoxy In English Popular Tradition’, by Archpriest Andrew Phillips. He quotes a popular doggerel rhyme:
IN seventeen hundred two and fifty,
Our style was changed to Popery,
But that it is liked we don’t agree.
The Church’s conventional first day of Spring has been March 21st ever since the fourth-century; Rome now allows it to be March 20th if that more nearly matches the astronomical northern vernal equinox. Allowing Easter to fall too early was one of the criticisms of the Irish tradition at the Synod of Whitby in 664. See our post Bede and the Paschal Controversy.
A Pan-Orthodox Congress in Constantinople in May 1923 proposed a Revised Julian Calendar that smoothed out the flaws but, like Rome, also introduced a new first day of Spring – nobody, it appears, can resist the temptation to do more than is necessary. Almost all Eastern churches still calculate Easter the old way, and many (notably Russia) keep the whole church year on the unrevised Julian calendar.
