Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.classics,soc.history.moderated
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!yeshua.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!csusac!csus.edu!netcom.com!mccombtm
From: tth@dhruva.caltech.edu (Thomas Hamilton)
Subject: Re: Why AD Latin, BC English?
Message-ID: <mccombtmCwM5zs.EGL@netcom.com>
X-Submissions-To: soc-history-mod@bcm.tmc.edu
Sender: mccombtm@netcom.com (Todd Michel McComb)
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
References: <35sgje$gt1@news.u.washington.edu> <mccombtmCwLEI5.MA6@netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 1994 01:39:21 GMT
Approved: mccombtm@netcom.com
X-Requests-To: history-mod@netcom.com
Lines: 27
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:31413 sci.classics:4631

In article <mccombtmCwLEI5.MA6@netcom.com> gans@scholar.chem.nyu.edu (Paul J. Gans) writes:
>Edward Zotti (ezotti@merle.acns.nwu.edu) wrote:
>
>: Does anybody know why AD, anno domini, is Latin, while the
>: abbreviation BC, before Christ, is English? The earliest use of
>: anno domini appears to have been in the 12th century. 
>
>My copy of Bede is at home, but the Venerable Bede introduced
>the notion of dating events from the birth of Christ.  Before
>that western Europeans dated events by King-years.
>
The adoption of the birth of Christ as the zero point on the calender
was made by the Catholic Church around 520.  In an attempt to eliminate
ongoing church disputes about the date of Easter, the church at that
time introduced a simplified "Computus", or algorithm for determining the
date of Easter.  The zero point of the calender
was fixed at the date that became 1 A.D. because, according to the (erroneous)
Computus, there was a new moon on Jan 1 that year.  This basically
astrological method of determining the date of Christ's birth results
in the embarassing problem that it is 4 years after the death of Herod the
Great.  I have no idea when the styling A.D. was adopted or what the
church may have used previously.  The calender, however, was definitely
promulgated by Rome, not by any English monk, no matter how Venerable.

cheers
tom

