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- PARIS (AFP) - Suffering from
pre-millennial tension? Worried about the millennium bug? Wondering about
where to spend the once-in-a-lifetime end-of-century bash? All getting
too much for you? The man to blame is called Short Denis.
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- The reason why the world is currently preparing to mark
the end of the second millennium is that early in the sixth century a man
named Dionysius Exiguus (Denis the Short), a monk and astronomer from Scythia,
now southwest Russia, decided that a new calendar was needed.
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- While compiling a table of dates for Easter he concluded
that it made more sense to count the years from the birth of the Christian
church's founder than from the start of the reign of the Roman emperor
Diocletian, as previously.
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- His system of Anno Domini (AD - "In the year of
of our Lord") failed to catch on at first, and was rescued from obscurity
two centuries later by the Venerable Bede. The custom of naming years in
the Christian Era came into common use in ecclesiastical circles in the
Middle Ages, but was not adopted for civil use until much later.
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- Thus the approach of the year 1000 caused little fuss
among the populace, still counting time in terms of the reigns of kings
and emperors.
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- And the rest of humanity was advancing to a different
drumbeat. Even today there are about 40 other calendars in use around the
world, all beginning at different epochs and with the start of the year
occurring at different times.
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- On January 1, 2000 it will be 7508 by the Byzantine calendar,
5760 by the Jewish, 4636 by the Chinese, 1921 by the Indian (Saka) and
1420 by the Islamic (Hegira) calendars.
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- And while Short Denis claims the credit for laying the
foundations for the first universal dating system, he is also responsible
for two anomalies, one of which is of consequence to astronomers and the
other of which is mainly of interest to purists.
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- Firstly, and understandably, he left out the year 0 AD
because the concept of zero had not yet arrived from the Arab world.
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- He therefore counted the first year of the Christian
Era as 1 AD, with the year preceding Christ's birth as 1 BC. Astronomers
are therefore obliged in their calculations to subtract one, so that the
year 4 BC becomes the year -3.
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- A further consequence is that, as pedants are fond of
pointing out, the end of the millennium occurs at the end of the 2000th
year, not at the beginning, and the revellers on December 31 upcoming will
be jumping the gun by no fewer than 365 days.
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- Denis's second error was in thinking that Christ was
born at the start of the year now known as 1 AD. Modern research indicates
that Christ was probably born between 6 and 4 BC, so that the dawn of the
third millennium, technically speaking, is already a few years behind us.
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- In compiling his calendar Denis assigned Christ's birth
to the December 25 preceding January 1, in line with a Christian tradition
arising from the Jewish orthodox belief that the real start of a baby boy's
life began not with his birth but with his circumcision and naming ceremony
on the eighth day post-parturition.
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- As it happened, the Roman republic had been using January
1 as a starting date for the year since at least 153 BC, though the spring
equinox on March 25 was widely used for the new year throughout Europe,
and continued to be used as such until the late 16th century. (Venice used
March 1, while much of France used the moveable feast of Easter).
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- Scotland shifted to the January 1 system in 1601, while
England plugged on with the March 25 new year system until 1752.
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- So much confusion cannot entirely be laid at Denis's
door, and doubts remain even as to his name. Some scholars hold that "Exiguus"
referred not to his stature but to his modesty.
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