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A device adopted from the Romans
Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99...
A device adopted from the Romans by the old chronologers to aid them in finding the day of the week corresponding to any given date, and indirectly to facilitate the adjustment of the "Proprium de Tempore" to the "Proprium Sanctorum" when constructing the ecclesiastical calendar for any year. The Church, on account of her complicated system of movable and immovable feasts (see CHRISTIAN CALENDAR), has from an early period taken upon herself as a special charge to regulate the measurement of time. To secure uniformity in the observance of feasts and fasts, she began, even in the patristic age, to supply a computus, or system of reckoning, by which the relation of the solar and lunar years might be accommodated and the celebration of Easter determined. Naturally she adopted the astronomical methods then available, and these methods and the methodology belonging to them, having become traditional, are perpetuated in a measure to this day, even the reform of the calendar, in the prolegomena to the Breviary and Missal.
The Romans were accustomed to divide the year into nundinae, periods of eight days; and in their marble fasti, or calendars, of which numerous specimens remain, they used the first eight letters of the alphabet to mark the days of which each period was composed. When the Oriental seven-day period, or week, was introduced in the time of Augustus, the first seven letters of the alphabet were employed in the same way to indicate the days of this new division of time. In fact, fragmentary calendars on marble still survive in which both a cycle of eight letters A to H indicating nundinae, and a cycle of seven letters -A to G-indicating weeks, are used side by side (see "Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum", 2nd ed., I, 220. -The same peculiarity occurs in the Philocalian Calendar of A.D. 356, ibid., p. 256). This device was imitated by the Christians, and in their calendars the days of the year from 1 January to 31 December were marked with a continuous recurring cycle of seven letters: A, B, C, D, E F, G. A was always set against 1 January, B against 2 January, C against 3 January, and so on. Thus F fell to 6 January, G to 7 January; A again recurred on 8 January, and also, consequently, on 15 January, 22 January, and 29 January. Continuing in this way, 30 January was marked with a B, 31 January with a C, and 1 February with a D. Supposing this to be carried on through all the days of an ordinary year (i.e. not a leap year), it will be found that a D corresponds to 1 March, G to 1 April, B to 1 May, E to 1 June, G to 1 July, C to 1 August, F to 1 September, A to 1 October, D to 1 November, and F to 1 December a result which Durandus recalled by the following distich:
Alta Domat Dominus, Gratis Beat Equa Gerentes
Contemnit Fictos, Augebit Dona Fideli.
Now, as a moment's reflection shows, if 1 January is a Sunday, all the days marked by A will also be Sundays; If 1 January is a Saturday, Sunday will fall on 2 January which is a B, and all the other days marked B will be Sundays; if 1 January is a Monday, then Sunday will not come until 7 January, a G, and all the days marked G will be Sundays. 