Calendar Changes

You may have noticed our anthologists' footnote about a change in the calendar (please see the bottom of p. 126 (118) for an example)..  Here is more information:

The Roman emperor Julius Caesar commissioned a calendar during his reign in the first century B.C.  This we call the Julian Calendar, named after him.  This calendar was figured on a 365.25 day year.

Unfortunately, that figure is incorrect.  A year is really 365.242179 days long.  The difference may not seem significant, but it results in an error of 11 minutes, 14 seconds per year which grows to 7 days in 1000 years.

By the mid-1500's, the vernal (spring) equinox was about 10 days off.  This did not sit well with the Catholic Church which used the first day of spring to calculate some of its feasts and holidays.  So, the Pope at that time, Pope Gregory, commissioned a new calendar to fix the problem.  We call this the Gregorian Calendar, the one we use in the West today.

The Gregorian Calendar's remedy was that October 5, 1582 became October 15, 1582 to account for the 10 day error.  In addition, the leap year was created to offset the decimal part of a day in the yearly cycle.  To account for the extra one-quarter of a day, leap years occur every year that is exactly divisible by 4 except for centennial years unless a centennial year is evenly divisible by 400.  (Thus, the year 2000 WAS a leap year, but the year 1900 was not).

Puritans such as Bradford and Rowlandson, however, refused to use the new Gregorian Calendar even though it was far more accurate than the Julian calendar.

You can receive up to five extra credit points if you submit your own correct answer to the following question by October 1, 2004.  Knowing what we do now of Puritan beliefs, please explain why Bradford and Rowlandson refused to use the new Gregorian Calendar.