Julian calendar Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Intercalation === The old intercalary month was abolished. The new leap day was dated as ''ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martias'' ('the sixth doubled day before the Kalends of March'), usually abbreviated as ''a.d. bis VI Kal. Mart.''; hence it is called in English the [[bissextile]] day. The year in which it occurred was termed ''annus bissextus'', in English the bissextile year. There is debate about the exact position of the bissextile day in the early Julian calendar. The earliest direct evidence is a statement of the 2nd century jurist [[Publius Iuventius Celsus|Celsus]], who states that there were two-halves of a 48-hour day, and that the intercalated day was the "posterior" half. An inscription from AD 168 states that ''a.d. V Kal. Mart.'' was the day after the bissextile day. The 19th century chronologist [[Christian Ludwig Ideler|Ideler]] argued that Celsus used the term "posterior" in a technical fashion to refer to the earlier of the two days, which requires the inscription to refer to the whole 48-hour day as the bissextile. Some later historians share this view. Others, following [[Theodor Mommsen|Mommsen]], take the view that Celsus was using the ordinary Latin (and English) meaning of "posterior". A third view is that neither half of the 48-hour "bis sextum" was originally formally designated as intercalated, but that the need to do so arose as the concept of a 48-hour day became obsolete.<ref>W. Sternkopf, "[https://books.google.com/books?id=MmPMaTG2ukYC&pg=PA718 Das Bissextum]", (JCP 41 (1895) 718β733).</ref> There is no doubt that the bissextile day eventually became the earlier of the two days for most purposes. In 238 Censorinus stated that it was inserted after the [[Terminus (god)|Terminalia]] (23 February) and was followed by the last five days of February, i.e., a.d. VI, V, IV, III and prid. Kal. Mart. (which would be 24 to 28 February in a common year and the 25th to 29th in a leap year). Hence he regarded the bissextum as the first half of the doubled day. All later writers, including Macrobius about 430, [[Bede]] in 725, and other medieval [[computus|computists]] (calculators of Easter) followed this rule, as does the [[liturgical year|liturgical calendar]] of the Roman Catholic Church. However, Celsus' definition continued to be used for legal purposes. It was incorporated into [[Digest (Roman law)|Justinian's Digest]],<ref>Justinian, [http://webu2.upmf-grenoble.fr/Haiti/Cours/Ak/Anglica/D50_Scott.htm#XVI Digest 50.16.98] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120208135740/http://webu2.upmf-grenoble.fr/Haiti/Cours/Ak/Anglica/D50_Scott.htm#XVI |date=2012-02-08 }}.</ref> and in the English ''[[Statute De Anno et Die Bissextili]]'' of 1236,<ref>{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tKZFAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA20 |chapter=The statute ''De anno et die bissextili'', made at Westminster, Anno 21 Hen. III. and Anno Dom. 1236 |title=The Statutes at Large from Magna Charta to the End of the Reign of King Henry the Sixth |volume=1 |location=London |year=1763}}</ref> which was not formally repealed until 1879. The effect of the bissextile day on the [[nundinal cycle]] is not discussed in the sources. According to Dio Cassius, a leap day was inserted in 41 BC to ensure that the first market day of 40 BC did not fall on 1 January, which implies that the old 8-day cycle was not immediately affected by the Julian reform. However, he also reports that in AD 44, and on some previous occasions, the market day was changed to avoid a conflict with a religious festival. This may indicate that a single nundinal letter was assigned to both halves of the 48-hour bissextile day by this time, so that the [[Regifugium]] and the market day might fall on the same date but on different days. In any case, the 8-day nundinal cycle began to be displaced by the 7-day [[Seven-day week|week]] in the first century AD, and [[dominical letter]]s began to appear alongside nundinal letters in the fasti.<ref>[https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/48*.html#33.4 Dio Cassius 48.33.4], [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/60*.html#24.7 60.24.7]; C. J. Bennett, "The Imperial Nundinal Cycle", ''Zeitschrift fΓΌr Papyrologie und Epigraphik'' 147 (2004) 175β179.</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page