The word 'bissextile' is a standard one for the English word 'leap' in 'leap
year' in the romance languages (Latin dialects).
Properly, i.e., in proper Latin, it means 'second sixth'; but thereby hangs
a tale: In vulgar medieval Latin it was often, indeed usually interpreted
as meaning 6th x 2 or 12th; and this is why a bissextile year is a leap
year.
Before the Gregorian calendar reform the new year began on March 21st, and
February was thus the last [full] month of the old year. Quoting now from
the circa 1350 Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1404(A), folio 81r:
. . for [th]at day is twyce told vj kalendes [Marcii]. The people calleth
it lepe year, for it leapeth by a day more thanne anne oder yere. Also it
is seid bysext, twice sex is 12, for euermore save in lepe yer Seynt Mathie
[Saint Mathias's] day is the vj[th] day of the kalends of March, but than it
is the 12[th] day of the kalends of March, and when lepe yere falleth Seynt
Mathie day shall be the last day of the two [and not be furst].
Leap/bissextile years were then determined by the Julian-calendar rule:
Divide 'the last two numbers of the year of Our Lord' by 4, and if the
remainder is zero, the year is a leap year. In such leap years an extra day
was intercalated during February, the last month of the year. This extra
day, the sixth kalends of March [February 24th for Latin dropouts] is
reckoned twice [occurs on two successive days], with St. Mathias's Day,
normally celebrated on the first and only February 24th, being celebrated on
the second of them in leap years.
(Here vj, which we wrote vi, is the Roman numeral for 6.)
This practice is of course different from the Gregorian one of adding an
additional final day, February 29th, to the month of February in leap years.
What was done before the Gregorian reform was to add an additional
February 24th immediately following the usual February 24th in leap years
[and to celebrate St. Mathias's Day on the second of these two cheek-by-jowl
instances of February 24th]. Moreover, leap years were calculated
simplistically: there was no centurial-year correction.
John Gilmore
SystemCraft LLC
_________________________________________________________________
Enjoy a special introductory offer for dial-up Internet access — limited
time only! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to listserv@no-spam with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO
Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
never ceases to confound ...
A lesson most worthy as we pass into the first afternoon of the new year
- by common determination anyway.
Shane ...
On Thu, 2004-01-01 at 12:49, john gilmore wrote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to listserv@no-spam with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO
Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
