Christian
The Christian Era is the era now in general use throughout the world. Its epoch, or commencement, is January 1, 754 AUC (ab urbe condita—“from the foundation of the city [of Rome]”—or anno urbis conditae—“in the year of the foundation of the city”). Christ’s birth was at first believed to have occurred on the December 25 immediately preceding. Years are reckoned as before or after the Nativity, those before being denoted bc (before Christ) and those after by ad (anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord”). Chronologers admit no year zero between 1 bc and ad 1. The precise date of commencing the annual cycle was widely disputed almost until modern times, December 25, January 1, March 25, and Easter day each being favoured in different parts of Europe at different periods.
The Christian Era was invented by Dionysius Exiguus (c. ad 500–after 525), a monk of Scythian birth resident in Italy; it was a by-product of the dispute that had long vexed the churches as to the correct method of calculating Easter. Many churches, including those in close contact with Rome, followed 95-year tables evolved by Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, and by his successor, St. Cyril; but some Western churches followed other systems, notably a 532-year cycle prepared for Pope Hilarius (461–468) by Victorius of Aquitaine. In 525, at the request of Pope St. John I, Dionysius Exiguus prepared a modified Alexandrian computation based on Victorius’ cycle. He discarded the Alexandrian era of Diocletian, reckoned from ad 284, on the ground that he “did not wish to perpetuate the name of the Great Persecutor, but rather to number the years from the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Somehow Dionysius reckoned the birth of Christ to have occurred in 753 AUC; but the Gospels state that Christ was born under Herod the Great—i.e., at the latest in 750 AUC. Dionysius’ dating was questioned by the English saint Bede in the 8th century and rejected outright by the German monk Regino of Prüm at the end of the 9th. Nevertheless, it has continued in use to the present day, and, as a result, the Nativity is reckoned to have taken place before the start of the Christian Era.
The new chronology was not regarded as a major discovery by its author; Dionysius’ own letters are all dated by the indiction (see below). The use of the Christian Era spread through the employment of his new Easter tables. In England the Christian Era was adopted with the tables at the Synod of Whitby in 664. But it was the use, above all by Bede, of the margins of the tables for preserving annalistic notices and the consequent juxtaposition of historical writing with calendrical computations that popularized the new era. Outside Italy it is first found in England (in a charter of 676) and shortly afterward in Spain and Gaul. It was not quickly adopted in royal diplomas and other solemn documents, however, and in the papal chancery it did not replace the indiction until the time of John XIII (965–972). The Christian Era did not become general in Europe until the 11th century; in most of Spain it was not adopted until the 14th and in the Greek world not until the 15th.
Of the alternative chronologies used by Christians, the most important were: (1) the indiction, (2) the Era of Spain, and (3) the Era of the Passion. The indiction was a cycle of 15 years originally based on the interval between imperial tax assessments but during the Middle Ages always reckoned from the accession of Constantine, in 312. Years were given according to their place in the cycle of 15, the number of the indiction itself being ignored. This chronology was the most widespread in the early Middle Ages, but its use diminished rapidly in the 13th century, although public notaries continued to use it until the 16th. The Era of Spain was based on an Easter cycle that began on January 1, 716 AUC (38 bc), marking the completion of the Roman conquest of Spain. First recorded in the 5th century, it was in general use in Visigothic Spain of the 6th and 7th centuries and, after the Arab invasions, in the unconquered Christian kingdoms in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. It was abolished, in favour of the Era of the Incarnation, in Catalonia in 1180, in Aragon in 1350, in Castile in 1383, and in Portugal in 1422. The Era of the Passion, commencing 33 years after that of the Incarnation, enjoyed a short vogue, mainly in 11th-century France.