Happy Opinion Day
Tuesday will be Sept. 20, which corresponds to "The Feast of Opinion" (Fête de l'Opinion) in the French Revolutionary calendar.
The calendar was adopted in France by decree in November 1793 as a secular, rational alternative to the Christian calendar. It was back-dated to begin at the autumnal equinox of 1792, and it was used in France until Napoleon restored the Gregorian calendar on Dec. 31, 1805 (or 10th Nivose, Year of the Republic XIV, as it till then would have been calculated).
The calendar was designed by the poet and revolutionary figure Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Eglantine. It may have been intended as a rational construction, but like all soli-lunar calendars, sacred or secular, it faced the challenge of dividing an (almost) 365-day sun-year into equal months.
Twelve 30-day months gets you close to an even division, but this leaves a few days over. The Gregorian solution was to make the months unequal, giving some months an extra day. The philosophical and egalitarian Fabre d'Eglantine chose the solution of keeping all months equal, but adding in the extra days between the end of one year and the start of the next (which was more or less how the Romans did it before Julius Caesar's reforms).*
The year ended with Fructidor ("Fruit Month," Aug. 18-Sept. 16) and began on 1st Vendemiaire ("Vintage Month," Sept. 22-Oct. 21). In between fell five "extra days" -- jours complémentaires. Rather than simply being intercalary days, however, they were designated as Sansculotides, or "feasts of the proletariat," as a later generation of European radicals might have called them.
The model, obviously, was the feast days of the old Catholic Church, but these were decidedly rational. Sept. 17 was the Feast of the Virtues. Sept. 18 the Feast of Genius, Sept. 19 the Feast of Labor, Sept. 20 the Feast of Opinion, and Sept. 21 the Feast of Rewards.
To solve the final problem of this type of calendar, the extra hours that add up to a full day roughly every four years, Fabre d'Eglantine resorted to the "leap year." Every fourth year, a sixth feast day was added, the Jour de la Révolution.
I have no idea how the French celebrated the Feast of Opinions. But it ought to be the national holiday of the blogosphere. Any suggestions for traditions? How about blindfolded games of "pin the blame on the president" and "jump the shark," or bobbing for Instapundit links, or feasts of boiled crow.
*The Roman calendar was based on the luni-solar year. That is, it tried to reconcile the cycles of the sun and the moon, which seems a tantalizing possibility, since 12 lunar cycles require 354 days, which is just a few short of the 365-day solar year.
A purely lunar calendar of 12 months (such as the Muslims use) picks up an extra year every 34 years, due to the extra days, unless it is corrected. The Romans corrected their calendar by intercalating a whole month every two years, when the deficit added up to 22 days.
Another practical problem with the lunar-based calendar was that the new moons were not mathematically calculated in Roman times, but rather observed by the priests, who once they saw the moon declared the start of the new month. And weather, the landscape, and the nearness of the new moon in the sky to the sun could hinder that observation.
At some early point in Roman history, these two important aspects of the calendar -- intercalation and the declaration of the start of the month by the sighting of the new moon -- were handed over to the priests (pontifices or sacerdotes). When the priests saw the new moon from the Capitol, they would declare the number of days till the nones (five or seven, depending on whether it was a 29- or 31-day month). The first full day of the month was the kalendae, or "calling," which is where the word calendar comes from.
Intercalation was done after Feb. 23 or 24 (the terminalia), every two or four years. Twenty-seven days were intercalated, making a full intercalary month (which included the last four or five days of Februarius), known as mensis intercalaris (and also known, according to Plutarch, as Mercedonius). No one now knows why the intercalation was done in the middle of February rather than after its end, unless it was because the important festivals at the end of that month (Regifugium and Equirra) were closely associated with holidays in early March.
After 153 B.C., the one-year rule of the consuls was given a standard beginning date and synchronized with the calendar year. This introduced a political element to the calendar, which invited trouble. The priests now could shorten, or lengthen, the term in office of a civil magistrate by speeding up, or slowing down, the turn of a new year. Owing to the clumsiness of the pontifices and still more to political maneuvers, by which intercalations were made or omitted recklessly to affect a magistrate's year of office, the calendar got into hopeless confusion.
There may have been another reason the calendar got off base: the famously superstitious Romans may have avoided intercalation during times of war, especially the Second Punic War, because intercalary days were regarded as unlucky. Cf. Macrobius, 1.14.1: verum fuit tempus cum propter superstitionem intercalatio omnis omissa est, and Ammianus, 26.1.7: (bissextum) quod aliquotiens rei Romanae fuisse norat infaustum.
The solar eclipse of Oct. 19, 202 B.C., fell on a civic date in early December.
The Republic failed in its duty to regulate the regulators. A dictator like Caesar was the only one who could effect the necessary change.
The calendar was adopted in France by decree in November 1793 as a secular, rational alternative to the Christian calendar. It was back-dated to begin at the autumnal equinox of 1792, and it was used in France until Napoleon restored the Gregorian calendar on Dec. 31, 1805 (or 10th Nivose, Year of the Republic XIV, as it till then would have been calculated).
The calendar was designed by the poet and revolutionary figure Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d'Eglantine. It may have been intended as a rational construction, but like all soli-lunar calendars, sacred or secular, it faced the challenge of dividing an (almost) 365-day sun-year into equal months.
Twelve 30-day months gets you close to an even division, but this leaves a few days over. The Gregorian solution was to make the months unequal, giving some months an extra day. The philosophical and egalitarian Fabre d'Eglantine chose the solution of keeping all months equal, but adding in the extra days between the end of one year and the start of the next (which was more or less how the Romans did it before Julius Caesar's reforms).*
The year ended with Fructidor ("Fruit Month," Aug. 18-Sept. 16) and began on 1st Vendemiaire ("Vintage Month," Sept. 22-Oct. 21). In between fell five "extra days" -- jours complémentaires. Rather than simply being intercalary days, however, they were designated as Sansculotides, or "feasts of the proletariat," as a later generation of European radicals might have called them.
The model, obviously, was the feast days of the old Catholic Church, but these were decidedly rational. Sept. 17 was the Feast of the Virtues. Sept. 18 the Feast of Genius, Sept. 19 the Feast of Labor, Sept. 20 the Feast of Opinion, and Sept. 21 the Feast of Rewards.
To solve the final problem of this type of calendar, the extra hours that add up to a full day roughly every four years, Fabre d'Eglantine resorted to the "leap year." Every fourth year, a sixth feast day was added, the Jour de la Révolution.
I have no idea how the French celebrated the Feast of Opinions. But it ought to be the national holiday of the blogosphere. Any suggestions for traditions? How about blindfolded games of "pin the blame on the president" and "jump the shark," or bobbing for Instapundit links, or feasts of boiled crow.
*The Roman calendar was based on the luni-solar year. That is, it tried to reconcile the cycles of the sun and the moon, which seems a tantalizing possibility, since 12 lunar cycles require 354 days, which is just a few short of the 365-day solar year.
A purely lunar calendar of 12 months (such as the Muslims use) picks up an extra year every 34 years, due to the extra days, unless it is corrected. The Romans corrected their calendar by intercalating a whole month every two years, when the deficit added up to 22 days.
Another practical problem with the lunar-based calendar was that the new moons were not mathematically calculated in Roman times, but rather observed by the priests, who once they saw the moon declared the start of the new month. And weather, the landscape, and the nearness of the new moon in the sky to the sun could hinder that observation.
At some early point in Roman history, these two important aspects of the calendar -- intercalation and the declaration of the start of the month by the sighting of the new moon -- were handed over to the priests (pontifices or sacerdotes). When the priests saw the new moon from the Capitol, they would declare the number of days till the nones (five or seven, depending on whether it was a 29- or 31-day month). The first full day of the month was the kalendae, or "calling," which is where the word calendar comes from.
Intercalation was done after Feb. 23 or 24 (the terminalia), every two or four years. Twenty-seven days were intercalated, making a full intercalary month (which included the last four or five days of Februarius), known as mensis intercalaris (and also known, according to Plutarch, as Mercedonius). No one now knows why the intercalation was done in the middle of February rather than after its end, unless it was because the important festivals at the end of that month (Regifugium and Equirra) were closely associated with holidays in early March.
After 153 B.C., the one-year rule of the consuls was given a standard beginning date and synchronized with the calendar year. This introduced a political element to the calendar, which invited trouble. The priests now could shorten, or lengthen, the term in office of a civil magistrate by speeding up, or slowing down, the turn of a new year. Owing to the clumsiness of the pontifices and still more to political maneuvers, by which intercalations were made or omitted recklessly to affect a magistrate's year of office, the calendar got into hopeless confusion.
Censorius (de D.N. 20), Solonius (1.43), and Ammianus (26.1.12) all tell us that the difficulties in which intercalation had involved the romans were increased when they handed over to the pontifices (or sacerdotes) the right to intercalate at their discretion, and the pontifices then used this right to oblige their friends who might for business or political reasons want a longer or a shorter year. [Agnes Kirsopp Michels, "The Calendar of the Roman Republic," Princeton University Press, 1967]
There may have been another reason the calendar got off base: the famously superstitious Romans may have avoided intercalation during times of war, especially the Second Punic War, because intercalary days were regarded as unlucky. Cf. Macrobius, 1.14.1: verum fuit tempus cum propter superstitionem intercalatio omnis omissa est, and Ammianus, 26.1.7: (bissextum) quod aliquotiens rei Romanae fuisse norat infaustum.
The solar eclipse of Oct. 19, 202 B.C., fell on a civic date in early December.
The Republic failed in its duty to regulate the regulators. A dictator like Caesar was the only one who could effect the necessary change.
