On the night of December 31 to January 1, we habitually raise our glasses and celebrate the onset of the New Year. Peter I, thanks to whom we celebrate this truly national holiday - New Year, would be very happy with our fun and a little festive outrage. However, before his reign, both the date of the current year and the day of the coming of the next were calculated in a completely different way.
Where did our chronology come from?
Emperor Peter I borrowed a lot from Europe: shaving beards, smoking tobacco, a regular army, but his most global innovation was the change in the chronology system. The date that we now consider the beginning of the new year began to be counted from January 1, 1700. Before the revolution of 17, after the date was mentioned, it was necessary to say "from the birth of Christ" and this is a fundamental difference between the new chronology and what was earlier, when the years were considered "from the creation of the world."
The most interesting thing is that the European chronology, borrowed by Peter I, and in Europe itself, was not adopted immediately, but at the end of the 16th century by the decree of Pope Gregory.
The date introduced by the Bolsheviks according to the "new style", which we use now, is precisely the chronology according to the Gregorian calendar.
Only since 1582 has Europe celebrated the New Year in this way.
One of the points of accusation brought against Copernicus by the Inquisition was his disagreement with the introduction of the calculation of the date from the birth of Christ.
How the years were counted before
The way the chronology was conducted in Russia until January 1700 is usually called the "Old Church Slavonic calendar." But this is a fundamentally wrong opinion. The Church could not calculate the date according to the pagan calendar, therefore it calculated the years according to the same principle as in the Byzantine Empire, from which Orthodoxy came to Russia. The country, which is our spiritual ancestor, counted the years from the creation of the world. According to the Byzantine calendar, Christ was born 5508 years after the creation of Adam.
Politics intervened more than once in the chronology. For example, the Antiochian Church believed that Christ was born 8 years earlier, and the Byzantine date was adopted only for the convenience of calculating the date of Easter.
There were also discrepancies with the date of the New Year in Russia: the church believed that it would come on September 1, and according to the civil calendar, the year began on March 25, the day of the creation of the first woman - Eve by God.
The Annunciation is celebrated on March 25 - the date when the Mother of God learned that she would give birth to Christ.
Peter, with his characteristic straightforwardness, solved this issue simply, bringing everything to a single denominator - the first of January.
What year is it now?
If you want to know what year it is according to the Old Church Slavonic calendar, then add 5500 or 5508 to the current date (a figure that is more historically correct). It turns out that we do not live in 2014, but in 7522. Well, the one who gave us this winter vacation was born in 7180 from the Creation of the World.
