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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture >the 'lost 11 days', of the 1751 Calendar change from the Julian to Gregorian calender. Others can go into more detail, but here is a start. The length of a year is not an even number of days. It is sort of close to 365.24219878 days (and that will change as the earth speeds up or slows down). It is not easy to build a calendar around that. Some folks tried 365 days, but that showed problems quickly, as the first day of the year (spring, for example) based on the calendar slipped away from the first day of spring seasonally by a day every four years. Julius Caesar used 365.25 days per year in 48BC, but after a millenium and a half, that showed problems also, such as the first day of spring (or Easter for that matter) slipping toward summertime by a small amount each year (the difference between 365.25 and 365.2422, roughly 11 minutes per year). Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull in 1582 reforming the calendar to the one we use today, but the existing calendar was already off, so part of the calendar reform was to bring the calendar back in sync (so the first day of spring would again actually be so) by going from October 5, 1582 to October 15, 1582. (Note that non-Catholic countries had their own reforms at different times). The Gregorian Calendar is not perfect either, so eventually another change will be necessary to keep the first day of spring according to the calendar in sync with the first day of spring according to the seasons. Tom ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html