Anno Domini

invented Anno Domini years to date Easter.]]

(abbreviated as AD or A.D., sometimes found in the form ) and Before Christ (abbreviated as BC or B.C.) are designations used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The AD or the Christian calendar era is based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus of Nazareth, with AD counting years after the start of this epoch, and BC denoting years before the start of the epoch. There is no year zero in this scheme, so the year AD 1 immediately follows the year 1 BC. This dating system was devised in 525, but was not widely used until after 800, and even after that, other systems were still widely used throughout Europe.

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today. For decades, it has been the unofficial global standard, recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations and the Universal Postal Union. Though the Western calendars spread around the world over the past four centuries as a result of western power, in modern times the Gregorian calendar and AD year numbering has been adopted by many non-Western countries with no Christian heritage. It has been adopted for pragmatic interests of international communication, transportation and commercial integration. It has also become a basis of scholarly dating.

The term Anno Domini is Medieval Latin, translated as In the year of (the/Our) Lord. It is sometimes specified more fully as Anno Domini Nostri Iesu (Jesu) Christi ("In the Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ"). Because BC is the English abbreviation for Before Christ, it is sometimes incorrectly concluded that AD means After Death, i.e., after the death of Jesus. If that were true, the thirty-three or so years of his life would not be in any era.

Traditionally, English has copied Latin usage by placing the abbreviation before the year number for AD. Since BC is not derived from Latin it is placed after the year number (for example: 68 BC, but AD ). However, placing the AD after the year number (as in " AD") is also becoming common usage. The abbreviation is also widely used after the number of a century or millennium, as in "fourth century AD" or "second millennium AD" (although conservative usage formerly rejected such expressions). cathedral, Austria]]

History

The Anno Domini dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus, who used it to compute the date of the Christian Easter festival, and to identify the several Easters in his Easter table, but did not use it to date any historical event. His system was to replace the Diocletian era that had been used in an old Easter table because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. The last year of the old table, Diocletian 247, was immediately followed by the first year of his table, AD 532. When he devised his table, Julian calendar years were identified by naming the consuls who held office that year — he himself stated that the "present year" was "the consulship of Probus Junior", which was 525 years "since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ". Thus Dionysius implied that Jesus' Incarnation occurred 525 years earlier, without stating the specific year during which his birth or conception occurred.

:"However, nowhere in his exposition of his table does Dionysius relate his epoch to any other dating system, whether consulate, Olympiad, year of the world, or regnal year of Augustus; much less does he explain or justify the underlying date." According to and , King Herod the Great was alive when Jesus was born, and ordered the Massacre of the Innocents in response to his birth. Blackburn and Holford-Strevens fix King Herod's death shortly before Passover in 4 BC which is incompatible with a conception prior to 4 BC. On this point, Blackburn and Holford-Strevens state that "St. Luke raises greater difficulty ... Most critics therefore discard Luke". Some scholars rely on John 8:57: "thou are not yet fifty years old", to place Christ's birth c. 18 BC. thus establishing the standard of not using a year zero, even though he used zero in his computus. Both Dionysius and Bede regarded Anno Domini as beginning at the incarnation of Jesus, but "the distinction between Incarnation and Nativity was not drawn until the late 9th century, when in some places the Incarnation epoch was identified with Christ's conception, i.e., the Annunciation on March 25" (Annunciation style). Eastern Orthodox countries only began to adopt AD instead of the Byzantine calendar in 1700 when Russia did so, with others adopting it in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Even though Anno Domini was in widespread use by the 9th century, Before Christ (or its equivalent) did not become common until much later. Bede used the expression "anno igitur ante incarnationem Dominicam" (before the Incarnation of the Lord) twice. "Anno an xpi nativitate" (before the birth of Christ) is found in 1474 in a work by a German monk. In 1627, the French Jesuit theologian Denis Pétau (Dionysius Petavius in Latin), with his work De doctrina temporum, popularized the usage ante Christum (Latin for "Before Christ") to mark years prior to AD.

Change of year

When the reckoning from Jesus' incarnation started replacing the previous dating systems in western Europe, different people chose different Christian feast days to begin the year: Christmas, Annunciation, or Easter. Thus, depending on the time and place, year number changed on different days, which created slightly different styles in chronology:

from 25 March 753 AUC (today in 1 BC), i.e. from the incarnation of Jesus. That first "Annunciation style" appeared in Arles at the end of the 9th century then spread to Burgundy and northern Italy. It was not commonly used and was called "calculus pisanus" since it was adopted in Pisa and survived there till 1750.

from 25 December 753 AUC (today in 1 BC), i.e. from the birth of Jesus. It was called "Nativity style" and had been spread by the Venerable Bede together with the Anno Domini in the early Middle Ages. That reckoning of the year of Grace from Christmas was used in France, England and most of western Europe (except Spain) till the 12th century (when it was replaced by Annunciation style), and in Germany till the second quarter of the 13th century.

from 25 March 754 AUC (today in AD 1). That second "Annunciation style" may have originated in Fleury Abbey in the early 11th century but it was spread by the Cistercians. Florence adopted that style in opposition to the one of Pisa, so it got the name of "calculus florentinus". It soon spread in France and also in England where it became common in the late 12th century and lasted until 1751.

from Easter, starting in 754 AUC (AD 1). That "mos gallicanus" bound to a movable feast was introduced in France by king Philip Augustus (1165-1180-1223), maybe to establish a new style in the provinces reconquered over England. However, it never spread beyond the ruling élite.

With those various styles, the same day could, in some cases, be dated in 1099, 1100 or 1101. The Annunciation style also caused a major problem: in some years, there was no Easter, and in other years, that feast was celebrated twice; for example, Easter occurred on 23 March 1504 (i.e. in 1505 for us) and on 12 April 1506, but not in 1505.

Other eras

During the first six centuries of what would come to be known as the Christian era, European countries used various systems to count years. Systems in use included consular dating, imperial regnal year dating, and Creation dating.

Although the last non-imperial consul, Basilius, was appointed in 541 by Emperor Justinian I, later emperors through Constans II (641–668) were appointed consuls on the first 1 January after their accession. All of these emperors, except Justinian, used imperial post-consular years for all of the years of their reign alongside their regnal years. Long unused, this practice was not formally abolished until Novell XCIV of the law code of Leo VI did so in 888.

Another calculation had been developed by the Alexandrian monk Annianus around the year AD 400, placing the Annunciation on 25 March AD 9 (Julian)—eight to ten years after the date that Dionysius was to imply. Although this Incarnation was popular during the early centuries of the Byzantine Empire, years numbered from it, an Era of Incarnation, were only used, and are still only used, in Ethiopia, accounting for the eight- or seven-year discrepancy between the Gregorian and the Ethiopian calendars. Byzantine chroniclers like Maximus the Confessor, George Syncellus, and Theophanes dated their years from Annianus' creation of the World. This era, called Anno Mundi, "year of the world" (abbreviated AM), by modern scholars, began its first year on 25 March 5492 BC. Later Byzantine chroniclers used Anno Mundi years from 1 September 5509 BC, the Byzantine Era. No single Anno Mundi epoch was dominant throughout the Christian world. Eusebius of Caesarea in his Chronicle used an era beginning with the birth of Abraham, dated in 2016 BC (AD 1 = 2017 Anno Abrahami).

Spain and Portugal continued to date by the Era of the Caesars or Spanish Era, which began counting from 38 BC, well into the Middle Ages. In 1422, Portugal became the last Catholic country to adopt the Anno Domini system. For example, Cunningham and Starr (1998) write that "B.C.E./C.E. …do not presuppose faith in Christ and hence are more appropriate for interfaith dialog than the conventional B.C./A.D." Upon its foundation, the Republic of China adopted the Western calendar in 1912 and the translated term was 西元 (lit. Western Era). Later, in 1949, the People's Republic of China reiterated the use of the Gregorian calendar and accepted the term gōngyuán (公元, lit. Common Era). Regardless of name, the dating scheme remains the same.

No year zero

In the AD year numbering system, whether applied to the Julian or Gregorian calendars, AD 1 is preceded by 1 BC. There is no year "0" between them. Because of this, most experts agree that a new century begins in a year with the last digits being "01" (1801, 1901, 2001); new millennia likewise began in 1001 and 2001. A common misconception is that centuries and millennia begin when the trailing digits are zeroes (1800, 1900, 2000, etc.);

Controversy

Some feel that using the phrase "Year of our Lord" or basing the world's dating system on the life of Jesus are forms of bias towards the Christian religion. Attempts to use the more secular year designations BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) have also stirred debate in some countries.

Proposed reforms

The following are proposed reforms of the Gregorian calendar:

Holocene calendar

International Fixed Calendar (also called the International Perpetual calendar)

World Calendar

World Season Calendar

Leap week calendars

* Pax Calendar

* Common-Civil-Calendar-and-Time

* Symmetry454

See also

Calendar

Notes and references

Notes References

Bede. (731). Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum. Accessed 7 December 2007.

(despite beginning with 2, it is English)

Declercq, G. "Dionysius Exiguus and the Introduction of the Christian Era". Sacris Erudiri 41 (2002): 165–246. An annotated version of part of Anno Domini.

Doggett. (1992). "Calendars" (Ch. 12), in P. Kenneth Seidelmann (Ed.) Explanatory supplement to the astronomical almanac. Sausalito, CA: University Science Books. ISBN 0-935702-68-7.

Gerard, J. (1908). "General Chronology". In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 16 July 2008 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03738a.htm

External links

Calendar Converter

Category:Calendar eras Category:Christianity-related controversies Category:Chronology Category:Latin religious phrases Category:Time Category:6th-century Christianity Category:Religion timelines Category:Christian terms