In recent months public opinion has been drawn to the subject of the calendar. The discussion that followed on this question showed once again the partisanship and the unpreparedness of many participants in the dispute. It would seem logical that the calendar question should be resolved by studying the calendar problem; in our case, however, arguments of the most varied character were heard: ideological, culturological, political and even economic. In short, everything that has no relation whatever to the calendar and in no way reflects the real substance of the problem.
To begin with, let us try to review briefly the history of the calendar question in the Orthodox Church and the state of the calendar problem.
From deep antiquity humanity has recorded the existence of natural cycles — the alternation of day and night, the alternation of the seasons, the alternation of years. The cyclical nature of natural phenomena is conditioned by three factors: the rotation of the Earth about its own axis, the revolution of the Moon around the Earth and the revolution of the Earth around the Sun. For this reason the observation of precisely these phenomena underlies all known calendars. In history there have been three basic types of calendar.
The first type is the lunar calendars. In them the synodic month is taken as the basis of reckoning, that is, the interval of time between two new moons. The synodic month lasts on average 29.53 days. A lunar calendar usually consists of 12 synodic months, each of which lasts 29 or 30 days. Today the lunar calendar is used, for example, by Muslims.
The second type of calendar is the solar calendars. The basis of such calendars is the tropical year, that is, the time of one revolution of the Earth around the Sun. One tropical year amounts to 365 days, 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds. The classic example of a solar calendar is the Julian calendar.
The third type of calendar is the lunisolar calendars. They use synodic months, but at the same time take account of the length of the tropical year. To reconcile these two cycles, one month is periodically added to the calendar. Such, for example, is the traditional Chinese calendar.
In the years of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ the high priests of the Jerusalem temple used a lunisolar calendar in which the year consisted of 354 days. The central Jewish feasts were the Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. In the Christian Church the chief events of the year become the celebrations in honour of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, His Resurrection and the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles. But they are inseparably bound up with the Old Testament feast days. The Church could not therefore wholly ignore the Jewish cycle of feasts.
At the same time, already from the first century after the Nativity of Christ former pagans began to come into the Church in great numbers. They were not tied to the Jewish calendar tradition, but lived by the Julian calendar, which was at that time in use in the Roman Empire. The name of this calendar is bound up with the emperor Gaius Julius Caesar. It was precisely on his instructions that the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes worked out a new solar calendar. He reckoned that the tropical year lasts 365.25 days, and therefore in the new calendar the year consisted of 365 days. Thus over four years an error of one day accumulated. Every fourth year was therefore declared a leap year: one day was added to it, which was to eliminate the error. The Julian calendar was introduced in the Roman Empire in 46 B.C.
Thus the Christian Church found itself at the intersection of two calendar practices: the Jewish and the Roman. And this gave rise to the problem of adapting the Jewish rules for reckoning the feasts to the Julian calendar. It quite quickly became obvious that it is simply impossible to calculate by the Julian calendar the exact dates of the chief events of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. This is what gave rise to the long discussions about the principles on which the Christian church year should be built.
In the first centuries of Christianity different Local Churches had different approaches to the reckoning of the date of Pascha. For example, in Asia Minor and in Palestine Pascha was celebrated together with the Jews (on the night of the 14th to the 15th of Nisan, irrespective of the day of the week). In Alexandria, Syria and Rome, however, Pascha was a movable feast whose date was reckoned by various rules.
Christians in Alexandria and Syria began, at least from the third century, to use a 19-year cycle for reconciling the Julian calendar with the traditional Jewish calendar and for calculating the date of the celebration of Pascha. The point is that 19 tropical years coincide almost exactly with 235 synodic months. A calendar based on a 19-year cycle has 12 years of 12 synodic months and 7 years of 13 synodic months. As a result the 19th year of this cycle ends on the same day by the solar calendar.
The question of the day of the celebration of Pascha was discussed at the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325. Unfortunately no written decrees of the Council on the celebration of Pascha have come down to us. Some scholars suggest that the Council did not in fact adopt any official written decree on the Paschalion. Professor Vasily Bolotov in particular considered that the fathers of the Council adopted something "unwritten, unformalised, having the character of a friendly agreement".
The emperor Constantine the Great sent an epistle to those bishops who had not been present at the Council in Nicaea. From this epistle we learn that the Council sought to have all Christians celebrate the feast of Pascha on one and the same day. The Council also unambiguously excluded the possibility of celebrating Pascha by Jewish rules. It was decided to work out its own order of time and its own law.
The general principles established by the Council concerning the Paschalion were as follows. First, the Pascha of Christ was to be a movable feast, reckoned each year by special rules. Second, the Resurrection of Christ must always be celebrated on a Sunday. Third, this day must fall after the spring equinox. The drawing up of the tables with the dates of the celebration of Pascha the Council entrusted to the Church of Alexandria. It was precisely the Alexandrian archbishops who regularly sent epistles to all the other Churches indicating the dates of the celebration of Pascha.
In 341 the Local Council of Antioch in its 1st canon laid down: "Those who dare to violate the definition of the holy and great Council which was at Nicaea concerning the holy feast of the saving Pascha, let them be excommunicated from communion and cast out of the Church… If anyone … shall presume … to separate himself and to celebrate Pascha with the Jews, such a one the holy Council henceforth adjudges to be a stranger to the Church". Condemnation of those who celebrate Pascha "with the Jews" is met with also in the 7th apostolic canon.
This prohibition against celebrating Pascha "together with the Jews" is usually interpreted as the inadmissibility of marking Pascha on the same day as the Jews. By this logic the Christian Pascha must necessarily be celebrated after the spring equinox and after the Jewish Passover. In ancient sources, however, we meet another understanding of the words "together with the Jews" (μετά τῶν Ἰουδαίων).
In the epistle already cited the emperor Constantine indicated that the Christian Church must create its own system of reckoning the Paschalion, one that would not be dependent on the Jewish Passover: "Let us have nothing in common with the Jewish people, since another way has been shown us by the Saviour… We must separate ourselves from that shameful company, because it is in truth strange that the Jews should boast as though we were incapable of observing this custom independently of their determinations".
Thus, what was spoken of at the Council was not the tying of the Christian Pascha to the Jewish Passover but, on the contrary, the complete refusal by Christians to take the Jewish liturgical calendar into account! For that reason, in the fourth and fifth centuries the day of the Resurrection of Christ could repeatedly coincide with the Jewish Passover. For example, St Epiphanius of Cyprus wrote in the 370s: "Pascha cannot be celebrated if the equinox has not passed, which the Jews do not observe. We celebrate Pascha after the equinox, although they too [the Jews] used to celebrate it, since they too often celebrate it together with us. And when they celebrate the Passover before the coming of the equinox, then they celebrate it alone".
By the Alexandrian Paschalion the Christian Pascha coincided with the Jewish Passover in the years 289, 296, 316, 319, 323, 343, 347, 367, 370, 374 and 394. And this was not perceived as a violation of the decrees of the First Ecumenical Council. Only the tying of the Paschalion to the spring equinox was considered obligatory.
Gradually, however, both in the East and in the West the inaccuracy of the Julian calendar began to be recognised. As has been said, it takes as its basis a tropical year of 365 days and 6 hours. The real length of the tropical year, however, is less: 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds. Thus the Julian calendar has an error of 11 minutes and 14 seconds a year. Over 128 years this discrepancy gives an error of 1 day. The spring equinox in the Julian calendar therefore deviates steadily from the astronomical equinox. Correspondingly, the feast of the Pascha of Christ gradually shifts towards summer.
In the second half of the sixteenth century the Roman pope Gregory XIII decided to carry out a calendar reform. On 24 February 1582 he issued an instruction that the day after 4 October 1582 was to be reckoned not the 5th but the 15th of October. In this way the error of the Julian calendar accumulated since the fourth century was eliminated. In order not to allow this discrepancy to accumulate in future, it was decided to reckon as a leap year every fourth year with the exception of those years that complete a century and in which the number of hundreds is not divisible by four without a remainder (1700, 1800, 1900, 2100). Under such a system there fall in every 400 years not 100 leap years but 97. Consequently an error of one day accrues not over 128 years but over 3,280 years.
In the new calendar the 19-year cycle was also corrected, in order to bring it into accord with the real phases of the Moon. In the new calendar the full moons are moved back by one day every 300 years, and on the 8th occasion after 400 years (that is, 8 times in 2,500 years).
The new calendar received the name Gregorian from the name of Pope Gregory.
The introduction of the Gregorian calendar stretched over several centuries. Since it was perceived as the fruit of the Roman pope's activity, the Protestant states regarded the new calendar negatively. As one of the Protestant polemicists wrote, "better to part company with the Sun than to keep company with the pope". Nevertheless, by the middle of the eighteenth century practically all the countries of Western Europe had gone over to the new calendar.
Pope Gregory XIII officially approached the Patriarch of Constantinople Jeremias II with a proposal to go over to the new calendar. The patriarch, however, refused to do so.
From the second half of the nineteenth century the Gregorian calendar gradually became the worldwide calendar. In 1873 it was introduced in Japan, and in 1911 in China. In 1916 the Gregorian calendar was adopted by the Kingdom of Bulgaria, in 1919 by the Kingdom of Romania and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, in 1924 by Greece, in 1925 by the Turkish Republic, in 1928 by Egypt. In February 1918 the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Soviet Russia as well. In Ukraine the new calendar was officially introduced by a law of the Little Council of the Ukrainian People's Republic of 12 February 1918.
Thus at the beginning of the 1920s the question of the church calendar acquired a pan-Orthodox dimension. Almost all the Local Churches were faced with the problem of the church calendar not corresponding to the civil one. The Patriarch of Constantinople Meletius IV (Metaxakis), elected on 25 November 1921, declared his intention to carry out a reform of the church calendar. From 10 May to 8 June 1923 a Pan-Orthodox congress met in Constantinople. Delegates from the Cypriot, Serbian, Romanian and Greek Churches were present at it. The participants of the congress came out in favour of a move to the so-called Revised Julian calendar. This calendar was worked out by the Serbian astronomer Milutin Milanković and is based on a 900-year cycle in the course of which 7 leap days are cancelled. Correspondingly, an error of one day accrues in the Revised Julian calendar over 43,500 years. Until 28 February 2800, however, the Revised Julian and Gregorian calendars coincide. At the same time the congress decided to leave the traditional Eastern Paschalion in use, although it called on all Christian confessions to create a single practice, common to all, for reckoning the date of the Pascha of Christ.
It is interesting that the first Local Church that attempted to go over to the Revised Julian calendar was the Russian Orthodox Church. On 24 September 1923 a conference of bishops under the chairmanship of Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow took the decision to go over to the new calendar in October 1923. On 1 October 1923 Patriarch Tikhon issued an epistle on the reform of the calendar. It stated that the day following 1 October was to be reckoned the 15th of October. Thereafter the new Julian calendar was to be used in church life. The introduction of the new calendar, however, provoked numerous protests in the dioceses. And so already on 8 November 1923 Patriarch Tikhon issued an instruction in which he said that the introduction of the new style was being suspended.
In March 1924 the Constantinopolitan, Cypriot and Greek Orthodox Churches went over to the new style, in April 1924 the Orthodox Church in Poland, in October 1924 the Romanian Orthodox Church, in 1928 the Alexandrian and Antiochian, and in 1968 the Bulgarian Church.
It is interesting that already at the beginning of the twenty-first century the question of the possibility of returning to the old calendar was discussed in some local churches. For instance, in 2014 the Council of Bishops of the Polish Orthodox Church took the decision to return to the Julian calendar. At the same time, in parishes where there is such a need, it is permitted to keep the new style. The Polish Orthodox Church became the only Local Church that first adopted the new style and then (after 90 years!) abandoned it.
Today the Jerusalem, Russian, Georgian, Serbian and Polish Orthodox Churches live by the Julian calendar. The remaining Local Churches live by the Revised Julian calendar. The autonomous Finnish Orthodox Church (within the Patriarchate of Constantinople), however, lives by the Gregorian calendar (including the western Paschalion).
The introduction of the new calendar in the Local Orthodox churches gave rise to a series of grave conflicts. In particular, in Greece, Romania and Bulgaria there occurred the so-called Old Calendarist schisms, which remain unhealed to this day.
What then are the objections that its opponents bring against the Revised Julian calendar? It is entirely obvious that the central problem of the Revised Julian calendar is the loss of balance between the fixed and the movable annual liturgical cycles. In the Alexandrian Paschalion, which is used in the Orthodox Church to this day, the spring equinox is assigned to 21 March by the Julian calendar. The real astronomical equinox, however, now falls 13 days earlier. The inaccuracy of the Julian calendar leads to the day of the Pascha of Christ gradually moving towards summer. In the Revised Julian calendar the error of the Julian solar year is eliminated, but this error remains in the reckoning of the Paschalion. And this is what destroys the balance between the movable and the fixed church feasts.
This is best seen in the example of the Apostles' Fast. Traditionally the Peter's Fast begins on the Monday after the Sunday of All Saints and continues until the day of the holy apostles Peter and Paul (29 June by the Julian calendar). Depending on the day of the celebration of the Pascha of Christ, the length of the Peter's Fast in the Julian calendar can be from 8 to 42 days. But since 29 June in the Revised Julian calendar shifts by 13 days, this leads to the Peter's Fast disappearing altogether in years with a late Pascha. In those Local Churches which live by the Revised Julian calendar, therefore, the fast-free week is sometimes cancelled and the Peter's Fast begun earlier, so as not to lose it entirely.
By the Revised Julian calendar there may fall within the period of Great Lent feast days that were formerly celebrated exclusively in the period after Pascha. For example, the feast of the Great Martyr George the Victorious can never fall within Great Lent by the Julian calendar. This is what determines the particular emotional (paschal) character of this feast. In the Revised Julian calendar, however, the day of St George may fall within the period of the singing of the Lenten Triodion. Such a combination of services is not provided for at all by the Typicon.
Consequently, the move to a more accurate solar calendar while preserving the traditional Alexandrian Paschalion gives rise to a series of difficult questions. Their resolution requires a balanced discussion, to which specialists must be drawn not only in astronomy and the Paschalion but also in liturgics and canon law.
Moreover, the Julian calendar is a part of the liturgical tradition of the Church. Like any traditional thing, the Julian calendar can be, and often is, an object of criticism. Yet it is precisely these traditional things that are a component of cultural and religious self-identification.
Let us return to Ukrainian realities. As is known, the recent disputes about the celebration of Christmas have once again divided Ukrainian society. And they have once again shown that, unfortunately, we often think in categories of stamps and clichés, the offspring of that same very "tenacious" Soviet inheritance. On the whole, people do not even give themselves an account of the fact that the question of the date of the celebration of Christmas is not in itself an isolated, separate question. That it can and must be considered only in the context of the general question of calendar reform. I have personally had occasion more than once to answer questions about the calendar, and not once have I heard a strictly calendrical argument. Instead there poured out a river of arguments of the sort: why should we not celebrate Christmas as everyone in the world does? Why not mark Christmas together with Europe? And finally, my favourite: why is the Moscow Patriarchate against celebrating Christmas on 25 December? (!!!). Unfortunately, one can see today how in the polemic about the calendar attempts are made to brand adherents of the Julian calendar almost as traitors to the national interest. Such an approach is a mark of totalitarian thinking and of ideological partisanship. The discussions about the date of Christmas have shown once again that Ukrainian society as a whole is not ready to respect other views, opinions and wishes of another person. "Why should we not celebrate Christmas as in Europe?" Here it still has to be worked out what "as in Europe" means, where traditional Christmas has long since been transformed into a certain X-mas that has nothing in common with Christianity and is directed at the secular side of the celebration. As though the Church were preventing anyone from marking it in that manner. But a counter-question arises: "And why should we not learn to respect the opinion of another person, as in Europe?" — and together with that opinion the rights of a considerable number of believers to mark Christmas precisely in those traditions that are characteristic of our territory, the calendrical side included.
To sum up, I should like to note that in discussions about the calendar (as, incidentally, in all others) it is necessary above all to determine the right, and not the blind-alley, directions for the development of the discussion. To what, properly, it should lead. And the fundamental task of theologians, canonists and historians is to make all aspects of the subject under consideration as widely known as possible. It is also always worth remembering that the Church, in discussing anything whatever, must not fit an ideological base to fashionable trends.+SYLVESTER,
Archbishop of Bilhorod,
vicar of the Kyiv Metropolis,
rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary