This year marks 100 years since the Romanian Orthodox Church adopted the corrected calendar. How did the representatives of the Metropolitanate of Transylvania explain this decision to the citizens of Sibiu?

In 1924, the Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church adopted the corrected calendar; thus, October 1 became October 14, 1924. Romania, as a state, adopted this corrected (astronomically corrected) calendar 5 years earlier, in 1919.The calendar that the Holy Synod introduced on October 1, 1924, is not the Roman Catholic calendar, but our old Julian calendar of our holy Eastern Orthodox Church, aimed at counting time much better than the so-called Gregorian calendar“, explained the representatives of the Transylvanian Metropolis in its annual publication “Calendarul Bunului Creștin” (1923-1949), the successor to the “Calendar” (1852-1922) – a publication founded by Andrei Șaguna – and the predecessor of the collections “The Orthodox Christian Almanac” (1950- 1952) and “Church Guide” (1953 – present).

In the 1925 edition of the “Good Christian Calendar” (page 113), in the section “Grab and read!”, an article was published regarding the decision of the Holy Synod of the BOR by which the new calendar (or the corrected/corrected calendar) was also adopted by the Church. The article is called “The calendar directed by St. Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church” and starts from the discussions that existed at that time in society in which “a part of our believers from the villages and cities, hearing about the change of the calendar, believed that the Romanian Orthodox would have surrendered to the law of the papacy “.

“But it’s not like that. Neither the Romanian Orthodox, nor other Orthodox (such as the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians and Russians) received the Gregorian calendar, but made a correction in their Julian calendar. Thus, the calendar of the church of the east becomes better than the Gregorian calendar or of the church of the west”, assure the authors of the publication printed in Sibiu by the Metropolitanate of Transylvania.

This is how the representatives of the Church of Sibiu explained the decision adopted 100 years ago:

“(…) The Eastern calendar is very old. In 1925, 1600 years have passed since the holy fathers of the church, gathered in the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), decided to receive this calendar for the entire Christian church, which at that time had not yet split into Eastern and Western.

This calendar was not made by a Christian, but by the learned pagan Sosighene, (46 years before the birth of the Savior), at the behest of Julius Caesar. In honor of Julius Caesar, the calendar was called the Julian calendar.

Sosighene sought to match the year in his calendar to the year of the sun. We know that the time it takes the earth to rotate once around the sun is called the solar year.

This time of a year, the learned Sosighene counted it as 365 days and 6 hours; — but, this calculation was wrong, because it was proved later, that the year of the sun is only 365 days, 5 hours, 48 ​​minutes and 48 seconds. So, the year in the Julian calendar was too long, and year after year it lags behind the celestial year by 11 minutes and 12 seconds. At first this was not felt; but in 1582, i.e. 1257 years after the Council of Nicaea, it was noticed that the calendar was 10 days behind the sun. Western Christians corrected this calendar mistake, when after October 5 they calculated October 15, 1582.

The new calendar was first received by the Roman Catholic Church; the Lutherans received 1 some 170 years after the Catholics; our Orthodox church did not accept it, because there were too big differences in the calculation of the holy Easter day and the commemoration of the saints every day.

But from 1582 until today, a period of 300 years, our eastern calendar remained behind by another three days, so that today the difference was 13 days.

Thus, for some time our church had to think about changing the calendar; an agreement was therefore made between all the Eastern Orthodox churches, and with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and, following this agreement, St. Synod of Bucharest, decided the following:

1. Tuesday, October 1, 1924, is considered October 14, and St. Paraschiva, which by the way was to be celebrated on October 27 according to the new calendar;

2. Also on this day, all the saints from October 1 to 13 were commemorated and the gospels from Sundays of October 5 and 12 were also read;

3. All the holidays, which are celebrated on a certain day of the month, remain on that day, but according to the fixed calendar. Thus St. Demetrius is celebrated on October 26, St. Archangels Michael and April on November 8, Entry into the church of the Mother of God on November 21, St. Nicolae Ia December 6, but all according to the correct calendar. We will have Christmas on December 25th, together with the sunsets, and New Year on January 1st, together with the sunsets;

4. St. Easter, however, we will not have them at the same time as the evenings, but they will be counted after the Easter of our church;

5. The commemoration of the saints every day remains unchanged and all church ordinances remain unchanged.

That being the case, the calendar that the Holy Synod introduced on October 1, 1924, is not the Roman Catholic one, but our old Julian calendar of our holy Eastern Orthodox Church, aimed at counting time much better than the so-called Gregorian calendar.

Because of this, the clergy and the people of the country and of our Orthodox-Romanian church should unhesitatingly receive the calendar directed by St. Synod; because the rules of faith and ritual have not changed in any way, but those established by St. Fathers and the cathedrals of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The clarification letter about the calendar, given by St. Synod in 1924, it is subscribed by all the metropolitans and bishops of the country, the heads of our church, and therefore all the Romanian people to receive with confidence the correct calendar, without worrying that it would deviate from our ancestral law”.

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