a distribution of time, accommodated to the uses of life; or a table or almanack containing the order of days, weeks, months, feasts, &c., happening throughout the year. See Time, Month, Year, &c.

It is called kalender, from the word kalende, anciently wrote in large characters at the head of each month. See Kalends.

The days in kalendars were originally divided into octader, or eights; but afterwards, in imitation of the Jews, into hebdomades, or sevens; which custom, Scaliger observes, was not introduced among the Romans till after the time of Theodosius.

There are divers kalendars, according to the different forms of the year and distributions of time established in different countries. Hence the Roman, the Jewish, the Persian, the Julian, the Gregorian, &c., kalendars.

The ancient Roman kalender is given by Ricciolus, Struvius, Danet, and others; by which we see the order and number of the Roman holidays and work days.

The three Christian kalendars are given by Wolfius in his Elements of Chronology.

The Jewish kalender was fixed by Rabbi Hillel about the year 362, from which time the days of their year may be reduced to those of the Julian kalender.

The Roman KALENDAR owed its origin to Romulus: but it has undergone various reformation since his time. That legislator distributed time into several periods, for the use of the people under his command: but as he was much better versed in matters of war than of astronomy, he only divided the year into ten months, making it begin in the spring, on the first of March; imagining the sun made his course through all the feasts in 364 days.

Romulus's kalender was reformed by Numa, who added two months more, January and February; placing them before March; so that his year consisted of 355 days, and began on the first of January. He chose, however, in imitation of the Greeks, to make an intercalation of 45 days; which he divided into two parts; intercalating a month of 22 days at the end of each two years; and at the end of each two years more another of 23 days; which month, thus interposed, he called Marcedonius, or the intercalary February.

But these intercalations being ill observed by the pontiffs, to whom Numa committed the care of them, occasioned great disorders in the constitution of the year; which Caesar, as sovereign pontiff, endeavoured to remedy. To this end, he made choice of Sofigenes, a celebrated astronomer of those times; who found, that the dispensation of time in the kalender could never be settled on any sure footing without having regard to the annual course of the sun. Accordingly, as the sun's yearly course is performed in 365 days six hours, he reduced the year to the same number of days: the year of this correction of the kalender was a year of confusion; they being obliged, in Kalendar order to swallow up the 65 days that had been imprudently added, and which occasioned the confusion, to add two months besides the Marcedonius, which chanced to fall out that year; so that this year consisted of 15 months, or 445 days. This reformation was made in the year of Rome 708, 42 or 43 years before Christ.

The Roman kalender, called also Julian kalender, from its reformer Julius, is disposed into quadriennial periods; whereof the first three years, which he called communis, consist of 365 days; and the fourth, bifextile, of 366; by reason of the six hours, which in four years make a day or somewhat less, for in 134 years an intercalary day is to be retrenched. On this account it was, that Pope Gregory XIII., with the advice of Clavius and Ciaconius, appointed, that the hundredth year of each century should have no bifextile, excepting in each fourth century: that is, a subtraction is made of three bifextile days in the space of four centuries; by reason of the 11 minutes wanting in the six hours whereof the bifextile consists.

The reformation of the kalender, or the new style as we call it, commenced on the 4th of October 1582, when ten days were thrown out at once, so many having been introduced into the computation since the time of the council of Nice in 325, by the defect of 11 minutes.

Julian Christian KALENDAR, is that wherein the days of the week are determined by the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, by means of the solar cycle; and the new and full moons, especially the paschal full moon, with the feast of Easter, and the other moveable feasts depending thereon, by means of golden numbers, rightly disposed through the Julian year. See Cycle, and Golden Number.

In this kalender, the vernal equinox is supposed to be fixed to the 21st day of March; and the cycle of 19 years, or the golden numbers, constantly to indicate the places of the new and full moons; yet both are erroneous. And hence arose a very great irregularity in the time of Easter. To show this error the more apparently, let us apply it to the year 1715. In this year, then, the vernal equinox falls on the 10th of March; and therefore comes too early by 11 days. The paschal full moon falls on the 7th of April; and therefore too late, with regard to the cycle, by three days. Easter, therefore, which should have been on the 10th of April, was that year on the 17th. The error here lies only in the metempsychosis, or postponement of the moon, through the defect of the lunar cycle. If the full moon had fallen on the 11th of March, Easter would have fallen on the 13th of March; and therefore the error arising from the anticipation of the equinox would have exceedingly augmented that arising from the postponement. These errors, in course of time, were so multiplied, that the kalender no longer exhibited any regular Easter. Pope Gregory XIII., therefore, by the advice of Aloysius Lilius, in 1582, threw 10 days out of the month of October, to restore the equinox to its place, viz. the 21st of March; and thus introduced the form of the Gregorian year, with such a provision as that the equinox should be constantly kept to the 21st of March. The new moons and full moons, by advice of the same Lilius, were not to be indicated by golden numbers. Kalendar, numbers, but by epacts. The kalendar, however, was still retained in Britain without this correction: whence there was a difference of 11 days between our time and that of our neighbours. But by 24 Geo. II. c. 23, the Gregorian computation is established here, and accordingly took place in 1752.

Gregorian KALENDAR, is that which, by means of epacts, rightly disposed through the several months, determines the new and full moons, and the time of Easter, with the moveable feasts depending thereon, in the Gregorian year.

The Gregorian kalendar, therefore, differs from the Julian, both in the form of the year, and in that epacts are substituted in lieu of golden numbers: for the use and disposition whereof, see EPACT.

Though the Gregorian kalendar be preferable to the Julian, yet it is not without its defects (perhaps as Tycho Brahe and Cassini imagine, it is impossible ever to bring the thing to a perfect justness). For, first, The Gregorian intercalation does not hinder, but that the equinox sometimes succeeds the 21st of March as far as the 23rd; and sometimes anticipates it, falling on the 19th; and the full moon, which falls on the 26th of March, is sometimes the paschal; yet not so accounted by the Gregorians. On the other hand, the Gregorians account the full moon of the 22nd of March the paschal, which yet falling before the equinox, is not paschal. In the first case, therefore, Easter is celebrated in an irregular month; in the latter, there are two Easters in the same ecclesiastical year. In like manner, the cyclical computation being founded on mean full moons, which yet may precede or follow the true one by some hours, the paschal full moon may fall on Saturday, which is yet referred by the cycle to Sunday: whence, in the first case, Easter is celebrated eight days later than it should be; in the other, it is celebrated on the very day of the full moon, with the Jews and Quartodeciman heretics; contrary to the decree of the council of Nice. Scaliger and Calvisius show other faults in the Gregorian kalendar, arising from the negligence and inadvertency of the authors; yet is this kalendar adhered to by the Romans throughout Europe, &c., and used wherever the Roman breviary is used.

Reformed or Corrected KALENDAR, is that which, setting aside all apparatus of golden numbers, epacts, and dominical letters, determines the equinox, with the paschal full moon, and the moveable feasts depending thereon, by astronomical computation, according to the Rudolphine Tables.

This kalendar was introduced among the Protestant states of Germany in the year 1700, when 11 days were at once thrown out of the month of February; so that in 1700 February had but 18 days: by this means, the corrected style agrees with the Gregorian. This alteration in the form of the year they admitted for a time; in expectation that, the real quantity of the tropical year being at length more accurately determined by observation, the Romans would agree with them on some more convenient intercalation.

Construction of a KALENDAR or Almanack. 1. Compute the sun's and moon's place for each day of the year; or take them from ephemerides. 2. Find the dominical letter, and by means thereof distribute the kalendar into weeks. 3. Compute the time of Easter, and hence fix the other moveable feasts. 4. Add the immoveable feasts, with the names of the martyrs. 5. To every day add the sun's and moon's place, with the rising and setting of each luminary; the length of day and night; the crepuscula, and the aspects of the planets. 6. Add in the proper places the chief phases of the moon, and the sun's entrance into the cardinal points; i.e. the solstices and equinoxes; together with the rising and the setting, especially heliacal, of the planets and chief fixed stars. See ASTRONOMY.

The duration of the crepuscula, or the end of the evening and beginning of the morning twilight, together with the sun's rising and setting, and the length of days, may be transferred from the kalendars of one year into those of another; the differences in the several years being too small to be of any consideration in civil life.

Hence it appears, that the construction of a kalendar has nothing in it of mystery or difficulty, if tables of the heavenly motions be at hand.

Some divide kalendars or almanacks into public and private, perfect and imperfect; others into Heathen and Christian.

Public almanacks are those of a larger size, usually hung up for common or family use; private are those of a smaller kind, to be carried about either in the hand, inscribed on a staff, or in the pocket; perfect, those which have the dominical letters as well as primes and feasts inscribed on them; imperfect, those which have only the primes and immoveable feasts. Till about the fourth century, they all carry the marks of heathenism; from that age to the seventh, they are generally divided between heathenism and Christianity.

Almanacks are of somewhat different composition, some containing more points, others fewer. The essential part is the kalendar of months and days, with the rising and setting of the sun, age of the moon, &c. To these are added various parerga, astrononical, astrological, meteorological, chronological, and even political, rural, medical, &c., as calculations and accounts of eclipses, solar ingresses, aspects, and configurations of the heavenly bodies, lunations, heliocentrical and geocentrical motions of the planets, prognostics of the weather, and predictions of other events, tables of the planetary motions, the tides, terms, intercet, twilight, equation, kings, &c.

Gelaelean, or Jellaiwan KALENDAR, is a correction of the Persian kalendar, made by order of Sultan Gelreddan, in the 467th year of the Hegira; or Christ 1089.

is used for the catalogue or fasti anciently kept in each church of the saints both universal and those particularly honoured in each church; with their bishops, martyrs, &c. Kalendars are not to be confounded with martyrlogies; for each church had its peculiar kalendar, whereas the martyrlogies regarded the whole church in general, containing the martyrs and confessors of all the churches. From all the several kalendars were formed one martyrlogy: so that martyrlogies are posterior to kalendars.

is also applied to divers other compositions reflecting the 12 months of the year.

In this sense, Spenner has given the shepherd's kalendar; Evelyn and Miller the gardener's kalendar, &c.