All for Nothing

It was early in the fifth century, although nobody seemed too sure about exactly how early,  when Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Short perhaps? Let’s call him Den. for short) was asked by his boss Pope John 1 to calculate the date of Easter for the next few years because the previous calculation only went as far as about 500 when the World was expected to end. (some of this may sound vaguely familiar)

 Off  Den went to get some parchment and a large bottle of Aspirin, he would need both to even begin to figure out that LXII plus CXXVIII really was CXC and that was just the beginning.  Easter, as we all know too well, is a lunar dated event and most other dates we deal with are Solar dated, the two are uncomfortable together, even a simple Solar month of 30 days does not mesh well with the Moon’s cycle of 29 days and a bit so the calculation was likely to prove long and troublesome.

Some time later (probably some long time later) Den had cracked it, he had Easter pegged for the next two hundred years.  He probably got elevated (to Dennis the not-so-short perhaps?)   He left no explanation of how he did the calculation but it was correct.

Den was chuffed and fancied himself a mathematician so he decided to extend his dating backwards to determine the current year from the date of the birth of Christ.  He had a bit of an ulterior motive for this.   Den did not like the Diocletian Year system then in force, he thought, rightfully as it happened, that the said Diocletian was an early persecutor of all things Christian and did not deserve to be remembered on the calendar, and Den was determined to get him off.  Some time later Den had determined that the current year was the 525^th since the big event and he called it DXXV Anno Domini, It was a handle that stuck, and the year is still counted that way.  He called the first year of his count 1AD, but he did allow that Christ had been born on the Previous December 25 and started his year on January 1^st to match the Roman year.

Unfortunately Den had made a couple of mistakes, one relatively minor and another that is still causing all kinds of trouble.  First off he made a little mathematical error and placed the birth of Christ 3 years after the death of Herod (not good) it is now generally believed the birth was actually in 4 BC by Den’s reckoning (1year before Herod’s departure).  No big deal as long as everyone agrees and not something that has ever been adjusted.  His second mistake was to prove a little more involved and a whole lot more troublesome, according to Den, the first Year was numbered 1AD and the rest counted from there, he had no year zero, because like all learned western folk of his time, he had no real concept of zero as a number, numbers were used to count things and there was little need to count if one had nothing to enumerate.  Consequently his first year was numbered I and the current year was DXXV, end of.

So, you may say or even SO!  Well nobody much cared then either, Den’s calendar did not catch on real quick, and there was a kind of Vatican revolt a few years later when Den got the sack together with most of the other intellectuals and his system languished for a bit.  Quite a bit as it happened, in fact the next time his calendar was looked at seriously was in 731 AD when once again his Easter calculations were due for extension.   This time it fell to a British monk called Bede (who was not yet Venerable) to make the laborious calculations.  Locked in his windswept wilderness he had all the time in the World to make the numbers work, which he did, and decided to encapsulate his newfound knowledge in a book titled “Ecclesiastical History of the English People”   (apparently he had forgotten that Den was in fact Bulgarian).  Flushed with success Bede extended his history back as far as 60BC and that’s when the trouble started.   Bede numbered his dates  3BC, 2BC, 1BC, then started 1AD, 2AD, 3AD etc. (he actually wrote these as IIIBC, IIBC, IBC etc. but I’ve made it a bit easier for you.  Again there was no year zero because Bede, despite his two hundred year start over Den, still had no real concept of zero as a number.

SO! You may say or even SO!! Well think on this, suppose a child was born on January 1 in 3BC.  In 2 BC he (it’s always a he isn’t it) would be 1 year old, in 1BC he would be 2, in 1AD he would be 3 and in 2 AD he would be 4 etc.   But wait a minute how old is he on January 2, 2AD?   Born in  –3 it is now + 2 hence age =5 not 4.   So BIG PROBLEM.

How big?  Well let’s imagine a child born in the first second of the first day of the first year AD and let’s say his name is Century.  Everybody agrees that early in the year 2AD he will be one year old, early in 3AD he will be two etc.  born lucky, as the year 99AD dawns he will be 98 and oops!  Century will only be 99 when the year 100AD arrives.  He and the first century will only pass 100 on January 1, 101.  Hmmm! starting to see the extent of this?

Hotels were booked solid for December 31, 1999 toasts were made and everyone celebrated the end of the second millennium (one cherished Charioteer got a T-Shirt memorializing the event).  That grand keeper of the World’s time The Royal Greenwich Observatory  hosted a state sponsored Millennium Experience complete with a opening ceremony on that date.  At the exhibit’s close exactly one year later, as the atomic clock finally ticked out the millennium, the astronomers were the only ones celebrating the event.

Of course if one wishes to be accurate one should remember that other small error Den made, (the lost four years) which together with the lost zero would put the millennium at December 31, 1997 and so we all missed it.

Well, I did in fact raise a glass that day, but it felt as lonely as it feels now at the end of this post.

Author: Low Wattage

Expat Welshman, educated (somewhat) in UK, left before it became fashionable to do so. Now a U.S. Citizen, and recent widower, playing with retirement and house remodeling, living in Delaware and rural Maryland (weekends). View all posts by Low Wattage