DATES
637
DATES
dealing with the earlier Middle Ages, cannot by itself
lie accepted as a proof, or even a presumption, of the
siniriousness of the document.
The Christian Era. — The point of main interest in this conne.\ion is to determine the source and period of the introduction of our present system of dating by the Christian Era. Although, as explained in the article Chronology, Genek.\l (q. v.), the monk known as Dionysius Exigiuis, when resident in Rome, c. 527, seems to have been the first to initiate the practice of calculating years from the birth of Christ, and although it was undoubtedly he who identified the year uf Christ's birth with the year 753 of the foundation of Rome, as is still done in our current ilironology, nevertheless it was not until long after the
- il;c of Dionysius Exiguus that the system came into
ciinunon use. For example no trace of it will be fnuiid in that great historian of the Gallic Church, St. t Iregory of Tours, the contemporary of our St. Augus- i iiie of England ; and in the writings of Pope St. Greg- ory the Great the Dionysian Era is not adopted. It was the pope's haliit to date his letters by the regnal years of the emperor and letters so datetl may be seen in Bede's "Ecclesiastical History", just as they were rnpied from the Roman archives. Apparently it was I lie Englishman Bede himself who was the first to living the Dionysian system into general use, for it was liirough him that it wa.s adopted in literature, having liccn employed systematically not only in his "De lomporum Ratione" but especially in his "Ecclesi- astical History". What is more, we may notice the striking fact that the regular employment of the ( hristian Era in English charters began just at the period of Bede's pre-eminent influence. It is only lr(im about the year G79 that we are able to appeal to 1 jiglish charters of indisputable authenticity. Tak- ing eight such documents, the eight earliest which we can quote with confidence and dated respectively 679, (i92, 697, 732, 734, 7.36, 740, 759, we may notice says Professor Earle (Land Charters, Introiluc, p. xxxiii) that " of this series the first five though all more or less dated, whether by the month or the regnal year, or by the Indiction, or by all these at once, have not the Anno Domini. On the other hand, the last three agree in using the Christian Era and from this time the practice is continuous. In the intervening year which breaks this series into two parts falls the death of Bede a. d. 735." Very noteworthy is the decree of an English .synod held in 816, wherein it is jircscribed that the bishop shall put the acts of the synod into writing and date them by the Era of the Incarnation. This points no doubt to a time "when eccUwiastics knew the era well enough but had not yet acquired the punctual haljit of using it". It is in any case certain that neither in the papal chancery nor in that of the Western I'jnpire was the system introduced until con- siderably later. In the empire it only became general in the latter part of the ninth century, while although it occurs occasionally in papal documents of the time of John XIII (965-972), it was not the rule before the twelfth century. But for the dating of papal docu- ments and for the so-called "double date" see the article Bulus and Briefs.
Reckoning of Years. — Before the Christian Era was generally adopted in the dating of documents various other systems were employed at different periods and in different countries. The best known of these was the counting by " indictions". The indic- tion was a cycle of fifteen years, the first of tliese cycles being conceived to have started at a point three years before the beginning of the present Christian Era. It was usual to indicate only the position of the year in the current indiction, and no notice was taken of the number of cycles already completed. Thus, for ex- ample, indictio quartn meant the fourth year of some particular indiction and not the fourth cycle of fifteen years after b. c. 3; from which it follows that
merely to know the year of the indiction is useless for
determining the absolute date of any document unless
we know otherwise approximately the period to which
the document belongs. In reckoning the beginning
and consequently the changing-point of the indiction-
cycles four different systems were adopted : the in-
dirtio Grtvcn according to which the indiction began on
September 1st; the indictio Ccrsarea (or indiction of
Bede) beginning September 24th ; the indictio Romana
bcgiiuiing December 25th or January 1st; and the in-
dictio Senensis beginning September 8th. The indic-
tio Grcccn was the oldest of these and it remained in
use in papal bulls until 1087 and in imperial docu-
ments until 832. It was partly supplanted, especially
in the Carlovingian sphere of influence, by the indictio
Cccsarea.
Concurrently with the year of the indiction it was customary both in papal and imperial documents to mention the regnal year of the pope or emperor. So far as regards the emperors this was prescribed by Justinian (Novella xlvii). In the case of the popes we do not know any instance earlier than 787. Generally speaking (though the rule admitted of many excep- tions, especially later) the regnal year was calculated from the day of coronation or consecration. In the oflicial acts of most of the countries of Christendom, and notably in England, the regnal year of the sov- ereign was always given and sometimes this was the only indication of the year. As a continuous system of year enumeration the oldest era in practical use appears to have been that known as the "Era of the Martyrs" or "of Diocletian" (anni Diocletiani) . Its starting-point was the accession of the Emperor Dio- cletian, 29 Aug., 284. The Spanish Era {cera Hispan- icn) was in familiar use in Spain from the fifth cen- tury down to late in the Middle Ages. It adds about thirty-eight years to the ordinary numbering of the Christian Era. W^here Byzantine influences pre- vailed the years were generally numbered from the l.iegiiuiiiig of the world (ah origine mundi). This era was caK ulated from 1 September, and the birth of Christ, which is the point of departure of our present chronology, took place in the year 5509 of the Byzan- tine system. Several other methods of reckoning, of which the best known is the Era of the Hcgira followed in Mahommedan countries, have also prevailed in various localities, but they cannot be discussed in <l('tail here. After the Christian Era had been uni- versally adopted an important source of confusion as regards the dating of documents still remained in the diversity of practice about the, beginning of the year. For the details of this the reader nuist be referred to the article Chronology, fiENERAL, and to the works mentioned in the bibliography, but we may notice here that among the .Vnglo-S.ixons, as also at many different periods in the papal cliancery, the new year was calculated to begin on December 25th. On the other hand, in England from the twelfth century on- wards, largely imdor Norman influences, the years were numbered from the 25th of March. This ar- rangement was often called the mox Anglicnnus or conijmtatio Anglicana, though it also prevailed in Florence, Siena, Pisa, and at least occasionally in other parts of the Continent as well as in many papal documents. In England it lasted on down to the eighteenth century, though after Elizabethan times it became increasingly common in the dating of letters to indicate the .system of dating adopted, N. S. often standing for the New or Continental Style in which the year began on January 1st, and O. S. for the Old Style in which tlu^ year was counted from March 25th. Fur- ther N. S. was still more frequently used for dates which followed the reformed calendar of Gregory XIII, as explained in the article Chronology, General.
The licchnning oj Days. — The early converts to Christianity in the West not unnaturally retained the method of indicating the days of the month which
