Byzantine calendar
The Byzantine calendar, also called the Roman calendar, the Creation Era of Constantinople or the Era of the World, was the calendar used by the Eastern Orthodox Church from to 1728 in the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It was also the official calendar of the Byzantine Empire from 988 to 1453 and it was used in Russia from to 1700. This calendar was used also in other areas of the Byzantine commonwealth such as Serbia — where it is found in old legal documents such as Dušan's Code and is thus called the Serbian calendar — and is currently still used in the Republic of Georgia alongside the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
The calendar was based on the Julian calendar, except that the year started on 1 September and the year number used an Anno Mundi epoch derived from the Septuagint version of the Bible. It placed the date of creation at 5509 years before the incarnation of Jesus, and was characterized by a certain tendency that had already been a tradition among Jews and early Christians to number the years from the calculated foundation of the world. Its Year One, marking the assumed date of creation, was September 1, 5509 BC, to August 31, 5508 BC. This would make the current year .
History
The first appearance of the term is in the treatise of a monk and priest, Georgios, who mentions all the main variants of the "World Era" in his work. Georgios argues that the main advantage of the World era is the common starting point of the astronomical lunar and solar cycles, and of the cycle of indictions, the usual dating system in Byzantium since the 6th century. He also regarded it as the most convenient for the Easter computus. For the details see the section "Tabular Byzantine calendar" below. Complex calculations of the 19-year lunar and 28-year solar cycles within this world era allowed scholars to attribute cosmic significance to certain historical dates, such as the birth or the crucifixion of Jesus.This date underwent minor revisions before being finalized in the mid-7th century, although its precursors were developed c. AD 412. By the second half of the 7th century, the Creation Era was known in Western Europe, at least in Great Britain. By the late 10th century, when the era appears in use on official government records, a unified system was widely recognized across the Eastern Roman world.
The era was ultimately calculated as starting on September 1, and Jesus was thought to have been born in the year 5509 since the creation of the world. Historical time was thus calculated from the creation, and not from Christ's birth as it was in the west after the Anno Domini system adopted between the 6th and 9th centuries. The eastern Church avoided the use of the Anno Domini system of Dionysius Exiguus, since the date of Christ's birth was debated in Constantinople as late as the 14th century.
The Byzantine calendar was identical to the Julian calendar except that:
- the names of the months were transcribed from Latin into Greek;
- the first day of the year was September 1, so that both the ecclesiastical and civil calendar years ran from 1 September to 31 August,, which to the present day is the Eastern Orthodox church year;
- dates were seldom, if ever, reckoned according to the kalends, nones, and ides of the months in the Roman manner, but simply numbered from the beginning of the month in the Greek, Syrian, and Egyptian manner, and,
- its era was based on the year of creation, reckoned September 1, 5509 BC, to August 31, 5508 BC, rather than the foundation of Rome; years were also reckoned by their place in the indiction and not by the years' consuls.
The Byzantine World Era was gradually replaced in the Eastern Orthodox Church by the Christian Era, which was utilized initially by Patriarch Theophanes I Karykes in 1597, afterwards by Patriarch Cyril Lucaris in 1626, and then formally established by the Church in 1728. Meanwhile, as Russia received Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium, it inherited the Orthodox calendar based on the Byzantine Era. After the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the era continued to be used by Russia, which witnessed millennialist movements in Moscow in AD 1492. It was only in AD 1700 that the Byzantine calendar in Russia was changed to the Julian calendar by Peter the Great. It still forms the basis of traditional Orthodox calendars up to today. September AD 2000 began the year 7509 AM.
The age of the world
The earliest extant Christian writings on the age of the world according to the biblical chronology are by Theophilus in his apologetic work To Autolycus, and by Julius Africanus in his Five Books of Chronology. Both of these early Christian writers, following the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, determined the age of the world to have been about 5,530 years at the birth of Christ.Ben Zion Wacholder points out that the writings of the Church Fathers on this subject are of vital significance, in that through the Christian chronographers a window to the earlier Hellenistic biblical chronographers is preserved:
The Hellenistic Jewish writer Demetrius the Chronographer wrote On the Kings of Judea which dealt with biblical exegesis, mainly chronology; he computed the date of the flood and the birth of Abraham exactly as in the Septuagint, and first established the Annus Adami, the antecedent of the Hebrew World Era, and of the Alexandrian and Byzantine Creation Eras.
Alexandrian Era
The Alexandrian Era developed in AD 412, was the precursor to the Byzantine Era. After the initial attempts by Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria and others, the Alexandrian computation of the date of creation was worked out to be 25 March 5493 BC.The Alexandrine monk Panodorus reckoned 5904 years from Adam to the year AD 412. His years began with August 29, corresponding to the First of Thoth, the Egyptian new year. Annianos of Alexandria however, preferred the Annunciation style as New Year's Day, 25 March, and shifted the Panodorus era by about six months, to begin on 25 March. This created the Alexandrian Era, whose first day was the first day of the proleptic Alexandrian civil year in progress, 29 August 5493 BC, with the ecclesiastical year beginning on 25 March 5493 BC.
Dionysius of Alexandria had earlier emphatically quoted mystical justifications for the choice of March 25 as the start of the year:
The Alexandrian Era of March 25, 5493 BC was adopted by church fathers such as Maximus the Confessor and Theophanes the Confessor, as well as chroniclers such as George Syncellus. Its striking mysticism made it popular in Byzantium, especially in monastic circles. However this masterpiece of Christian symbolism had two serious weak points: historical inaccuracy surrounding the date of the resurrection of Jesus as determined by its Easter computus, and its contradiction to the chronology of the Gospel of St John regarding the date of the crucifixion of Jesus on Friday after the Passover.
Chronicon Paschale
A new variant of the World Era was suggested in the Chronicon Paschale, a valuable Byzantine universal chronicle of the world, composed about the year AD 630 by some representative of the Antiochian scholarly tradition. It had for its basis a chronological list of events extending from the creation of Adam to the year AD 627. The chronology of the writer is based on the figures of the Bible and begins with 21 March, 5507.For its influence on Greek Christian chronology, and also because of its wide scope, the Chronicon Paschale takes its place beside Eusebius, and the chronicle of the monk Georgius Syncellus which was so important in the Middle Ages; but in respect of form it is inferior to these works.
By the late 10th century, the Byzantine Era, which had become fixed at September 1 5509 BC since at least the mid-7th century, had become the widely accepted calendar of choice par excellence for Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
Accounts in Church Fathers
says in his Homily "On the Cross and the Thief", that Christ "opened for us today Paradise, which had remained closed for some 5000 years."Isaac the Syrian writes in a Homily that before Christ "for five thousand years five hundred and some years God left Adam to labor on the earth."
Augustine of Hippo writes in the City of God :
Augustine goes on to say that the ancient Greek chronology "does not exceed the true account of the duration of the world as it is given in our documents, which are truly sacred."
Hippolytus of Rome maintained on Scriptural grounds that Jesus's birth took place in AM 5500, and held that the birth of Christ took place on a passover day, deducing that its month-date was 25 March. He gave the following intervals:
In his Commentary on Daniel, one of his earlier writings, he proceeds to set out additional reasons for accepting the date of AM 5500:
Around AD 202 Hippolytus held that Jesus was born in the 42nd year of the reign of Augustus and that he was born in AM 5500. In his Commentary on Daniel he did not need to establish the precise year of Jesus's birth; he is not concerned about the day of the week, the month-date, or even the year; it was sufficient for his purpose to show that Christ was born in the days of Augustus in AM 5500.