CAL'ENDAR, n distribution or divis ion of time into periods adapted to the purposes of civil life ; also a table or re gister of such divisions, exhibiting the order in which the seasons, months, festi vals, and holidays succeed each other du ring the year. The word is derived from the ancient Latin verb ealare, to call. In the early ages of Rome, it was the custom for the pontiffs to call the people together on the first day of each month, to apprise them of the days that were to be kept Prierea in the course of it. Ileum dies eatenthe, the calends or first days of the different months. The calendars in use throughout Europe are borrowed from that of the Romans. Romulus is sup posed to have first undertaken to divide the year in such a manner that certain epochs should return periodically after a revolution of the sun ; but the knowledge of astronomy was not then sufficiently AnTS. 53 advanced to allow this to be 'lone with much precision. The Roman calendar continued in it state of uncertainty and confusion till the time of Julius Cmsar, when the civil equinox differed from the astronomical by three months. Under the advice of the astronomer Sosigenes, Cursor abolished the lunar year, and reg ulated the civil year entirely by the sun. The Julian year consisted of 3651 days, and consequently differed in excess by 11 minutes 10-15 sec. from the true solar year, which consists of 365 d. 5 h. 45 in. 49-62 sec. In consequence of this iliffer once the astronomical equinox, in the course of a few centuries, sensibly fell hack towards the beginning of the year. In the time of Julius Cover it corre sponded to the 25th of Mardi; in the sixteenth century it. had retrograded to the 11th. The correction of this error was one of the purposes sought to be ob tained by the reformation of the calendar effected by Pope Gregory XIII, in 1582.
By suppressing 10 clays in the calendar, Gregory restored the equinox to the _21st of March, the day oa which it fell at the time of the Council of Nice in 325 ; the place of Easter and the other movable church feasts in the ecclesiastical calen dar having been prescribed at that coun cil. And in order that the seine incon venience might be prevented in future, lie ordered the intercalation which took place every fourth year to be omitted in years ending centuries. The Gregorian calendar was received immediately or shortly after its promulgation by all the Roman Catholic countries of Europe. The Protestant states of Germany, and the kingdom of Denmark, adhered to the Julian calendar till 1700; and in Eng land the alteration was successfully op posed by popular prejudices till 1752. In that year the Julian calendar, or old style, as it was called, was formally abol ished by the act of parliament, and the date used in all public transactions render ed coincident with that followed in other European countries, by enacting that the day following the 2t1 of September of the year 1752 should be called the 14th of that month.
A new reform of the calendar was at tempted to be introduced in France du ring the period of the Revolution. The commencement of the year was fixed at the autumnal equinox, which nearly co incided with the epoch of the foundation of the republic. The names of the an cient. months were abolished, and others substituted having reference to agrieul