Dates and Dating
In classical Latin even before the time of Christ it was usual for
correspondents to indicate when and where their letters were
written. This was commonly done by such words as dabam Roman�ante
diem quartum Kalendas Januarias, i.e. I gave or delivered this at
Rome on December 29th. For this the later formula was data Rom�
(given at Rome). Hence data,, the first word of the formula, came
to be used for the time and place therein specified. The principle
that imperial decrees and charters must be "dated" as a condition
of validity, i.e. that they must bear upon them the indication of
the day and year when they were delivered, may be traced back to
the time of Constantine. In the course of the Middle Ages this
principle was generally admitted, and we find, for example, that
at Cologne in the twelfth century the validity of a certain
instrument was contested because it lacked a date. "Those who have
seen it say that the document which John brought does not bear the
day or the indiction ... now the Roman decrees lay down that
letters which lack the day and the indiction have no binding
force." (Westdeutsche Zeitschrift f�r Geschichte, I, 377.) But
although this principle was recognized in theory it was not always
carried out in practice. Even down to the beginning of the twelfth
century not only royal and imperial letters but even charters
(Urkunden), properly so called, were occasionally through the
carelessness of officials sent out without a date. (Bresslau,
Handbuch, I, 891.) In this matter the Italian chancery officials
seem to have been much more careful than those of the rest of
Europe. The same is true with regard to the correctness of the
dates which do appear in official documents, especially those of
the early Middle Ages. As a rule the charters emanating from the
chancery of the Western Emperors are much more liable to this form
of error than those of the Holy See (Bresslau, ib., 844). But even
the bulls of such a pontiff as Innocent III are not unfrequently
at fault, and as Leopold Delisle has shown, an erroneous
calculation of the indiction may be perpetuated through a whole
series of authentic documents (Bib. de l'Ecole des chartes, 1858,
p. 55). In any case it remains certain and is admitted by all
serious writers upon diplomatics that the mere fact that an
erroneous date occurs in a document, especially when we are
dealing with the earlier Middle Ages, cannot by itself be accepted
as a proof, or even a presumption, of the spuriousness of the
document.
THE CHRISTIAN ERA
The point of main interest in this connection 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
GENERAL CHRONOLOGY, the monk known as Dionysius Exiguus, 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 of Christ's
birth with the year 753 of the foundation of Rome, as is still
done in our current chronology, nevertheless it was not until long
after the age of Dionysius Exiguus that the system came into
common use. For example, no trace of it will be found in that
great historian of the Gallic Church, St. Gregory of Tours, the
contemporary of our St. Augustine of England; and in the writings
of Pope St. Gregory the Great the Dionysian Era is not adopted. It
was the pope's habit to date his letters by the regnal years of
the emperor and letters so dated may be seen in Bede's
"Ecclesiastical History", just as they were copied from the Roman
archives. Apparently it was the Englishman Bede himself who was
the first to bring the Dionysian system into general use, for it
was through him that it was adopted in literature, having been
employed systematically not only in his "De Temporum Ratione" but
especially in his "Ecclesiastical History". What is more, we may
notice the striking fact that the regular employment of the
Christian Era in English charters began just at the period of
Bede's pre-eminent influence. It is only from about the year 679
that we are able to appeal to English charters of indisputable
authenticity. Taking eight such documents, the eight earliest
which we can quote with confidence and dated respectively 679,
692, 697, 732, 734, 736, 740, 759, we may notice says Professor
Earle (Land Charters, Introduc., 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
prescribed 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 ecclesiastics knew the era well enough
but had not yet acquired the punctual habit of using it". It is in
any case certain that neither in the papal chancery nor in that of
the Western Empire was the system introduced until considerably
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 documents
and for the so-called "double date" see the article BULLS 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 indiction was a cycle of fifteen
years, the first of these 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 example, indictio
quarta 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 determining-point
of the indiction-cycles four different systems were adopted: the
indictio Gr�ca according to which the indiction began on September
1st; the indictio C�sarea (or indiction of Bede) beginning
September 24th; the indictio Romana beginning December 25th or
January 1st; and the indictio Senensis beginning September 8th.
The indictio Gr�ca was the oldest of these and it remained in use
in papal bulls until 1087 and in imperial documents until 832. It
was partly supplanted, especially in the Carlovingian sphere of
influence, by the indictio C�sarea.
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 exceptions, especially later)
the regnal year was calculated from the day of coronation or
consecration. In the official acts of most of the countries of
Christendom, and notably in England, the regnal year of the
sovereign 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 Diocletian, 29
Aug., 284. The Spanish Era (�ra Hispanica) was in familiar use in
Spain from the fifth century down to late in the Middle Ages. It
adds about thirty-eight years to the ordinary numbering of the
Christian Era. Where Byzantine influences prevailed the years were
generally numbered from the beginning of the world (ab origine
mundi). This era was calculated 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 Byzantine system. Several other
methods of reckoning, of which the best known is the Era of the
Hegira followed in Mahommedan countries, have also prevailed in
various localities, but they cannot be discussed in detail here.
After the Christian Era had been universally 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 must be referred to the
article GENERAL CHRONOLOGY, but we may notice here that among the
Anglo-Saxons, as also at many different periods in the papal
chancery, the new year was calculated to begin on December 25th.
On the other hand, in England from the twelfth century onwards,
largely under Norman influences, the years were numbered from the
25th of March. This arrangement was often called the mos
Anglicanus or computatio 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 0.S. for the Old Style in which the year was counted from
March 25th. Further 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 Reckoning of Days
The early converts to Christianity in the West not unnaturally
retained the method of indicating the days of the month which was
current among their pagan contemporaries. According to this, three
fixed points were taken in each month, the kalends on the first
day, the ides on the thirteenth (or in some months on the
fifteenth), and the nones on the ninth day before the ides and
consequently on the fifth or seventh. The dates which fell between
these fixed points were designated by the number of days by which
they fell short of the next fixed point. Thus the twenty-fourth of
May was called ante diem nonum kalendas Junias (i.e. the ninth day
before the kalends of June). During the early Middle Ages this
system was retained practically unaltered except that the long
Roman form was somewhat contracted, for example decimo kalendas
Julii was written instead of the ante diem decimum kalendas
Julias.
A curious arrangement prevailed at Bologna (it was called from its
place of origin the consuetudo Bononiensis) and extended over a
large part of the north of Italy. According to this the first half
of the month was numbered forwards and called menses intrans, but
the last half of the month was called mensis exiens and numbered
backwards, as in the Roman system; thus the seventeenth of May was
called die quinto decimo exeuntis mensis Maii. Our present system
of numbering the days straight on from the first of each month
began to appear in the sixth century and gradually became more
prevalent throughout the Middle Ages, but it never came into
general use on account of the custom of indicating the day by the
feasts of the local calendar. Not only did the common festivals
serve for this purpose, but the Sundays were also often used, and
were designated by the first words of their Introit in the Mass.
For instance in Dominica l�tare means on the Sunday whose Introit
begins with L�tare in Domino, i.e. the fourth Sunday of Lent.
Moreover the vigil of a feast, or the previous day, or the octave,
or a specified day within the octave, were all familiarly
designated by their relation to the feast, e.g. in pervigilio
Nativitatis Beat� Mari�; postridie Sancti Laurentii; in octava
Sti. Laurentii, etc. In this method of dating, which was
constantly employed both in Latin and ill the vernacular, the use
of the English word utas for octave should be noticed. This method
of dating by saints' days, as will be readily understood, depended
much upon local conditions and was always apt to become both
complicated and inexact.
HERBERT THURSTON
Transcribed by Rick McCarty
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.
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