What is the difference between the Gregorian and Julian calendars?

Question

When did they come into use, how were they structured, when did they fall out of use (if applicable) and how many days were lost during the transition between calendars?

I can't for the life of me find information that isn't confusing as hell. I'd be delighted if someone could put it into layman's terms for me, refraining from just cutting and pasting information from the internet (I've looked there already).

Just curious as I am researching the validity of some New Age texts, and would like this information for reference.

Cheers guys!

Answer 1

The Gregorian calendar is the calendar system that is used today. It is a revision of the Julian calendar that preceded it.

Until 1582 AD, western nations measured time using the Julian calendar. This calendar was authorized by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. It is based on the assumption that a year is 365.25 days. Every fourth year is declared a leap year when an extra day is added to February.

The only real problem with the Julian calendar was its handling of leap years. Inserting one leap year in every four years results in a calendar year averaging 365.25 days, a good but not perfect match to the real calendar year of about 365.242189 days. This causes an "error" of about .75 days per century.

When the Gregorian calendar was authorized, a correction was made to attempt to bring the current date in line with dates in the year 1 in the Julian calendar. The correction was miscalculated by two days and only ten days were dropped instead of twelve. Pope Gregory decreed that the day following October 4, 1582, should be called October 15, 1582. This calendar still has an error factor of three days every 10,000 years, and eventually a correction will have to be made.

Regrettably, it took from 1582 to 1918 for the Julian calendar to completely die out, so you do have to make clear which one is being used for dates in that interval. For example, most Catholic nations switched over immediately; most Protestant nations took considerably longer, and the USSR didn't change to the Gregorian calendar until 1918.

Answer 2

Gregorian Vs Julian Calendar

Answer 3

Julian Vs Gregorian Calendar

Answer 4

The calendar currently in worldwide use for secular purposes based on a cycle of 400 years comprising 146,097 days, giving a year of average length 365.2425 days. The Gregorian calendar is a modification of the Julian calendar in which leap years are omitted in years divisible by 100 but not divisible by 400. By this rule, the year 1900 was not a leap year (1900 is divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400), but the year 2000 will be a leap year (2000 is divisible by 400).

The Gregorian calendar was constructed to give a close approximation to the tropical year, which is the actual length of time it takes for the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun.

The Julian calendar was switched over to the Gregorian starting in 1582, at which point the 10 day difference between the actual time of year and traditional time of year on which calendrical events occurred became intolerable. The switchover was bitterly opposed by much of the populace, who feared it was attempt by landlords to cheat then out of a week and a half's rent. However, when Pope Gregory XIII decreed that the day after October 4, 1582 would be October 15, 1582, the Catholic countries of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy complied. Various Catholic German countries (Germany was not yet unified), Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland followed suit within a year or two, and Hungary followed in 1587.

Because of the Pope's decree, the reform of the Julian calendar came to be known as the Gregorian calendar. However, the rest of Europe did not follow suit for more than a century.

The Protestant German countries adopted the Gregorian reform in 1700. By this time, the calendar trailed the seasons by 11 days. England (and the American colonies) finally followed suit in 1752, and Wednesday, September 2, 1752 was immediately followed by Thursday, September 14, 1752. This traumatic change resulted in widespread riots and the populace demanding "Give us the eleven days back!"

English Calendar:

September 1752
Su M Tu W Th F Sa
&; &; 1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Sweden followed England's lead in 1753. Russia, however, did not follow suit until 1918, when January 31, 1918 was immediately followed by February 14th. In fact, however, the USSR is not on the Gregorian calendar, but on a more accurate one of their own devising. The USSR calendar is designed to more closely approximate the true length of the tropical year, thus has one additional rule for when a year is a leap year. It will remain in synchronization with the Gregorian calendar for thousands more years, by which time one or both will have probably fallen into disuse. Similarly, Iranian calendar is also a more accurate version of the Gregorian calendar (Ross).

Formulas for computing the Julian date from the Gregorian dates are given in Danby (1988) and Sinnott (1991). Go to the link provided to see the formulae.

Answer 5

The Julian calendar was invented by Julius Caesar, as he wanted to develop a more practical way of keeping time, this was because there was no set calendar at all, there were 8 definate months but then a bit of a sketchy period inbetween December and March that was unnamed and had no set time period, understandably this was all rather irritating so Caeser decided to make up his own year, presumably with the help of astronomers of the time. As they were astronomers of his time, they got it slightly wrong.

The calendar gave one extra day a year - sorry - maths isn't my forte and I cant remember exactly what happened,( I know there was a problem with leap years) , and so needed to be changed, also it made Easter difficult to determine and it was decided that certain dates in the calendar had to set in stone, such as the Spring Equinox in March.

The Gregorian calendar was introduced to stop the anomalies, although I don't know who it was introduced by i'm afraid, but I know it's based on our rotation round the sun. I would imagine that this would have to have been determined much later as astronomers must have been able to fix certain dates in the calendar with certain astronomical events - Spring Equinox 21st March, Autumn Equinox 12st Sept (The Equinoxes are the days in the year that have exactly the same amount of day and night) Summer Solstice, the shortest day, on the 21st June and Winter Solstice, the shortest day, the 21st December.

What I find very exciting is that the calendars all rvolve around very old pagan feast days, just goes to show theres nothing new under the sun, is there?

Answer 6

YYDDD is Julian. The last two digits of the year followed by the number of days within that year. March 1 would be 06060. April 1 would be 06090. April 15 would be 06105 and so on. MMDDYY is Gregorian.
Julian dates are used in computers mostly.

Answer 7

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What is the difference between the Gregorian and Julian calendars?
When did they come into use, how were they structured, when did they fall out of use (if applicable) and how many days were lost during the transition between calendars?

I can't for the life of me find information that isn't confusing as hell. I'd be delighted if someone could put...

Answer 8

The difference is about 8 days and the new calandar came into force around 1582
the changes were made to bring the calandar back into line with observed phenomena (Primarily mid winter and mid summer solstices) the reason that the calandar got out of sync, was due to the fact that the earth takes an 'odd' amount of time to make a complete revolution of the sun - 365.242375 days - hence leap years. Nowdays you will find that scientists also add 'leap seconds' to their calculations to more closely follow the solar year

Answer 9

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Answer 10

Quran gives very precise answer. Allah (meaning the God) had created sun and moon so that you can keep track of time and months and years. From SUN only you can't keep track of years. It is the lunar shapes according to different dates that guided man to make calender and there had alwyas been 12 month from the time the earth was created