Revised Julian calendar

The Orthodox calendar, called in the Orthodox Milankovitch calendar, calendars or short neujulianischer New Calendar, is a calendar that only slightly differs from the Gregorian calendar, but is about ten times more precisely adapted to the astronomical solar year. Not three leap days are omitted in 400 years in him, but seven leap days in 900 years.

Leap year rule

The rules for leap years the Orthodox calendar have been developed by the Serbian Milutin Milankovitch and scholars are:

This calendar has less 7 leap years in comparison with the Julian calendar in 900 years. In the Gregorian calendar, there are 3 leap years less in 400 years, which gives the average calendar year length of 365.2425 days results. In the Orthodox calendar is 365.242222 days, the approximation to the solar year ( tropical year: 365.242190 days ) is about ten times better than in the Gregorian calendar. He is the most accurate so far proposed calendar. The deviation is after 31,250 years only one day (Gregorian: after about 3,225 years ago). To strive for a higher accuracy would make little sense because of the unpredictable in detail small changes in the Drehgeschwindkeit the earth as they may arise, for example, by magma currents inside the earth or by winds and ocean currents.

The resulting circuits from the 900 -year calendar period of the Orthodox calendar contains 682 common years to 365 days and leap years 218 to 366 days and includes a total of 328,718 days. The corresponding 400 -year calendar period of the Gregorian calendar contains 303 common and 97 leap years, or 146,097 days. In 400 Gregorian years, the weekday assignment repeated for 146 097 without a remainder divisible by 7 ( Result: 20,871 weeks ). In the Orthodox calendar, the day of the week assignment repeated until seven 900 -year calendar periods.

Adoption and implementation

On the gesamtorthodoxen Congress in Constantinople Opel decided in 1923 all Orthodox churches, introduce with a jump of 9 March 1924 23 March 1924 new calendar with the above switching rules.

Exception was the Russian Orthodox Church, due to the political turmoil that followed the October Revolution, the Congress could not attend and therefore stayed with the old Julian calendar. Then revised some Orthodox churches (such as the Patriarchate of Jerusalem or the Serbian Orthodox Church ) of its decision to wait for the time when the Russian and other Orthodox churches could participate under the former communist regimes equally in decision-making. Other Orthodox churches felt that reform is necessary, such as the Patriarchate of Constantinople Opel together with the Greek Orthodox Church and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. They introduced the new calendar, which meant that today a part of the Orthodox Churches continue the Julian calendar maintains, while the other part calculated according to the new calendar.

Originally, the new calendar should also apply to the date of Easter. In this important Christian festival, however, it was decided a few years later that the commonality of the date in all Orthodox churches was more important than the existence of astronomical accuracy. Therefore, for the determination of the movable feasts basically the old calendar used. Nevertheless, the elimination of some altkalendarischer factions of the Orthodox Church as a whole remained.

The introduction of the calendar was and is controversial in Orthodoxy, both in content and in terms of the " coup- like " described by opponents as the manner of its introduction. Only about half of the Orthodox Churches has the calendar actually introduced.

Difference Gregorian and Orthodox calendar

Due to its lower number of leap days of the Orthodox calendar will run ahead in the future Gregorianschen calendar more and more. By the year 2800 both calendars are still the same. Between 2800 and 5600, the Orthodox calendar, in some centuries, one day ahead. 5600 from the 1-day- ahead is no longer fallen below.

Weekday tables

The day of week of a date in the Orthodox calendar can be specified with the help of the Sunday letter. The latter is the same as determined in the Gregorian calendar, which changes the mapping between Dominical Letter and calendar year as a result of another switching cycle ( other secular years without leap day ).

Table of the Sunday letter: For leap years two dominical letters, the left for January and February, the right for the remaining months apply.

Weekday table: In the column of the above table taken from Dominical Letter of the year is valid to this letter weekday series. If one goes into the line for a particular day of the week to the right, we find the corresponding data from all days of the year. Assuming a date to the left, one finds in the column under the dominical letter the corresponding day of the week.