Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/192

CALENDAR (6) —The name of a place, according to the Masoretic text (I Par., ii. 24); but there is little or no doubt that, with the Vulgate and Septuagint. we should read "Caleb went in to Ephrata" (his wife), instead of "in Caleb-Ephrata".

2em  Calendar, ——All civilized peoples and even those which seem to be only just emerging from utter barbarism keep some kind of record of the flight of time and are prone to recognize certain days, recurring at regular intervals, as days of special rejoicing or mourning, or occasions for the propitiation of the powers of the unseen world. In ancient Egypt and Babylonia, in China and Hindostan, and again on the American Continent, among the Aztecs or the ancient Peruvians, definite traces have been found of a more or less elaborate calculation of seasons serving as a basis for religious observances. Only of recent years, i. e. in Nov., 1897, a remarkable discovery was made at Coligny in the department of Ain, France, when certain inscribed stone slabs were brought to light in which all are agreed in recognizing an ancient Celtic calendar, probably pre-Christian, though the precise interpretation of the details still remains a matter of lively controversy. Again, both Greece and Rome possessed highly developed calendars, and the Fasti of Ovid, for example, preserve a detailed description in verse of the chief celebrations of the Roman year.

What more nearly concerns us here is the Jewish calendar, outlined in Lev., xxiii. The computation of time among the Jews was based primarily upon the lunar month. The year consisted normally of twelve such months, alternately of 29 and 30 days each; such a year, however, contains only 354 days, which by no means agrees with the number of days in the mean solar year. Moreover, the exact length of the mean lunar month is not exactly 29½ days as the above arrangement would suggest. To compensate for the irregularity two corrections were introduced. First, a day was added to the month Hesvan (Heshwan) or subtracted from the month Kislev (Kislew), as need arose, in order to keep the months in agreement with the moon; secondly, eight years out of every nineteen were made "embolismic", i. e. an intercalary month seems to have been introduced when necessary, at this point, in order to prevent the 14th day of Nisan from arriving too early. On that day (Lev., xxiii, 5, 10) the firstfruits of corn in the ear had to be brought to the priests and the paschal lamb sacrificed. This made it necessary to delay the Pasch (14 Nisan) until the corn was in ear and the lambs were ready, and the rule was accordingly established that 14 Nisan must fall when the sun had passed the equinox and was in the constellation of Aries ( — Josephus, Ant., I, i. 3). Down to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, it would seem that in the insertion of this intercalary month the Jews followed no fixed rule based on astronomical principles, but that the Sanhedrim decided each time whether the year should be embolismic or not, being influenced in their decision not by astronomical considerations alone, but also, in some measure, by the forwardness or backwardness of the season. It was the difficulty created by such a system and by the impossibility of accommodating it to the Julian chronology, adopted throughout the greater part of the Roman Empire, which led to those troubles about the determination of Easter (the Paschal controversy) that played so important a part in the history of the early Church. Besides the Pasch and the week of the unleavened bread (or azymes), of which the Pasch formed the first day, the Jewish calendar, of course, included many other feasts. That of Pentecost, or, "of the weeks", 50 days after the Pasch, is of importance because it also found a place in the Christian Dispensation. The other great celebrations of the Jewish year occurred in autumn, in the month Tishri. The Day of Atonement fell on 10 Tishri and the Feast of Tabernacles extended from the 14th to the 21st, with a sort of octave day on the 22nd, but these had no direct bearing on the calendar of the Christian Church. The same may be said of the minor Jewish festivals, e.g. the Encœnia mentioned in the Gospel of St. John, which were, for the most part, of later institution.

It might almost be laid down as a general law that in the ancient world holy days were also holidays. In the Jewish system, besides the weekly sabbath, rest from work was enjoined on seven other days of the year, to wit: the first and last day of the Azymes, the feast of Pentecost, the Neomenia of the Seventh month, the day of Propitiation, the first day of Tabernacles, and 22 Tishri which immediately followed. It is not wonderful that this principle was recognized later in the Christian Church, for it had pagan example also in its favour. "The Greeks and barbarians", says Strabo (X, 39), "have this in common that they accompany their sacred rites by a festal remission of labour". So without, seeking to derive the Jewish sabbath from any Babylonian institution, for which there is certainly no warrant, we may note that the new moon and the 7th, 15th, and 22nd seem to have been regarded among the Babylonians as times for propitiating the gods and unlucky; the result being that on these days no new work was begun and affairs of importance were suspended. In the Christian system the day of rest has been transferred from the Sabbath to the Sunday. Constantine made provision that his Christian soldiers should be free to attend service on the Sunday (Euseb., Vita Const., IV, 19, 20), and he also forbade the courts of justice to sit on that day (Sozom., I, 8). in 425 decreed that games in the circus and theatrical representations should also be prohibited on the day of rest, and these and similar edicts were frequently repeated.

n the Roman chronological system of the Augustan age the week as a division of time was practically unknown, though the twelve calendar months existed as we have them now. In the course of the first and second century after Christ, the hebdomadal or seven-day period became universally familiar, though not immediately through Jewish or Christian influence. The arrangement seems to have been astrological in origin and to have come to Rome from Egypt. The seven planets, as then conceived of—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon, thus arranged in the order of their periodic times (Saturn taking the longest and the Moon the shortest time to complete the round of the heavens by their proper motion)—were supposed to preside over each hour successively, and the day was designated by that planet which presided over its first hour. Beginning on the first day with the planets in order, the first hour would be Saturn's, the second Jupiter's, the seventh the Moon's, the eighth Saturn's again, and so on. Continuing thus, the twenty-fifth hour, i.e. the first hour of the second day, and consequently the second day itself, would belong to the Sun; and the forty-ninth hour, and consequently the third day, to the Moon. Following always the same plan the seventy-third hour and the fourth day would fall to Mars, the fifth day to Mercury, the sixth to Jupiter, the seventh to Venus, and the eighth again to Saturn. Hence, apparently, were derived the Latin names for the days of the week, which are still retained (except Samedi and Dimanche) in modern French and other Romance tongues. These names from an early date were often used by the Christians themselves, and we find them already in Justin Martyr. The special honour which the faithful paid to the Sunday (dies solis), coupled perhaps with the celebration of Christmas on the day designated the natalis invicti [solis]